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DEC 26TH
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Sydney Theatre Company in association with Sydney Festival and Merrigong Theatre Company presents A Windmill Theatre production
Re-live the special kind of hell that is the...
O SCHO L A D NCE By Matthew Whittet
10 JAN – 3 FEB 2013 SYDNEY THEATRE COMPANY SYDNEYTHEATRE.COM.AU 9250 1777 DIRECTOR
LIGHTING DESIGNER
ROSEMARY MYERS
RICHARD VABRE
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JONATHON OXLADE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK
LUKE SMILES MOTION LABORATORIES Photo: Shane Reid
7 – 9 FEB 2013 ILLAWARRA PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE MERRIGONG.COM.AU 4224 5999
WITH
AMBER MCMAHON JONATHON OXLADE GABRIELLE NANKIVELL LUKE SMILES ANIMATION MATTHEW WHITTET CHRIS MORE MOVEMENT
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rock music news welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly
five minutes WITH
HOLIDAY FROM BRIDEZILLA
W
What was the most difficult thing you’ve had to overcome as a band? Maintaining our stability (friendships and relationships), keeping our cool (our eyes blind and our ears deaf), living up to the hype, staying afloat, being terrible with technology and emotionally fragile and completely unreliable with live performances, writing a second record, and realising that it was time to stop.
e all got nostalgic a couple of weeks back when Bridezilla confirmed their rumoured split. A favourite of the Sydney scene since they emerged in 2005, the fivepiece kicked all the goals a young Aussie indie band can: touring with The Dirty Three, John Cale and Stephen Malkmus, being invited to play the Nick Cave-curated All Tomorrow’s Parties in Sydney and The Flaming Lips’ version of the same in New York, and releasing a debut album packed with gorgeous melody, swirling brass and string arrangements, and moody pop poetics. We caught up with vocalist Holiday Sidewinder ahead of their farewell show in January. Bridezilla have been on hiatus for the last two years; what’s everyone been working on? Solo records/endeavours, natural medicine, The Conservatorium Of Music, College Of Fine Arts, travelling, listening and learning, loving, making babies and catching up on lost time. You got together in high school, back in 2005. What’s it like going through so many changes as a group? Was that part of what made this break “inevitable” (as quoted from the announcement)? Yes, exactly. It was a unique existence in the most formative of years; we were bound to change, evolve, and dissolve. All that lives must die, and all good things come to an end, but
music survives and we’ve left some melodies in the ether of time. We were outrageously young and, nearly a decade later, we’re only just at the absolute beginning of adulthood.
What: Bridezilla – The Last Dance With: Cabins, Swimwear, Kirin J. Callinan (DJ set) and more When: Wednesday January 16 xxx
What would you nominate as the single greatest highlight of Bridezilla’s existence? Our first song. Our first show. It felt pretty special. In my eyes, we achieved everything I could’ve hoped for, in a fan-girl way. We met and shared stages with The Dirty Three, John Cale, Suicide, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Wilco, Stephen Malkmus, Belle &
Sebastian and SO many more incredible bands, and played incredible venues and events. We released an EP, a 7-inch split single with The Tren Brothers, and a fulllength album! We toured the UK and the US, and directly influenced and inspired novel writers, clothing designers and young people in bloody Mexico to play music! Our records were sold in Amoeba and Rough Trade. This is all unbelievable. If I had imagined any of that would or could have happened at 14 when we began – honestly, we had the time of our lives, and we will never forget. We are so lucky.
You’re about as Sydney as a band can get. What do you see as the biggest change to the local scene over the past seven years? It died badly for a little while there, along with all the venues. Goodgod and Marty Doyle (booking) opening up honestly breathed invigorating new life into the scene – hell, it created a whole new scene with no boundaries. The garage, lo-fi, DIY scene is fucking killer; it’s a great time, in good hands, and everyone should fully embrace it. Hype and expectation is irrelevant in the drowning economy of music; now it’s all about experience and enjoyment, real and raw.
FUN.
Remember that time you turned on RAGE one blurry morning and saw Janelle Monae sitting at #1, and assumed that the kebab shop you stumbled into on your way home was actually a portal to a parallel dimension where art is rewarded fiscally (and cheese costs an extra dollar)? Turns out it charted thanks mainly to the undeniable pull of pop maestros Fun., whose hit single with Monae, ‘We Are Young’, was one of the most addictive blasts of anything non-meth-related this year. Fun.’s Future Music Festival sideshow, set for March 7 at The Enmore Theatre, will sell out quick smart if the response to their Platinumselling debut Some Nights is anything to go by – although in truth the movement in tickets probably has more to do with them being our cover stars last week... Tickets on sale now.
Bombay Bicycle Club
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, Krissi Weiss, Caitlin Welsh NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Chris Honnery ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER: Tim Levy SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Mary-Jane Caswell, Katrina Clarke, Bree Corvell, Claire Hart, Ashley Mar, George Popov, Pedro Xavier COVER PHOTO: Shawn Brackbill 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) ONLINE & SOCIAL MEDIA: Tanydd Jaquet INTERNS: Natalie Amat, Katie Davern, Tanydd Jaquet, Mina Kitsos REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Benjamin Cooper, Alasdair Duncan, Christie Eliezer, Murray Engleheart, Andrew Geeves, Chris Honnery, Nathan Jolly, Anna Kennedy, Chris Martin, 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, Krissi Weiss, 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). Ad cancellations: Tuesday 4pm Published by Cartrage P/L ACN 104026388 All content copyrighted to Cartrage 2003 DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get The Brag? Email distribution@furstmedia. com.au or phone 03 9428 3600. PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: www.spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204 Win a giveaway? Mail us a stamped and addressed envelope, and we’ll send your prize on over...
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BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB
Earlier this year when a friend asked me to come along with her to Bombay Bicycle Club, I found the tightest, weather-conditioned lycra outfit, dug out my old BMX, put a Pokemon card in the spokes so it would sound like a motorcycle, and prepared for our first ride. Turns out we ended up at the Hordern, watching some UK foursome support Elbow – but despite the lack of valet bike-parking, I was very impressed. Now they are coming back as headliners at The Factory Theatre on Wednesday January 2, with Paper Kites on support duties. Get your ticket through Ticketek.
THE HIVES LIVE
The best thing about The Hives isn’t their string of impressive albums, or the fact that they purport to have their songs written and their strings pulled by an unseen svengali. It’s not the startling/hilarious arrogance that drips from them at every live show – or even that part when Howlin’ Pelle’s voice cracks Peter Brady-style during ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’. It’s that their drummer’s stage-name is Chris Dangerous! Catch them at the all ages gig at The Metro on January 7. Tickets for this Falls Festival sideshow are somehow still available…
FIELD YAY!
“So this is the new year, and I don’t feel any different,” sang Ben Gibbard back in those hazy, lazy The OC days. Perhaps his entire life trajectory (including his brief marriage to Katy Perr Zooey) might have been a lot different if, instead of just assuming January 1 works as a whitewash of everything that came before it, he had slid out of bed/bathtub and made his way
to Field Day, where everyone’s deep-seated regrets are blasted into submission. This year, a little bit of band-y love has been added to the traditional focus on KILLA BEATZ, with live sets from the likes of Two Door Cinema Club, Hot Chip, SBTRKT, The Vaccines, Django Django and more, plus a DJ set from Mark Ronson, who would definitely own some good records by now… It all happens on New Year’s Day at The Domain, and tickets are still available. It’s the start of your new life!
DEEZ NUTS IN HI-FI
Deez Nuts, definitely our favourite Aussie hardcore band named after a skit on a Dr. Dre record, have finished their third album Bout It, and are unleashing the lead single, ‘Band Of Brothers’, both as a digital download, ‘cos we live in the future, and a 7-inch vinyl, ‘cos we live in the past sometimes, too. It’ll be out January 9, which is great timing considering you were planning to catch them at their all ages show on Sunday January 13 at The Hi-Fi.
Emilie Autumn
AUTUMN’S COMING
It would be pretty hard not to walk away from an Emilie Autumn show completely besotted with her. Her music blends Victorian-era elements with more industrial-sounding synths and pulsing rhythms – plus the line “I’m giving you a head start, because I fight like a girl”, which is the best threat ever. Oh, and she plays violin like a demon. She’ll be at The Factory Theatre on March 30, and tickets are on sale now. Also, if you wanna lose faith in everyone and everything, read her autobiography: The Asylum For Wayward Victorian Girls.
BLUNTED & WAY-2-FONKY PRESENT
v
ULTRAMAGNETIC MCs CRITICAL BEATDOWN
25TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR LOOSE CHANGE / MIKE WHO / FRENZIE
FRIDAY 8TH FEBRUARY 8PM OXFORD ART FACTORY
$40 + BF (EARLYBIRDS) // $50 + BF (GENERAL RELEASE) VIA MOSHTIX
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rock music news
free stuff
welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
on the record WITH
CHRIS FROM TIGERTOWN sing all those songs live, I really wanted to listen closely to their recordings. It probably has the most songs I’ve ever seen on a Best Of record. The First Thing I Recorded My sister and I made a 3. tape when I was about eight and she was six. It was in our lounge room, with two microphones, onto our old tape deck. I played some blues, a violin piece (I think it was a Bach study for kids), and sang some old folk tunes I’d learnt at school. My sister sang songs she wrote on the spot. It is hilarious and amazing listening to her come up with it all. Pretty cool that we’re making records together again for the first time in 20 years.
1.
The First Record I Bought Michael Jackson – Dangerous. It was on cassette tape, and I was seven. I remember my uncle playing the ‘Black And White’ music video, and I did what I could to get mum and dad to buy me the album. Michael is still my main creative inspiration now. The
album tracks on Dangerous were my favourite, because he went all-out with the fantasy and movie soundtrack feel. The Last Record I Bought America – The Best Of 2. America. Last week I watched a DVD, America – Live In Central Park. Seeing them play and
FIRST AID KIT
Swedish sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg play stunning folk pop as First Aid Kit, which the following people have raved about: Patti Smith, Jack White, Conor Oberst. That’s all of the best people! Plus: they sold out their last Australian tour; their second and latest record The Lion’s Roar is fairly fantastic; and they are coming back to Sydney again, because we have a big Opera House that was gonna be just sitting there on Thursday January 3. Tickets are on sale from the venue now.
WOODS TOUR
Brooklyn certainly didn’t invent non-ironic, spooky lo-fi recordings, but many artists from there certainly deal in such a thing. And at the very top of the heap (artists hang out in heaps, based on a Pitchfork-implemented ranking system) sits Woods, whose five albums and corresponding label Woodsist are quite reminiscent of the whole communityvibe of early Animal Collective, albeit a lot
ROLLING STONE AWARDS! AND PATRON!
4.
The Last Thing I Recorded Our EP – Before The Morning. It was the first time we recorded in a studio as Tigertown. We had Jimi Maroudis as producer, who pulls out the most organic, rich sounds you’ve ever heard. It was so energising getting to take our bedroom recordings into a big space, and being able
less experimental/weird – although one band member’s job title is “tape effects technician”, so there’s that. They play Saturday January 26 at Goodgod Small Club. Totally get a ticket.
CRIB NOTES
Quick quiz: how many of your bands has Johnny Marr asked to join? If you happen to be Morrissey, still swanning around Sydney after his shows last weekend, the answer will be ‘one’ (thanks for reading!). If you are any of our other readers, it’s safe to say the answer is ‘none… yet’. And if you are any of the three Jarman brothers from UK indie-rock outfit The Cribs, the answer is also ‘one’. Marr has since left the group, but when one of the few indisputable geniuses of modern music wants to join a band, chances are it’s a very good band. And it is! The Cribs play Wednesday January 2 at Oxford Art Factory (and at Pyramid Rock Festival), and if you own any of their relentlessly hooky albums, well, you’ll already have bought tickets to this.
Children Collide
to stretch our legs. Lots of jumping around, and lots of group singing. The Record That Changed My Life 5. Fleetwood Mac – Rumors. I was late to listen to this. It was in my parents’ record collection my whole life, but it wasn’t until about four years ago that I listened to it. The first thing that hit me was how they were the most amazing pop songs, but still felt so trendy. And the energy from the band all playing together is really amazing on the record. As we started Tigertown, and even now, we often look to that record. The vocals are massive but still raw, and that’s our main inspiration at the moment. What: Before The Morning EP is out now With: John Butler Trio, Kaki King, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, The Black Seeds, Deep Sea Arcade, King Tide and more Where: Peats Ridge Festival @ Glenworth Valley When: December 29–January 1
AMANDA PALMER RESCHEDULES
Patron Tequila are getting set for another epic bash, sponsoring the Rolling Stone Awards for the third year in a row. Taking place at the iconic Beach Road Hotel on Wednesday January 16, they’ll be offering guests a cocktail menu of the world’s top tequila, sourced straight from Jalisco, Mexico (just like your exotic dream man/woman). With Tex Perkins acting as host and a live performance by Owl Eyes, you won’t want to miss out – which sucks, because, well, it’s invite only. Unless you win the double pass we have here. And this bottle of Patron tequila. Just send in your favourite tequila recipe (and be prepared to pick up your prize in person, and prove you’re 18+)
BLACK CHERRY NYE
If maneuvering anxiously through crowds of shrieking idiots under a bridge to watch a bit of light move across the sky isn’t your NYE cup of tea, our amigos at Black Cherry have an excellent alternative. Ska kings Area-7 and Viking lords Barbarion will headline a night of debauched rock’n’roll, blues and rockabilly at The Factory Theatre, featuring daring burlesque and DJ sets from Rockabilly Rhino, Sinead Ni Mhorda, Creatura Noctis and more, with a Twist And Shout ‘60s Dance Party room to boot. You’re probably wondering whether there’ll be cheap drinks all night, Mexican food, a mechanical bull, an all-weather beer garden, and a green fairy absinthe bar. The answer is yes. And yes, we have two double passes to give away. If you could pick ANYONE to take to this show, who would it be, and why? Tell us in 25 words or less...
Kaki King
Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra had to cancel their Australian shows after her best friend Anthony got extremely ill. He’s sadly still in treatment, but to thank you for your patience the band have rescheduled their show at The Enmore for a far-away distant date known as September 14 2013. If that date doesn’t work for you, refunds are available from your point of purchase.
RODRIGO Y GABRIELA
On first listen, Mexican guitar gods Rodrigo y Gabriela seem to be an odd fit for Sydney Opera House: their Latin-rhythms, speed-metal riffing, and jazz-wanderings surely belong elsewhere. But it actually makes perfect sense. Musically, these guys are at the top of their – or anyone else’s – game, and with the addition of Latin jazz pianist Alex Wilson, this may turn out to be the most cultured thing you’ve seen at the Opera House (unless you managed to catch Dave Hughes’ stand-up show...). Tickets can be purchased from the venue website.
UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA
When Ruban Nielson (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) moved to Portland in order to write his second record II, we just knew that fertile musical city would warp his already quiteoff-kilter music into something amazing. It’s proper psychedelia: bower-birding from various sources, blending break-beats, soul, funk, and a bunch of hooks from the era of the (original) Nuggets compilations. Catch it live at The Standard on Wednesday January 2, with the ever-babin’ Bloods as support.
NYE WITH THE GURG
We’ve checked all the gig guides for you (turns out ours is the best), and we can safely say there is only one New Year’s Eve party that boasts free entry, a career-spanning set from Regurgitator, and glam rock-inspired burlesque dancers. It’s at Rock Lily, at The Star Casino (where you tried counting cards that time), and no bookings will be taken. Just try to book – see what happens!
POST-FESTIVAL FUNS
HEAPS OF GOOD STUFF AT THE ‘DALE
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TRIPLE SIDEWAVE
Watching Bullet For My Valentine play live is such a visceral, face-melting experience, full of
Instead of spending New Year’s Eve at a house party full of people you aren’t quite sure exactly how you met (“through a friend? I dunno. Where’s the punch?”), get along to Peats Ridge Festival in Glenworth Valley with a tent and watch as many of the hundreds (literally) of acts playing over the three days as you can. There’s John Butler Trio, Kaki King, Luke Slater, Krufty Kuts, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, The Herd, The Black Seeds, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and yeah, hundreds more. It happens from December 29–January 1, check all the details at peatsridgefestival.com.au, and don’t forget to pack spare underpants and both flavours of Twisties.
aggression and energy, that when they speak between songs in their Welsh accents it’s like being spun and shoved into traffic. You’ll see what I mean at their February 27 Soundwave sideshow at The Hi-Fi, which also features ferocious punk rockers Cancer Bats, and the growling Miss May I. Oh, and if you bought tickets for the cancelled Cancer Bats tour in July, they’ll be valid for this show! If you didn’t, tickets are on sale now.
Xxx photo by Xxxx
The Annandale have three pretty undeniable post-Xmas, pre-NYE gigs at which you should spend that murky time of year. Firstly there’s the traditional Front End Loader-led Boxing Day show (‘Roxing Day’, with support from Royston Vasie, The Darkened Seas, The Hungry Mile, Teenage Hand Models and Surprise Wasp, $15 only), then the next evening (Thursday December 27) comes Bang!, with Little Bastard, Cabins, Papa Pilko & The Bin Rats, The Mountains and Callithump, and free entry if you’re early. Theeennn on Saturday December 29, our favourite frenetic rockers Children Collide will be headlining, after sets from The Hollow Bones and She Rex. Merry Annandale!
Canberra-based Gypsy-folk outfit The Crooked Fiddle Band have booked the Factory Theatre for Friday January 4 to head up a rollicking night: their sixth annual Post-Festival Party. The bill also features The Warsaw Village Band (actually from Poland, so not just a clever name), San Fran’s Gregory Page and The Rusty Spring Syncopators. Tickets $25, doors open at 7pm, wear shoes and then take them off to dance.
FOR PEATS’ SAKE
MOJO
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The Music Network
themusicnetwork.com
Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer
THINGS WE HEAR * Ke$ha’s ‘Die Young’ has been pulled from some US radio stations following the Sandy Hook school shooting. It was being played to 167 million listeners until then. She Tweeted that she understood why, saying, “I had my very own issue with ‘die young’ for this reason… I did NOT want to sing those lyrics and I was FORCED TO.” * Justice Crew’s ‘Boom Boom’ has been certified five times Platinum. * Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All have hit out at a lawsuit by a 17-year-old fan, claiming he was roughed up by the band after he jumped on stage at a gig in San Antonio. The rap collective claim that the fan threw the first punch, sending the media Tweets from the teenager’s account, from which he allegedly acknowledged he threw the first punch and boasted of the money he’d get from suing them. * After relocating to Sydney because of the media heat surrounding his post-tax fraud jail term, is manager Glenn Wheatley moving back to Melbourne?
MADONNA’S MDNA TOUR HIGHEST GROSSING OF 2012
* Meat Loaf is to quit live performances after his UK tour – not before his time, judging by his AFL Grand Final performance last year… * The APRA awards are returning to Melbourne in 2013. *The Pirate Party has applied for registration to contest Senate seats in Victoria, NSW and Queensland in next year’s federal elections. * Alberts-signed singer-songwriter Emi Green has returned from a two-month songwriting trip writing and recording in London, Hamburg, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles and Bristol – with an estimated 60 songs. Meanwhile, 17-year-old Kellyville singer-songwriter Jessica Cerro told Hills Shire Times she has signed a four-year publishing deal with Alberts, and will be juggling her music with her final school year in 2013. Cerro, a finalist in the triple j Unearthed High competition, has just formed a new band. * Nirvana reps denied the band is about to go on tour. Bassist Krist Novoselic recently said he was open to a tour with
360 SPLITS FROM BOOKER
The biggest tour of 2012 was Madonna’s MDNA, which grossed a staggering US$228 million, reported Billboard. She sold out all 72 shows and drew 1,635,176 fans. She caused controversy, brandishing a fake gun onstage, flashing a boob in Turkey, handing out pink anti-homophobia wristbands in Russia, feuding with the French right wing and pulling out of Australia, and urged fans to support victims of Hurricane Sandy last month by baring her butt, yelping, “Get over my naked ass and give me some money”. Runner-up was Bruce Springsteen, who earned $198 million. The rest of the Top 10 list included Roger Waters ($186m), Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour by Cirque du Soleil ($147 million), Coldplay ($147 million), Lady Gaga ($124 million), Kenny Chesney & Tim McGraw ($96 million), Van Halen ($54 million), Jay-Z & Kanye West ($47 million) and Andre Rieu ($46 million).
360 has parted with his booking agency New World Artists, with his manager Rae Harvey of Crucial Music taking over those duties. No reason was given.
BISSET NEW GM OF CBAA The Community Broadcasting Association of Australia announced Jon Bisset as its general manager from February, taking over from Kath Letch. Among his high level executive posts, Bisset served as CEO of the Public Relations Institute of Australia, the Council On The Ageing (NSW), Fundraising Institute Australia (Deputy) and GM of Operations for Netball Australia.
IINET PULLS OUT OF ISP TALKS Australia’s third largest internet service provider (ISP), iiNet, has pulled out of talks with music and film companies. The talks over the past year centred on ISPs helping copyright owners to curb piracy on their networks by providing information. But iiNet’s
Just Announced
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COOPERS AMP: LIVE SHOW, FIRST SHORTLISTED ALBUM The Coopers Amp revealed Hermitude’s HyperParadise as the first album in its shortlisted nine. It also announced that, as part of its expansion, it will hold a free live event in Melbourne’s Federation Square on Friday February 1. Hermitude, along with the other nine shortlisted acts, will perform at Amp Alive, hosted by Clare Bowditch and Kevin Mitchell. This year’s removal of the entry fee saw a 150% rise in artists nominating their releases.
THE VANGUARD LAUNCHES PROJECT AWESOME! Since he took over two years ago as creative director of The Vanguard, Russall S. Beattie introduced shows like Star Wars Burlesque, Batman Follies Of 1929 and The Music Of Quentin Tarantino. Over the January 18-20 weekend comes Project Awesome!: seven events inspired by films and TV. These include Robocop Sings The Blues (Robocop being Bob Log III), a screening of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory with a chocolate degustation, a Q&A with the cast of TV’s Danger 5, a Twin Peaks Pie Party, and a group of celebs reading out the script of Police Academy.
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Sony Music is offering bands, DJs and solo acts the chance to be included in its guide to the hottest summer events. Head to Summertainment at facebook.com/ sonyaustralia. One of the label's A&R team will attend gigs of unsigned acts deemed the most interesting and exciting; you have until the end of February to list your event.
ALICIA KEYS FACING LAWSUIT Alicia Keys is facing a lawsuit over her single ‘Girl On Fire’. US songwriter Earl Shuman claims a sample of his 1962 song ‘Hey There Lonely Girl’ was lifted from the 1970 version by Eddie Holman without his permission. The alleged use was first unveiled by the Showbiz411 blog.
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SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA SET NEW AUSSIE CHART RECORD
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Swedish House Mafia have set a new Australian chart record with ‘Don’t You
ENTERTAINMENT QUARTER, BUILDING 220, 122 LANG RD, MOORE PARK, SYDNEY
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The producers of the star-studded 12-12-12 concert distributed the first $50 million to victims of Hurricane Sandy. A claimed two billion watched it worldwide on pay-as-youwatch, 19 million of them in the United States. Other monies came from ticket sales ($36m), sponsorships, donations and merchandise auctions. The digital album is out through Columbia, with the physical version to follow. But due to the baby boomer-themed acts, it didn’t generate too much excitement on social media. The six-hour show generated 1.5 million social media comments, says social media trackers Bluefin Labs, compared to 13 million during the Grammys and 12.8 million during the MTV Music Video Awards.
WANT A SONY MUSIC REP AT YOUR GIG?
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From The Jam (UK)
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chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby says it is not the ISPs’ jobs to be dobbing in their customers. Consumers infringe, he said, because entertainment companies don’t provide content in time and at a reasonable cost – iiNet will return to talks when they do.
12-12-12 CONCERT: $50 MILLION DISTRIBUTED
Coming Soon
The Boys Of Summer Tour 2013 Sun 13 Jan
David Lee Roth out front. * Port Macquarie police and ambulance were full of praise for Festival Of The Sun, saying it was “a very well run event”, with only two minor problems from the sell-out crowd of 3000 punters. * Job audition of the week: DJ Brad Guy pitched for a job at Star FM in Dubbo with a three-and-a-half minute video, going through Dubbo with an ‘I Love Star FM Dubbo’ placard, and getting bystanders to say why he’d be great on radio. “You’re so cute!” spluttered one girl. Star FM gave him an audition as a result. * New research commissioned by the UK’s Musicians’ Union suggests that 60% of musicians have worked for free over the past year, and more than half of professional musicians get paid less than £20,000 (AU$31,000) per year. * Icehouse’s Iva Davies returned to Epping Boys High for the first time since leaving in 1972, to address the assembly and rehearse ‘Great Southern Land’ with the school choir and orchestra before they played it at their Speech Day.
Worry Child’. The song has spent 14 consecutive weeks at #1 on the ARIA Club Chart – the longest running #1 club track in Australia ever. The now triple Platinum single defeats Spiller and Sophie EllisBexter’s ‘Groovejet’, which held the #1 spot for 13 consecutive weeks in 2002.
MP3S CAUSE HEARING LOSS A study released recently by Better Hearing Australia found that 70% of young people have experienced tinnitus, with MP3 players the most damaging of all leisure noise. The report said that constant exposure to loud noise was the number one cause of hearing loss, with a quarter of problems caused by listening to MP3 players at excessive and damaging levels. Almost half of those questioned, aged 18-34, went to noisy bars and pubs and listened to music through headphones at least once a week. One in four people are expected to experience hearing loss by 2050. The World Health Organisation recommends a safe level of 70dB.
Lifelines Engaged: Deadmau5 proposed to celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D via Twitter (he has 1.8 million followers), and she accepted. Dating: According to tabloids in Sydney and London, Russell Brand struck up a “steamy” friendship with MTV’s Kate Peck after they met at the ARIAs. Splitting: Has manager Jason Trawick warned Britney Spears’ family he’s breaking their affair, so they’re prepared when he breaks the news to her? Split: Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and actor/singer Zooey Deschanel have officially divorced after three years. Injured: Marilyn Manson needed 24 stitches to his ear after a brawl in Switzerland. Injured: ACT Brumbies revealed that champ Nic White needed surgery on a fractured jaw after he was king-hit at the Foreshore music festival in Canberra on November 24. They cleared him of wrongdoing, saying it was unprovoked. Injured: Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn was hospitalised in New York after a cab struck him in his groin; he had a hernia operation last month. Arrested: A 24-year-old man who travelled from Wisconsin to get into Taylor Swift’s home in Nashville on her birthday. She was not home, and has recently complained of her worsening stalker problems. In Court: James Blunt settled his legal action against News International over News Of The World’s phone-hacking, accepting “substantial” damages. In Court: Giorgios Karounis appeared in Burwood Local Court over a warrant from Finnish authorities, who say he claimed to be George Young of The Easybeats (elder brother of Angus and Malcolm) and allegedly sold AC/DC to a Finnish jazz festival to the tune of €50,000 in 2003. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, he’d just finished over five years in Silverwater prison on fraud when he was arrested on this charge. Died: Peter Andre’s brother Andrew, 54, in a London hospital after a battle with kidney cancer. Peter flew him from the Gold Coast for treatment. Died: Nashville drummer Willie Ackerman. He played with Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson, Louis Armstrong, Patsy Cline, George Jones and Waylon Jennings, and appeared on classics ‘El Paso’ and ‘Wings Of A Dove’. He was 73 years old.
22 Piece Live Extravaganza
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MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS / SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2013 Sydney Festival is back this January, bringing the cutting edge of theatre, performance, music and art from around the world to our city. It's the first program from new festival director Lieven Bertels, who's come from a similar role at the famously diverse Holland Festival – and he's brought a few changes to ours. Festival First Night has been replaced by Day One: An Opening In Three Acts on January 5, with events in Hyde Park, Darling Harbour and The Domain. The festival bar has moved from Hyde Park Barracks to Sydney Town Hall, rebranded after the Amsterdam clubbing institution Paradiso, which will see late-night sets
from Nicolas Jaar, Richard Hawley, Lindstrøm, Darshan Jesrani and others. But there's more in store than that... Last week, we unpacked the arts program, which fuses Bertels' classical music training with avant garde dance and theatre. This week we've picked out some favourites from the vast and varied music lineup, from blog-hyped Brooklyn bands to Indonesian grunge; from Sydney favourites re-imagined, to old French classics sung by young French stars. There'll be further coverage from us in the new year; until then, visit sydneyfestival.org.au
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orry I’m yawning so much, man. We’re getting ready to play a little show at Carnegie Hall in a couple of weeks, and we’ve been working really hard to get ready.” Only David Longstreth, frontman of and creative maestro behind Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors, could refer to an upcoming concert at the worldfamous venue with such apparent nonchalance. Don’t be fooled, though: Longstreth isn’t just playing it cool. Sure, he’s an artist who has manipulated aesthetics and alternately destroyed and rebuilt artifice with dizzying effect over the course of his band’s career, but he’s also an incredibly kind and genuine interview subject. In fact, through much of our discussion, the only reminder that this is anything more than a conversation between fellow music nerds is the New Yorker’s gargantuan eloquence. That, plus the fact that he occasionally slips in casual references to his work with Björk and Jay-Z. No biggie. Dirty Projectors are far from just a one-man show; the collective of supremely gifted creatives has been consistently feted by artistic collaborators, music journalists and fans alike for their almost unbelievable agility in combining their classical and avant garde training with a decidedly pop bent. Yet Longstreth has been the only consistent member of the group throughout their decade-long, seven studio album career. The Yale graduate has taken his group from the relative obscurity of 2002’s
basement-recorded and analogue The Graceful Fallen Mango – released under his own name – to the heights of collaboration with luminaries like David Byrne and the aforementioned Icelandic Queen of Weird. Along the way, Dirty Projectors have recorded projects as diverse as 2007’s Rise Above – a collection of reimagined tunes by essential hardcore outfit Black Flag – and the more recent Mount Wittenberg Orca. The latter, first released in 2010 in a digital-only format, followed their collaboration a year earlier with Björk at a special concert in a New York bookstore. “Wittenberg came together really easily, in a way,” Longstreth explains matter-of-factly. “It came out of this idea I’d had to write 40 minutes worth of music, to be performed by us and Björk. It was a pretty wild experience, and also really, really cool. I wrote the music really quickly and we spent about three or four days rehearsing it, and then we just got down to it.” The unique nature of the album was amplified by the venture’s status as a fundraiser for Housing Works, an organisation that provides shelter and care for homeless AIDS sufferers in New York. “We’ve only played that album live on just that one occasion, and it may never happen again. There were about 500 people packed into the Housing Works Bookstore, so it was pretty exciting and pretty weird,” Longstreth says. “The whole thing was organised by my friend Brandon Stosuy [Pitchfork
editor], who’s on the board there and has been helping them put on these shows with some really cool collaborations for a while. We were pretty much unamplified, but when you’ve got Björk performing, everything is different. She’s just an incredible performer,” he says, warming to the memory. “She opens her mouth and – I don’t even know how to describe it... Something happens right then, in that moment, because she’s able to bring an energy or force into being that completely wasn’t there before.” Prior to Wittenberg, the group had released Bitte Orca, an album that marked a change of pace for the band; it was their first studio album through the UK’s Domino Records, and their last with members Angel Deradoorian and Brian McOmber. It was universally hailed by the music world: TIME Magazine’s Josh Tyrangiel was famously moved to note how Longstreth had made the critic’s job undoable, and Ed Droste of fellow New York band Grizzly Bear noted his embarrassment at not being able to describe any of what he was hearing. “Bitte Orca is about the experience of touring, to some extent,” Longstreth says cautiously, understandably not wanting to be reductive in his assessment of the intricate, layered work. “I actually wrote that album with a kind of emblem of the last band in mind. The band was great, and then it was time for something else.” The last 12 months have been hectic for the group, even by
By Benjamin Cooper
their own ridiculously industrious standards. They’ve released their seventh studio album in Swing Lo Magellan, and its follow-up EP About To Die. Longstreth also took time out to direct the short film Hi Custodian; a visual collision of many of the latest album’s tracks, it features a startling enmeshing of surreal and symbolic imagery. “Swing Lo Magellan was much less intended [than Bitte Orca], in a way. I wrote the songs because I was really inspired, and the arrangements came out of what the songs needed to be at the time,” he says. “A lot of songwriting comes from weird ideas you had when you were sitting on the edge of your bed, and then that turns out to resonate with people. I think with this album I was able to not over-write it, or fill it up with tangential ideas and layers of instrumentation. In some ways these songs feel a little bolder, even a little scarier, because I’m just letting the feelings and ideas speak for themselves more. “We recorded in this old house,” he continues. “I know a lot of articles have called it a hunting lodge, but it was really just an old house up in the woods. It had been empty for a while before we moved in. I don’t really like to think of recording as just involving one session and then you’re done; that’s why we all moved in and set up the gear and the microphone and just left it all on for the whole time. It was a period of constant writing and recording – I honestly have no idea when the session began.”
The band’s current rehearsals for the upcoming show at Carnegie Hall are being conducted with chamber ensemble yMusic. The classically trained musicians have previously worked with The National and St Vincent, and played the orchestral arrangements that Longstreth composed for the recording of Swing Lo. Their one-off hometown show comes ahead of the two groups' tour to Sydney Festival in January – and Longstreth is particularly ebullient when discussing his colleagues’ work. “yMusic are the best players in New York – that is absolutely not an exaggeration,” he says. “They’re amazing to work with because they just pick everything up instantly. I know that if the idea makes sense – and even if it doesn’t – they’re going to be able to pull it out of the confusion, and find what’s essential… They work really well together as a unit, in terms of the score and the arrangement. They have this innate ability to find what a passage of music is trying to do; I’ve worked with a lot of ensembles over the years, and many of them don’t always get that," he continues. "I suppose that’s why I love working with them so much – they really are such a different kind of ensemble.” Where: Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House When: Monday January 21, 8pm More: yMusic are playing at The Famous Spiegeltent @ Honda Festival Garden (Hyde Park) on January 22 & 23, and at Salon Perdu Spiegeltent in Parramatta on January 24 & 25.
Dirty Projectors photo by Shawn Brackbill
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MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS / SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2013 traditional instruments and original scores. If you’ve never heard (or heard of) a lirone, sackbut, cornett or lute – some amazing and unique Baroque instruments – then hearing them move through the many sonic contours of Dappled Cities’ back-catalogue is sure to be melodic overload. In a good way.
Dappled Cities The Future Is Baroque By Krissi Weiss
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ydney’s indie rock heroes Dappled Cities have never been content to simply work within the safety of a well-tested formula. The band arrived full of art-rock zeal in 2001, slowly morphed into the synth-heavy darkness of their pivotal 2009 release, Zounds, and rose out of it with their markedly euphoric 2012 album, Lake Air. This cycle of reinvention and rebirth is pushing
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the band further and further into the left-of-field, exemplified by their forthcoming performance for Sydney Festival. While pop bands playing live backed by an orchestra is nothing new, inviting The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and The Brandenburg Boys Choir to reinterpret their music for the Baroque period with a host of preclassical instrumentation is a wild idea – even for Dappled Cities. Guitarist and vocalist Dave Rennick is readying himself for the hard part of this exercise with equal parts excitement and nervous anticipation; when we speak, the band are only just beginning to deconstruct their music for the performance. “It should take quite a long time, but yeah – we have
to turn it around in a few weeks,” Rennick laughs. “We’ve been charting our songs and looking at how to conceptualise it all, but really, these are all such good musicians that they’ll handle it well. I have an intimate knowledge of our music and how it all goes, but then you get to the point where you’re like, ‘Right, so how’s this gonna look on a freaking stave?’ The instruments are all pre-classical instruments that work on really strange tunings as well, so we have to match their tuning – which really throws out your muscle memory.” The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, led by artistic director Paul Dyer, breathes fresh life into 16th, 17th and 18th century classical music through the use of
The idea had been floating around for quite some time within the Dappled Cities camp, but the band never felt as though they were in a position to embark on such an ambitious exercise, let alone with such an illustrious company. “It takes a bit of clout to approach Brandenburg and ask them to collaborate, so when this came up with The Sydney Festival, we were really happy to finally get it happening,” Rennick explains. “The idea of using an orchestra to reinvent pop music has been done a thousand times before. We always thought that working with The Brandenburg Orchestra would be amazing, and we thought it would be so much better to use weirder, fruitier instruments. We’re not just gonna go for big, stringbased chord progressions under every song like it’s usually done; the volume of this is going to be quite soft and delicate.” Dappled Cities will be forgoing the usual dynamism of their live drums in favour of synth rhythms. The guitars will take a back seat too, and they’re hoping to present their synth melodies on vintage electronic equipment. The band always bring a theatrical element to their live performance, and Rennick assures that this performance will be no different. “As far as exactly what we’re going to do on stage – well, we’re all gonna find out together come the first dress rehearsal!” he laughs. “We’ve got a lot of ideas of trying to modernise the repetitive approach of Baroque music and
its use of looped melodies. As far as the physical performance, we’re all just gonna be on stage making musical love. “I don’t wanna give too much away but there’s a lot of visual production that we’re putting into it all as well… We’re always interested and keen to do something different, and jump onto the stepping stones of what lies ahead. So I guess this is our stepping stone to ultra-high browness, or classical awesomeness, or something,” he laughs. Rennick is good humoured and often quick to laugh; the passion that he brings to his art doesn’t appear to be steeped in any ego at all, despite the lofty accolades his band have garnered through their career. Dappled Cities’ desire to keep moving forward is not driven by a want to be arty for the sake of it; they seem to genuinely believe that creation is one long journey. “We like to build and we like to do something different all the time,” Rennick says. “Our band is ten years old, and we’re looking ahead. We don’t plan on quitting any time soon but we can’t keep doing what we do, so we’re trying to express that through every record and every performance. We like to explore and – well, ‘bored’ is the wrong word, but when we’ve done something it’s in the past and it’s done. If someone comes up and says, ‘Hey, do you wanna play at Sydney Festival with some old, weirdly-tuned instruments?’ we just say ‘Hell yes!’” What: Dappled Cities present The Future Is Baroque with The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and The Brandenburg Boys Choir Where: Paradiso @ Sydney Town Hall When: Tuesday January 22
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SRI LANKA
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MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS / SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2013 Navicula photo by CPMB
Mélanie Pain So Frenchy So Chic By Alasdair Duncan
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Green Grunge By Benjamin Cooper
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ince forming in 1996, Navicula have become known for both their aggressive live shows and their powerful environmental conscience. The four-piece are often referred to throughout Indonesia as the Green Grunge Gentlemen – a title that neatly encapsulates their philosophical opposition to unchecked development in their native Bali, as well as their melodic influences: seminal Seattle acts like Soundgarden and Alice In Chains. “All artists will create art about what moves them,” explains guitarist and vocalist Robi (Gede Robi Subriyanto). “That is why many of our songs are about social and environmental issues right now. Maybe one reason for this is that in Indonesia we really experience the negative impacts of environmental destruction. Most of the world does too, but in the US politicians are still debating if global warming is real or not. Shocking.” Robi and his bandmates, Dankie (guitar), Made (bass) and Gembull (drums), have just arrived back in Bali following their first extensive tour of America. They were invited to the States as winners of the inaugural RODE Rocks competition, an invaluable opportunity provided by the microphone manufacturer, which saw them recording at LA’s Record Plant Studio with legendary Chilean producer Alain Johannes (Queens Of The Stone Age, Arctic Monkeys).
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The band used the LA recording sessions to work on tracks for their upcoming seventh album, Island Of The Dogs. The title is an adaptation of Bali’s tourism slogan proclaiming itself as the Island Of The Gods, and is notably invective – especially considering the famous hospitality of the island and its people. The band see another side to life in their homeland; rampant development and pollution in recent years have cut vicious swaths through the community, and through traditional life. This passion for activism and change is grounded in Navicula's local environment, but the band is also motivated by the more far-reaching work of organisations like Greenpeace Indonesia. “During our tour of Borneo, Navicula band members rode alongside Greenpeace on trail motorbikes for 2,000 kilometres,” Robi says. “At each village and city we came to, we put on a concert. We came to Borneo expecting to see the last remaining rainforest … but for 14 days, travelling across three provinces, all we saw was destruction. I was well-informed about the destruction of the rainforest there, but nothing prepared me for seeing it in person, and on such a massive scale. It was heartbreaking. This was not a rainforest tour of Indonesia, but a tour searching for the Indonesian rainforest.” Where: Manning Bar, Sydney University When: Thursday January 10, 8pm
seems to be genuinely overflowing with excitement. “I think one of my favourite solo shows was in Sydney at The Metro, when I did the tour with Émilie Simon,” she says. “There was something very special about that night. I came on stage with my band and we were straight at the top from the very first song. The audience was just crazy. I really remember that as being my favourite concert ever, because everyone was just there in the moment. Some days, you come on stage and everyone is smiling, but you’ve just got to spot the one who’s bored and try and play to them. At this show, nobody was bored, there was no stress around me, I sang all the songs perfectly… It was just a really good show.”
as long ago as 1991, so it only took me 21 years to make it a reality…” While developing his style, Scott was not only drawn to the poets his mother lectured about, but also to literature on maritime symbolism, faeries and folk music, which set his band well apart from many of their British contemporaries in the ‘80s. In the post-punk era, The Waterboys managed to remain accessible, however traditional their influences, and even found themselves lumped in with the media-hyped Scottish ‘Big Music’ scene, along with Simple Minds, Big Country and World Party. At the time, Big Music was defined simply as having ‘big, powerful choruses in the vein of U2’, but Scott was far from interested in contemporary Edinburgh, preferring instead to split his time between Dublin and New York – environments which inspired his writing as much as any book of verse. “Dublin in the ‘80s was such a wonderful place to come home to after being on tour. It’s where I wrote a lot of The Waterboys' songs and the music for the Yeats poems, but I’ve also found that New York has had a profound effect on my work. It’s this huge melting pot of all the world’s music, and a place where I feel quite creatively unrestrained.”
By the time The Waterboys had released their third and most successful album, 1985's This Is The Sea, they had already introduced listeners to Celtic folklore, Native American rites, political scrutiny and pre-religious spirituality. The latter has often been widely misinterpreted by groups claiming Waterboys to be both Christian and heathen, depending on who you ask.
What: So Frenchy So Chic, with Mélanie Pain and Nadéah Where: Paradiso @ Sydney Town Hall When: Monday January 21, 8pm More: Mélanie Pain's Bye Bye Manchester is out now
The Waterboys An Appointment With Mr Yeats By Leigh Salter
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ike Scott is so much the archetypal poetry-obsessed troubadour, it’s as though he was written into being by the very scribes who inspired his love of words. As a young man, the Scottishborn singer made no real distinction between the artistic value of The Beatles or Bob Dylan and the poets C.S. Lewis and W.B. Yeats. They simply all wound up together, along with a well-considered fascination with paganism and pre-religious spirituality, which resulted in The Waterboys – a band he has remained the sole ongoing member of for the last 30 years. Over the course of ten albums, Mike explored in great depth several points of fascination, but arguably none more than the work of poet, William Butler Yeats. The early 20th Century Irish poet’s own interests – paganism, the occult – heavily reflect those of Scott’s greatest works, so it came as no surprise when The Waterboys released an entire album of the poet’s words set to music last year: An Appointment With Mr Yeats. I spoke with Scott from his adopted home (and Yeats' birthplace), Dublin, ahead of a tour for the album that will include Australia for the first time, prompted by an invitation from Sydney Festival. “I completely expect my preconceptions [of Australia] to be shattered, but that’s the exciting thing about travelling to new places,” Scott says. He explains that the idea for The Waterboys’ Yeats project was planted within his psyche from a very young age. “I knew about Yeats when I was 10 or 11, because my mum was – and still is – a university lecturer in English, and she would often mention this Yeats guy. But I didn’t start to really focus on him until I was in my teens. At the same time, I was discovering music. The two things were very closely linked for me, and still are,” he says. “But I envisioned doing this show
“I never subscribed to any religion. I always found magic to be much more interesting,” Scott explains. “When I was in my early 20s, I discovered spiritual literature and found there was a much greater depth to nonreligious ideas about the world.” The deity Pan, from Greek mythology, is a favourite of Scott’s, turning up in a number of songs (‘The Return Of Pan’, ‘The Pan Within’). “To me, Pan represents our connection to one another and to nature. A lot of Christian religion seems to be about escapism, but Pan is a reminder that being connected is what’s important.” What: An Appointment With Mr Yeats is out now With: Oh Mercy Where: The State Theatre When: Wednesday January 23, 8pm
Mike Scott photo by Paul MacManus
In order to be crowned winners, they first had to impress an allstar judging panel that included Swedish garage kings The Hives and former Guns N’ Roses (and current Velvet Revolver) drummer Matt Sorum. “The first song I ever learned to play on guitar was ‘November Rain’ by Guns N’ Roses. I never imagined Matt Sorum would someday listen to a song I wrote!” Robi says. “The RODE Rocks competition is huge for Navicula. It has opened the doors to a lot of opportunities for us. We have a chance to get people in the US and Australia and around the world to listen to our songs.”
The American tour managed to take in the band’s environmental focus – “In California alone we travelled from the Red Wood Forests in the north to the Yucca Desert in the south!” Robbi exclaims – along with a surprise gig supporting one of their rock idols. “Opening for H.R. of Bad Brains was a really last-minute gig offer. It turned out that we not only met him, but he was there at the venue and watched our whole set. He even mentioned us on stage during his performance – I think he was surprised that he had an opening act that came all the way from Indonesia!” Robi laughs.
place,” she says. “It’s about forever having this desire to be free.” Someone once said that Mélanie Pain’s music takes heartache and sadness and makes it sound sexy; she finds this flattering, if a little bewildering. “That’s always the thing people say about me,” she says. “I can’t control that but I like it, because all my inspirations, all the musicians I love, have the same kind of effect on their songs.” There’s a seductive sadness to the songs on Bye Bye Manchester, but also a newfound freshness and spontaneity. “I made my first album over the course of five years working with a lot of people – but this one was made in six months in total. I really wanted to have this fresh sound, I didn’t want to think about it. All the ideas I had ended up on the record; if I liked a keyboard [part], I would just record it and it would end up on one of the songs.” This January, Mélanie Pain returns to Australia with So Frenchy So Chic – a night devoted to France’s eclectic music scene – and she
Melanie Pain photo by Marc Thirouin
Navicula
ver since she was a teenager, Mélanie Pain had dreamed about going to Manchester. The city, which produced bands like The Smiths and New Order, seemed to radiate a doomed kind of romance, and she was determined to experience it for herself. When it came time to write her second solo album, the Nouvelle Vague singer decided to give it a try. “I would imagine Morrissey walking the streets in the rain, and I would dream about going there myself someday,” she says. “When I decided to take some time by myself to write a new album, I knew I wanted to get out of Paris and I knew a friend in Manchester who could provide a bedroom, so I just went for a few months to write my stuff.” Pain quickly found that there is a duality inherent to Manchester; it’s the kind of city that you love, but also want to escape. All in all, the city didn't quite live up to her teenage fantasies. “When I went there, I ended up doing exactly the same things I do in Paris – waking up, having a coffee in the bar next door, going to the market to buy some food, and then working on my songs all day. It wasn’t as exceptional as I’d hoped for, but it still gave me the opportunity to write the songs I wanted to.” Pain’s new album is called Bye Bye Manchester, and it is inspired by the love-hate qualities of the rainy northern city, and by the need to escape and go somewhere new. “The album is about the places where you dream of being, but when you’re there, you dream about escaping and going to another
J A N U A RY
F A C E B O O K . C O M / B E A C H R O A D H O T E L
SIDESHOW. WEDNESDAY
Presents
Sat 5 Jan JAN 2ND
CITY CALM DOWN + TOM UGLY JAN 9TH
GL ASS TOWERS
+ DZ DE DEATHRAYS ( DJ SET) + SO SOSUEME DJS JAN 23RD
ALISON WONDERLAND + HEY GERONIMO + FISHING
DCUP
+ STONEY ROADS DJS + DEVOLA + SILVER AGE
Sat 12 Jan
CASSIAN +TIGERLILY + MAILER DAEMON + DJ TASH
Sat 19 Jan
SUFUR (RUFUS DJS)
+ F.R.I.E.N.D/S DJS + HANSOM + SINA
SatAUSTRALIA 26 DAY Jan
SUN CITY
PERTH
+ KRISTY LEE +ISBJORN + SPECIAL GUESTS
JAN 30TH
GOLDFIELDS + PANAMA ANAMA + F.R.I.E.N.D/S I.E.N.D/S DJS DJ
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Beach House Living The Dream By Alasdair Duncan
B
altimore dream-pop duo Beach House specialise in crafting lush and beautiful songs, their gauzy arrangements packed with gentle keyboard hums and haunting vocal melodies. Every two years or so, they release another amazing album – the most recent being this year’s acclaimed Bloom – although singer Victoria Legrand insists that there is no careful planning behind what they do. “Believe it or not, nothing we’ve done has ever really been planned out conscientiously,” she tells me. “That two-year cycle is something that’s happened very naturally for us so far – everything we’ve done until this point has been very natural, out of a simple desire to make records and go on tour; a simple desire to be a band. I can’t tell you what the future will bring, but I can say that we’ll continue releasing records as long as there’s enough inspiration and enough belief behind them.” This sense of the enigmatic is a big part of Beach House’s appeal. For example, when it comes to albums like Bloom and its acclaimed predecessor Teen Dream, Legrand says that the only influence that shaped the songs was life itself. “We make sure that we keep the doors wide open to all experiences. We’re not very jaded people, and I think that we try to approach everything we do with the band as if it’s the first time. Making music and touring is
a very exciting life. I think your mind expands – you become a fuller person because of all the varieties of things that happen to you.” Legrand is a believer in the notion that everything is connected, and that everything she and bandmate Alex Scally do influences the music in some way. “We make our art and we live it,” she says. “It’s not a part-time thing, it’s everything that we do. It’s all connected.” Beach House often shy away from the spotlight, so I was surprised to hear one of their songs turn up on a recent episode of New Girl. I ask Legrand why they said yes to the Zooey Deschanel sitcom when they have famously said no to so many others, and she tells me that their philosophy, as far as licensing goes, is pretty simple. “We’re not that selective,” she says. “We don’t say yes to lots of things just because we feel like we have to [hold back]. If you’re an artist and you want to have a long career, I think it’s best to be wise in terms of how wide you spread your music. If you say yes to everything because you think that there’s no tomorrow, then maybe there is no tomorrow for you.” She pauses for a moment. “The only time we’re opposed to our music being used is if it’s for something that’s in bad taste, or bad for people. We don’t want to support anything that’s evil, and I guess New Girl is not evil.”
I ask Legrand how she sees the future of Beach House – does she see herself continuing to make music with the band for years to come? “I think music will always be part of my life and it will always be part of Alex’s,” she says. “Music has given us our lives, and so we’ll always be part of it. There are things we love outside of music, there are lots of things that have nothing to do with it, but I really believe in music, and I really think that it’s just something very special. Right now, it’s our most powerful way of expressing ourselves. I think it will always be part of our lives.”
What: Bloom is out now through Mistletone With: Wintercoats Where: The Enmore Theatre When: Thursday January 3 More: Also playing Falls Festival with Best Coast, Django Django and more, from December 28-January 1 in Lorne, Victoria (sold out), and December 29-January 1 in Marion Bay, Tasmania (all ages)
Area-7 Black Cherry NYE By Benjamin Cooper
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lack Cherry’s New Year’s Eve parties have become the stuff of legend. For the Biggest Night Of The Year, a converted warehouse in Marrickville known as The Factory Theatre becomes a decadent wonderland of music, burlesque, karaoke and delicious drinking times. Past events have embraced a swathe of genres and cultures, taking in rockabilly, blues, ska and rock’n’roll with equal abandon, and the promoters’ trademark inclusiveness and eye for quality is going up a notch this time around: there are three separate rooms of excitement and entertainment, and acts as diverse as glam rockers Sunset Riot, blues fiends The Dead Love and rockabilly kings The Drey Rollan Band – headlined by Melbourne ska legends Area-7. After nearly two decades together, the partystarting rock’n’rollers are ready to show Sydney how to really celebrate an annual milestone. “It’s fucking beautiful that this has all come together,” Area-7 frontman John ‘Stevo’ Stevens tells me down the line. “Chucky T [guitarist Charles Thompson] was in Sydney a little while back, and ran into the Black Cherry crew at The Townie [the Town Hall Hotel in Newtown]. They asked if we’d like to come up and spend New Year’s Eve with burlesque dancers and a bunch of great bands – needless to say, we didn’t hesitate.” Like many other now-legendary Aussie alt-rock bands, Area-7 experienced their first wave of success in the late ’90s, through heavy touring and high rotation on both commercial and independent radio. Following the collapse of their label a few years later, they decided to take a more measured approach for the future. “Around the time of the global changeover of our record label, a lot of our momentum got killed: we had half an album recorded, but we were left in no-man’s land. So we took a look around and decided that we would just play when we felt like it. We’ve never taken ourselves too seriously and it’s meant that things stay pretty fresh. I’m not going to lie – we have a lot of fun!”
The band have just come off a Greatest Hits tour supporting fellow Melbournians and rock stalwarts The Living End. Reviews consistently raved about the opening act’s energy, which Stevo attributes to their decision to tour on their own terms. “We’ve got nothing against touring our guts out – we’ve certainly done that in the past – but it’s nice to not have to slog it out playing 25 shows [in a row]. There are certain advantages to having some time off occasionally. There’s an enthusiasm when we do play that you just can’t get anywhere else.” Stevo is particularly excited about the mix of entertainment at Black Cherry. “To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of the alternative scene and the music business has become quite contrived these days,” he says. “It’s quite strange because people seem to have pretty diverse tastes, but a lot of what you hear on the radio is all the same. So I think the really exciting point [comes] when you bring a whole group of scenes together, like they do at Black Cherry. There’s a real strength to that, and a lot of appeal too. “As much as I love ska, I cannot stand listening to it all the time,” he continues, laughing. “It’s going to be quite humbling to share the stage with acts of that quality who they’ve picked for New Year’s. And, of course, we’ll have a great time making sure people in the audience go nuts and dance around. We cannot wait to get up there and start work. It’s going to be an evening of good drink and good songs – I just hope Sydney’s ready to go.” Who: Bands – Area-7, Barbarion, The Ramshackle Army, The Drey Rollan Band, Sunset Riot, The Dead Love, Jungle Rump Rock’n’Roll Karaoke; Burlesque – Tasia, Kira Hu-La-La, Frankie Faux; DJs – Rockabilly Rhino, Sinead Ni Mhorda, Creatura Noctis, The Black Cherry DJs, and a Twist & Shout ‘60s Dance Party room Where: Black Cherry NYE @ The Factory Theatre When: Monday December 31, from 9pm–4am
Bored Nothing Idle Hands By Krissi Weiss
RIA week has ended, backs have been thoroughly patted, and aspiring young musicians are bleary-eyed from looking longingly into the face of commercial success. In amongst this cycle of hope – often dashed by the dismal world that is our current creative economy – sits a young indie artist with a truly unique approach. Armed with an almost apologetic press release promoting his scruffy, debut self-titled album, the story of Bored Nothing’s Fergus Miller is truly unique. Wandering around with no fixed address and with no need to be anywhere at any time, Miller was driven to songwriting out of guilt: the guilt of having too much time on his hands.
A
Things seemed to move quickly from there, despite Miller’s best efforts to stall momentum. “As soon as I started leaving CDs around, people found a way to get in contact with me on the internet,” he says. “All I had was an email address with Bored Nothing in the title, and people found it. Every day I’d get like six booking offers and management and labels emailing me, which was a pain in the arse ‘cause I’m not interested in any of that stuff. So I was just saying no to everyone for six months – and then I thought maybe I could get some of my friends to learn some instruments and be in a band.”
“I was at a Britney Spears crossroads,” Miller says down the phone, nursing a hangover. “I’d lost my job, every plan that I had fell through, and I was left with absolutely nothing to do. For some reason I still had a guitar and a computer, and my friend let me set up a studio in her lounge room, so I recorded a bunch of stuff there.” And all of a sudden there’s a debut album in his hands. “It all feels odd,” he says. “Especially when connected to these recordings that were literally made to give to friends on the weekends.”
At this point it might seem that Miller’s either playing a role, or taking it all for granted. He’s neither though, coming across instead as a truly nice guy with a genuinely pure approach to creativity. “This might sound a bit juvenile, but I think anyone who’s interested in that kind of [industry] stuff is a douchebag,” he says. “It’s good to be ambitious, but that stuff is all shit. I like making music, it keeps me happy, I’d do it for free, I was doing it for free – and I think it’s a negative attitude to desire success. It’s a creative art and success is the devil to that; you should just want to make yourself and other people happy. That sort of attitude towards fame literally makes me want to die.”
Miller admits he doesn’t play any instruments very well. “I only bought my first electric guitar late last year,” he says. “I had a four-track that I wanted to do something significant with, so I decided I’d use the recording equipment and the guitar to make some music to show to my friends at the pub on a Saturday night. I just kept doing it every week, getting CD-R’s and colouring them by hand, and then I started doing 50 at a time.” He’d leave a bunch of them on the mantelpiece at the pub, some on the train home, and a few around record stores and in odd places. “I felt guilty for having so much time on my hands, so I thought I’d share my boredom with other people. I also love finding things – I thought, ‘Where can I leave these that no one would expect to find them?’” 24 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
When asked about his plans for the future, Miller only knows what he’s doing the next day. “I’m certainly no middle class rich kid. I spend most of my time watching Seinfeld re-runs and eating frozen pizza while recording these days.” What: Bored Nothing is out now through Spunk Records With: Jonny Telafone, Black Zeros Where: FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel When: Thursday January 10
www.wearealta.com
with special guests
NAKAGIN FLASH FOREST (MELB) SPOONTY
10
$
entry or $12 with cd
FBI SOCIAL // December 28th // 8:00pm
BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12 :: 25
arts frontline
free stuff email: freestuff@thebrag.com
arts, theatre and film news... what's goin' on around town and more...
five minutes WITH
DIEGO BONETTO
of indie-alternative printing outfit Big Fag Press – who produce high-definition, large-scale, limited-edition artworks for artists, designers and print-buffs. Diego acquired an appreciation for weeds as a child in Italy, where he began foraging for ‘spontaneous flora’. As he grew older, and became an artist, these kinds of plants became metaphors in his work – for migration, settlement and belonging. But for his forthcoming Peats Ridge project, The Weedy Corner, it’s less metaphorical and more literal: weeds are good for you, yo! What’s your background and training? I’m an Italian migrant; I’ve been in Australia for nearly 20 years. I grew up on a farm, and when I moved here I worked in orchards and garden centres while training as an artist, eventually graduating with a Bachelor of Creative Arts from the University of Western Sydney.
D
iego’s had a busy year, expanding his popular foraging tours and weedawareness activities into the ‘mainstream’ via walking tours for Crave Sydney International Food Festival, and an 18-month project with Casula Powerhouse, culminating in the exhibition and activities program Wild Stories. Besides this, he’s also the founder and operator
FLICKERFEST! 2013! WIN!
What are you doing for Peats Ridge Festival? I will present a series of talks/performances where people will get to know the stories behind the species growing under their feet. We are surrounded by species that have co-evolved with the human species, entering into the folklore, food and medicinal vocabulary of all the cultures around the world. There is an encyclopaedia of human/botany relationships right in front of your eyes, and my storytelling will celebrate that. How does The Weedy Corner compare to your previous projects? My foraging tours have been extremely popular with people from
all walks of life, all kinds of professions, and of all ages. What’s different about the Peats Ridge program is that there will also be a central display set up within the festival, where the plants will be protected from trampling feet. We will create a sanctuary of weeds, of sorts. What are a few common weeds around Sydney that have unexpected uses? Dandelion, the king of detox: great in salads and damn good for you. Nettle: nutritious and free. Cobbler's Pegs: one of the most respected plants in Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western herbalism alike. Mallow: extremely palatable and a great help in all sort of ailments due to its mucilage content. Sowthistle: the puha part of the traditional Pacific Islander diet of ‘puha and pakeha’ (“weeds ‘n’ white-man”). What is Wild Stories? It’s the result of an 18-months long community engagement process where I collaborated with lots of people using wild plants in their doings. Now I’m having a rest thank you very much! What: The Weedy Corner When: December 29 – January 1 Where: Peats Ridge Sustainable Arts & Music Festival @ Glenworth Valley More: weedyconnection.com / peatsridgefestival.com.au And: Check out Wild Stories at Casula Powerhouse until January 31.
March 22-23 in aforementioned calendar, which is the Gala Awards Finals, where the cream of the crop compete for the ‘big cheese’. shortandsweet.org
BEN QUILTY X NAS
Archibald-winning painter Ben Quilty spent the end of 2011 on the frontline in Afghanistan, having been commissioned by the Australian War Memorial (AWM) as their official war artist. Quilty’s observations of the aftermath of war, translated into 21 studio paintings, will be on display as part of Ben Quilty: After Afghanistan; a collaborative effort between the National Art School (NAS) and AWM. Katie Dyer, Curator of NAS says: "Artists in conflict zones observe and record the trauma, courage, emotions and actions that surround war... issues for constant consideration and debate.” After Afghanistan will run at the NAS Gallery (behind Taylor Square) from February 1 – April 13.
SHAKESPEARE FORSHORE
If you like a touch of the bard, and enjoy words like ‘fashionable’, ‘dauntless’, ‘embrace’, ‘inauspicious’, ‘lustrous’, ‘outbreak’ and ‘pander’, stuff your picnic basket with fairybread and rally your wood-sprites for the annual Sydney Shakespeare Festival – which kicks off with night-time performances from
Pat Hoffie: A Place in Paradise, 2012
ARTSPACE 2013
Woolloomooloo’s Artspace have dropped their 2013 program, kicking off on January 31 with three concurrent shows: Daniel Boyd’s ‘immersive video environment’ History Is Made At Night, in which his customary use of dots is extended to using them as lenses through which to view a concealed image; Pat Hoffie’s series you gotta love it, in which she got traditional Balinese wood-carvers to replicate popular tourist sticker-slogans; and Mathieu Gallois’ project Wellington, in which he examines and re-interprets references to local Aboriginal issues and incidents in his grandfather’s newspaper, spanning 21 years. Then from March 13, Berlin-based performance troupe Chicks On Speed will present their latest mashup of performance, electroclash, fashion and visual arts: an interactive app called SCREAM. For the full 2013 Artspace program, see artspace.org.au
SOYA 2013: ENTRIES OPEN
Holiday homework for shutterbugs: consider putting together an application for the photography category of the 2013 Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards, which offers one talented emerging artist $5000 in cash, $5000-worth of flights, and a mentorship with award-winning portrait photographer Polly Borland. The applications close February 5 – the first in a staggered rollout of SOYA’s 11 competition categories, which include: Fashion (mentored by the Zimmerman sisters – deadline March 5); Interactive Content & Gaming (Ashley Ringrose and Brad Eldridge – deadline April 2); Written Word (author Lisa Dempster – deadine May 7); and Visual Design & Communication (Vince Frost – deadline June 4). For the mentors and application deadlines for Film 26 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
Flickerfest runs from January 11 – 20 at Bondi Pavilion, and we have five double passes up for grabs to check out one of the Best Of Australian sessions listed below: just email us with your preferred session date, and the name of one film in the lineup (hint: see our special on page 29 – not the picture below, lazybum). For the full Flickerfest lineup and tickets, see flickerfest.com.au Best Best Best Best Best
of Australian of Australian of Australian of Australian of Australian
1: Sunday January 13 2: Monday January 14 3: Thursday January 17 4: Friday January 18 5: Saturday January 19
Chef de Meute (Leader Of The Herd) January 17, on Glebe Foreshore. This year they’re presenting witty rom-com Much Ado About Nothing, and pastoral comedy As You Like It. Shows are on every Thursday to Sunday at 8pm until February 24, at Bicentennial Park, and kids 12 and under and people aged 65 and over get in free, so it’s prettymuch a foregone conclusion (he made up that phrase too!) Get tix from sydneyshakespearefestival.com.au or at the door/shrub.
SYDNEY THEATRE AWARDS
We like the Sydney Theatre Awards because they’re voted by critics – the ones who spend most nights of their week sitting in the dark watching productions and performances that range from inspired to godawful. So they prolly know what they’re talking about. The Sydney Theatre Awards ceremony will be held on January 14, but here’s what the critics have nominated as their picks for Best Mainstage Production: The Boys (Griffin/Sydney Festival), Les Liaisons Dangereuses (STC), Medea (Belvoir/ATYP) and Thyestes (Belvoir/ Sydney Festival). And for Best Independent Production: Hamlet (Sport for Jove), The New Electric Ballroom (Siren Theatre Co / Griffin Independent), Punk Rock (Pantsguys Productions/ ATYP Under The Wharf); The Taming of the Shrew (Sport for Jove). Yeah, you missed a lot of theatre this year babez.
BRENDA MAY
& Video, Animation, Music, Visual Arts, Architecture & Interior Design and Craft & Object Design, see soya.com.au
SHORT+SWEET
If you love theatre but have the attention span of a 10-year-old, circle January 9 in your Leunig calendar, when the Sydney instalment of short play festival Short+Sweet kicks off, taking over King Street Theatre and Sidetrack Theatre with ten-minute bites of theatre, until March 23. There’s over 160 short works in the program (with titles like Harry Potter in Ten Minutes, My Dad Oughta Be P.M., I Feel [Insert Emotion] and Masterchef: Uncut) – which means there’s a good chance someone you know made something. If you don’t like beating around the bush, however – and/or you only like ‘winners’ – then circle
One of our favourite parts of Flickerfest is unearthing the fresh Australian filmmaking talent that’s growing just under our noses. So this year, we’re presenting Flickerfest’s Best Of Australian programs – all five of them. Featuring a killer lineup of short comedies, dramas and animations, the programs are a who’s-who that covers better-known filmmakers like the BlueTongue Films collective and the big names of tomorrow (srsly, Warwick Thornton and Wayne Blair passed through the fest on their way to box office glory).
Will Coles: Might Is Right
Brenda May Gallery’s popular annual sculpture group show kicks off on January 23, with a lineup of established and emerging artists that includes Senden Blackwood, Joel Bliss, Walter Brecely, Will Coles, Jim Croke, Marguerite Derricourt, Todd Fuller, Lyndal Hargrave, KellyAnn Lees, Barbara Licha, William Maguire, Angela McHarrie, Emily McIntosh, Brendan Murphy, Mylyn Nguyen, Leslie Oliver, Sandra Pitkin, Arun Sharma, Benjamin Storch, Greer Taylor, Peter Tilley, Eli Turier, Jacek Wankowski, and Ken & Julia Yonetani. We’re digging this one (left) by Will Coles, who says of his sculpture: “I guess this is about my problem with certain religious people, not so much the religions themselves.” brendamaygallery.com.au
An Unexpected Journey Return Of The Hobbit By Alicia Malone
Martin Freeman and Sir Ian McKellen in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
O
n hearing how director Peter Jackson described him as a real-life Hobbit, Martin Freeman laughs. “He can talk!” he scoffs, “Peter is the person who is closest to a Hobbit. And unlike a Hobbit, I did leave home for 18 months – he didn’t!” He has a point. Freeman, the star of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, spent a year and a half in Jackson’s native New Zealand shooting three prequels to the hugely popular Lord Of The Rings trilogy. That series remains the highestgrossing film franchise ever, winning a record 17 Oscars. “Everywhere I walk is my face!” laughs Martin. “If I translated that into thinking I’m responsible for the film I’d go mad. Fortunately, the star of the film is the film. And Peter. But I would like a ring of power. I’d use it to be invisible and get in and out of this hotel.” Freeman is going to need that ring even more once An Unexpected Journey is released in
cinemas worldwide. Based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s children’s book The Hobbit, this first film introduces us to a younger Bilbo Baggins (Freeman) who is perfectly happy in his boring life at home, until Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen) ambushes him with a pack of dwarves and convinces him to come on an adventure. “Martin was always our first choice for Bilbo,” admits Jackson. “Bilbo is written in a very English style – slightly fussy, suspicious of adventures and other people, doesn’t want to get into danger. We wanted to find an actor who could do the dramatic parts of the role but also have the comedy. We did have a problem that by the time we were green lit, Martin was on a TV show and not available. I went into a real panic; I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing it. So we did something no one does: we started shooting with Martin, and we stopped so he could shoot the show. That’s how badly we wanted him.”
That risk was certainly worth it, with Freeman impressing everyone on set, including veteran actor Sir Ian McKellen. “I remember quite late into the shoot, I was standing behind the camera feeding him lines, and I watched him do the same passage over and over again, and every time, he did it differently. I was in awe; I couldn’t see how he did it. Martin’s a brilliant comedian and I wouldn’t mind taking acting lessons from him, but he said ‘Oh, I’m not going to give you any tips…’” McKellen is one of the few actors reprising their roles from The Lord Of The Rings, but for a time he wasn’t sure if he’d come back. The Hobbit suffered major production delays, partly due to MGM Studio’s financial difficulties and partly because of a change in directors, with Peter Jackson unsure he wanted to do it. “I had to buffer myself in case the film was never made, by thinking up all the reasons why I wouldn’t want it,” admits McKellen. “Like, ‘I won’t have to live away from home for 18 months.’ Or ‘I won’t have to revisit a part I’ve already played.’ But in the end a friend said to me, ‘Ian, the fans aren’t going to care that you’re going to be inconvenienced somewhat by going back to Middle Earth. They just want you to be in the film.’ I don’t think that had ever been said to me before about any part I have played – that there were an awful lot of people who wanted me to do it. And I realised I wanted it myself. I just couldn’t have John Hurt coming in, putting on a beard!” As to why fans are so invested in the films, Jackson thinks it’s to do with the realism Tolkien created. “What Tolkien does is make fantasy feel authentic, making it feel like part of history, even though it has these creatures. Somehow it feels real in a way that a lot of fantasy doesn’t.” And this time around, the films will feel even more real, with Jackson utilising a new high-
Experience Film International Film School Sydney
Open Night Thursday 10th January 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Andy Serkis, who reprises his role as Gollum, also worked with the new format as Second Unit Director. “I think it’s brilliant. It’s invigorating, totally immersive and the level of detail is unparalleled. It will shock and upset people, but it’s new, and things always shock and upset people when they’re new. Kids used to playing video games will not even think about it for a second, because they’re used to looking at incredible clarity and receiving stories at that level. Our generation is in love with the old format because it’s what we’ve grown up with, and how we see film. But that will change.” Something that isn’t likely to change is how beloved Serkis’ Gollum character is. The actor admits, “On a daily basis people come up to me and talk about Gollum. I’m on the Tube in London and people talk to me, start doing their impersonation or ask me to do Gollum. It’s just become part of my life, bizarrely.” Sir Ian McKellen agrees that the fans’ connection with his character will probably never end, admitting, “I suppose if I have a gravestone it will say ‘Here Lies Gandalf’ and I can imagine the newspaper headlines, ‘Gandalf has died’. But they’d be wrong because Gandalf never dies…” he says, with a wink. What: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey When: In cinemas from December 26
Want to experience film like never before? Then you need to experience IFSS. Come along to our Open Night on Thursday 10th January, where you will be guided through the realm of filmmaking by students and teachers that are practicing in the industry. Every school says “we’re different”. The difference at IFSS is that we live up to that promise. In two years with us, you make up to six films and work on up to 24 other films being made by your peers. You won’t get to do that at any other film school in Sydney! So come along on Thursday 10th January and experience IFSS.
RSVP online at ifss.edu.au/whats-happening/open-days-events T: 02 9663 3789 E: info@ifss.edu.au W: www.ifss.edu.au L: 27 Rosebery Ave, Rosebery NSW 2018
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Peter Jackson on set.
resolution 3D format, making the images look so clear, it’s as if you’re peering into a window rather than onto a flat screen. “This format is a gift, a tool I can use to make you feel part of that world,” says Jackson. “But of the 25,000 cinemas around the world screening The Hobbit, only about 1,000 of them are going to show the new format. We just want to see what the response is. It’s a very different look, there’s a reality to it that takes some time to get used to.”
Peter Pan [THEATRE] The Power Of Play By Dee Jefferson Peter Pan Meyne Wyatt photo by Gary Heery
et you thought Peter Pan was a children's book, right? Yes – but J.M. Barrie’s beloved adventure about Peter, the Darling children and Neverland started life as a play, debuting in 1904 (an era when theatre was a form of mass entertainment in London), before being re-written as a novel in 1911. Next month, Belvoir’s Artistic Director Ralph Myers will take the helm of a new production that seeks to get back to the story’s theatrical origins, and awaken our powers of makebelieve.
B
TABOO
Anton Kannemeyer: ‘A Black Woman’
[ART] Breaking Ground At the MCA By Lauren Carroll-Harris
T
he expression “breaking ground” has its origins in agriculture. As harvest commences, the earth is ruptured by spades, rakes and ploughs; the ground is literally broken, a season is birthed, and stocks are replenished. Along the way, the term has somehow found its way into everyday language as an idiom to explain the formation of new ideas: “to break new ground”.
You’ve probably seen Andrew’s work before – at the very least, his neon, geometric, downward arrow at the entrance of the newly renovated MCA. What you may not know is that the arrow points to text alluding to the site’s former status as a dockyard – a colonial, working-class past that’s been rendered invisible by the constant development and redevelopment of the city shoreline. In TABOO, the hidden histories brought to light include race relations in South Africa, born-again Christianity, and life as an ex-con. Beyond these pinpointed issues, Andrew wants audiences to ask: “What kind of stories do we tell our children? Do we only half tell them difficult stories?” The story of Melbourne artist Bindi Cole is one such difficult tale: “Bindi was in jail for a couple of years when she was 24 for drug charges, and she found Jesus,” Andrew tells me. “She became a born-again Christian, and that got her through jail. For her, the taboo is about the shame one carries with them when they’re incarcerated, and then the shame of carrying
Andrew says the show will be “intense. I’m interested in giving a heightened experience and seeing how people deal with that.” He’s extended his show’s mandate to the exhibition space itself, playfully renovating the white cube. “The walls are fluoro; they’re not only black and white, they’re yellow, pink and blue. I thought, what could be more taboo in a white-walled gallery?” Equally, this is not a traditional exhibition: “The show has become more an inventory of artworks, archival material and objects,” says Andrew. Like the hidden histories at its core, TABOO also reveals the backstories, threads and influences of artworks that are often left untold in conventional exhibitions. “I think it’s really important to show artists’ processes,” he explains. “It’s a way for the viewers to get closer to the ideas.” Underneath the shock-and-awe tactics, the fluoro walls, the controversies and the coverups, Andrew hopes to show how art is a key way in which history is represented, interpreted and reinterpreted. It’s a reminder that what is considered commonplace is still up for grabs. “There are certain things that happen in this society that don’t happen in other societies, that can’t happen in other societies,” he says. “I suppose TABOO is about bringing those stories together and seeing what activates particular issues or taboos and what doesn’t.” What: TABOO feat. Bindi Cole, Jimmie Durhum, Leah Gordon, Alicia Henry, RIcardo Idagi, Anton Kannemeyer, Jompet (Agustinus Kuswidanato), Yal Ton (aka Eric Bridgeman, Judy Watson. When: Until February 24, 2013 Where: Level 1, South Gallery, MCA
Myers also appreciated that Barrie’s tale is about the power of make-believe – which makes it a great subject for a theatre company. “You know, you just watch children play, and they’re like, ‘This umbrella is a mushroom, and I’m an Indian' – and they all buy the rules immediately, and they’re away! Which is essentially what you’re doing in the theatre as well,” Myers suggests “– you’re like, ‘I’m Prince Hamlet, this is Horatio, we’re in Denmark’. But we do it less easily, I think, than children do.” Designed for “everyone from about 5-yearsold and up”, Myers’ Peter Pan will invite adult audiences to remember what it was like to play: “Everything in Neverland is created out of what’s in the bedroom of the kids at the [beginning] of the show,” he says. Myers and adaptor Tommy Murphy looked to their own memories for inspiration, setting the story in a nostalgic world of ‘80s childhood. “It’s a childhood world that’s sort of before the advent of really serious technological [incursions] – games and stuff,” says Myers, who is in his early thirties. “It’s kind of an analogue childhood, which is sort of what Barrie imagined, I think.” Topping the cast, in the central role of Peter, is rising stage star Meyne Wyatt, who exploded onto Sydney stages in the last 18 months with key roles in Griffin’s Silent Disco and Brothers Size, Belvoir’s Buried City, STC’s Bloodland, and Bell Shakespeare’s The School For Wives. “He’s just perfect for it, really,” says Myers. “He’s so mischievous and funny and quick-witted and mercurial as a person and as an actor, and kind of restless – which is all the things that Peter Pan is.” The rest of the cast is a grab-bag of young talent: comedic foils Charlie Garber and Gareth Davies, rising female stars Geraldine Hakewill (Les Liaisons Dangereuses at STC), Harriet Dyer (The School For Wives; Pygmalion at
STC), and Megan Holloway (Neighbourhood Watch at Belvoir); Jimi Bani (ABC’s Redfern Now and Mabo), and Johnny Leary (The Business at Belvoir). “We just keep playing,” says Myers, “and thankfully the cast are very playful and inventive and fun… This play is full of ridiculous challenges: how do you get a pirate captain to be eaten alive by a crocodile while the water explodes? How do you get a whole lot of kids to fly? It goes on and on. But we came up with a great solution to the crocodile problem yesterday: I had my head in my hands, and Gerry [Hakewill] was like, ‘Maybe we could do this’ – and I was like, ‘Oh my god, that’s a genius idea!’ So it’s lovely that this group of people are contributing in that way – it’s exactly how you should be making theatre.” When: January 5 – February 10 Where: Belvoir St Theatre, Upstairs More: Belvoir.com.au
Anton Kannemeyer: picture courtesy courtesy the artist and Stevenson Gallery
For acclaimed Indigenous artist Brook Andrew, breaking new ground is about bringing silenced voices and hidden histories into light. His latest curatorial project, TABOO, brings together films, performances, talks and works by nine local and international artists, to explore the unspoken, the contraband and the unheard – at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art. Where sex and pregnancy outside of wedlock were once forbidden yet widespread, TABOO asks what is out-of-bounds today, and why.
that secret around that they were in jail. I didn’t even know she was in jail until she told me.” In many ways, TABOO is a study of how people really live, of everyone’s common yet unaired vulnerabilities, losses and hardships.
Myers first started thinking about Peter Pan in 2000, while working on a production with legendary theatre provocateur Barrie Kosky. As he wrote in a recent Sydney Morning Herald piece, that experience made him realise our “national obsession” with lost children: “They’re everywhere in our culture: Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, Dot and the Kangaroo, The Leaving of Liverpool, Frederick McCubbin, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Bringing Them Home… re-reading Barrie’s original play I was struck by the uncanny feeling that this could secretly be a play about Australia – a world off on its own, full of oddities, constantly trying to leave its past behind.”
Tripod [COMEDY] Men Of Substance? By Chris Martin
A
fter 16 years on the international comedy circuit, it’s fair to say Tripod have come of age in more ways than one. “The band is now legally old enough to have sex with,” deadpans Scott ‘Scod’ Edgar, the lanky and amicable singer-guitarist who shares the stage with long-time collaborators Yon and Gatesy. “After you’ve been together [that long], you’re looking for strategies to minimise the pain and maximise the output. We used to work every day, come together from 10 to 3 and treat it like a day job, and I suppose that’s a good thing to be prepared to do – but after a while you’re just sitting there looking at each other, hoping an idea falls into your head.” Their solution? Band camp. “We go away to Shoreham [on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula] and get fucked up and cook good food and write music. It’s a really fun way to do it.”
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In their earlier days, Tripod got a break via Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s ‘Red Faces’ segment, playing an all-in-one pastiche of Oasis hits. “It’s almost a rite of passage, doing a ‘look how songs fit together’ type tune,” says Scod. “Ours was a pretty long bow [to draw], considering the chords of those [Oasis] songs aren’t really exactly the same – we kind of had to mash it up a bit to fit, but it worked.” Before that TV appearance, however, Tripod was a serious musical act. Scod still considers himself a musician first and a comedian second. “Tripod was initially just covers and strange versions of songs done in three-part harmony. We were opening for rock’n’roll cover bands at pubs and stuff on weekends back in the early ’90s … the comedy just happened after that, really.”
very time-intensive. Comedians can just kind of rough out an idea on the back of a napkin and work it out during their shows – you can’t do that with music.”
Straddling that comedy/music divide can be a challenge: music fans want to hear the hits, while comedy fans don’t want to hear old jokes. “People will [say], ‘Yeah, I liked the show, but I wanted to hear this song or that song,’” says Scod, “but at the same time you can’t use it as an excuse to roll out the same show every year … On the other hand, writing a song is
Apart from Men of Substance, the new year also promises an intriguing ‘serious’ project in collaboration with Eddie Perfect. Perfect Tripod will debut in Melbourne, and feature four-piece vocal arrangements of classic Australian songs. After that, Tripod still have at least one more ambition to fulfil: selfconfessed geeks, Scod, Yon and Gatesy were
immortalised by name in a 2003 Star Wars novel, and now that the famous franchise is set to return to cinemas, Scod would cherish an invite to appear on screen. “That’s the thing we’ll never have over Flight Of The Conchords,” he says. “The little one got to be an elf in Lord of the Rings – that’s something I will always be jealous of.” What: Men of Substance Where: Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House When: January 3-13
Tripod photo by Lynton Crabb
Scod, Yon and Gatesy’s writing efforts from last summer have spawned Men Of Substance, their follow-up to the ambitious Tripod Vs The Dragon musical. “I think the title represents more of a question than a conclusion,” Scod laughs. “We all turned 40 last year or this year … we’re starting to become elders in a young blokes’ game a little bit. … the show definitely explores whether we’ve matured with age or not; whether wisdom has gathered or not. I’ll leave it to the
audience to draw that conclusion. I have my serious doubts.”
FLiCKER
FEST
Escape the heat this summer at Bondi Pavilion, where Flickerfest are laying out their annual spread of short films – with all the best award-winning local and international short dramas, documentaries, animations and comedies, sprinkled with premiere screenings of the freshest talent. Besides the International and Australian competition programs, this year offers up Short Laughs Comedy, the FlickerKids and FlickerUp programs, GreenFlicks, Flicks for (Senior) Citz, Celebrity Shorts, a From The Oscars retrospective, and a Viva Las Elvis program that shows the impact of The King from Germany to Palestine to Ireland and rural Australia. Flickerfest runs from January 11-20. Below we unpack some highlights from the program; for the full lineup of short films and parties, see flickerfest.com.au Second Hand
SHOWCASE:
A STORY FOR THE MODLINS / SPAIN
GreenFlicks
Elmer Modlin was a failed actor whose biggest part was as an extra in Rosemary’s Baby. This haunting, lo-fi documentary explores the secret life of Elmer and his wife and son, who fled America to Madrid in the 1970s, where they holed up in a dark apartment – for the next 30 years – and she painted surrealist, quasi-religious tableaux, while her son and husband struck strange poses for her camera. Weird, sad – totally compelling. Previous screenings/awards: In Competition – Sundance 2013; Best Documentary – Karlovy Vary. Session: Best Of Documentary 2
By Justin Wolfers & Dee Jefferson Two years ago, Flickerfest introduced a GreenFlicks competition program, showcasing short films dealing with issues of sustainability and the environment. It was a pet passion of Festival Director Bronwyn Kidd (Flickerfest actively works to reduce its carbon footprint and serves organic local food and beverage) – but it was also her response to the increasing number of entries dealing with these themes. “I really wanted to be able to bring these films to audiences who, like me, wanted to be informed and engaged with how other countries were dealing with this universal issue,” says Kidd. “The interesting thing for me as a festival programmer was that despite the doom and gloom about the environment spread every day in the mainstream media, these films had a theme of hope. Filmmakers were actively focusing on characters and story, often with positive and very personal approaches to dealing with sustainability in their global neighbourhood – and there was a real feeling that the individual could make a difference.” In its third year now, the GreenFlicks competition spans two screening sessions and runs the gamut from documentaries to dramas, animations, nature films and even a sprinkling of comedy. Many of the films wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, favouring impact over subtlety. For example, high-paced farmer-drama Chicken Karma (dir. Christian Cordeaux) features a cagedegg farmer haunted by his subconscious, a green-friendly radio host and eventually a rogue environmentalist who imprisons him in chicken-wire, restoring things to their natural balance. The message is loud and clear – but making the villain the centre of the piece and allowing him genuine pathos
makes for a fresh and intriguing treatment of the ‘ethical eggs’ issue. Equally direct – and playful – is Canadian animation Second Hand (dir. Isaac King), which contrasts the fast-paced, highly disposable lifestyle of a businessman with his gentle, recycle-friendly neighbours, who find creative uses for the junk he discards. As the man begins to rethink his approach to the world around him, King’s drawing style becomes more rounded and idiosyncratic, and the pace becomes gentler. At the opposite end of the spectrum, offering more oblique commentary on environmental issues, are the video-clip The Tree (dir. Caroline Fisher), in which naked human figures mount a majestic Morton-Bay fig tree, to the strains of Sigur Rós; the almost entirely apolitical nature-short Ten Quintillion (dir. Romilly Spiers), which is essentially a series of super-macro shots of snails and other insect life that offers up a romanticised vision of their existence; and the surrealist Finnish drawn-animation Swarming, which explores the interior life of a dead bird. As you might expect, the predominant genre across the GreenFlicks program is documentary. Stand outs include After The Tsunami – The Father, which puts a human face on an environmental disaster, in the form of a grieving man who lost his
entire family in the 2011 Japanese tsunami; and Potato Heads: Keepers Of the Crop, which uses potato-growers in Peru and Minnesota as case-studies for the cultural and socio-economic value of the tuber, and its centrality to future world food security. On the local front, stand-outs include Wild Things (dir. Richard Mockler), a thoroughly researched and intriguing piece about mongrel dogs in the ACT – part-dingo breeds that have a taste and talent for attacking sheep. The barbaric local tradition of stringing up their carcasses from trees (not unlike old-fashioned lynchings in the USA) is contrasted with the practise of local sculptor Amanda Stuart, who makes casts of the dogs that highlight their gracefulness. This year’s GreenFlicks films emphasise that political and artistic vision can operate simultaneously and successfully – but they also reveal the tricky line between delivering a message and over-selling it, and a couple of the films veer close to being policy-vehicles. On the other hand, the pro-empathy, pro-regeneration and pro-empowerment stance this selection of films takes definitely makes for feel-good viewing. Sessions: GreenFlicks Eco Shorts 1 & 2 Time: Sunday January 20 at 12.30pm & 2.30pm
PROFILE:
Dave's Dead
Alethea Jones
Besides being a hive of activity, she is polymathic in her approach to her career, working as a choreographer (for acts like Delta Goodrem, Operator Please and Children Collide), actor, writer, director and producer. But her first calling was acting, and she says, “The last three shorts I directed – When the Wind Changes, Lemonade Stand and Dave’s Dead – were written by actors, and I think that my acting background has helped my dialogue with cast to no end.”
ALETHEA SAYS Looking forward: “I just want to make things in every medium. I’m a TV junkie at home, so I want to take that passion across to directing TV. To that effect, I’ve done director’s attachments on Rush and Neighbours, so I’ve been able to see how an episode is put together from the writing stage through to the edit. Features would be heavenly to make as well. I’ve also just started with TVCs, which in themselves are little bundles of contained energy.” Who she admires: “I love Baz Luhrmann and his ostentatious treatment of story. I love Wes Anderson,
Acclaimed Magnum photographer Elliot Erwitt has a career spanning 60 years and many iconic images – including documentary photographs and portraits of figures such as Marilyn Monroe and Che Guevara, among others. This documentary takes us behind the scenes of this great talent (particularly his taste for shooting dogs), and features a cameo by Erwitt’s cheeky alter ego, André S. Solidor. Previous screenings/awards: Best Documentary – New York City Short Film Festival and Aspen Shortsfest; Audience Choice – Austin Film Festival. Session: Best Of Documentary 1
THE CAPTAIN / AUSTRALIA Can you make comedy out of a horrific plane crash? Yes you can, say powerhouse collective Blue-Tongue Films. Their latest short, written and directed by Nash Edgerton (Spider; Bear) and Spencer Susser (Hesher) stars award-winning NZ filmmaker Taika Waititi (Boy) as a pilot who wakes up after a particularly bad flight/ hangover to discover the damage he’s done. It’s shot by in-demand DOP Greig Fraser (Bright Star, Zero Dark Thirty), and the production budget alone is impressive. Previous screenings/awards: Official Selection – Sundance 2013 Session: Best Of Australian 2
FRIEND REQUEST PENDING / UK Take your mum to this adorable comedy about Mary (Judi Dench), a social-networking-savvy older woman navigating the fraught world of online flirting, and trying to snag a date with Trevor – whose tweets are “very witty, better than Stephen Fry's." Meanwhile, her best friend Linda is determined to ‘poke’ Mary’s son (Tom Hiddleston). Ewwww. So cute. Previous screenings/awards: Best Comedy – New York City Short Film Festival; Official Competition – Chicago International Film Festival. Session: Celebrity Shorts
GOD OF LOVE / USA
By Dee Jefferson Alethea Jones has had a cracker 24 months, taking gongs at Tropfest, Flickerfest and the IF Awards for her comic shorts. Meanwhile, she’s been busy with production-attachments on Rush and Neighbours, directing and starring in five episodes of the cult comedy web series Cop Hard, directing an ABC-commissioned documentary, and working in development on two feature film projects and three television series.
ELLIOTT ERWITT I BARK AT DOGS / USA
Jones’ breakthrough was When The Wind Changes, an absurdist comedy written by and starring Richard Davies (TV’s Offspring) as a gormless slacker who gets his comeuppance. Debuting at MIFF in 2010, it went on to take Best Short at IF Awards, Best Comedy at St Kilda Film Festival, and People’s Choice and Most Resourceful at Flickerfest – “which we love,” says Jones, “because we made this film with Rick’s own money.” Her next big success was winning Tropfest with her sweet-nsour comedy Lemonade Stand, about a grandfather/grandson team whose annual refreshment stand comes under threat from neighbourhood stiff Kevin “fanny-pants” Dawson.
Her latest comic adventure is Dave’s Dead, a dark comedy about friendship and a funeral. Flickerfest Festival Director Bronwyn Kidd says, “Both [this and When The Wind Changes] are very funny and unusual stories – not the usual 7-minute gag film with blokey humour that has at times dominated the Australian short film comedy landscape. I also think the performances and stories are incredibly strong and sophisticated.”
and am really moved by P.T. Anderson’s older films, like Magnolia and PunchDrunk Love. Bit of a sucker for Woody Allen, too.”
On Dave’s Dead: “The film is really big in vision, but we only had a few thousand dollars to make it. We had to stretch the money and really scrap to get it made. … You use up a lot of nervous energy asking things of people and making the best of what you have.”
Her tips for 2012/13: "Argo, directed by Ben Affleck, had such a great mix of comedy and drama. Also delightful characters; Silver Linings Playbook – Bradley Cooper has never been better; Cloud Atlas, although many people didn’t like it, was a truly inspiring cinematic moment for me. That’s a film that gave to me as an audience member. I walked out of it inspired by life. In terms of TV, I’m really, really mad for Downton Abbey and Game Of Thrones."
NYU graduate Luke Matheny is in production on his feature directorial debut, starring Chevy Chase, Matt LeBlanc and Ali Larter – so it’s time to acquaint yourself with his 2011 Academy Award-winner: a black and white rom-com about a lounge-singing darts champion with a severe case of unrequited love, whose prayers are answered with a pack of magical love darts… It’s a silly premise, but the performances are great and the humour is just the right amount of weird. Previous awards: Academy Award – Best Live Action Short Session: From The Oscars
CHEF DE MEUTE / QUEBEC
What: Dave’s Dead, Dir. Alethea Jones Session: Best Of Australian 1 More: aletheajones.com
On surviving the scene: “The challenge is finding people that will work for free or very little money to help make a quality product. Often you’re working with inexperienced crew who are looking to log up hours and stuff for their reels. But those people who do commit are all heart, and that goes a long way.”
Pugs! In this French-Canadian comedy, a young woman develops a bond with her deceased-Aunt’s pet that may just help her human relationships as well. It’s the first pairing of award-winning director Chloé Robichaud and lead actress Ève Duranceau, whose feature Sarah Runs will release next year. Previous awards: Official Competition – Cannes. Session: Best Of International 1
● Sound designer Sam Petty (Animal Kingdom) talks about his directorial debut, Wishart; ● Emerging filmmaker Billie Pleffer talks about her award-winning short B I N O; ● We unpack more highlights from Flickerfest’s massive lineup. BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:11 :: 29
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PEATS RIDGE - SATURDAY 29TH DECEMBER DUBSHACK THEATRE / VICS DISCO
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opening ceremony
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brown horn orchestra
pear shape
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rockets tijuana cartel
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plastic pollution in the 21st century national parks & wildlife
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ceddy mcgrady
b & j big bash
nourish your being (a)
peats green poetry slam workshop
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acrobalance yoga family friendly
The Mariner
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circle of drums african PLAYSHOP
powerful pilates
cabaret of the flesh
wiradjuri freeman traditional dancers
love tv
kai ora moari dancers
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sound travel chakra balance
vinyasa yoga - for new beginnings in 2013
aycc - solving the climate crisis
flow yoga - pilates
asen
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community energy plan
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film - bag it
keke mama film - home
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film - freedom ride
chairman wow dj angus ware
rollers music feat. antic kobra kai
the atlas room krafty kutS vs a.skillz
jamie smith
shamik tactical aspect
amy rose
intrika and the three sisters
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loren kate the crooked fiddle band extravaganza
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sam westphalen
sma the chemist
the medics
yaama yaama welcome
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peats ridge overview become the warrior
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tigertown
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alkaline and the noise mechanix
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anabelle kay
door to imagination
foreigndub
dj ballistic
film - age of stupid
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cold war crush dj rasputin
stuart ridley: emagica
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underworld
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THE PIRATE’S LAIR
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daily meds shamik beatbox workshop tigertown
nic cassey
insurgent
cass eager & the velvet rope all the colours
lana de angeles eliot barham
battleships
richard cuthbert
lime cordiale
the book of ships (solo) charlie charles & the cherry pickers
kaki king belle & the bone people
current swell
the guppies
wild marmalade gold fields
woe & flutter
amy rose dread lion and friends
salta sarah humphreys & the volunteers
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blood red shoes
modest
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master of ribongia
jesse morris & the 3 beans 5
softwar vs slow blow
vARgas alkaline and the noise mechanix
kinksy
didjeridoo & traditional dance workshop
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tha juke box gangsterz aka jeannie vs kryptic lapkat
kingrhythm
hooves
power yoga moves & grooves
BELLY DANCE PERFORMANC E
cabaret of the flesh RIVERSHACK BLUES BAND
natural baby care
powerful pilates
lifestyle footprint
create passion & purpose for 2013
food connect greenpeace - save the reef from coal
posture care feel empowered raw food changed my life
samba social club
dumpster diving
keke mama
medicine rhythms a conscious dance event
po i thriller
worm farming understanding climate change
capoeira
john seed: deep ecology
cat daddy
GUMAROY NEWMAN
disco disorder
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film: food inc.
dj subversive
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circle of drums drum circle
laughter yoga TAI CHI
sustainable fashion
chant circle with lulu & mischka
juggling
optimising australia’s waste management
give & receive with partner massage vinyasa yoga for beginnings in 2013
west african dance with jamo jamo
adventure conservation
nourish for being (b)
plastic band
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HULA HOOPING
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body percussion
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ryanosaurus
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ALEXANDRA - belly dance
judgement
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little bastard
nicole keipert
matriark art theatre
rayjah45
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mirring aboriginal cultural •workshops• •clapstick making• •torres STRAIT weaving• •stone knapping• •boomerang making•
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hi-tops brass band
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JOHN BUTLER & THE WILDERNESS SOCIETY
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ZERO CARBON AUSTRALIA 2020
opening of jup murri corroboree - wollombi dancers
alison plevey
MASSAGE - GIVING & RECEIVING
jebebara drums
UNION YOGA PARTNER YOGA
plastic band
VINYASA FLOW
barry brown & the get down isoma & leigh wood
OPEN FORUM: PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE SECURING OUR WATER CONCLUSION: WHAT WE LEARNED AT PEATS
RIVERSHACK BLUES BAND
CHANT FOR INNER PEACE
blitzkrieg love bombs
anomie aka sophie loizou mogz n kye
dub terminator
dj silver b, dj angus ware & dj desire
FILM: WOODSTOCK
dj che your vaga
dj perastroikas hipster g
GANGNAM STYLE JUGGLING 2
TAI CHI EATING SUSTAINABLY
SOULSWEATTM DANCE
poseidon
TRIBAL GROOVE FUSION (WITH ZUMBA & YOGA)
LAUGHTER YOGA 2
FILM: DIVE
rumplestompskin
wahoo vs chappo
NATURAL SKIN CARE
TO SPELL GREAT CHANGE
lysergic dan
leeroy vs keirra jade
CAPOEIRA REDUCING CHEMICAL USE
RETHINKING TRANSPORT
filth collins
western synthetics tokyo denmark sweden
VINYASA FLOW
MEDICINE RHYTHMS A CONSCIOUS DANCE EVENT
ghawazi caravan
mr rogers (usa)
pigeon
friendly fires (dj set)
UNION YOGA VINYASA
tue 1st 11.00am closing ceremony
nye chant with lulu & mischka tue 1st 8.30am kundalini yoga let yourself shine tue 1st 9.30am power yoga moves & grooves
WORKSHOPS Mobility Method
skin on skin
circle of drums african PLAYSHOP
nye parade leaving boardi
big ezee
sharon jones & the dap-kings
qigong and tai chi
corroboree circle
juzlo tuka
royston vasie
ECOLIVING
HATHA & PRANA IN VINYASA YOGA
WILLIAM lee ceddy mcgrady
HEALING HAVEN
charlie gradon
current swell
john butler trio
canoe making • clapstick making • leather workshop
johnsong drachemann vs loz nonsense
DRUM & DANCE TEMPLE
smoking ceremony for nye
anna weatherup
nic cassey
fancy dress judging
kemikoll
BOARDI uncle phil kup murri cooking • torres STRAIT WEAVING
sam the chemist
elwood myre hef t
hat fitz & cara
unknown mortal orchestra
28: engine sound
jenna murphy
hey geronimo
skryptcha
PEATS RIDGE - MONDAY 31ST DECEMBER DUBSHACK THEATRE / VICS DISCO
celcius & f0rest sound
salta
fanny lumsden & the thrillseekers
winter people
THE PIRATE’S LAIR
persianlovecake
microwave jenny hiatus kaiyote
chai temple
WORKSHOPS Mobility Method heart opening vinyasa flow
yin of yoga
sam buckingham
BELLBIRD
underworld
opening ceremony
BELLBIRD
LYREBIRD
DANSE ORIENTALE (BELLY DANCING)
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Arts Snap
Film & Theatre Reviews
At the heart of the arts Where you went last week...
Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.
■ Film
■ Film
In cinemas from January 3
THE HOBBIT / Dir. Peter Jackson There’s nothing wrong with this film that a good nip and tuck couldn’t cure. The LOTR trilogy was based on three books; the forthcoming Hobbit trilogy is based on one book. Do the maths. The result is a painstakingly faithful rendition that borders on snoozy. Where LOTR had enough interlocking plots and romantic interests to keep things interesting, The Hobbit is far more linear: a bunch of dudes going from point A (Hobbiton) to point B (Smaug’s treasure-mountain) with interludes of eating, fighting and dodging things. That said, Martin Freeman is a great Bilbo – perfectly, comically fussy – and the look of the film, 3D graphics and all, is gorgeous. DO: Pay for three hours of parking. DON’T: Sit next to someone who snores.
JACK REACHER
PICS :: TL
the christmas show
On paper, there’s not much to set the film apart from numerous others that feature a tough, off-the-grid law enforcer out for justice. Though it’s an adaptation of Lee Child’s 2005 novel (the ninth in his Jack Reacher series, sporting the superior title One Shot), it has the feel of a throwback to a bygone era of ‘60s/’70s crime pics, right down to a superb car chase in the vein of The French Connection and Bullitt. It’s been adapted and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, writer of The Usual Suspects and 2000’s undervalued Way of the Gun, and he lends it a distinct sensibility that lifts it above the pack, from the hardboiled and often un-PC dialogue, to the smart deployment of strikingly nondescript Pittsburgh locations.
13:12:12 :: 107 Projects :: 107 Redfern St Redfern
The chilling opening scene, in which a sniper picks off several random innocents from a building above, explicitly evokes Dirty Harry, and the work of director Don Siegel is another big reference point here. As with any throwback, if the aforementioned names don’t mean much to you, Jack Reacher likely won’t either, and however finely tuned Cruise’s star-turn is, he won’t convert any haters. The film’s pleasures, then, turn out to be surprisingly rarefied for all the generic narrative elements. And that’s OK by me. Ian Barr ■ Film
LIFE OF PI
cardboard city group show
PICS :: TL
In cinemas from January 1
13:12:12 :: Soldiers Rd Gallery :: Suite 405/ 342 Elizabeth St Surry Hills
Arts Exposed What's in our diary...
BLACK CHERRY NYE Monday December 31 from 9pm-4am The Factory Theatre, Enmore
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If you want more bang for your buck, head along to Black Cherry’s now-infamous NYE bash, with more live bands, burlesque and mechanical-bull action than you can shake a nipple-tassle at. Pocket-rocket pin-up Tasia will be performing her badass ‘Tigerwoman’ routine (pictured, rrrreow), Kira Hula-La will be putting the hoop into the hoopla, and Frankie Faux will be keeping it real – all wrangled by MC and resident sass-patrol Lauren LaRouge. Meanwhile, headliners Area-7 and Barbarion will be leading a massive live lineup that spans Celtic punk, rock’n’roll and party-grunge, and Twist & Shout will be hosting their own ‘60s pop oasis, featuring the Go-Gette Go-Go Dancers. And in between sets, you can dust off your vocal chords with Jungle Rump Rock’n’Roll Karaoke – the only karaoke that does your skillz justice with a live band. BAM. Tickets from factorytheatre.com.au
If you never quite got around to reading Yann Martel’s book, don’t worry – the general consensus seems to be that the film is at least as good, if not better. And it’s good – but not mind-blowing. Martel’s book was hugely popular, in the way that Jonathan Livingston Seagull was hugely popular: both repackage 'profound life truths’ in the form of a digestible parable that involves animals. Martel’s story, brought to the screen by diverse director Ang Lee, is about religion and faith, which is pretty obvious from the get-go, as an adult ‘Pi’ Patel (Bollywood superstar Irrfan Khan) tells a FrenchCanadian interviewer (Rafe Spall) about his childhood growing up in his father’s zoo, in the Pondicherry province of India, where he dabbled in every religion that came his way: Hinduism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism... What – in a work of fiction – is likely to happen to a boy obsessed with matters of faith? His faith must be tested. And so a teenaged Pi (expressive newcomer Suraj Sharma) comes to be floating in the middle of the ocean, after the ship taking his family – and the zoo-full of animals – to Canada sinks during a storm. Like Job, Pi undergoes a series of torments – starting with the death of his family and sharing a raft with a hungry, seasick tiger. It’s not the ‘message’ of this book/ film that is powerful, it’s the execution: the performances (even the CGI tiger, incredibly) are nuanced and believable, creating an emotional truth that speaks louder than words. Lee has done the best with what is a fairly heavy-handed story, and the result is both touching and entertaining, without being life-changing. Dee Jefferson
LES MISÉRABLES / Dir. Tom Hooper Children of the ‘80s unite! The totally-OTT musical melodrama that is Les Mis is back, and it’s glorious. Hooper’s heavyhanded directing is a perfect match for this larger-than-life tale of love, sacrifice and death in 19th century France. Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe face off in the roles of convict-made-good Jean Valjean and righteous law enforcer Javert, whose decades-old rivalry entangles prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold Fantine (Anne Hathaway) and her daugheter Cosette (Amanda Seyfried). Jackman is the standout– the man can actually act, actually sing, and actually knows how to work a camera. Expect all the Oscar noms. DO: Sing along to all the songs. DON’T: Expect anyone to like that. SAMSARA / Dir. Ron Fricke Fricke & Co. (Koyaanisquatsi, Chronos Baraka) have got time-lapse photography down to a fine art. Their latest slice of cinematographic porn is a two-hour epic of images and music that captures the natural and man-made wonders – and terrors – of the world. Stunning footage of cathedrals is juxtaposed with intimate scenes of children being christened, and tracking shots of equally majestic and awe-inspiring natural edifices like the canyons of Yellowstone. And then, just when you’ve been lulled into a trance-like state of wonderment, Fricke thoroughly freaks you out with close-ups of almost-human android faces, or a vignette in which a businessman covers his face and then his entire head in a ghoulish mess of grey clay, paint, hair and plantmatter. DO: Go to the quietest possible session. DON’T: Eat beforehand – you’ll lose it in the abattoir and meat-processing scenes. QUARTET / Dir. Dustin Hoffman We’ve had two British films about alternative-style nursing homes in the last 12 months – and both starred Maggie Smith as a cranky old spinster. Like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel before it, Quartet is an improbably feel-good comedy-drama about one of life’s most depressing inevitabilities. Pitching its camp in a beautiful countryside mansion-cumnursing home for aged musicians, the film stars Smith, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins (aka Shirley Valentine) and Tom Courtenay as four former opera singers who reunite under duress to sing the quartet from Verdi’s Rigoletto – whereupon shenanigans ensue. DO: See it with your parents (although this topic may cut a bit close to the bone...). DON’T: Be fooled into believing that real nursing homes are anything like this. SIGHTSEERS / Dir. Ben Wheatley This is the black sheep of the Boxing Day lineup – not a life-affirming or sentimental gesture in sight. Instead, you’ll be taking a caravan trip with thirty-going-on-forty-yearolds Tina (Alice Lowe) and Chris (Steve Oram), as they break free of their dismal everyday lives (for him, unemployment and a failed attempt at a novel; for her, caring for her miserable, mean-spirited mother) to create their own little romantic bubble on the road: sex, sightseeing, companionship – and a spot of light killing. If Mike Leigh had sex with Edgar Wright, they’d make a horror-comedy baby like this. DO: Yourself a favour. DON’T: Litter. Chris hates that. Dee Jefferson
See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews
Xxx
Jack Reacher is a Tom Cruise vehicle with a title that would be utterly forgettable if it wasn’t so susceptible to fake-porn bastardisation (Jack Reacharound, teehee!). It’s also one of the best mainstream genre films of recent years – a crime-noir in the guise of an action film, that’s immaculately crafted and detailed from first scene to last, and (in an inspired bit of casting) features legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog in a rare Hollywood acting role, putting his distinctive timbre to wonderfully evil effect as a coldblooded, one-eyed, Teutonic-stereotype villain.
BOXING DAY REVIEWED
DVD Reviews What's been on our TV screens this week Get girled...
HART OF DIXIE: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON Six minutes into Hart Of Dixie comes a one-liner so saccharine and sickly that it will take every ounce of your being not to eject the DVD, shatter it into shards and cut yourself with the pieces. But should you force your way past this early stumbling block, you’ll find a show that walks the line between sweetness and off-beat humour in the same way that made Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s past ventures – (The OC and Gossip Girl) such necessary viewing. Like the aforementioned shows, Hart Of Dixie co-opts the fish-out-of-water premise. Dr. Zoe Hart (played with brash perfection by Rachel Bilson) is a New Yorker fresh out of medical school, whose perfectly navigated life plan is blown off course when she can’t find a fellowship and winds up in Bluebell, Alabama – an insular hick-town. It’s a well-trodden path, but it’s one that works because of the many possibilities for chaos and comedy that come with such displacement. And as with all these shows, the town itself is the main character; in Bluebell, community spirit is number one, and it’s easy to fall into the rich world that Schwartz & Co. have carved out. By the end of the pilot, three possible love interests have been established for Hart, and most of this season finds her bouncing back and forth between them.
GIRLS: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON When the pilot for Girls – by far the most fiercely dissected, feted and criticised show of the year – aired in April, the line most commentators focused on was when protagonist Hannah earnestly proclaimed to her parents that she was the voice of her generation – “or at least a voice, of a generation”. It’s a neat line, which showcases Hannah’s solipsistic sense of entitlement, but it also had reviewers offering up similar praise to 26-year-old writer, creator, show-runner, director and star Lena Dunham. And rightly so. Girls focuses on that post-higher-learning generation who, after years of being told they can achieve anything, suddenly find themselves thrust into a world of endless internships, high living costs and ill-defined personal relationships. “That whole in-between space,” as Dunham once referred to it. The transition from the cushion of college to the real world is a murky one, especially when you are burning with ambitious and ideals, and Dunham traverses this beautifully: Hannah worrying herself sick about “the stuff that gets up around the sides of condoms”; her main love interest Adam’s shift from alpha deadshit to nuanced sweetheart (with some relatable cringe-worthy sex scenes along the way); Hannah, high on opium tea, yelling at her parents that “coffee is for grownups”.
As with The OC, many characters start off unbearable and slowly thaw out, revealing their various hands. It’s a master move: having the protagonist fall for these characters at the same pace as the viewer. Of course, with 22 unashamedly romanticised episodes, lines like the clunker in the pilot occasionally pop up. The genius of it all is that you start to forgive these sentimental moments... or maybe you simply start to believe in them more.
Girls is, at its heart, a show about feeling displaced. About knowing exactly where you belong, and how things are meant to end up, but not yet having the ability to achieve this. Hannah isn’t a patient person: she wants everything now, and gets frustrated by her own inactivity. The girls she surrounds herself with – prudish Marnie, worldly Jessa and bubbly Shoshanna – aren’t nearly as well-drawn as Hannah, but this matters little: this is a onewoman show.
Nathan Jolly
Nathan Jolly
Street Level WITH
SIMON MERCIER
P
reviously the manager of Surry Hills’ White Horse, these days Simon helms Name This Bar – a venture he launched in 2009 as an experiment, and which has become a hot spot for live art, hosting first the Secret Wars series, and now Art Battles. Every Thursday night, up to four artists duke it out on canvas in a 100-minute battle of skills – culminating in a grand final on January 17. The current series takes the theme ‘East Meets West’, with the winner scoring a trip to Dubai to represent Australia at the Tiger Translate music-meets-art mashup. What have been the highlights of the series so far? There’s one from an earlier series that deserves a special mention: the theme for the battle was ‘when sex goes south’. One of the artists, Creon, created a piece where a nun is in a church giving birth to the Devil. It was sold to art collector friend of mine in Melbourne. This piece is so wrong in so many ways that he can’t even display it in his house, so it’s hidden away – but it’s still the most talked-about piece he owns; apparently it’s a great dinner-party conversation starter. What’s in the name? When we first started, the idea was to set up a Facebook page to name the bar, and it was only meant to run for two weeks. It went from there to people writing names in books we placed on the bar – to writing on the walls (Tequila Mocking Bar was a favourite). After a month we just couldn’t decide, so… How hard is it operating a small bar? I was told so many times that I was mad opening a bar on Oxford Street, because there are too many problems and everyone else around us had closed down; but after three years, we’re still building the business and we’ve never had any issues with patron behaviour. The major challenge is that we’re not in a major destination like the Cross or Crown Street, and we’re on the Paddington side of Taylor Square on our own – so we constantly recreate and bring in new ideas to keep things interesting (such as astro-turfing the bar and the toilet walls).
How’d you get into this line of work? I started in a nightclub on the Gold Coast when I was 18, flat broke and living in my car and needing cash bad. I got a job doing street promotions for a nightclub, and couldn’t believe how much fun it was. I went from a street promotions guy to a jelly wrestling referee, sound and lighting assistant, DJ and compere, and finally a duty manager. Then mum asked me when was I going to get a real job… So I tried that normal job thing of 9 to 5, but it just wasn’t fun. I ended up running a club in Cairns that wasn’t doing so well; we applied the fun element to everything we did and got all the staff involved – and the place went through the roof. From there I went to Port Moresby, PNG (yeah crazy, I know) and ran a couple of places. It’s places like that which really teach you how to adapt to the elements. What: Art Battles Australia When: Every Thursday from 8pm; Grand Final on January 17 Where: Name This Bar / 197 Oxford Street More: artbattles.com.au / namethisbar.com BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12 :: 33
Remedy
More Than The Cure Since 1989 with Murray Engleheart
MOVING SIDEWALKS
Now this is really something. One of the great '60s punk and psych units was Texan outfit The Moving Sidewalks, whose guitarist Billy Gibbons (later of ZZ Top) once drew a gushing on-camera TV rave from no less than Jimi Hendrix. On March 30, the band, with Gibbons, is reforming for a one-off show at BB Kings in New York City, to celebrate the release of The Moving Sidewalks: The Complete Collection compilation – which will, of course, include the classic ‘99th Floor’. But it’s not just times that have changed since the ‘60s, it’s ticket prices too: VIP tickets for the show are US$120, which includes “a reserved seat in the side left wing balcony, color (sic!) show poster and post-show meet-and-greet with artists.” Imagine what Hendrix would be charging these days?
THE BRONX IV
The Bronx have a new album out in February, titled The Bronx (IV). It was apparently informed by the band’s experiences with side project Mariachi El Bronx. Hopefully this is a good thing.
BOB MOULD DOCUMENTARY
Tis the season for looking for a handout to help make a doco, it seems – and some efforts are far more donation-worthy than others. The latest is a ridiculously righteous cause: See a Little Light: A Celebration Of The Music And Legacy Of Bob Mould – about the legendary singer-songwriter and axe-man for Hüsker Dü and Sugar. Pity it isn’t entirely Hüsker Dü-centric, but as Mould was the hurricane at the front of that trio, they ought to get a serious lookin (albeit through Mould’s own personal prism). And given it’s all about the life and times of the wrestling nut, it’s appropriate that the major focus of the movie is a tribute show from 2011 in LA, which was hosted by Mould and included guests like Ryan Adams and members of No Age. Funds-wise, the filmmakers are looking for about $10,000 to get the project sorted.
Contributions can be made through Kickstarter.
IN THE FAMILY
If you ever happened to wonder how the heck Public Enemy’s Chuck D ended up on Meat Loaf’s Hell In A Handbasket album, here’s the answer: “Meat Loaf is [Anthrax guitarist and former Public Enemy collaborator] Scott Ian’s father-inlaw,” D told Rolling Stone. “I think he was looking for something on his album that answered to a dynamic that he didn’t want to do himself. So he reached out to Scott, Scott reached out to me, and I said sure.”
BALLPOWER
New York label Sing Sing Records recently reissued The Coloured Balls’ classic Ballpower on vinyl, and have also done the business with an early record by TV Smith, from 1975. A mere 50 copies of Sleaze (as it’s titled) were made back in the day, and it was recorded for a crippling cost of less than 39 pounds.
JUST DO IT
There’s a great line about The Grateful Dead, which we think was originally coined by legendary US promoter Bill Graham, that goes something like this: “They’re the only ones who do what they do and they're the only ones who can do what they do.” We reckon the same could be said of San Diego’s Earthless, who lifted the roof of The Annandale Hotel a good few centimetres last week. The main set was a 50-minute non-stop hurricane of cosmic power-trio jamming that thankfully took its sweet time in resolving itself, and didn’t over-reach for a moment. And being over the top without over-reaching is no small feat. The sound? An endless channelling of transmissions from everyone from The Hendrix Experience to the jazzy stuff that was so much a part of the first Sabbath record. Essentially, it was pure raw music in all its elevating glory, with no vocals to diminish or detract – except during an encore of The Groundhogs’ ‘Cherry Red’.
THE YEAR IN REVIEW OK, here’s our top records for 2012, in no particular order: Meat And Bone (Jon Spencer Blues Explosion), Advaitic Songs (Om), Kadavar (Kadavar), Researching The Blues (Redd Kross), Psychedelic Pill (Neil Young and Crazy Horse), Wreck (Unsane), Songs Of The Third And Fifth (The Mark Of Cain), Ascent (Six Organs of Admittance), The Seer (Swans), Family From Cuba (Ian Rilen & The Love Addicts), The Aberrant Years and Today Is Friday (feedtime), The Lost Tapes (Can), Nevermind The Bollocks box (The Sex Pistols), The Velvet Underground and Nico box, All Through The City box (Dr Feelgood), Off! (Off!), Throw It To The Universe (The Soundtrack Of Our Lives), Weapon Of Choice (The Cult), Harmonicraft (Torche), Locked Down (Dr John), Sweet Heart Sweet Light (Spiritualized), Big Moon Ritual and The Magic Door (The Chris Robinson Brotherhood), Lonerism (Tame Impala), Savage Heart (Jim Jones Revue) and Silver Age (Bob Mould). And our gigs of the year: Dig It Up! (Enmore Theatre etc), High On Fire (Manning Bar), Earth (The Hi-Fi), Redd Kross (Sandringham), Earthless (The Annandale), Hot Snakes (Annandale), Spiritualized (Sydney Opera House), Tame Impala (The Enmore), Dirty Three (Opera House) and The Jim Jones Revue (Annandale).
Tame Impala @ The Enmore
TOURS, GIGS, THANKS
Xxxx
The Baddies are doing their old-school punk rock thing with Stamp Out Disco (punk rock DJs, playing punk rock vinyl) on New Year’s Eve at the Botany View Hotel (King Street, Newtown) from 7pm until 2am. Free.
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The ever-awesome monster groovemakers The Deftones are at the UNSW Roundhouse on May 15. As always, thanks for listening this year. In fact, thanks for listening every year. We appreciate ya.
Send stuff to remedy@ozemail.com.au by 6pm Wednesdays. Pics to art@thebrag.com www.facebook.com/remedy4rock
Hot Snakes photo by Mary Jane Caswell Tame Impala photo by Pedro Xavier
Hot Snakes @ The Annandale
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live reviews What we've been to see...
TAME IMPALA, THE GROWL The Enmore Theatre Friday December 14
Topping off a year of unanimous rave reviews for their second full-length LP, sprouting serious fans in the US, UK and elsewhere, and making many an end-ofyear Best Album list, Tame Impala met with their expectant and faithful Sydney fans on Friday – and proved themselves more than capable of delivering on the hype. The Growl, another offshoot of Tame Impala’s extended family tree (frontman Cam Avery is the drummer for Pond), were promising openers – if a little green – with their bass-heavy, bluesy rock. Yet despite this being a relatively early show, with one support, everyone in the room was waiting. Tame Impala signaled their arrival with the familiar locomotive rhythm of Lonerism opener ‘Be Above It’, as The Enmore, suddenly packed out completely, began seething with already-sweaty bodies and wafts of illicit smoke. Synth-laden stoner anthems ‘Endors Toi’ and ‘It Is Not Meant To Be’ maintained the energy with a heavier kick-drum beat, as they morphed stomping party tracks.
Tame Impala spared us the “will they or won’t they” pre-encore charade; after ducking off the stage for barely half a minute, the band returned to play a mesmerising version of ‘Half Full Glass Of Wine’ that went on for seven minutes, though it seemed much longer (and I mean that in the best possible way). The proverbial glass isn’t half full for Tame Impala; it’s overflowing. And I can’t think of another band right now that deserves it more.
Soon enough it felt like an elephant was shaking his big grey trunk on The Enmore’s
Jenny Noyes
GRIMES
Oxford Art Factory Tuesday December 11 Anyone who thinks Grimes exists purely to legitimise the prevalence of pastel hair and bindi-wearing girls on the internet probably hasn’t seen her play live. Though she seems like a convenient pre-packaged collection of everything you’re supposed to like right now – experimental synths, hair, Azealia Banks-rivalling music videos – Grimes isn’t just a case of fashion, or “girls’ music”. Hers is a musicianship borne, like most solo electronic artists, of solipsistic hours spent bent over a synthesiser in her bedroom. I’d only ever watched one Grimes performance on YouTube, a song she’d played at SXSW earlier this year, and it was a little underwhelming – if only because outdoor shows are so unforgiving. So I was surprised when she bounded on stage at the packed-out Oxford Art Factory, commanding attention with a billowing coat that made her look a bit like a mad scientist would through an amphetamine haze. She was backlit with swivelling searchlights and engulfed in smoke, so for the most part all you could see was a lanky silhouette in a pair of drop-crotch pants: an arresting spectre
THE DATSUNS, THE TREATMENT The Annandale Hotel Sunday December 16
The Penny Lane look-alike draped her arms on a foldback speaker and stared dreamily at The Treatment. Complemented by a dedicated mosh-pit of three, the Sydney band offered the required warm-up for the unprecedented carnage The Datsuns would unleash. A ridiculously loud, foot-stomping, airguitar-worthy performance blasted out of the Annandale speakers; showcasing The Treatments’ debut EP Drive Me Crazy, the lead singer was so intimate with the microphone that it fell off its perch. Concluding their set by throwing their guitars to the ground, the band stalked off stage and left their audience in complete and utter distortion. The last time I saw The Datsuns was at New Zealand’s version of Top Of The Pops. No shit. I stood in the front row, and their classic rock performance gave me a much needed faith in New Zealand music. I had a new favourite band: pure, energetic, motherfucking rock’n’roll. Two albums later, I was more or less in the same place tonight: The Datsuns were perfectly preserved in my mind, and lead singer
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sprung floor – but it was just the adoring crowd going nuts for one of the setlist highlights, complete with a sparse, mostlydrums, jazz-improv-style breakdown in the middle, just to shake things up. Anyone confused had no time to complain before a soulful rendition of ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ had the audience singing along like a class of dilated pupils. As the set progressed almost every intro was met with rapturous applause, yet the music’s intensity transcended the crowd-surfing, jostling and singing-along. The visuals began as a simple retro WinAmp plugin, but at some point transformed into intense kaleidoscopic projections with a giant eye as centrepiece. By the time the epic finale ‘Apocalypse Dreams’ was in full swing, I felt I was blissfully tripping at the gates of Mordor, on just a couple of beers.
on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday night. When synth tracks began to swell from her sampler, embellished with melodies played on a Roland Juno-G, it felt like 2am in a festival tent – in a good way. Thickly-looped vocal layers and lush reverb augmented with guitar pedals washed over dreamy synth in songs like ‘Symphonia IX’, her pensive knob-twiddling occasionally broken by her pogo-ing to the build-ups of heavier songs like ‘Circumambient’, and the oldie ‘Vanessa’. Though there were lulls throughout Grimes’ show, she brought the crowd back with eagerly anticipated hits ‘Oblivion’ and ‘Genesis’ – and with a set that lasted under an hour, she definitely didn’t overstay her welcome. Her bigger, trancier songs didn’t really land with the crowd, but the sound was so good that it didn’t matter. If I had one beef, it was with the two hammy back-up dancers whose dance moves were of a calibre unseen since I’d frequented underage club nights in the early 2000s (remember The Sprinkler?). But even the hair-whipping and tartan mini skirts weren’t enough to turn me off, and that says something for Grimes’ stage presence, which buzzing with genuine (and totally adorable) energy. Dijana Kumurdian
Dolf reminded me of all the lyrics I used to know by heart. There were no indicators that tonight was a Sunday. After The Datsuns took to the stage, the third song saw semi-successful crowd-surfing; halfway through the set, there was beer and bodies everywhere. Playing a generous amount of older songs, no long-time fans could have been disappointed with the setlist. Moshpit favourites ‘In Love’ and ‘Harmonic Generator’ weaved themselves between tracks from their new album, Death Rattle Boogie. And if you didn’t know the song, The Datsuns threw in some fun activities: “Shall we do it?” Dolf asked the band, halfway though new track ‘Helping Hands’. Convincing the audience to sit on the ground for some ‘down-time’, he prepared them to jump in the air when things got a bit loud. Carnage. Diving into the next song with a leg kick, all shit was lost as Dolf finally screamed “LIKE A MOTHER FUCKER FROM HEEELLLL” into the microphone. Turning for a group huddle on-stage to determine the final song of the evening, ‘Freeze Suckers’ has the band cryogenically frozen in my mind, from now until I see them next. Tanydd Jaquet
snap sn ap
the datsuns
PICS :: MJC
up all night out all week . . .
catcall
PICS :: AM
16:12:12 :: Annandale Hotel :: 17 Paramatta Rd Annandale 9550 1078
15:12:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587
post-festival party 2013
15:12:12 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William St 9331 9900
party profile
a very radiant christmas
PICS :: PX
It’s called: Post-Festival Party 2013 It sounds like: Fjords screaming while Vikings rage into battle against a maelstrom of giant squid, serenaded by an old-timey veranda band. Who’s playing? The Crooked Fiddle Band, Warsaw Village Band (Poland), Mr Gregory Page (USA), The Rusty Spring Syncopators. Sell it to us: A mini-festival snaring some of our favourite acts from Peats, Woodford, Falls and the other summer festivals – but this time with short queues at the bar, and flushing toilets. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The guy in the heavy-metal T-shirt, mohawk and kilt moshing to traditional Polish fiddle while his girlfriend grabs the banjo from ‘Washboard Sam’ and joins the jam. Crowd specs: Summer nomads who haven’t stopped partying since New Year’s Eve and still have at least one ounce of dance left in them. Wallet damage: $25 at the door. Where: Factory Theatre, Marrickville
j.lo
PICS :: AM
When: Friday January 4, from 7pm
:: KATRINA CLARKE :: MARY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) :: DANIEL MUNNS :: PEDRO OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER MAR LEY ASH :: T HAR :: CLAIRE JANE CASWELL :: BREE CORVELL XAVIER ::
half time
PICS :: PX
14:12:12 :: All Phones Arena :: Sydney Olympic Park 8765 4321
15:12:12 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100 BRAG :: 494:: 24:12:12 :: 37
snap sn ap
heaps of bands bro!
PICS :: PX
up all night out all week . . .
gotye
PICS :: KC
14:12:12 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100
broken stone records family xmas
PICS :: MJC
14:12:12 :: Sydney Entertainment Centre :: 35 Harbour St Darling Harbour
08:12:12 :: St Stephen's Church :: 189 Church St Newtown 9557 2043
nye player haters ball
14:12:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700
party profile
mum
PICS :: BC
It’s called: The NYE Player Haters Ball It sounds like: A nostalgic RnB tribute of ludicrous proportions! Who’s playing? Milan Ring & The Left Eyes, Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Mike Who, Smart Casual (Jingle Jangle) and Daniel Darling (Yo Grito!). Sell it to us: Shake, grind and jig your way into 2013! This NYE we’re reaching peak party mode with a live band serenading the Goodgod Danceteria with cheeky covers of those feel-good nostalgic jams everyone knows and loves. The Left Eyes feat. Milan Ring will be recapping all the best tributes of the year, including Destiny’s Child, The Neptunes, R.Kelly, TLC and more! For every other moment, DJs Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Mike Who, Smart Casual and Daniel Darling will be will keep the dancefloor twisting with hip hop, RnB, soul, garage rock and exotic selections! The bit we’ll remember in the AM: That moment you realised you know all the words to every R. Kelly song ever. Crowd specs: Player haters, ballers and shot-callers. Wallet damage: $25 Where: Goodgod Small Club / 55 Liverpool St, Chinatown
14:11:12 :: The Enmore :: 118-132 Enmore Rd Newtown 9550 3666 :: KATRINA CLARKE :: MARY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) :: DANIEL MUNNS :: PEDRO OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER MAR LEY ASH :: T HAR :: CLAIRE JANE CASWELL :: BREE CORVELL XAVIER ::
38 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
captured 2.0 grand finale 12:12:12 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William St 9331 9900
PICS :: PX
tame impala
PICS :: PX
When: Monday December 31, from 10pm
FRI 28 DEC SAT 29 DEC
NOF*TANGRAPTURE / HELL SETZER
SLIPPERY M.C. / PITTSTHEKIDD DJ BOBBY DIGITAL
WED 02 JAN
BANG BANG ROCK & ROLL YES, I’M LEAVING / BAD JEEP
FRI 04 JAN THU 10 JAN NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
MAXINE KAUTER BAND THE WEDNESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB CHARLES BUDDY DAABOUL
SUPPORTS: BLOODS & BLACK ZEROS
FRI 1 1 JAN SAT 12 JAN
SAT 05 JAN RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY PRESENTS
THU 17 JAN
JEFF THE BROTHERHOOD KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD GOOCHPALMS / BLOODS.
CHALI 2NA TYPHONIC / RAINE SUPREME RHYTHM AND CUTLOOSE
TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT MOSHTIX.COM.AU/THESTANDARD WEARETHESTANDARD.COM.AU - FACEBOOK.COM/THESTANDARDSYDNEY
BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12 :: 39
SUMMER HOLIDAY GIG GUIDE send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com
MONDAY DECEMBER 24
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 26
ROCK & POP
ROCK & POP
Andy Mammers Duo Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill free 8pm Benton & Storm Time and Tide Hotel, Dee Why free 3pm all-ages Chris Paton Northies, Cronulla free 9pm Co Pilot The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 7.30pm Damage Inc - Metallica Show Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills free 9.30pm Greg Agar Northies, Cronulla free 5.30pm Jamie Lindsay Northies, Cronulla free 5.30pm Luke Dixon Camden Valley Inn, Camden Park free 6.30pm Mental As Anything Ettamogah Pub, Kellyville free 9pm Millenium Bug Pioneer Tavern, Penrith South free 8.30pm Nicky Kurta Trio Kirribilli Hotel free 8pm Outlier Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney free 10pm Rick Fensom Harbord Beach Hotel free 7.30pm Zoltan Cronulla RSL free 6pm
2 Way Split, Wild Armadillos The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm Andy Mammers Duo Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 9.30pm Cambo, Steve Tonge, Rob Henry The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm David Agius Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill free 6pm Gang Of Brothers, DJ Urby Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7pm Jimmy Bear O’Malley’s Hotel, Darlinghurst free 9.30pm Matt Jones Duo Castle Hill Tavern free 5pm Roxing Day: Front End Loader, Royston Vasie, The Darkened Seas, The Hungry Mile, Teenage Hand Models, Surprise Wasp Annandale Hotel $15 4pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK Royal Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 7pm
TUESDAY DECEMBER 25 ROCK & POP Alex Hopkins Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill free 1pm Ben Finn Duo Castle Hill Tavern free 9.30pm Christie Lamb Camden Valley Inn, Camden Park free 12pm Danielle Todd Camden Valley Inn, Camden Park free 12pm Evie Dean Novotel Homebush, Homebush Bay free 11.30am Outlier, DJ Smithers Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7pm Unforgetable Bankstown Sports Club free 12pm Zoltan Revesby Workers Club free 8pm
ROCK & POP Bang!: Little Bastard, Cabins, Papa Pilko & The Bin Rats, The Mountains, Callithump Annandale Hotel free (early bird)$10 7.30pm Dave White Duo, Fun Puppets The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm The Drey Rollan Band, Miss Pia & Her Lonesome Playboys, DJ Dylabolical Rock Lily, Pyrmont free 8pm Mother & Son Moonshine @ Hotel Steyne, Manly free 8pm Proper Music Social: Bud Petal, Rascals And Runaways, Andy Golledge Union Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Sarah McLeod, Owen Campbell The Workers, Balmain free 8pm Tim Freedman’s Fireside Chat The Basement, Circular Quay $35 (+ bf)–$89.80 (dinner & show) 7.30pm
JAZZ Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm Tangalo Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $20$25 7pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK ACOUSTIC & FOLK The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm
FRIDAY DECEMBER 28 ROCK & POP
THURSDAY DECEMBER 27
Russell Neal, Violet Nights, Monica & the Explosion Forest Lodge Hotel, Glebe free 7.30pm
Alta, Nakagin, Flash Forest, Spoonty FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Brian Cadd Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $49– $91 (dinner & show) 8pm Flamin’ Beauties Courthouse Hotel, Darlinghurst free 10pm The Headliners Westmead Tavern free 6.30pm Hey Geronimo, Jackie Onassis, Jordan Sly, Kristy Lee Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Hue Williams Oasis On Beamish free 8.15pm J Parrino Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Lime Cordiale, The My Tys, The Carraways Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Millennium Bug Rooty Hill RSL Club free 8pm MUM End Of The Year Party: Seaborne, Gum, Stray Pixels, Swim Team DJs, Vaals DJs, Danny Cruel, Cries Wolf DJs, Seabas, Catkings, MUM DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm Original Sin INXS Show Unity Hall Hotel, Balmain free 9.30pm Reckless, Nicks Kingswell Orient Hotel, The Rocks free (early bird)-$5 5pm Stone Monks, Barefoot Alley, The Lynettes, Drew Harris The Basement, Circular Quay $15 (+ bf)–$69.80 (dinner & show) 7.30pm Swinging Sixties Collaroy Services Beach Club free 7pm all-ages Tim Freedman Brass Monkey, Cronulla $40.80 7pm Yum Engadine RSL & Citizens Club free 8pm
JAZZ El Orqueston Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $20$25 7.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm
SATURDAY DECEMBER 29 ROCK & POP Cabins
40 :: BRAG :: 494:: 24:12:11
Sharon Jones
Children Collide
Anti-Flag (USA) Sandringham Hotel, Newtown 8pm
Back To The 80s Unity Hall Hotel, Balmain free 9.30pm Blind Valley, The Dalton Gang’s Last Raid, The Thrones Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Chasing Karma Oatley Hotel free 8.30pm Children Collide, The Hollow Bones, She Rex Annandale Hotel $25 (+ bf) 7.30pm Hue Williams Grand Hotel, Wyong free 7pm Karnivool, High Tension Metro Theatre, Sydney $49.70 7pm Louis London, Sea Legs, F.R.I.E.N.D/s Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Peats Ridge 2012 (runs until January 1): John Butler Trio, Friendly Fires DJ Set (UK), Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings (USA), Krafty Kuts vs A.Skillz (UK), Kaki King (USA), Luke Slater (UK), The Black Seeds (NZ), Unknown Mortal Orchestra (NZ), The Herd, Theo Parrish (USA), Blood Red Shoes (UK), 5daysofstatic (UK), Gaudi (UK), Tijuana Cartel, Mat. McHugh & The Seperatista Sound System, Clairey Browne & the Bangin Rackettes, Electric Empire, Northeast Party House, Hey Geronimo, Deep Sea Arcade, The Tongue, The Medics, Young Magic, King Tide, Wild Marmalade, Electric Wire Hustle, Skryptcha, Gold Fields, The Griswolds, Gossling, Ganga Giri, The Preatures, The Liberators, Sensient, Current Swell, All The Colours, The Delta Riggs, Hatfitz and Cara, Battleships, Winter People, The Crooked Fiddle Band, Tuka, Lime Cordiale, Will & The People, Chapelier Fou, The Cairos, Daily Meds, Jones Jnr, Tigertown, MUM DJs, Microwave Jenny, Kingfisha, Pigeon, Cass Eager & The Velvet Rope, Half Moon Run, Gung Ho, Tokyo Denmark Sweden, Claude Hay, The Falls, Glass Towers, Tin Sparrow, Royston Vasie, Woe & Flutter, Fanny Lumsden & the Thrillseakers, Meniscus, Rockets, The Guppies, Traveller & Fortune, Little Bastard, Kate Martin, Pear Shape, Enola Fall, The Green Mohaire Suits, Master Of Ribongia, Nic Cassey, George & O’Sullivan, Richard Cuthbert, Brian Campeau, Belle and the Bone People, Anabelle Kay, Roesy, Deseven Zyklus, Oblongmonster, Stuart Ridley (emagica), The Atlas Room, Bec Sandridge, Elwood Myre, Persianlovecake, Salta, Sam Buckingham, Sam Westphalen, Tim Humphreys, Valley Of Kings, LAPKAT Peats Ridge, Glenworth Valley $340 opens 8am Renee Geyer The Basement, Circular Quay $40 (+ bf)–$94.80 (dinner & show) 7.30pm Safari Suits, Eric Lawless Orient Hotel, The Rocks free (early bird)-$5 4.30pm A Tribute to Boz Scaggs & Hall & Oates
Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $40 8pm Us Two Duo Engadine RSL & Citizens Club free 8pm Yum Brighton RSL Club, Brighton-LeSands free 8pm
JAZZ Blue Moon Quartet Supper Club, Fairfield RSL Club free 7pm Keyim Ba Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $20$25 7.30pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 5pm Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie Well Co. Café / Wine Bar, Leichhardt free 7.30pm Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie, Paul Furniss, Tony Burkys, Bob Gillespe Penrith RSL Club, Penrith free 2pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm Russell Nelson The Belvedere Hotel, Sydney free 9pm Shazz Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Sydney free 8pm
SUNDAY DECEMBER 30 ROCK & POP Ace Brighton RSL Club, Brighton-LeSands free 7pm Alphamama Moonshine @ Hotel Steyne, Manly free 8pm Goodbye 2012: The Jefferson, The Lazybones, The Carraways, Peoples Palace, Tiger & The Rogue, Nudest Colonies, Rascals & Runaways, Mary & The Banks Annandale Hotel $5 4pm Renee Geyer The Basement, Circular Quay $40 (+ bf)–$94.80 (dinner & show) 7.30pm White Bros, U2 Elevation Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm
JAZZ Peter Head Trio & Friends The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK Anthony Hughes Oatley Hotel free 2pm The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm Harmontate Beach Road Hotel, Bondi 3.30pm
summer holiday gig guide
NEW YEAR'S EVE 2012 MONDAY DECEMBER 31
Regurgitator
ROCK & POP
The Baddies, Stampout Disco Botany View Hotel, Newtown free 7pm Barry Leef’s Doobies Eagles & West Coast Rock Show: The Barry ry Leef Band, Kimi Tupaea The Basement, Circular Quay $55 (+ bf) 7.30pm Black Cherry NYE: Area-7, Barbarion, Sunset Riot, The Ramshackle Army, The Dead Love, The Drey Rollan Band, Jungle Rump Rock’n’Roll Karaoke, Rockabilly Rhino, Sinead Ni Mhorda, Creatura Noctis, The Black Cherry DJs The Factory Theatre, Enmore $45– $55 (+ bf) 8pm Flamin’ Beauties Penrith Hotel free 9pm Harbour City Bears Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst 8pm Harbour Party NYE: Ricki-Lee, Marvin Priest, The Aston Shuffle, Luciana, Ivan Gough, D-Cup, Radio Ink, Alleyoop, Tom Piper, Garcon Garcon, Brother G, Tass, Isabella Melody Luna Park, Milsons Point $119 6.30pm Jive Bombers Bankstown Sports Club free 8pm New Years Eve At The Brewery: Seattle Sound The Australian Brewery, Rouse Hill free 8pm Ray Beadle, Bryce Cohen Brass Monkey, Cronulla $39.80 7pm Regurgitator, Smithers, Seabass, Mark Da Costa & The Blacklist Rock Lily, Pyrmont free 6pm We Come Out At Night: Buried in
Y 2 E Y 013 A A W R D 'S NE TUESDAY JANUARY 1 ROCK & POP
Big Way Out Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket free 10pm Ed And Astro Duo, The Donovans Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm Field Day 2013: Two Door Cinema Club (UK), Hot Chip (UK), SBTRKT (UK), Mark
Ronson DJ Set (UK), The Vaccines (UK), Erol Alkan (UK), Disclosure (UK), Krafty Kuts & A-Skillz (UK), Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (UK), Fake Blood (UK), Booka Shade (GER), DJ Nu Mark (USA), Adrian Lux (SWE), Maya Jane Coles (UK), Coolio (USA), Django Django (UK), AC Slater (USA), Danny Daze (USA), AraabMuzik (USA), Icona Pop (SWE), Breakbot (FRA), Jesse Rose (GER), Jaguar Skills (UK), Van She, Hudson Mohwak (UK), Scuba (GER) The Domain, Sydney $118 (presale)–$138 (+ bf) 12pm
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
Barbarion Verona, Sienna Skies, The Bride, Ghosts On Broadway, Lakeside Spectrum, Darlinghurst $30 8pm
The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 5pm
JAZZ
Craig Thommo Duo The Belvedere Hotel, Sydney free 6pm The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm Royal Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 7pm
Kafe Kool Supper Club, Fairfield RSL Club $20 7pm Marsala Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $85 8pm Peter Head
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Monday 24th Dec ................. COPILOT ...................... 7.30PM - 11.00PM Tuesday 25th Dec ................................................ XMAS DAY - CLOSED Wednesday 26th Dec . WILD ARMADILLOS ............. 4.30PM - 7.30PM 2 WAY SPLIT .................... 8.30PM - 1.00AM Thursday 27th Dec ........... FUN PUPPETS .................. 4.30PM - 7.30PM DAVE WHITE DUO ..............9.00PM - 1.00AM Friday 28th Dec............. NICK KINGSWELL ............. 5.00PM - 8.00PM RECKLESS ...................... 9.30PM - 1.30AM Saturday 29th Dec .............. ERIC LEWIS ..................... 4.30PM - 7.30PM SAFARI SUITS ................ 8.30PM - 12.00AM Sunday 30th Dec ............. U2 ELEVATION ................. 4.30PM - 7.30PM WHITE BROS ................. 8.30PM - 12.00AM Monday 31st Dec NYE .......... DJ’S ONLY ..................... 6.00PM - 2.00AM Tuesday 1st Jan .............. THE DONOVANS ............... 4.30PM - 7.30PM ED AND ASTRO ............... 8.30PM - 12.00AM Wednesday 2nd Jan .... JONATHON JONES ............. 4.30PM - 7.30PM MARK TRAVERS ................9.00PM - 1.00AM Thursday 3rd Jan ............... GARY JOHNS ................... 4.30PM - 7.30PM HELLO CLEVELAND .......... 9.00PM - 12.00AM Friday 4th Jan................. MICHEAL PETER ............... 5.00PM - 8.00PM RECKLESS ...................... 9.30PM - 1.30AM Saturday 5th Jan ................ GREG BYRNE ................... 4.30PM - 7.30PM SINGLED OUT ................ 9.00PM - 12.00AM Sunday 6th Jan ................ U2 ELEVATION ................. 4.30PM - 7.30PM LONESOME TRAIN ........... 8.30PM - 12.00AM Tuesday 8th Jan .................... COPILOT ..................... 9.00PM - 12.00AM Wednesday 9th Jan .... JONATHON JONES ............. 4.30PM - 7.30PM MARK TRAVERS .............. 9.00PM - 12.00AM Thursday 10th Jan ............ GARY JOHNS ................... 4.30PM - 7.30PM WHITE BROS ................. 9.00PM - 12.00AM Friday 11th Jan ................ JAMES PARRINO .............. 5.00PM - 8.00PM BIG WAY OUT TRIO ............ 9.30PM - 1.30AM Saturday 12th Jan ........ DAVE MASON COX ............. 4.30PM - 7.30PM 2 FOLD ........................ 9.00PM - 12.00AM Sunday 13th Jan ............... U2 ELEVATION ................. 4.30PM - 7.30PM OUTLIER TRIO ................ 8.30PM - 12.00AM
BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:11 :: 41
summer holiday gig guide our gig picks for the festive season
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 2 ROCK & POP
65daysofstatic (UK), Sleepmakeswaves The Hi-Fi, Moore Park $45 (+ bf) 8pm Bombay Bicycle Club (UK), The Paper Kites The Factory Theatre, Enmore $69.90 7.30pm all-ages City Calm Down, Tom Ugly, Bernie Dingo, Devola, Hansom Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm Cosmo Jarvis, Eirwen Skye Annandale Hotel $31 (+ bf) 8pm The Cribs (UK) Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $44 (+ bf) 8pm Donny Benet, Kirin J Callinan Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney free 8pm Half Moon Run (CAN), Kim Churchill The Vanguard, Newtown $20 8pm Party Anthems Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket free 11pm Unknown Mortal Orchestra (NZ), Bloods The Standard, Darlinghurst $28.70 (+ bf) 8pm Wild Catz Trio, Mark Travers, Jonathan Jones Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Rodrigo Y Gabriela (Mexico), Alex Wilson Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $79 (+ bf)–$99 8pm TAOS, John Chesher, Gavin Fitzgerald Coach & Horses Hotel, Randwick free 7pm
THURSDAY JANUARY 3 ROCK & POP
The Audreys, The Yearlings Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $34–$76 (dinner & show) 8pm Beach House (USA), Wintercoats Enmore Theatre $63.20 7pm Best Coast (USA), Dune Rats, Pear Shape Metro Theatre, Sydney $46.70 7pm all-ages Billboard Beach House
Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket free 10pm Hat Fitz And Cara The Vanguard, Newtown $20.80 8pm Hello Cleveland, Gary John Trio Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm Jive Bombers Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 10pm Mariah Carey (USA) Allphones Arena, Sydney Olympic Park 8pm Maximo Park (UK), Glass Towers The Hi-Fi, Moore Park $50 (+ bf) 7.30pm The Morrisons, Scaramouche, Sex In Columbia, Mary Gunn Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Two Door Cinema Club (UK) Hordern Pavilion, Moore Park 8pm Willis Earl Beal (USA), Courtney Barnett Goodgod Small Club, Sydney $35 (+ bf) 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
First Aid Kit (SWE) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House 8pm Folk Uke (USA), Jorja Carroll Brass Monkey, Cronulla $23.50 7pm Russell Neal Forest Lodge Hotel, Glebe free 7.30pm
FRIDAY JANUARY 4 ROCK & POP
Blood Red Shoes (UK), StepPanther, Black Zeros The Hi-Fi, Moore Park $41.80 (+ bf) 8pm Duane-stock: Dead Radio, King Tears Mortuary, Black Springs, Mope City, Hobbes Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $5 8pm Half Moon Run Brass Monkey, Cronulla $17.85 7pm The Headliners Royal Hotel, Springwood free 9pm Jamie Robbie Reyne, Harts, Martha Marlow, Kobar Upstairs Beresford free 6pm Limpwrist (USA), Hard-Ons, Shit Weather, Glory Hole Annandale Hotel $20 (+ bf) 8pm M.I.A (UK) Enmore Theatre $86.10 8pm Millenium Bug Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket 8pm
First Aid Kit
ROCK & POP
The Hives (SWE) Metro Theatre, Sydney $83 7pm allages Mat.McHugh Brass Monkey, Cronulla $34.70 7pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Elevation U2 Acoustic Orient Hotel, The Rocks 4.30pm Royal Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 7pm Russell Neal, Chris Brookes Kellys On King, Newtown free 7pm
TUESDAY JANUARY 8 The Morrisons, Surprise Wasp, Witch Fight Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm MUM: Bang Bang Rock‘n’Roll, The Summervilles, Permanent, The Honey Badgers, MUM DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm The PJ O’Brien Band, Matt Ross The Vanguard, Newtown $21.80 8pm Post Festival Party 2013: Warsaw Village Band (POL), The Crooked Fiddle Band, Gregory Page (USA), The Rusty Spring Syncopators The Factory Theatre, Marrickville $25 (+ bf) 7pm Reckless, Michael Peter Orient Hotel, The Rocks free free (early bird)-$5 5pm Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $49–$79 8pm
JAZZ
Brian’s Famous Jazz and Chilli Crab Night: Dave De Vries Quintet Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $19– $59 (dinner & show) 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm Folk Uke (USA), Dave Gunning The Basement, Circular Quay $29.79 6pm The Mighty Reapers Cat & Fiddle Hotel, Balmain $20 8pm
SATURDAY JANUARY 5 ROCK & POP
Altitude Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket free 10pm The Daptone Super Soul Revue: Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings (USA), Charles Brady (USA), Menahan Street Band (USA), The Sugarmen 3 (USA), MC Binky Griptite (USA) Sydney Festival @ The Domain, Sydney free 7.30pm Elevate Moorebank Sports Club free 9pm Evil J And Saint Cecilia, Griffith Goat Boy, Lila Goldie, Davey Lane FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Hawksley Workman (CAN), Andy Brown The Basement, Circular Quay $29.80 6pm Hat Fitz & Cara Robinson Brass Monkey, Cronulla $17.85 7pm Kiss Me James Squire Brewhouse, Sydney 8pm all ages Kittens: The Darkened Seas, The Dark, King Colour, Kittens DJs Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 9pm
42 :: BRAG :: 494:: 24:12:11
MONDAY JANUARY 7
The Monks of Mellonwah, Belle & The Bone People, Waiting on Mondays, Jessica Cerro Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm The Music Makers Club: Vulpes Vulpes, Jacobide, Disco Is Dead, The Havelocks, Capitol, The Ivory Drips Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Of Great Heights Festival: Good Heavens, Kira Puru And The Bruise, Melodie Nelson, Missing Children, Mere Women, The Fabergettes, Boatfriends The Red Rattler, Marrickville $15 2pm Party Anthems Paragon Hotel, Circular Quay free 8.30pm Road Crew South Hurstville RSL Club free 9pm Singled Out, Greg Byrne Orient Hotel, The Rocks free (early bird)-$5 The Starliners Blacktown Workers Club free 8pm Swingshift Cold Chisel Show Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills free 10pm
JAZZ
Takadimi, Pena Flamenca The Vanguard, Newtown $21.80 8pm Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie Well Co. Café / Wine Bar, Leichhardt free 7.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm Sharon Shannon (IRE) Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $40– $82 (dinner & show) 8pm
SUNDAY JANUARY 6 ROCK & POP
Chapelier Frou, Raven The Vanguard, Newtown $23.80 8pm Hawksley Workman (CAN) Brass Monkey, Cronulla $28.60 6pm Lonesome Train, U2 Elevation Orient Hotel, The Rocks free free 4.30pm Ray Beadle Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $34 8pm
JAZZ
Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie South On Chalmers free 2.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm
ROCK & POP
Co-Pilot Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm Hail To The King: Mojo Juju, Kira Puru, Cash savage, Stella Savage, Holiday Sidewinder The Vanguard, Newtown $38.80 8pm Hot Chip (UK), World’s End Press Enmore Theatre $65 7pm Mat McHugh Brass Monkey, Cronulla $34.70 7pm She Is King: Jacqueline Feilich The Basement, Circular Quay $30 (+ bf) 7.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Canadian East Coast Showcase: Tim Chaisson (CAN), Dave Gunning (CAN), Andy Brown (CAN), Vishten (CAN), Cole & Van Dijk Notes Live, Enmore $17.85 7pm Champagne Jam Dundas Sports Club free 7.30pm
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 9 ROCK & POP
Donny Benet, Issabella Manfredi Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney free 8pm Glass Towers, DZ Deathrays, Sosueme DJs, Hansom, Shantan Wantan Ichiban Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm Hail To The King: Mojo Juju, Kira Puru, Cash savage, Stella Savage, Holiday Sidewinder The Vanguard, Newtown $38.80 8pm Kim Churchill Brass Monkey, Cronulla $17.85 7pm Live & Local: Ellis Hall, Tina Alcorace, Tre Samuels, The Lost Trolleys Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $10 8pm Mark Travers, Jonathan Jones Orient Hotel, The Rocks free free 4.30pm Musos Club Jam Night Bald Faced Stag Hotel, Leichhardt free 8pm
JAZZ
Sharon Shannon Big Band The Basement, Circular Quay $40 (+ bf)–$94.80 (dinner & show) 7pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Ben Sollee (USA), The Falls Notes Live, Enmore $40 (+ bf) 7pm
THURSDAY JANUARY 10 ROCK & POP
Bored Nothing, Jonny Telafone, Black Zeros
summer holiday gig guide our gig picks for the festive season FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 (+ bf) 8pm Hail To The King: Mojo Juju, Kira Puru, Cash Savage, Stella Savage, Holiday Sidewinder The Vanguard, Newtown $38.80 8pm Katie Whyte, Maxine Kauter Band, The Wednesday Music Club, Charles Buddy Daaboul The Standard, Darlinghurst 8pm Matt McHugh & The Seperatista Soundsystem Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $39 (+ bf) 8pm Musos Club Jam Night Carousel Hotel, Rooty Hill free 8pm The Story So Far (USA), Anchors The Factory Theatre, Marrickville $27 (+ bf) 7pm Trash Can: Chicks Who Love Guns, She Rex, Let Me Down Jungleman, Lepers & Crooks, Oslow Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $10 8pm White Bros, Gary John Trio Orient Hotel, The Rocks free free 4.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK Rory McLeod (UK), Dave Gunning (CAN) Notes Live, Enmore $37.75 7pm
FRIDAY JANUARY 11 ROCK & POP Big Way Out Trio, James Parrino Orient Hotel, The Rocks free (early bird)-$5 5pm Bodacious Cowboys Farewell Show The Basement, Circular Quay $25 (+ bf)–$79.80 (dinner & show) 7.30pm Circle Jerk, Lenin Lennon, Hira
Tokyo Denmark Sweden
SATURDAY JANUARY 12 ROCK & POP
Hira, F’Tang, King Tears Mortuary Sly Fox Hotel, Enmore free 8pm Discovery: Sun City Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst 8pm Django Django (UK), Palms, Twinsy Metro Theatre, Sydney $54.20 (+ bf) 7.30pm all-ages Gary Jules (USA) The Factory Theatre, Enmore $44 (+ bf) 8pm Grand Salvo, Heather Woods Broderick, Seaworthy St Philip’s Anglican Church, Sydney $20 7.30pm Hail To The King: Mojo Juju, Kira Puru, Cash Savage, Stella Savage, Holiday Sidewinder The Vanguard, Newtown $38.80 8pm Judy Stone’s Farewell Concert Cardiff Panthers free 1pm Los Coronas Sydney Festival @The Famous Spiegeltent, Hyde Park North, Sydney 8pm Lyyar, No Art, Buzz Kull, Devotional
FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Mental As Anything Brass Monkey, Cronulla $44.90 7pm Mouldy Lovers, Waiting For Guiness, Tommy M & The Mastersounds, My Sauce Good Notes Live, Enmore $12.25 7pm Nightwish (FIN), Sabaton, Darker Half Enmore Theatre $85.60 7pm allages Something Else, Next Best Thing Dundas Sports Club free 8.30pm Tokyo Denmark Sweden Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Twelve Foot Ninja, Dumbsaint, Teal Annandale Hotel $21.45 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm
2 Fold, Dave Mason Cox Orient Hotel, The Rocks free free (early bird)-$5 4pm Blake Saban 3, Good Corn Liquor James Squire Brewhouse, Sydney 8pm Devil’s Kitchen: Nunchukka Superfly, King Parrot, Chainsaw Hookers, Wicked City, Mother Mars, The Sure-Fire Midnights, Adrift For Days, We Are Gamma, Arrowhead, The Bloody Kids, Battle Pope, Witch Fight, Yanomamo Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt $25– $30 Dirty Beaches FBi Social @ Kings Coss Hotel 8pm Diviney The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $25 5pm all-ages Kim Churchill, Steve Smyth The Basement, Circular Quay $15 (+ bf) 7.30pm La Bastard, The Hollow Bones, The Dalton Gang’s Last Raid, The Magic Bones Gallery Bar, Oxford art Factory free 8pm Los Coronas Sydney Festival @ The Famous Spiegeltent, Hyde Park North, Sydney 8pm Marduk (SWE) The Hi-Fi, Moore Park 8pm Muddy Waters Tribute Show Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $38– $80 (dinner & show) 8pm New Gods Goodgod Small Club, Sydney 8pm Peter Murphy (UK), Familia The Factory Theatre, Enmore $59 (+ bf) 8pm SLAM Festival: Parachute Youth,
Tigertown, Van Hoorn, Sun City, Crossing Red Lines, Colorstarr Dunningham Park, Cronulla free 12pm Spunk Tones: Beach House (USA), Sharon Van Etten (USA), Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders, Wintercoats, Bored Nothing A&I Hall, Bangalow $55.10 7pm Unity Floors, Chook Race, Adults The Old Fitzroy Hotel, Woolloomooloo 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm
SUNDAY JANUARY 13 ROCK & POP The Bee Gees Tribute Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $39– $81 (dinner & show) 8pm Deez Nuts, Comeback Kid (CAN), For the Fallen Dreams (USA), Hand Of Mercy The Hi-Fi, Moore Park 8pm Cheerywood, Frank Sultana And The Sinister Kids, Rusty Spring Syncopaters The Vanguard, Newtown $18.80 8pm Finn Bald Rock Hotel, Rozelle free 6.30pm Northlane, In Hearts Wake King Street Wharf 4/5, Sydney $34.70 11.45am Outlier Trio, U2 Elevation Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK The Enterprise Band Cabravale Diggers, Canley Vale free 8.30pm
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44 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
BRAG’s guide to dance, hip hop and club culture
brag beats
pnau
+ ricki-lee
+ benga + a.skillz + maya jane coles + more also:uide bg + clu b snaps + clu eekly + w mn colu
h.o.s.h.
inside
so this is the new year
AT
BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12 :: 45
dance music news
free stuff
club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
on the record WITH
Light Year
JORDAN DECK I’ve been running Chemistry for the past four years too. I also run occasional parties with my friends at Subsonic, Shrug and Loosekaboose. It is inspiring to work with such amazing people who are in it for the right reasons. Bringing people together through music is a beautiful thing.
Dial Records, Kompakt, Freude Am Tanzan, Permanent Vacation, Laut & Luise and Innervisions. Music, Right Here, Right Now The Sydney scene is very strong at the 5. moment. There are lots of different crews
Growing Up My mum is very passionate about 1. all kinds of music, and really opened my
Inspirations I’ve been inspired by all sorts of artists 2. over the years, from jazz to techno to rock
eyes up to how it could move people. My uncle was also a big influence early on, introducing me to the likes of The Doors and Jimi Hendrix at the age of ten, which was the beginning of my obsession with sound. I started singing and playing guitar and percussion when I was 13, and played in various bands in my teens. I didn’t get into electronic music until a lot later, but I guess I’ve always had an interest in music that’s deep and emotional, which carries over to the style that I play now.
– including the likes of Kenny Burrel, Keith Jarret, Jeff Buckley, Dr. John, Superpitcher, Michael Mayer, Lawrence, Carsten Jost and more recently Mano Le Tough, whose mixes have inspired me to continue pushing a deeper and more atmospheric emotive sound.
DE LA SOUL
The revered trio that is De La Soul will perform at The Standard on Saturday January 5 as part of a 15th birthday celebration for the Red Bull Music Academy. De La Soul were hailed for transforming the sound of hip hop when they released their groundbreaking first album, 3 Feet High And Rising, back in 1989. The group followed up with De La Soul Is Dead, establishing a sound that was built upon irreverent lyrics and production that sampled everything from funk and soul to pop, reggae and psychedelia. De La Soul have consistently released albums ever since, with their eighth long-player, the First Serve project, surfacing at the start of this year. Support duties on the night will go to Red Bull Music Academy Sao Paolo 2002
Your Crew I have a few crews! I’ve been running 3. Strange Fruit every Saturday at The Abercrombie since May, which has been going off pretty much from the get-go – and participant Typhonic, with Brisbane drums and decks duo Rhythm & Cutloose rounding off the bill. First release tickets are $44.
CRUISE BAR NYE
Cruise Bar’s New Year’s Eve Destination bash has a lengthy lineup of DJs ready to soundtrack the transition into the New Year at the prime vantage point opposite the Harbour Bridge. The Radio INK DJs (featuring the vocals of Rachel Campbell), The 14th Minute, Matt Roberts, Sista P and stalwart funky house duo Yogi & Husky will all be peddling tunes. The revelry commences at 6pm, and if you’re among the first 500 to arrive you will receive a NYE Destination souvenir gift bag “filled with limited edition goodies”.
DIRTY SOUTH NYE @ MARQUEE
Grammy nominated DJ/Producer Dragan Roganovic, aka Dirty South, will be headlining at Marquee this New Year’s Eve. As Dirty South, Roganovic is renowned for the tracks ‘It’s Too Late’, ‘Let It Go’ and ‘Alamo’, and has collaborated with some of the higher profile acts in the EDM world: Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso and the man with the positive energy, Mr David Guetta. Roganovic’s remix CV is equally star-studded, having reworked the likes of U2, Snoop Dogg, Tracey Thorn, Depeche Mode, Guetta and Josh Wink. Dirty South has also chalked up annual compilations on labels like Ministry Of Sound, Toolroom Records and Cr2 – so in summary, the man has a fairly impressive discography. The only question left to ask is, ‘Who wants to get dirty on New Year’s Eve?’ (sorry.) First release tickets are available from $200.
Dirty South
running their own thing, and there are different styles of music to cater for all tastes. I feel very fortunate to be able to play every week and book artists that play such inspiring music; Raffi Lovechild, Jamie Lloyd, Trinity, Dave Stuart and Jonathan Lukermann are a few that have inspired me recently. With: Alphatown (live), Jimi James, Pocket 808, Peret Mako, Co-Op DJs, Marcotix, Trinity, Magda Bytnerowicz, Kali and more Where: Together Boxing Day @ The Abercrombie When: Wednesday December 26 More: Jordan Deck also plays each Saturday at Strange Fruit @ The Abercrombie
If you’ve already made plans for Friday January 4, then you won’t want to hear about how awesome THE ***KING OAF SOCIAL CLUB will be. You’ll be distressed when you learn that internationally acclaimed producer Light Year is making an appearance (Soulwax, Erol Alkan, Tiga and Mr Oizo count themselves as fans), and you’ll squirt some FOMO tears about the rest of the stellar lineup, which includes hipthrusting house DJ Frames, energy-blazing duo Wordlife, and festival-hopping Chux – all from the vanguard of local EDM talent. (You should bury your head on January 1, too, when a very special guest will be revealed...) BUT: if you’ve wisely kept your schedule open, we have a double pass to give away – just tell us the Light Year song that won him all those accolades.
BEACH ROAD NYE
With help from selectors Clockwerk, Richie Ryan, Supertrivia, Omar Varts and Kato, who has been focusing on his Wordlife project this year, Bondi’s iconic Beach Road Hotel is throwing a self-described “massive NYE Eve House Party!” In addition to the abovementioned DJs, other noteworthy features include beer pong, limbo, fried chicken from TruckStop and 100 complimentary beers (Millers). As the press release challenges, “what more could you want?”
Nathan Fake
AGWA YACHT CLUB 016: FT GUY GERBER & DIXON
Finely Tuned have announced the February edition of their sell-out AGWA Yacht Club series for this summer. Innervisions label head honcho Dixon, Supplement Facts’ Guy Gerber and Finely Tuned’s own posterboy Emerson Todd will form the headline triple bill. To say Finely Tuned have their finger on the pulse is not the sort of back-slapping we stoop to on this page, but the fact is their headliners were both on the podium of this year’s Resident Advisor top DJ/live act poll; Dixon placing at #3 in the DJ Poll, and Gerber at #2 for Live Acts Of 2012. Dixon has helmed some of the finer compilations of the past decade, including Temporary Secretary, Live At Robert Johnson Vol. 8 and my personal favourite, Body Language Vol 4. He’s also just released a remix of Ian Pooley’s ‘CompuRhythm’, an extremely polished good-time summer anthem that will undoubtedly send the Starship into a frenzy when it’s played by Dixon himself come February. Meanwhile, Gerber – an Israeli DJ and producer – released a Fabric mix earlier in the year that was comprised entirely of his own tracks, which were composed specifically for the compilation and apparently inspired by minimalist composer Steve Reich. Tickets are available through pulseradio.net
SUN CITY SHOW
NATHAN FAKE
Norfolk producer Nathan Fake will play a Rainbow Serpent Festival sideshow at Chinese Laundry on Saturday February 2. Fake shot to prominence at an early age, being picked up by James Holden’s seminal Border Community label while still a teenager, and going on to release the seminal club tune ‘The Sky Was Pink’, for which he remains bestknown. Fake has been a part of the Border Community stable ever since, releasing his debut LP in 2006, Drowning In A Sea Of Love, and remixing the likes of Four Tet and Radiohead (as part of the band’s TKOL RMX series). Fake released his third LP, Steam Days, earlier this year – an outing that recaptured the psychedelic analogue synthdriven sounds that imbue the Border Community cannon. Arguably Fake’s most ‘dynamic’ album work to date, Steam Days is a must for fans of Holden and Luke Abbott; it’s the result of Fake re-listening to his previous albums, and thinking they sounded too clean. “This one has the perfect amount of grit in it,” he assures us. Xxxx
Perth electro-pop outfit Sun City will play The Beresford Upstairs at a free gig on Friday January 11. Recently releasing their sophomore EP Set Alight, which also features a remix of ‘High’ by fellow Perthite and Modular poster-boy Shazam, Sun City are fresh back from their tour of Africa, which included headlining to a 3000-strong crowd at SalmonFest in Zimbabwe. (The magnitude of this feat is amplified when you considering that the duo hadn’t previously played a single show outside of their hometown.) Now Sydneysiders have a chance to check out what makes the Western Australians’ sound resonate with the Africans. Audiences will hear sounds evocative of M83 and Passion Pit as Sun City showcase their blend of classic ‘80s analogue synth hooks, which have also been evinced on their mash-ups of tracks from the likes of Miami Horror and Bag Raiders. 46 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
OAF SOCIAL CLUB
xxx photo by xxx
The Music You Make The sort of music you’ll hear me play 4. includes stuff from labels like Pampa Records,
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dance music news
free stuff
club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
five things WITH
ELLY K
The First Record I Bought: The first record (I remember) 1. buying was Barry White – The Ultimate
The Last Thing I Recorded: A piano arrangement last night, which 4. I’ll be adding into an original I’m working on.
Collection. I had a very strange obsession with him at a very young age. I think his voice and the rhythm and live instruments in the production really appealed to me, and have stuck with me since; I still play his tracks, even if they are remakes or samples. He’s definitely been a huge inspiration in what I’m listening to and creating today.
Hoping to have it finished and released really soon, but the perfectionist in me is delaying that quite a bit! I’ve got a couple of remixes that will be coming out early next year, which is super exciting. For the moment I’ve just been curating the Elly K Exclusive mixes, which are live on my website and Soundcloud. The Record That Changed My Life: That is such a huge and impossible 5. question. Anything from Prince, Chic,
The Last Record I Bought: Ren Riz – Day Dream EP. Every 2. track is super cool, and I love supporting
Theophilus London, Jamiroquai, AraabMuzik, Frank Ocean, Disclosure and The Weeknd, which doesn’t even cover it. I don’t think you could ever pinpoint one record that changed your life – I’ve got an endless list of old disco records, and then different hip hop records which have all inspired me. More recently I’ve really been into what I call ‘future bass’. My whole set at Stereosonic this year was future bass, and it was so cool watching people embrace something that can sound so different to what they might be used to.
Aussie-based musicians. The First Thing I Recorded: I used to record mixes on cassette 3. tapes daily. You know, where you’d play a track, then pause the recording, then find the next track, press play and then keep recording. I wish I could find those tapes, actually – there was a lot of J.Lo, J Dilla, Tribe Called Quest, Bob Sinclar, all awesome tunes but probably horribly mixed! Fast-track a couple of years, and the first live recording was a track I made sampling Aaliyah – I was just playing around on a keyboard one day and then started humming ‘Rock The Boat’, and then ‘Hold Me Close’ was made!
SPENCER & NELSON: NUMBERS LABEL NIGHT
The crew behind the Numbers record label from Glasgow are throwing a party at Goodgod Small Club on Thursday January 3. The Numbers imprint is responsible for
HED KANDI NYE
Hed Kandi will descend on Bungalow 8 and The Loft on New Year’s Eve for a harbour-side fiesta featuring 14 acts across two levels. Sonic suppliers on the night will include local lad Alex Taylor, Venuto, Phil Hudson, Frankie Romano, Tim Whitney, Adrien Benedeck, Damien Goundrie, Glass Wax DJs, Chris Luder and the UK’s Miss P, all pushing the disco and house flavours that are associated with the longstanding Hed Kandi label. (Which, on a visual level, is renowned for the strangely alluring manga-style babes who feature prominently in all the Hed Kandi artwork.) The dresscode for Hed Kandi NYE is ‘white and glamorous,’ though I’m lead to believe it’s not a race thing, and all cross-sections of Sydney’s culturally diverse population are invited to attend.
The Gaslamp Killer
With: Sonny Fodera, Phil Hudson, John Devecchis, Huw Longman, Nicc Johnson, Random Soul Where: NYE In The Rocks @ The Argyle When: Monday December 31, from 6pm
putting out records by the likes of Jamie xx, Hudson Mohawke, Mosca and SBTRKT, and for the Sydney bash, Numbers label co-founders Spencer and Nelson will be throwing down, along with secret special guest(s). Given the label’s roster, you can bet that the guests will indeed be special – but all will be revealed soon enough... The party kicks of at 11.30pm, with another Numbers party featuring Jackmaster already lined up for February 9.
HUXLEY TOUR
UK DJ/producer Michael Dodman, who releases under the moniker Huxley, will return to Australia next year and play Chinese Laundry on Saturday March 2. After attaining initial success as a garage producer, Huxley’s sound has evolved towards a deeper housebased sound in the past few years, as he’s remixed the likes of Lee Burridge and the Field Day-bound Maya Jane Coles, and delivered releases on labels such as Tsuba, Hypercolour, 20:20 Vision and his own Saints
& Sonnets imprint. As a DJ, you can expect Huxley to mix between house, techno and a bit of garage-style influence.
BOILER ROOM TV @ GOODGOD SMALL CLUB
Clubbers should be aware of the online phenomenon that is Boiler Room TV by now. For those shifting uncomfortably in their seats, Boiler Room is a site that takes DJs from the underground and puts them on at an invite-only secret location, broadcast to thousands of club voyeurs watching online from home. The concept has taken off, with self-conscious dancers left to work on their moves in front of the mirror at home, while the extroverts and exhibitionists work it for the camera – or until they forget the camera is even there. As you may have guessed, Boiler Room TV is headed to Australian shores for a series of gigs and online broadcasts over several dates later this summer. The Sydney Boiler Room instalment is slotted for Goodgod Small Club in
Action Bronson
HOLD TIGHT
In celebration of another year (take that, Mayans!), Niche Productions has announced a bass, house and future beats lineup that is, you could say, unbeatlievably impressive (take that, dictionary!). Since the Flying Lotus and Martyn events in early 2012 saw guests channeling sardines, jam-packed (not to be confused with sardine jam – a whole other issue) into The Metro Theatre, Hold Tight will now take over both rooms of the venue on January 5 to present a smattering of cutting edge electronica. Dubstep pioneers Digital Mystikz, aka DMZ, are throwing down, alongside other huge names like The Gaslamp Killer, Rustie, Theo Parrish, Space Dimension Controller, DJ Nu Mark, T Williams, Spencer (Nmbrs) and Om. We have a double pass to give away; just tell us which artist on the bill you’d like to hold tight, and what your opening line would be... Sydney on Thursday January 17. There’s no announcement on the headliner yet, though the good news is you do have three weeks to brush up on your most beguiling dancefloor moves – and you can always fall back on the ‘gurning zombie’, depending on how the night plays out...
HERMITUDE II
One of the leading lights in the Aussie hip hop scene, Blue Mountains duo Hermitude, have announced an additional Sydney show as part of their ‘The Villain’ tour, set for Oxford Art Factory on Saturday February 9 – after their first show sold out. Hermitude are still basking in the success of their fourth album, HyperParadise, which came out on Elefant Traks earlier this year and spawned the single ‘Speak Of The Devil’, a collaboration with Sydney vocalist Chaos Emerald. Hermitude’s production work has been in solid demand from some of Australia’s more eminent acts, leading them to remix the likes of The Presets and Missy Higgins, and co-produce Urthboy’s acclaimed Smokey’s Haunt. For anyone who missed out on tickets the first time around: learn from your mistakes.
Alex Taylor Hermitude
Astral People, in conjunction with Vice & Noisey, have announced a “triple-hit musical calamity” featuring New York’s Action Bronson, Stones Throw label boss Peanut Butter Wolf and local hero Jonti. Bronson will be making his debut Sydney appearance following the release of his latest digital album Rare Chandeliers, a full-length collaboration with veteran beatsmith The Alchemist. For an idea of Peanut Butter Wolf’s pedigree, one only has to look at the artist roster he’s put together on Stones Throw: the roll call features the likes of J Dilla and Madlib along with new-faces like Dâm-Funk, Aloe Blacc, Mayer Hawthorne and Jonti himself. The triple-hit musical calamity kicks of at 8pm on Saturday January 12, at Sydney University’s Manning Bar.
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Action Bronson photo by Brook Bobbins
ACTION BRONSON + PEANUT BUTTER WOLF
H.O.S.H. Sunrise With Spice Afloat By Krissi Weiss
H
amburg-based DJ, producer, and promoter Holger Behn (aka H.O.S.H.) first came to the world of DJing when he was 18. Taking a few years to decide on pursuing dance music as a full-time career, he is now internationally renowned for it, and a pivotal part of the Hamburg dance music collective Diynamic. As he climbed the ranks as a young DJ, Behn met Solomun and Adriano Trolio, two other key players in Diynamic, years before the company/ community came to life. “I’d never really found a label that was able to fit with my music,” Behn says. “The ideas the guys had for Diynamic were really great and different; it all ended up coming together really well.” Although Behn initially tried to walk the conservative path – getting a normal job and living a nine-to-five life during his early 20s – his girlfriend at the time convinced him to focus on what he did best: music. By this time he was already a confident DJ and Diynamic was still just a developing idea, but he realised he wanted to know how the records he was spinning were made. The next step for Behn was to embark on the long journey to becoming a producer. “Producing and DJing are two different worlds for me,” he says. “DJing was a given talent that I just always had, but producing has been a job for me that I’ve had to learn over a long time. I had to train in the studio in a way, and get better with each year. When I play in front of a crowd as a DJ, I always become a different person. “People are looking at you expecting you to be an entertainer first,” he continues. “You’ve really got to smile and not just stand there. When your mood is not that good it’s hard to perform, so you have to find some way to get out of that before you get up there. Not every day is sunshine, and everyone knows that. The classical role of the techno and house
DJ is to take all of these records and turn them into one track and one journey. There are highs and lows and it’s not always about playing hit after hit; it’s about creating a curve, emotionally, for the people. In the studio it’s different. You have to have pictures in your mind of parties, and imagine what is gonna happen with the music. Sometimes the magic just happens, and sometimes you have to work really hard to make it happen.” Founded in 2006, the Diynamic crew pride themselves on being more than just a company, label or booking agent. They refer to themselves as a brotherhood, set on promoting a DIY approach to dance music and putting freedom of choice back into the hands of artists. “The whole dance music scene is one big circle,” Behn says, of Diynamic’s place within the wider German electronic scene. “We play a big role in bringing new music to the people and try to do our best, but really, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.” Behn confesses to “being really easily bored”, and while both his own work and the work of Diynamic is non-stop, he wanted to jump onto the other side of the music world next: promotion. Behn arranges a string of openair festivals in northern Germany every year: The Gruenanlage Festival is known as one of the finest open-air electronic festivals in the country, with an array of underground and upcoming talent. “Promotion is very, very different to the rest of my work,” he says. “You have to deal with laws, hotels, flights and all of that. But when you do a big festival and everything comes together after months and months of hard work it’s such a great feeling.” Germany has become a Mecca for a diverse range of artists over the past decade or more, especially within the electronic music scene. Behn is proud of his country and Hamburg’s
“The classical role of the DJ is to take all of these records and turn them into one journey... It’s not always about playing hit after hit; it’s about creating a curve, emotionally, for the people.”
growing influence, despite being a little overshadowed by Berlin. “The German dance scene is playing a big role [in the world] right now,” he says. “There’s a lot of German artists doing well all over, but even more than that you see how many outside producers want to live in Germany at the moment. In the last few years, Hamburg has just gotten bigger and bigger. There’s a family feel, too – although it’s not as big as Berlin, it’s good to be here.” Germany, he continues, has taken a while to shed the shackles of its own history, and for a while the legacy of World War 2 heavily influenced German art. “After the war, the thinking changed a lot here in art. Over two generations have gone since then; we don’t feel the need to escape the history, and there are a lot of great possibilities here. Germany is a rich country and we have a lot more to
enjoy than poorer countries. We’ve got to feel lucky and be thankful to be here.” Although Behn falls back on a few familiar tricks on stage, he prides himself on his spontaneous sets – and his forthcoming New Year’s sunrise gig for Spice Afloat will be no exception. “I never plan my shows,” he says. “I have my classics and my new tracks; I sort out a playlist together with stuff I might play and stuff that fits together, but it’s up to the moment, and every party’s different. That’s the only way to do it.” Who: H.O.S.H., Tiger & Woods, Murat Kilic, Softwar, Slowblow and more What: Spice Afloat – NY Morning Sunrise Cruise @ The Bella Vista, Star City Wharf When: Tuesday, January 1, 2013 from 4am–10am
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Ricki-Lee
Benga Changing The World, One Wub At A Time By Rick Warner
I
feel like I’m listening to something important as Adegbenga Adejumo, aka Benga, waxes lyrical about the state of dubstep – and rightly so. At the tender age of 26, Benga can claim the mantle as one of the elder statesmen of the sound. He cut his first record at 15 years old before the term dubstep had even been coined, and his studio work has been at the forefront of the burgeoning scene from the beginning. But in 2012, Benga has been quoted – or misquoted – as saying that he is distancing himself from the sound he helped create. “A lot of people misquote me and misjudge me,” he tells me – but it’s hard to deny that his latest singles are a far cry from the dark, heavy productions that made him famous. Benga’s new sound is more accessible, with big catchy chords and a lot more vocals; it’s a new, more crowdpleasing sound that’s alienated some of his long-term fans. “They just don’t understand what I’m trying to do here,” he says, frustrated. “I think I’m actually trying
to make music better for everyone. People sit down and make the same stuff, day in and day out. I’m trying to make a difference. I’m trying to change chart music. I want us to dominate it. That’s how I’m looking at things: I don’t want to be that guy in history that made a few tunes. I want to be the guy who changed things. That’s what I’ve always tried to do.” But as dubstep continues its trajectory into the commercial charts, seeping into pop productions, and with brostep sending steroid dudes into hysterics, Benga isn’t disappointed. In fact he seems more upset at the critics, the haters that dismiss his new style as ‘selling out’. “It’s funny how people look at things. The Britney Spears dubstep record wasn’t a great record, so it’s understandable that [people] toss it down to the ground. But if a record’s a great record and it’s been produced amazingly and the chords are different and epic, then just because it’s in the charts doesn’t mean it’s bad.” He pauses briefly to catch his thoughts. “It’s funny how people’s mindset is. People set their minds up in a certain way, and you can’t break that.” The purists can talk crap on Benga if they want to, but he’s blowing up around the world. He recently toured with long-time friend Skream, with the pair taking their music to places they never thought it’d be accepted, let along popularly embraced. I ask about the most unexpected reception of the tour. “[Singapore] was amazing,” Benga enthuses. “Me and Skream played back-to-back, not knowing what to expect. We get in the club and there are thousands and thousands of people. We had people chanting our names and going mental on the dancefloor. It was shocking how well they knew the tunes!” Having toured here twice already this year, it only makes sense that Benga will be back in Australia again for New Year’s Eve. He’s playing the massive Origin NYE party in Western Australia, as well as a cheeky New Year’s Day party at Space Nightclub for us lucky Sydney-siders. “Everyone always seems so happy,” he explains, when asked why he can’t seem to stay away. “It’s like, ‘The sun’s out!’ – what more can you say but that? I get a vibe of pure, positive energy. To me, that’s the way to live life. At the moment, out of my top ten countries, Australia is number one.” Who: Benga & Youngman, Friction & Linguistics, Gemini, Breakage, Inspector Dubplate, Glovecats and more Where: UKF Sydney @ Space Nightclub When: New Year’s Day 2013, from 9pm
Breaking Free By Alasdair Duncan icki-Lee’s third album, Fear & Freedom, is a surging and self-assured release, packed full of banging club tracks and lyrical affirmations of strength and certainty. It’s a release that radiates positivity, but it took the sprightly young pop star quite a while to get to such a good place. Fear & Freedom represents something of a rebirth for RickiLee, who wrote and scrapped almost an entire album’s worth of material prior to finding her feet again. “I was in a really dark place in my life, and the album I wrote was very dark and sombre,” she tells me. “It was very much a 23-year-old girl trying to piece her life back together after it had been shattered into a million pieces. I still hope that one day those songs get heard because I think they’re some of the best that I’ve written; they’re very honest and raw, and come from a very vulnerable time.”
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That comes from the songs – songs like ‘Hell No’ and ‘Crazy’ – where it’s all about being in charge and being in control. I like to find songs with a common theme and run them together, then design things like the lighting and the costumes and the instruments around that. I like to work to that theme to make a really exciting, visual show.”
Since then, Ricki-Lee tells me, things have turned around. She’s met new people, tried new things, and thrown herself into new sources of inspiration – experiences that formed the basis of Fear & Freedom. “I’ve fallen in love again,” she says. “I’ve taken control of my life back, I’ve found my feet again and come into myself as a woman. I’ve learned a lot of lessons – I’ve fucked up a lot – and I think all of that has led to a liberated and empowered album. I guess that lent itself to [the album’s] up-tempo dance feel. That wasn’t something I even thought about. I just went into the studio to write songs and they all turned out to be happy, upbeat ones, which was a nice change given that, with the batch of songs I wrote before that, I was in the foetal position in the corner with a bottle of wine. It was a nice change to write songs about being genuinely happy.” This has been a big year for Ricki-Lee, and her upcoming New Year’s Eve set at Harbour Party will quite literally be the culmination. She’s been rehearsing for weeks already, and promises to put on a totally revamped show. “I wanted to do something new and fresh and change it up a bit,” she tells me. “I don’t want to give them the same show every time. It’s important to keep it fresh, for yourself as well as for your fans; to put a new spin on certain songs, and reinvent ones that people know and love. We’ve put a lot of thought into making the show flow, with the set list and the arrangements. I’ve had my musical director coming up with new musical segues, new intros and outros. I don’t know if you can tell, but I’m so excited about getting on stage and performing this show!” Ricki-Lee tells me that the empowered tone of Fear & Freedom will come through strongly in her new show. “There’s a bit of a futuristic, military theme,” she says. “I’m in charge of the show and everyone has to do what I tell them! The dance moves are quite robotic and rigid.
With: Marvin Priest, The Aston Shuffle, Luciana, Ivan Gough, DCup, Radio INK and loads more Where: Harbour Party 2012 @ Luna Park When: Monday December 31, from 6.30pm
Vengaboys The Vengabus Is Coming Back By Benjamin Cooper
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obin Pors is stuck in a freezing Dutch winter, but he refuses to let that get him down. The original Venga Boy – hint: he’s the one in a sailor cap, not the cowboy – is a proud patriot, and loves the visage of his home city of Rotterdam when it’s shrouded in cold. Yet he admits a fondness for warmer climes – this is, after all, the group that made such a peculiar impact on the world of pop music in the late ‘90s with songs like ‘We’re Going To Ibiza!’ and ‘To Brazil!’. “Sitting here in the snowy wintertime of Europe feels like a million miles from you all in Australia,” Pors says. “I definitely need more sunshine – actually, Vengaboys always need more sunshine! A big part of who we are is about finding the sun, finding a way to break the daily routine. What could be better than taking the party to Sydney?” Pors and vocalists Kim Sasabone and Denise Post-Van Rijswijk have called Rotterdam home for the better part of the last decade. The fourth member is Pors’ fellow dancer and cowboy JJ Van Zon, who hails from the slightly stranger city of Amsterdam – a fact that Pors is more than happy to exploit for the sake of a laugh. “Some cities are very strange places, but Rotterdam is the greatest purely because Vengaboys live there!” he chuckles. “Seriously, I think the whole place must shut down when we’re not here, otherwise how could it be so great? JJ isn’t far away, though – we can go to Amsterdam whenever we want. It’s really where everything happens, probably because it’s just an easier state of mind there. The freedom is important,
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The specifics of that “something special” are cloaked in mystery, but Pors is barely able to contain himself. “I really wanna blurt it out, but then I’ll totally ruin the surprise and I couldn’t do that to you! I will say that we’ve added some crazy new songs to our live show, and there may even be some new covers... All you really need to know is that a lot of work has gone into the production of our new songs – somehow we’ve made it even more Vengaboys!” Surprises aside, local audiences can be certain that the Eurodance heroes will lay it all on the line when the Vengabus arrives in just a few weeks. Their live shows are famously raucous affairs; sometimes the band themselves surrender control to the party spirit. “Vengaboys are all about getting bored of your ordinary life and escaping to a tropical island where we can all have fun,” Pors explains. “When we’re performing, our tour manager is always saying, ‘Robin – don’t go off the stage!’, but we can’t help ourselves! We love to connect with people and be close to our fans. We know that what we do really helps other people, and it really helps us.” because sometimes we just have to get across there and work on some new dance routines...” The Vengaboys have an abiding affection for the Australian summer: they last visited our shores in January this year, and loved it so much that they’re bringing their ‘Bussing To
The Beach’ tour here again this summer. Pors has particularly fond memories of that last trip. “We had the craziest AND loveliest time last year in Australia. There were beautiful people everywhere, and the crowd gave us such a nice experience, so we’ve decided to bring something extra special this time.”
With: Twenty 4 Seven Where: Selina’s, Coogee Bay Hotel / Hornsby RSL, Hornsby When: Saturday January 12 / Thursday January 17
PNAU At Home On The Harbour By Alasdair Duncan
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t’s been a big year for the lads from PNAU. They uprooted from London, their home of nearly five years, and relocated to Los Angeles, where they’ve been working hard on an album for their side project, Empire Of The Sun. That’s to say nothing of the Cirque du Soleil soundtrack they wrote, or their collaborative album with pop’s elder statesman, Elton John. At present, though, Peter Mayes and Nick Littlemore are cooling their heels back in their hometown of Sydney, planning for an epic New Year’s Eve show on the harbour. It’s a beautiful setting, and PNAU promise a blow-out party to go along with it.
“New Year’s Eve is normally a blur for me,” Mayes says with a laugh. “I really like playing a show because people go out with the strict intention of having a good time, so you have a very receptive audience. To be honest, though, we haven’t really done that many shows this year, so more than anything we’re excited just to be back on stage in our hometown. It’s going to be a celebration.” PNAU traditionally put on a storming night – their set at last year’s Splendour was one of the highlights of the weekend – so I ask Mayes what exactly we can expect from their upcoming performance. “For those who haven’t seen us in a while, the show we’re touring at the moment features much more of a live band set-up than before,” he says. “There are a lot of people on stage, and everyone sings except for the drummer. It’s a really good collection of people, and it’s really fun to do it that way. It’s a difficult thing, because the options for how you can do a show are, in a way, endless, but this is a really fun way of doing it. There’s less of the visual side of things right now too; it’s more about the live performance. There’s a big lighting show and everything, but we’re not doing dancing fruit or anything like that…”
“I really like playing a show on New Year’s Eve, because people go out with a strict intention of having a good time... More than anything we’re excited just to be back on stage in our hometown.” For better or worse, everyone has a New Year’s Eve story – it’s the kind of night where you’re just as likely to meet your true love as projectile vomit all over him/her in the back of a taxi. Even Mayes has a cringe-worthy recollection: “There’s this one from about ten years ago that really stands out,” he says. “We were playing in a very small venue somewhere in Homebush, only a couple of us on stage, and my computer broke… Sound was coming in and out, and it wasn’t great. I did manage to finish the show, but it was fairly nervewracking and embarrassing and disastrous, and it’s not something I like to think about too often.” Things can only get better then, I venture. “Yeah!” he laughs. “This current show is a million times better than that one.”
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE PRESENTS
Australia’s favourite musical comedy trio are back in concert with a brand new show
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MEN OF SUBSTANCE
My conversation with Mayes turns to other pressing matters – namely, the new Empire Of the Sun album. A couple of years back, Empire frontman Luke Steele mentioned that he had fallen out of touch with Mayes and Littlemore – clearly there’s been a reconciliation? “Well for me personally, there was no big break,” Mayes says. “I don’t really pay attention to things like that. It was a reunion in the sense that we hadn’t made music together for a while; [Littlemore and I] had been on the road with PNAU for a few years. It was a reunion in the sense that we were able to get back into the studio again, and make music with such incredible colour. Luke has a really amazing voice.” Mayes insists that the album is nearly done and it sounds amazing – although as for a release date, he’s unsure. “That stuff is pretty much out of my hands,” he says. “It’s all [down to] record labels and managers. I would say that it will be out early next year, but I can’t say for sure. I’m just the guy who makes the records, so I’m the last to know.” These days, the boys from PNAU are calling LA home, and the city is feeding into their music in all sorts of ways. “It’s interesting – it’s so spread out that it’s one of the last cities where, as an artist or a musician, you can actually still get a cheap warehouse space to work in, in a good area,” Mayes explains. “In Sydney or New York or London, that’s not a viable option. There are a lot of people making great art and music in LA, and I find that the constant sunshine is an inspiration – the light that they have there. It’s a really nice place to work. When I first moved to London, having come from Australia, that was inspiring in a different way, because it was so grey and rainy and so unlike what I was used to. That was interesting at first, but after a while it wore us down and we had to get out. When you change your surroundings, it can really inspire your creativity.” With: Ajax, YesYou, Elizabeth Rose, What So Not, Sosume DJs and heaps more Where: NYE On The Harbour @ Cargo Bar, King Street Wharf When: Monday December 31
3-13 JAN / TICKETS $45* Armed with tattered wisdom, cheap whiskey and unlicensed firearms, Australia’s favourite musical comedy trio say they’ve grown up and become men. See for yourself in this longawaited Sydney premiere!
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Slow Magic Smoke And Mirrors By Benjamin Cooper
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stral People are ditching the city’s postChristmas hangover with a night of the finest international and local electronic music. Following on from the recent success of their OutsideIn festival two months back, the Sydney collective have joined forces with FBi Radio to showcase a diverse array of artists worthy of their combined power, including Pearson Sound, Hessle Audio’s co-founder Ben UFO, and UK dubstep innovator (and recent Australian visitor) Pariah. And to top it all off, they’ve included wunderkind producer and general mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma Slow Magic.
Violetness) and is only available online: all the physical copies of the vinyl and CD have been snaffled up by keen listeners the world over. It’s a glorious melange of drugged-out synths, with wavey vocals that beg at the edge of the ear. “You like the vocals?” the artist asks, sounding slightly surprised. “I always worry about it, because often they’ll be done a capella... but I do think that sometimes limitations can push you that little bit more. “Because I’m touring so much right now, I’m just embracing all of those limitations,” he continues. “I start most of my songs on the road, do a lot of remixing, and there’s even these iPhone apps that I’ve been using which make for more of a fun challenge. It’s actually a lot of fun to create remixes, because there’s already something solid there for me to work with on my laptop. Remixing on a pair of headphones in an airport is less than ideal, but I do get to visit some of the same cities more than once, and then I can meet up with people I’ve met before and see what ideas they have,” he says. “It seems like every time I tour, the quality of the people I meet and experiences I have just increases.”
The young artist resides in complete anonymity – no first or last names, and no clues as to his whereabouts. (“I wish I could tell you where I am right now, but it’s a bit of a secret,” he says. “Somewhere in America…”) It’s hard to fault his decision to remain shrouded in mystery; the obscurity manages to strip away the audience’s association with the man behind the decks, emphasising instead the esoteric beauty of his productions. It’s complex and beautiful, dreamy synth and sample music; the sequencing runs on choppy half beats, which bustle and flow through a heady brew of RnB via instrumental wash. It’s no surprise that Slow Magic’s sound is so in demand that its maker barely sleeps. When we speak he’s just stepped off a plane from a European tour – his third this year. “I have gotten very, very good at sleeping on airplanes,”
he laughs softly, “but nothing beats getting home and really resting. I think I probably slept for more than 14 hours last night, and that’s great because I’ve got a lot of ideas and half-started songs that I needed to work on… There’s something very solid and reassuring about getting home and seeing
Maya Jane Coles No Limits By Simon Hampson
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-year-old English producer and DJ Maya Jane Coles’ impending tour to Australia is set to round out her biggest year yet. “I’ve had fans wanting me to come over for a long time now, so I’m really glad I get to take in so many places across the country on this run.” After her profile exploded in 2010 with the track ‘What They Say’, Coles has spent the last two years playing at some of the biggest clubs and festivals around the world. Her productions range from deep house to techno, through to dubstep and chillout – all with a skilful use of heavy bass – meaning that no one knows quite what to expect next. “I listen to a lot of music from all genres,” Coles explains, “and I always try to put my own slant on things. I never want to limit myself by putting down boundaries before I start a track. Usually I’ll just go for it and not have a genre or specific style planned out – cliché as it sounds, it’s more about where my emotions naturally take me.”
Coles has just released her first EP in 12 months, Easier To Hide – the first release from her own label, I Am Me. The EP’s title track is taken from that of her debut album, scheduled for release in the first half of 2013. All four of the EP tracks were written, produced, engineered and mixed by her own hand – and she also designed the artwork. “There’s definitely less time to spare, but I will always want my music to really be my music, so I will always find the time,” she says. It can be difficult for a woman to work in an industry as dominated by men as the EDM scene, but Cole hopes her music speaks for itself. “I think it should definitely just be about the music,” she reflects. “I don’t want to be ‘good – for a girl’ at production. I just want to be judged as a producer on my music, and that alone. I hope that, as more women start producing and DJing, it becomes less of a novelty, so the ‘woman DJ’ thing fades away.” Coles was surrounded by music when she was growing up, and her family encouraged and supported her career. “I think they saw how determined I was to make it, and how much time I spent working on production. I’m lucky to have super open-minded parents, and they totally understand what I do.” The wide variety of genres and styles that Coles plays in her DJ sets reflects her varied musical education, and has played a huge part in her popularity. “I’m really happy that so many people seem to like my music. My influences are very diverse, and I like making lots of different types of music and playing out tracks that don’t just come from one place. I guess that in itself gives more entry points into my music than if I just made one niche sound. My sound will definitely always evolve.”
What: Easier To Hide EP is out on Beatport With: Two Door Cinema Club, Hot Chip, SBTRKT (live), Mark Ronson (DJ set), The Vaccines, Erol Alkan, Disclosure, Krafty Kuts & A Skillz, Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, Hudson Mohawke and more Where: Field Day NYD @ The Domain When: Tuesday January 1 52 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
Those half-started songs will form the basis of a soon-to-be-released second album, due in early 2013. His debut record, Triangles Will Never Die, was released earlier this year via LebensStrasse Records (Love Echo,
With: Triangles Will Never Die is out now With: Pearson Sound, Ben UFO, XXXY, Pariah, Dro Carey and more Where: The Metro Theatre When: Friday December 28
A.Skillz On Bond, Breaks and Beats By Annabel Maclean
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dam Mills is legendary in the breaks scene. The UK DJ and producer, better known as A.Skillz, is admired for his unique mixing and scratching, fierce production skills and ability to fuse funk, hip hop and breaks into his roofraising sets. We spoke ahead of A.Skillz’ next tour Down Under for Peat’s Ridge Festival, where he’ll be smashing out another epic set alongside UK DJ and producer, and long time collaborator, Krafty Kuts; the pair released their debut collab album, TrickaTechnology, back in 2003. “I’m so happy I get to come back to Australia again, because I was not expecting to,” Mills says. “It’s a real privilege to be invited back!”
not doing loads of gigs, to my first [big] show – it probably would’ve been Breakfest [in Perth] actually, around 10 years ago. That was one of first times coming out and doing a really big show with Krafty. “That was actually one of the most bizarre shows, too, because it’s so hot and there were bugs everywhere and they were going crazy all over the decks!” he laughs. “I’ve never seen anything like it – and it was like 40 degrees. I know it’s totally normal for you guys, but for us it was bizarre...”
When we speak, Mills is in the midst of putting together a studio DJ mix with Krafty Kuts, and preparing edits for their forthcoming tour. He tells me punters shouldn’t expect to hear a strictly TrickaTechnology set: “It’s not like we’ve been working on an album together or anything like that,” Mills says. “[Krafty Kuts and I] put a few new tracks together for an EP, which hopefully we’re going to drop before we come out to Australia. We actually just remixed TrickaTechnology too – only one track. We thought it’d be a thing worth doing, so we’re just finishing that up at the moment.” Krafty Kuts and Mills recently made a 50 Years Of Bond mini-mix as well, and Mills says there may be some James Bond soundtrack edits running through their Peats Ridge set. But he needs to actually see Skyfall first, to maintain credibility as a Bond aficionado. “It’s unbelievable that I haven’t actually seen it yet – it’s so bad, because I put all of that work into the Bond mix!” he says with a laugh. Worst of all, he lives right opposite the cinema, and the film is on every single night. “When something’s on your doorstep, you always go, ‘I’ll go next week’... I’m actually desperate to see it; I know Krafty has seen it and he loved it. To be honest, I do like the more recent ones; I like them all, but I think Daniel Craig is the absolute man – I think Casino Royale is a brilliant film. We’ve been starting our shows with a couple of little Bond things actually… there will be a few little moments in there.” Mills is also working on an EP to be released early next year, and is hoping to get his record label Jam City off the ground, too. “I’ve been working with a few people to put out an EP – not really big names, much more people that I’ve found through my travels – and I have another track coming out with Nick Thayer, which is going to be on the label that he’s signed to, OWSLA,” he says, before listing a forthcoming Canadian tour and a few more remixes as items on his agenda. “It’s just prioritising what’s important.” Before then, though, it’s a trip to warmer climes; Australia, Mills says, is one of his favourite places to tour. “Honestly, I think some of my most fondest memories – and I’m not just saying this – are actually in Australia, when we [Krafty Kuts and A.Skillz] came over together the first time,” he says. “That, for me, was a massive jump, from
Who: A.Skillz vs Krafty Kuts With: Luke Slater, Friendly Fires DJ Set, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Kaki King, Electric Empire, The Tongue and more Where: Peats Ridge Festival @ Glenworth Valley When: December 29–January 1
Maya Jane Coles photo by Thomas Knights
That sonic evolution will be encapsulated in Coles’ biggest statement yet: her debut album. “My album lands in March, and that will be the biggest reflection of my work – so 2013 is going to be a really special time for me. I’m really happy with it; it’ll be great to have it finally out there, and to see what everyone else thinks about it,” she says. “I toured quite a lot in 2012 and it took me out of the studio more than I would have wanted. Production is my first love so I will never get enough of it – it has been tough trying to keep a steady balance of both. Sometimes I wish there was two of me!”
all my equipment ready to go.”
Deep Impressions Underground Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery
Mano Le Tough
elgium’s techno don, Peter Van Hoesen, will play a Rainbow Serpent Festival sideshow in Sydney, on Friday January 25 at One22. Van Hoeson has enjoyed a watershed 2012, recording a new album under the name of Sendai with Yves De Mey, crafting multiple podcasts for XLR8R, mnmlssgs, CLR and Electric Deluxe (seek them out online if you’re after an introduction to the Belgium’s sonic leanings), and dropping the Perceiver LP on his label Time To Express. Selected from a pool of what was apparently enough material to fill two albums, Perceiver was an amalgamation of Van Hoesen’s traditional, stripped-back techno sound, and some experimental delving into modular electronics. “Music is a constant discovery of pre-existing combinations,” Van Hoesen says, providing insight into how he goes about his trade [just nod and smile politely and let’s move right along]. Recently, he played the coveted Sunday night set at Japan’s legendary Labyrinth festival, where he purportedly melted minds for over four hours – and he no doubt will arrive Down Under with the intention of doing the same to unsuspecting Aussie technophiles. But you, Deep Impressions reader, will of course be prepared. And part of that preparation is to have your presale ticket purchased from Resident Advisor.
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Irish-born Berlin resident Niall Mannion, who makes music under the colourful moniker Mano Le Tough, will release his first LP early next year, entitled Changing Days. Mano oversees the Maeve imprint with The Drifter, and has released on labels like Ben Watt’s Buzzin’ Fly and the Munich-based Permanent Vacation, through which he released the Mountains EP earlier this year after polishing off remixes for the likes of Róisín Murphy, Aloe Blacc and Midnight Magic. The inside word on Changing Days is that Mano adopts a more song-based approach than what he has shown to the listening public previously, dabbling in different tempos along the way. The presser tells listeners to expect a “musical vision” – nothing like good old synesthesia – “with bittersweet melodies and atmospheric moods that should appeal to ravers and more pop trained ears alike.” But whether your ears are “pop trained” or not, you will notice Mano’s vocals are featured throughout. "I guess I try and make music that has an emotional resonance, without being overly sentimental or schmaltzy,” Mano said in a recent interview, while staring wistfully out into the sunset. “It means a lot to me to try and connect with the listener on a deeper level and add something to their lives that’s more than a hands-in-the-air 5am moment in a club (although there is nothing wrong with that).” Rumour has it that Mano may be heading our way shortly after his album is released in February – but I’ll leave that announcement until it’s official early in the New Year. The Fabric compilation series has regained its mojo in recent times, and has once again returned to pushing boundaries with its mixes after a period that was somewhat ‘meh’. Of late, we’ve had top shelf Fabric compilations from Ben Klock and Zip,
and now the Fabric crew have announced that Romanian house ‘oddball’ producer Petre Inspirescu will helm the next offering. Petre is part of the Romanian experimental minimal collective RPR (formerly arpiar), the much-vaunted DJ trio that also includes Raresh and Rhadoo, who collectively run the RPR label. Inspirescu first made his mark back in ’07 with his Tips LP for Cadenza, a collection of four tracks that didn't sound like any other artist around at the time – and still doesn’t. He followed it up with Intr-o Seara Organica in ’09, an LP peppered with ‘secret weapons’ that had been unleashed in the sets of Villalobos, Zip and the DJ cognoscenti in the months prior to the LP officially dropping. Petre has also established his own Yojik ConCon imprint to release his (even) more experimental – and by the sounds of it, classically influenced – material. “For the first release of the new series I will not use the full orchestra, first of all because I still have to learn a lot and I need more time, but also because the idea of the first release does not require so many instruments,” Petre divulged when he surfaced for a rare public interview. “There will be a composition for voice and chorus and violoncello solo, so it is a bit different.” Petre re-emerged earlier this year with the Gradina Onirica LP, but none of his previous material will be included on this Fabric mix. These words, straight from the horse’s mouth, should give discerning minimalists considerable cause for excitement: “I immediately accepted [the offer to do the compilation for Fabric] because I always wanted to do a mix of my own tunes, and this time it will be combined with classical compositions... I’ve included only dance tracks that have never [been] heard before and that will not be released.” The disc will arrive next year, as will the next instalment of Deep Impressions. Until then, behave yourself and enjoy a Christmas of fine electronic music (drown out the fu*king carols, in other words).
LOOKING DEEPER WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 26
Loose Kaboose v Chemistry The Abercrombie
TUESDAY JANUARY 1 Luke Slater The Abercrombie
FRIDAY JANUARY 23 Peter Van Hoesen One22
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 23 Dixon, Guy Gerber AGWA Yacht Club
Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand. Contact through deep.impressions@yahoo.com BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12 :: 53
SUMMER HOLIDAY CLUB GUIDE send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com
MONDAY DECEMBER 24 The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills A Very Beresford Christmas Eve free DJs 5pm The Cool Room, Australian Brewery, Rouse Hill Brewery Christmas Bonanza Stafford Brothers feat. Timmy Trumpet, Troy T, Big Will, Koffee 7pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Coyote Xmas Eve Snow Party Johnny B, Mojo Man, Sean Megack, Damian James, Jarrad Pearse $10 (presale)-$20 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Christmas Eve Jam Astrix Little, Gillex, Nacho, Mike & Andy, Ali free 8pm
TUESDAY DECEMBER 25 Bondi Beach Sunburnt DJ Yoda, Helena, Nukewood, Ember, Monty, Johnny B, DJ Pooch?, Danny Simms, Shipwreck, Urby, Valentine, I Am Sam & Mr Bongolicious, Jagged Beats, Matt Scott, Shag, Jarrad Pearse, Gillex, Sinister Kid $69 (+ bf) 12pm Secret Underground CBD Oasis, Darlinghurst Boom Boom Xmas Wonderland Terrence Parker (USA), James Fazzolari, Boom Boom DJs $15-$25 (+ bf) 9pm
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 26 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Loosekaboose, Shrug & Chemistry Come Together Alphatown, Jimi James, Pocket 808, Peret Mako, Co-Op DJs, Marcotix, Jordan Deck, Trinity, Dave Stuart, Kate Doherty, Magda Bytnerowicz, Kali, Bad Apple DJs, Mesan, Matt Aubusson $10 2pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Bondi Hipsters Boxing Day Bondi Hipsters, Isbjorn, I Oh You DJs, The Holidays DJs free 8pm Bella Vista, Man O War Steps, Sydney Opera House High Flyers Boxing Day Cruise Joey Negro (UK), Karl Prinzen, Terry A, Nicc Johnson, Simon Caldwell, Koolade, Mike Who, Omegaman $75 6pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Boxing Day! SMS, Acid Mouth, Le Bronx, Retrounk, Stalker, Theobeats, Smash Mellow, Slip & Slyde, Homeslice, Oh Dear, Grizzly, Sharbait, Sampy 9pm Epping Hotel DTF Resident DJs free 8pm Establishment, Sydney Superjamm DJs 9pm DJ Hell
Goldfish, Kings Cross DJ Hell (GER), Johnny Gleeson $20 6pm Ivy, Sydney Boxing Day Tydi, Flume, Gtronic, Van She Tech, Starfuckers DJs, Ember, Nukewood, Fake Brat Pack $35-$45 1pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Boxing Day Party Special Guest DJs 10pm The Lewisham Hotel Garbage 90s Nights Resident DJs free 7pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Assembly Wednesdays Thomas Gold $30 10pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Terrance Parker (USA), Karl Prinzen, Digital Love DJs, Russtee free 11pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Cream Boxing Day UV Snow Party DJ Dim Slm, DJ Def Rok, Steve S, Rhys Jm Bobby Digital free 8pm Trademark Hotel, King Cross Contagious Behaviour Mik Fox, Steve Frank, Daniel Berti, Jay Rox, Troy T 9pm Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills Falcona & Jam Boxing Day Dance Party Alison Wonderland, What So Not, Joyride (DJ set) free 6pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour DJ Brynstar free 2pm Whaat Club, Kings Cross Whip It Wednesdays Boxing Day Special Vertigo DJs free 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Siwss Dub, Tigerlily, Puddles, Hazy, Hydraulix, Manjazz, Brothers Brimm, Rehu, Amy Lee, Pat Ward $5-$10 9pm
THURSDAY DECEMBER 27 The Abercrombie, Broadway Hologram Hologram DJs free 9pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi FBi Sunset DJ Simon Caldwell free 6pm Flinders Hotel, Darlinghurst Bananas Resident DJs free 8pm Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney Greenwood Thursdays Resident DJs free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs free 9pm The Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont OPM Farewell 2012 $20 10pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs $15-$20 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Rewind Dim Slm, Bobby Digital, August Jeremy S 8pm Selina’s @ Coogee Bay Hotel Starfuckers DJs 11pm Trademark Hotel, King Cross Swag Resident DJs free (early bird)$10 9pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour DJ Matt Roberts free 5pm Whaat Club, Kings Cross Bel Air Miami Robust, Brizz free 9.30pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda DJ Pooch (UK), Gillex, Spice Cube DJs, Propaganda DJs, Soup Kitchen DJs free (student)-$5 9pm
Phaeleh
Chinese Laundry, Sydney Wilkinson (UK), Sigma (UK), A-Tonez, Hydraulix, Pop The Hatch, Autoclaws, Bruxism, Shudder-X, Bassriot, Phaseone $15-$25 10pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Gimme Five Toby Neal, Anders Hitchcock free 5pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm Ivy Pool Club, Sydney Moonshine Graz, Alley Oop vs Shivers, Gerrit Oliver (GER), Magic Happens 9pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Ivan Drago, DJ Rain Julz free 9pm Kaya Sydney, Darlinghurst Howl Full Moon Party DJ Amanda Louise, Raul Lycan (Peru), Zac Acton $10 10pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KK Fridays Resident DJs free 9pm Metro Theatre, Sydney Pearson Sound (UK), Ben UFO (UK), XXXY (UK), Pariah (UK), Slow Magic (USA), Dro Carey, Cliques, Ben Fester $49.70 9pm 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 Phaeleh (UK), Garage Pressure, Kieran Helmore, Commit $25 (+ bf) 10pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst The Hellfire Club – The Other Side Of XXXMas Hellfire DJs $25 9.30pm
54 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
SATURDAY DECEMBER 29 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Falcona Presents The Slips (UK), DJ Hansom, Hansom, Niles Rumfoord free 8pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Heat Sherlock Bones, Robust, Fresh To Death, Stalker, Axslm, Twissted $20 8pm Cargo Bar, King St Wharf Kick On Resident DJs free 6pm Club 77, Darlinghurst Starfuckers Starfuckers DJs 10pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Yellow Sox DJ Anders Hitchcock free Establishment, Sydney Sienna Saturdays Resident DJs 8pm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel Hands Up! Staggman, Clockwerk free 11.30pm Gladstone Hotel, Chippendale Afterlife Drum & Bass Highly Dubious, Embi, Vibrasoul, Sarriss, Sakura, Pete Mac, DJ Taro, Open Eye, Double Robin, Devise free 9pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Stonebridge (SWE) $20 9pm
Dimitri From Paris Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour Homesexual ALOHA Freemasons (UK), Alex Taylor, Kitty Glitter, Stephen Craddock, Murray Hood, Chip, Jayson Forbes $50-$100 10pm Ivy Pool Club, Sydney SHE Beach Club Joey Negro, Dmitri From Paris (FRA) $49 (+ bf) 12pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Simon Laing, DJ Michael Stewart free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Sugarmill Bloc Party Alison Wonderland, Joyride, Devola, Hobophonics, Baby Gee, Chris Coast, Steve Frank, Mista Kay, Micky D 9pm Phoenix Bar, Darlinghurst Up Dayclub Resident DJs $15 5am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Resident DJs 8pm SHE Pop Up Club, Surry Hills SHE Pops Up Dimitri From Paris (FRA) $40 (+ bf) 8pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Masif Saturdays Resident DJs 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice Troopers Le Brond, James Taylor, Cassette, Morgan, Matt Weir $20 10pm Trademark Hotel, King Cross Cro Summerfest Dave Austin, Psyco, Josip Orlovic, MC Deekay 9pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour Skybar Saturdays Resident DJs $20 9pm Whaat Club, Kings Cross After Dark Camo, Brizz, Valentino, Aero $10 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Ajax, Go Freek, Emoh Instead, Tigerlily, Hannah Gibbs, Error, Thomas Lisse, Blaze Tripp, Deckhead, Brown Bear, Mike Hyper, E-Cats, Bounce Crew DJs, Jack Bailey, Acaddamy, Dan Wheeler $15$20 8pm
SUNDAY DECEMBER 30
FRIDAY DECEMBER 28 The Abercrombie, Broadway Totally Barry Bad Barry DJs free 9pm And, Bondi Junction Start Cue 003 Mia Lucci, T-Boy, Ross ‘Bravo’ Ashman, Alister Hearnshaw, Tommy Rutherford, Rickstar free 9pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi DJ Georgia, Playmate free 8pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Audio Sonic/Sucker Punch Nightmare, Hoodlmz, Aaron Daly, Cal French $10 8pm Cherry, The Star, Pyrmont Kerry Wallace free 6pm
Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Summer House Sessions I Am Sam, DJ Miss Tokio, Mr X, Marco Mileto SHE Pop Up Club, Surry Hills SHE Pops Up R.O.N.N aka Ron Carroll (USA) $40 (+ bf) 8pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Zaia Resident DJs 9.45pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Friendly Fires DJs (UK), Pink Lloyd, Dreamcatcher $20 10pm The Standard, Surry Hills Kid Mac, Slippery MC, DJ Bobby Digital $12 (+ bf) 8pm Tonka Bar, Darlinghurst Dirty Pop Falcona DJs free 8pm Tonka Bar - Upstairs, Darlinghurst Heatwave Conrad Greenleaf, DJ Whemmy free 10pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour Bring On The Weekend! DJ Matt Roberts, Candidate free 5pm Whaat Club, Kings Cross Think Fridays Disco Busy, Rymz $10 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM End Of The Year Party Seaborne, Gum, Stray Pixels, Swim Team DJs, Vaals DJs, Danny Cruel, Cries Wolf DJs, Seabas, Catkings, MUM DJs $10-$15 8pm
Starfuckers DJs
Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays S.A.S.H DJs 2pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi NYE Eve House Party Kato, Clockwerk, SuperTrivia, Omar Varts, Richie Ryan free 3pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 3pm Jacksons On George, Sydney Aphrodisiac Resident DJs free 5pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Easy Sundays Resident DJs 10pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sets DJ Tone free 7pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Daydreams Daydreams DJs 4.30am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Sundays Resident DJS free 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice After Hours Robbie Lowe, Matt Weir $20 4am Tatler, Darlinghurst Dust 2012 Retrospective Brendan Watson, James Taylor, Alley Oop $10 9pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour DJ Brynstar free 2pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Soup Kitchen Soup Kitchen DJs free 3pm
NEW YEAR'S EVE 2012
Chemical Brothers
MONDAY DECEMBER 31 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H NYE Russ Yallop (UK), Pig & Dan, Carlos Zarate,Mike Monday, Gabby, Phil Smart, Jake Hough, Glitch DJs, Robbie Cordukes, Mesan, Eoin Brosnan, Simon Brayford, Matt Weir, Kerry Wallace $65 (+ bf) 6pm The Belvedere Hotel, Sydney New Years Eve Craig Thommo Duo free 7pm Bondi Beach Shore Thing The Chemical Brothers (UK), Knife Party, Fedde Le Grand (NL) $138 (+ bf) 8pm Bungalow 8, Darling Harbour Hedkandi NYE 2012 Alex Taylor, Venuto, Cadell, Phil Hudson, Frankie Romano, Tim Whitney, Adrian Benedek, Damien Groundrie, The Italian Job, Glass Wax DJs, Chris Luder, Two Faced, Miss P (UK) $82.65-$257.14 6pm Candys Apartment & Whaat Club, Kings Cross New Years Eve Hoodlmz, 2busy 2kiss, Worimi, Bystanders, DJ Valentino, Front To Back, Matty hells, Amy Lee, Soniboy, Thick As Thieves $20 (+ bf) 9pm Cargo Bar, Darling Harbour NYE 2012 On The Harbour Pnau, Ajax, YesYou, Elizabeth Rose, What So Not, Sosueme DJs, DJ Russ Yallop
TUESDAY JANUARY 1 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Planetary Assault Systems aka Luke Slater, Defined By Rhythm, Ben Dunlop, Jordan Deck, Raffi Lovechild, Trinity, MSG, Marcotix, Mark Craven, Methodix, Kate Doherty, Nick Belshaw, Chris Honnery, Glitch DJs, Jam Smalls, Jamie Lloyd $40 12pm The Bella Vista, Star City Wharf, Pyrmont Spice Afloat NY Morning Sunrise Cruise 2013 H.O.S.H. (DE), Tiger & Woods (ITA), Murat Kilic, SlowBlow, Nic Scali, Morgan, Steven Sullivan, Dean Relf $85-$99 3.30am The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills NYD Confetti Michelle Martinze, Bobby Blaze (USA), Murray Hood, Eddie Coulter, Sista P, GI Jode free 12pm The Domain, Sydney Field Day 2013 Two Door Cinema Club (UK), Hot Chip (UK), SBTRKT (UK), Mark Ronson DJ Set (UK), The Vaccines (UK), Erol Alkan (UK), Disclosure (UK), Krafty Kuts & A-Skillz (UK), Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (UK), Fake Blood (UK), Booka Shade (GER), DJ Nu Mark (USA), Adrian Lux (SWE), Maya Jane Coles (UK), Coolio (USA), Django Django (UK), AC Slater (USA), Danny Daze (USA),
Flagrant, Kristy Lee $99-$170 6pm Establishment, Sydney Black & White Party Resident DJs $49 8pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney NYE Player Haters Ball The Left Eyes ft. Milan Ring, Mike Who, Smart Casual, Daniel Darling $20 (+ bf) 8pm Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour Homemade NYE Bombs Away, DJ Kronic, Royaal, Matt Ferreira, Tony Venuto, Dave Austin, Flite, Iko, Seiz, Suga Shane, Great Dane, James Spy $55-$120 9pm Hotel Chambers, Sydney NYE 2012 Scribe, Pieter T $70 (+ bf) 6pm Hotel Sweeneys Rooftop, Sydney Bare Essentials NYE Rooftop Party Garry Todd, Carlos Zarate, Sam Roberts, Robbie cordukes, Jake Hough, Ben Ashton, James Fazzolaro, James Cripps, FAF $50 (+ bf) 3pm
Ivy, Sydney Pacha NYE 2013 AN21 & Max Vangeli, Junion Jack & Kid Crème, Anna Lunoe, The Only, Yolanda Be Cool, Mo Funk, YokoO, Devola, Matt Nugent, Fingers, Adam Bozzetto, Trent Rackus, Program, Pat Ward $130-$220 (+ bf) 4pm Ivy Ballroom, Sydney SYD NYE 012 - Masters At Work Little Louie Vega (USA) vs Kenny Dope Gonzalez (USA), Antonio Zambarelli, Tono Marquez, Ben Sofowara $120 (+ bf) 9.30pm Jacksons On George, Sydney NYE Full Moon Party DJ Michael Stewart, DJ Simon Laing $55-$130 6pm Live @ The Brewhouse, King St Wharf NYE Celebration – Party Anthems of the 70s, 80s & 90s Mike Champion & Mr Saxophone, DJ Nasser T $150 (+ bf) 7pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross NYE Kick On Party Resident DJs 11pm Luna Park, Sydney Harbour Party 2012 NYE Ricki-Lee, Marvin Priest, The Aston Shuffle, Luciana, Ivan Gough, D-Cup, Radio Ink, Alleyoop, Tom Piper, Garcon Garcon, Brother G, Tass, Isabella Melody $129 6.30pm The Lybrary, Chppendale Midnight At The Oasis Huwston, Mucky Fingers, Return Of The M.A.C.K, Miss Micah, Reeganout, Andy Zao, Jefrey Palace, Strategy
Bombs Away
Fads, Cold Drop, Gadget, Quincy, Toki Doki $15 (+ bf) 8pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont New Year’s Eve 2012 Dirty South $200 (+ bf) 9pm Marrickville Bowling & Recreation Centre Mad Racket New Year’s Eve Kali, Peret Mako, Simon Caldwell, Ked Cloud, Jimmi James, Zootie $40 (+ bf) 10pm Marrickville Warehouse Space Hole In The Sky Warehouse Happening II – New Years Eve Lovefingers (USA), Canyons, Bell Towers, Love’s Disciple $30 (+ bf) 10pm Metro Theatre, Sydney Genesis NYE Eddie Halliwell (UK), John 00 Fleming (UK), Arnej (Bosnia), First State (ND), Nick Arbor, Thomas Knight, Antony Carpena, Scotty G, VLN, Toby Matrix, Punk Ninja, Krish Titan, Big J, Duress, I am Sam, I&S Project $117 9pm Museum Of Contemporary Art, Sydney New Year’s Eve 2013 Mobilee Rooftop Sessions Martin Landsky (GER), And.Id (Greece), Javi Sampol, Roberto Martin, Bella Sarris, Gemma Van D $413.30 (+ bf) (final release) 6pm The Old Library Restaurant & Bar, Cronulla NYE 2013 DJ Murray Lake 7pm Orient Hotel, The Rocks NYE Resident DJs 6pm
Ricki-Lee
Martin Landsky
AraabMuzik (USA), Icona Pop (SWE), Breakbot (FRA), Jesse Rose (GER), Jaguar Skills (UK), Van She, Hudson Mohwak (UK), Scuba (GER) $118 (presale)-$138 (+ bf) 11am The Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney Space Ibiza Australia NYD 2013 Kerri Chandler (USA), Carl Craig (USA), Mathew Jonson (CAN), Pig & Dan (ESP), Franck Roger (FRA), Remo (ITA), Garry Todd, Lee M Kelsall, Carlos Zarate, S.A.S.H, One 122 $99 (+ bf) 12pm SBTRKT
Ivy, Sydney Ministry Of Sound Classics New Years Day Ajax, Kid Kenobi, Late Nite Tuff Guy, Mark Dynamix, John Glover, Ping Pong DJs, Ben Morris, Shamus, Simon Caldwell, Nick Law, Trent Rackus $44.95-$59.95 2pm Ivy Pool, Sydney Lost Disco - Hot Creations Pool Party Infinity Ink (UK), Russ Yallop (UK), Brohn, T-Boy, Mia Lucci, Sam Roberts, Ben Ashton, Monkey Tennis, Le Brond, Co-Op, Alan Thomas, Shaun Broughton, Alley Erol Alkan
Jesse Rose Paragon Hotel, Sydney NYE 2012: Back To The '80s Resident DJs $20 (+ bf) 6pm Pontoon, Cockle Bay Wharf Mykonos NYE 2013 DJ Gogos (Greece) $40-$70 6pm The Roundhouse, UNSW, Kensington Bass Drop Hospitality NYE High Contrast (UK), Camo & Krooked, Logistics, S.P.Y, MC Wrec, Lowqui $75 (+ bf) 7.30pm Secret Underground Spot, Darlinghurst Boom Boom NYE Marcellus Pittman (USA), The Paradise Lost Disco Ensemble, The Boom Boom DJs $50 9pm Soho, Kings Cross NYE House Party Nukewood, Oakes & Lennox, Steve Frank, Lights Out, Here’s Trouble, Barfly, 14th Minute, Big Bee $20 (+ bf) 10pm Space, Sydney One Masif NYE 2012 Wasted Penguinz, Rebourne, Tranz-Liquants, Toneshifterz, Steve Hill, Suae, Pulsar, S Dee, Amber Savage, Kid Finley, Arbee, Kamikaze, Matrix, Xdream, DJ Bennett, Nomad, Nasty, Hardforze, Micky D, Inception, Rhee, Maetex, Nik Import, Malfunction, Midshifter, Lihan, Luke Spellbound, Ravine, Tezzr, HSB, Convict, Dillytek, The Strangers, The Khemist, Tha Artistz, Radio Rockerz, and more $55-$79 (+ bf) 9pm Vessel Bar, Sydney Vessel New Year’s Eve Party Jesse Rose (USA), Light Year, Nanna Does, Offtapia, A-Tonez, King Lee, Zwelli, Mr Ron Ron $170 (+ bf) 9pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour NYE White – Land Of Tomorrow DJs sold out 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Last Supper! Loose Change, NatNoiz vs Fiktion, Jack Bailey, Snillum, Amy Lee, Gee_Q, Critter, 3Phaze, Deli, Taylor Wolf Jimmy Crumpet 8pm
Y 2 E Y 0 A A W 13 R D 'S NE Oop 12pm The Lady Rose, King St Wharf, Darling Harbour A New Years Daydreams S.H.O.L.L, Nick The Kid (UK), Josh Lang, Nomad, Pred, Chris Dynasty, DJ Xdream, A-Starz, DBS, Keely, Amber Savage, DJ Husband, Kamikazi, Hardforze $50-$65 12pm Newtown Hotel NYD Ladyhawke DJ Set (NZ), Purple Sneakers DJs, Joyride, Girlthing DJs, Shag free 3pm Red Bull HQ, Alexandria High Flyers Little Secret New Years Day The Nextmen (UK), Mike Who, DJ Obliveus, Nicc Johnson, DJ Mathematics, RussTee, Koolade, Edseven, Karl Prinzen, Stephen Ferris, Graham Mandroules, The Groove Merchant, JC, The Gloom $85 (+ bf) 3pm Santa Barbara, Kings Cross That’s So Gay! Ariane, Alex Taylor, Nelson de Sousa, Peter Lovertits, Kiel Rogers, Valerie Yum $25 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross NYN New Years Night DJ Dim Slm, DJ Bobby D, DJ Sabio, DJ A-Lo 8pm Secret Innercity Funk Oasis, Sydney CBD Soul Of Sydney: New Years Day Block Party Soul Of Sydney DJs, Phil Toke, Ronney Farrah, Edseven, Juzzlikedat, C-Man $5-$15 2pm
Space, Sydney UKF Sydney Benga & Youngman (UK), Friction & Linguistics (UK), Gemini, Breakage, Inspector Dubplate, Glovecats, Pop The Hatch, Exray $35 9pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour New Year’s Day DJ Matt Roberts free 2pm Benga
BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12 :: 55
club guide send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 2 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi City Calm Down, Tom Ugly, Bernie Dingo, Devola, Hansom free 8pm Epping Hotel DTF Resident DJs free 8pm The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway Frat House Mean Dartin, Camo, Ra Bazaar free 5pm The Lewisham Hotel Garbage 90s Nights Resident DJs free 7pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Cream Syd Kids, DJ Dim Slm, DJ Eko, DJ Wanted, Dangerous D 9pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Adult Disco Special International Guest, Future Classic DJs, Pelvis $20 10pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Resident DJs $5 9pm
THURSDAY JANUARY 3 The Abercrombie, Broadway Hologram Hologram DJs free 9pm Flinders Hotel, Darlinghurst Bananas Resident DJs free 8pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Hi-Beams Resident DJs free 8pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Numbers Secret Special Guests, Spencer, Nelson $15 11.30pm Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney Greenwood Thursdays Resident DJs free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs 10pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs $15-$20 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Rewind Dim Slm, Bobby Digital, August Jeremy S 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Swag Resident DJs $10 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Propaganda DJs free (student)-$5 9pm
FRIDAY JANUARY 4 The Abercrombie, Broadway Totally Barry Bad Barry DJs free 9pm Enmore Theatre M.I.A. (UK) $86.10 8pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KK Fridays Resident DJs 10pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Fedde Le Grand $30 10pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst The ***king OAF Social Club Secret International Headliner, Light Year, Frames, Wordlife, Chux $20 (+ bf) 9pm M.I.A.
Ed Rush
The Gaslamp Killer
Wantan Ichiban free 8pm Epping Hotel DTF Resident DJs free 8pm The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway Frat House Mean Dartin, Camo, Ra Bazaar free 5pm The Lewisham Hotel Garbage 90s Nights Resident DJs free 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Resident DJs $5 9pm
THURSDAY JANUARY 10
SHE Pop Up Club, Surry Hills SHE Pops Up Aeroplane (Belgium) $25 (+ bf) 8pm Tonka Bar, Darlinghurst Dirty Pop Falcona DJs free 8pm Tonka Bar - Upstairs, Darlinghurst Heatwave Heatwave DJs free 10pm The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM Bang Bang Rock ‘n’ Roll, The Summervilles, Permanent, The Honey Badgers, MUM DJs $10-$15 8pm
SATURDAY JANUARY 5 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi D-Cup, Stoney Roads DJs, Devola, Silver Age free 8pm Cargo Bar, King St Wharf Kick On Resident DJs free 6pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Bass Mafia Skism (UK), Ed Rush (UK), Bare Noize (UK), Brookes Brothers (UK), Doctor Werewolf, A-Tonez, Typhonic, Fingers, E-Cats, King Lee $30-$35 7pm Club 77, Darlinghurst Starfuckers Starfuckers DJs 10pm Establishment, Sydney Sienna Saturdays Resident DJs 8pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Matthew Jonson (CAN), Matt Cahill, Johnny Gleeson $20 (+ bf) 6pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Raw Soul! Daptone Soul Review After Party Super Special Guest Live Band, Gonzo, Thomas Crown, King OPP $30 10pm The Island, Sydney Harbour Psychemagik (UK), Steele Bonus, Marcus King, Kali, Andy Webb $45 (+ bf) 3pm Ivy Pool, Sydney Chinese Laundry Pool Party DJ Marky (BRA) ft. Stamina MC, Aphrodite (UK), Royalston, A-Tonez, Linken $37 (+ bf) 12pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Sugarmill Bloc Party Alison Wonderland, Joyride, Devola, Hobophonics, Baby Gee, Chris
Coast, Steve Frank, Mista Kay, Micky D 9pm The Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Timmy Trumpet $30 9pm Metro Theatre, Sydney Hold Tight! Digital Mystikz (UK), Gaslamp Killer (USA), Rustie (UK), Theo Parrish (USA), Space Dimension Controller (UK), DJ Nu Mark (USA), T Williams (UK), Spencer (UK), Om Unit (UK), Kali, Simon Caldwell, Wordlife $59 7.30pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm Phoenix Bar, Darlinghurst Up Dayclub Resident DJs $15 5am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Resident DJs 8pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Masif Saturdays Resident DJs 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney International Guest, Matt Weir, Murat Kilic, Gabby $25 10pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Trademark Saturdays Resident DJs 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Resident DJs $15-$20 8pm
SUNDAY JANUARY 6 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays S.A.S.H DJs 2pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 3pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Easy Sundays Resident DJs 10pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sets DJ Tone free 7pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Daydreams Daydreams DJs 4.30am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Sundays Resident DJS free 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice After Hours Gabby, Murat Kilic $20 4am The World Bar, Kings Cross Soup Kitchen Soup Kitchen DJs free 7pm
MONDAY JANUARY 7 Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket Mother Of A Monday DJ Smokin Joe free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Latin Jazz Resident DJs free 7pm
The Abercrombie, Broadway Hologram Hologram DJs free 9pm Flinders Hotel, Darlinghurst Bananas Resident DJs free 8pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Hi-Beams Resident DJs free 8pm Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney Greenwood Thursdays Resident DJs free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs 10pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs $15-$20 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Rewind Dim Slm, Bobby Digital, August Jeremy S 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Swag Resident DJs $10 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Propaanda DJs free (student)-$5 9pm
FRIDAY JANUARY 11 The Abercrombie, Broadway Totally Barry Bad Barry DJs free 9pm The Factory Theatre, Marrickville Chali 2na (USA) 8pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KK Fridays Resident DJs 10pm The Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont TyDi $20 (+ bf) 10pm 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 Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Opiuo (NZ), Africa Hitech (UK), Rhibongiam JPS $20-$25 (+ bf) 10pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Zaia Resident DJs 9.45pm Tonka Bar, Darlinghurst Dirty Pop Falcona DJs free 8pm Tonka Bar - Upstairs, Darlinghurst Heatwave Heatwave DJs free 10pm The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM MUM DJs $10-$15 8pm
SATURDAY JANUARY 12 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Cassian, Tigerlily, Mailer Daemon, DJ Tash free 8pm Bella Vista Boat, Sydney Harbour Ship Faced Cruise Yolanda Be Cool,
TUESDAY JANUARY 8 Establishment, Sydney Rumba Motel Salsa DJ Wilie Sabor free 8pm Scruffy Murphys, Haymarket Frat House DJs free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Jam Resident DJs free 8pm
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 9 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Sosueme DJs, Hansom, Shantan
56 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
Afrika Hitech
Parachute Youth, Starfuckers DJs, Go Freek, Swiss Dub, Filth Collins $55-$65 (+ bf) 11am Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Disco! Disco! DJs 9pm Cargo Bar, King St Wharf Kick On Resident DJs free 6pm Club 77, Darlinghurst Starfuckers Starfuckers DJs 10pm Coogee Bay Hotel Vengaboys (NL), Twenty 4 Seven $45 (+ bf) 8pm Establishment, Sydney Sienna Saturdays Resident DJs 8pm The Famous Spiegeltent, Sydney Sydney Festiva Presentsl Hot Dub Time Machine free 11.30pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Darren Emerson (UK), Johnny Gleeson, A-Tones, Matt Cahill $25 6pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Sugarmill Bloc Party Alison Wonderland, Joyride, Devola, Hobophonics, Baby Gee, Chris Coast, Steve Frank, Mista Kay, Micky D 9pm Lady Rose Ship, Sydney Harbour Aquaholics Kyro & Bomber, A Tonez, Nick Thayer, Peking Duck, What Not, Redial, NatNoiz, Tigerlily, Cunningpants, Vengeance, E-Cats, Brown Bear 6.30pm Manning Bar, The University of Sydney, Camperdown Action Bronson (USA), Peanut Butter Wolf (USA), Jonti, Mike Who $45 (+ bf) 8.30pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Super Square $30 9pm Moore Park, Sydney Defender Sound System free 12pm One22, Sydney Sonido Somin Caldwell, Tang (UK), Gemma Van D, Tom Hardwood, Ryan Kenna, Andy Myatt $20 10pm Phoenix Bar, Darlinghurst Up Dayclub Resident DJs $15 5am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Resident DJs 8pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Masif Saturdays Resident DJs 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Bjorn Wilke (DE), Murat Kilic, Robbie Lowe $25 10pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Trademark Saturdays Resident DJs 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Resident DJs $15-$20 8pm
SUNDAY JANUARY 13 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays S.A.S.H DJs 2pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 3pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Easy Sundays Resident DJs 10pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sets DJ Tone free 7pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Daydreams Daydreams DJs 4.30am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Sundays Resident DJS free 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice After Hours Murat Kilic, Robbie Lowe $20 4am The World Bar, Kings Cross Soup Kitchen Soup Kitchen DJs free 7pm
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up all night out all week . . .
space ibiza on tour Three songs you’ll hear on the night: ‘You’re In Remix)’; ‘She’s On Fire (Maya Jane Coles Remix My System (Kerri Chandler )’; ‘Cold Blooded’ – Mathew Jonson. And one you definitely won’t: Avicii – ‘Level s’. Sell it to us: If you’re looking for that specia l Ibiza vibe here in Oz, underground music with large-scale production, and a chang e from other festivals where you may have found yourself surrounded by shirtless, juiced-up men – then this event could be for YOU. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The PM. Crowd specs: A music-savvy crowd that is respectful of one-another. Wallet damage: $99 (final release) Where: Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney When: New Year’s Day, from midday
bass mafia
PICS :: AM
party profile
It’s called: Space Ibiza – Sydney! It sounds like: The best underground house music, with big scale production. Who’s spinning? Kerri Chandler, Carl Craig, Mathew Jonson, Pig & Dan, Frank Roger, Remo, Garry Todd, Lee M Kelsall.
propaganda
PICS :: DM
14:12:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999
chinese laundry pool party
PICS :: AM
13:12:12 :: The World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700
compound
PICS :: KC
paul kalkbrenner 14:12:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587
PICS :: MJC
15:12:12 :: The Ivy :: 330 George St Sydney 9254 8100
15:12:12 :: The Hi-Fi :: 122 Lang Road Moore Park :: KATRINA CLARKE :: MARY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) :: OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER IEL MUNNS :: PEDRO XAVIER DAN :: MAR LEY ASH :: VELL JANE CASWELL :: BREE COR
BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12 :: 57
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halfway crooxmas
PICS :: PX
up all night out all week . . .
prince of thieves
PICS :: AM
15:12:12 :: Phoenix Bar :: 34-44 Oxford st Darlinghurst Sydney 9331 3100
14:12:12 :: Rock Lily :: Star City Sydney 9657 7737
It’s called: Hed Kandi NYE Disco Heaven – The White Party It sounds like: House music heaven. Who’s spinning? Alex Taylor, Venuto, Cadel l, Phil Hudson, Frankie Romano, Tim Whitney, Adrian Benedek, Damien Goundrie, The Italian Job, Glass Wax DJs, Reel Sessions, Chris Luder, 2 Facez, Miss P (UK) Three songs you’ll hear on the night: Stone Bridge feat. Therese – ‘Take Me Away (Vocal Mix)’; Soulshaker feat. Lorraine Browne – ‘Hypnotic Erotic Games (Soulshaker Original Club Mix)’; Michelle Week s – ‘The Light (Jazz-N-Groove Prime Time Mix)’. Sell it to us: Bungalow 8, theloft and Hed Kandi clubbing brand, present NYE 2012 Disco Heave , the world’s most glamorous n! You’ll be in a disco wonderland, surrounded by the best party crowd in Sydne y – and come fireworks time, you’ll be sitting front and centre! The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Arrivin g in a timely fashion (and wearing white), having a few tantalising drinks, dancing a bit to some good tunes, some fireworks… Then it all gets a bit hazy. Crowd specs: The die-hard house heads, the good looking, and those looking for a great time!
Wallet damage: From $89. Where: Bungalow 8 and theloft, Sydney Harbo ur When: New Year's Eve, from 6pm
the wall
PICS :: PX
15:12:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999
party profile
kid kenobi
PICS :: AM
hed kandi nye 2012
s.a.s.h sundays
PICS :: AM
12:12:12 :: The World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700
16:12:12 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William St 9331 9900 58 :: BRAG :: 494 :: 24:12:12
:: KATRINA CLARKE :: MARY S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) :: OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER IEL MUNNS :: PEDRO XAVIER DAN :: MAR LEY ASH :: VELL JANE CASWELL :: BREE COR
Aleka SAE Institute Graduate SAE was the key in order to gain an insight on the world of sound. Since then, I’ve been applying all this knowledge in my career in the music industry.
SAE INSTITUTE
INFO NIGHT Thursday January 24TH 4pm-8pm Find out more about Diplomas and Degrees in Audio Production and Film Production. To register call: (02) 8241 5200 /saeinstitutesyd or visit: Audio Production | Film Production | Electronic Music Production | FEE-HELP available
A-LIST ENTERTAINMENT PRESENTS
rossnoble.co.uk
SYDNEY ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE SATURDAY 20TH APRIL PH: 136 100 ticketmaster.com.au