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rock music news welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Natalie Amat and Nick Jarvis.

five things WITH

SAM FROM JENNY BROKE THE WINDOW Growing Up My brother Matt and I grew up 1. on the South Coast of NSW. From

easier when writing new songs as we’re able to reference certain aspects that we like.

an early age we developed a strong appreciation for music. We would listen and sing along to the Beach Boys in the car on trips away. Our parents would take us to stage productions like Annie, Saturday Night Fever and Les Misérables, which we often pretended we disliked so our friends wouldn’t disown us.

Inspirations Julian Casablancas would 2. have to be our major inspiration

out at a gig or bar. We use loops, layered samples and voice patterns to try and create something uplifting that people can move to. We recently recorded two singles with the help of producer Tony Buchen at 301 Studios.

Music, Right Here, Right Now I think bands will always 5. encounter the same obstacles

and influence. He’s so versatile and unique in every project he commits himself to. I can remember the first time I heard The Strokes, I was about 14 and my friend had made me a CD. ‘Is This It’ was track one; I don’t think I even listened to the rest of the CD. Your Band Our band is made up of myself, 3. my brother Matt, our good friends Todd, Joel and McCaff. Most of us met at school or through friends of one another. We all have similar taste in music, which makes it

The Music You Make We try and make music that 4. we would like to hear if we were

of venues closing down, limited support at gigs plus limited funding to do the things they want to do. I think it’s important to embrace the venues that are doing a good job such as World Bar, Brighton Up Bar, The Standard, Upstairs Beresford etc. as these venues want bands to succeed and deserve our support.

What: ‘Ravel’ Single Launch Where: The Standard When: Thursday May 23

VIVID TERMINAL BAR Bloods

EDITOR: Nick Jarvis nick@thebrag.com 02 9212 4322 ARTS EDITOR: Lisa Omagari lisa@thebrag.com 02 9212 4322 STAFF WRITERS: Benjamin Cooper, Alasdair Duncan NEWS: Natalie Amat, Nick Jarvis, Chris Honnery ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER: Tim Levy SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Katrina Clarke, Kate Lewis, Henry Leung, Ashley Mar

What better place to watch Vivid’s light installations on the Opera House than the Overseas Passenger Terminal, directly opposite.

No longer the domain of chokingly expensive restaurants and adventurous cruise ship passengers, for three days over the June Long Weekend it’ll turn into a food, drink and party hub with pop-up eating from Panama House, Mexicano and more, while [yellow tail] will provide the bar (in between company side-projects like natural gas drilling and ammunition manufacture), plus there’ll be the two Terminal Projekt parties with the likes of Tensnake, Jimmy Edgar and Sepalcure. Stay tuned to Brag Beats for more on the parties in the next few weeks – vividsydney. com for more on the bar.

COVER PHOTOGRAPHER: Ben Clement ADVERTISING: Ross Eldridge - 0422 659 425 / (02) 9212 4322 ross@thebrag.com ADVERTISING: Les White - 0405 581 125 / (02) 9212 4322 les@thebrag.com PUBLISHER: Rob Furst GENERAL MANAGER, FURST MEDIA: Patrick Carr patrick@furstmedia.com.au, (03) 9428 3600, 0402 821 122 DIGITAL DIRECTOR/ADVERTISING: Kris Furst kris@furstmedia.com.au (03) 9428 3600 GIG & CLUB GUIDE CO-ORDINATOR: Mina Kitsos, Katie Davern, Blake Gallagher gigguide@thebrag.com (rock) clubguide@thebrag. com (dance, hip hop & parties) AWESOME INTERNS: Natalie Amat, Katie Davern, Mina Kitsos, Blake Gallagher, Naomi Russo REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Nat Amat, Ian Barr, Simon Binns, Katie Davern, Marissa Demetriou, Christie Eliezer, Chris Honnery, Kate Jinx, Lachlan Kanoniuk, Jody Macgregor, Alicia Malone, Chris Martin, Jenny Noyes, Hugh Robertson, Rebecca Saffir, Jonno Seidler, Rach Seneviratne, Luke Telford, Simon Topper, Rick Warner, Krissi Weiss, Caitlin Welsh, David Wild Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this NEW address 100 Albion Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010 ph - (02) 9212 4322 fax - (02) 9319 2227 EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, editors or staff of The BRAG. ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Luke Forrester: accounts@furstmedia.com.au ph - (03) 9428 3600 fax - (03) 9428 3611 Furst Media, 3 Newton Street Richmond Victoria 3121 DEADLINES: Editorial: Wednesday 12pm (no extensions) Artwork/ad bookings: Thursday 12pm (no extensions).

Ad cancellations: Tuesday 4pm Published by Furst Media P/L ACN 1112480045.

All content copyrighted to Cartrage P/L/ Furst Media P/L 2003-2013 DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get The Brag? Email distribution@furstmedia. com.au or phone 03 9428 3600.

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6 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

Gypsy & The Cat

FBI FUNDRAISERS

Here’s to ten years of the best damn music station in Sydney! FBi have done a stellar job in the past decade but they couldn’t have done it without the support of some of Sydney best party-throwers and taste-makers, like Astral People, Future Classic, Broken Stone, Rice is Nice, Popfrenzy and Modular. So to celebrate, they’re throwing four massive fundraising parties at Oxford Art Factory and Goodgod co-curated by the aforementioned crews, and featuring a pretty comprehensive selection of Sydney’s best. Friday June 14 Future Classic and Astral People are bringing Panama, Cosmo’s Midnight, Rainbow Chan, Moon Holiday, and Victoria Kim to Goodgod; Friday June 21 Broken Stone Records join FBi to bring jangly punk types like Palms, Bloods and Step-Panther, plus Caitlin Park and more to OAF. Saturday June 22 Rice Is Nice and Popfrenzy bring Richard In Your Mind, Day Ravies, Unity Floors, Spod and spiritual brother Donny Benet to OAF; and Saturday July 27 they finish things off with a big old rave up courtesy of Modular, with Movement, Softwar, Wordlife and Slow Blow. More at fbiradio.com

SIDESHOWS SOLD OUT

The Splendour in the Grass sideshows are selling almost as quickly as the festival itself, with Daughter’s slot (presented by Brag) in Melbourne sold out and the Sydney show upgraded to the Metro for more space, still Wednesday July 24. Jake Bugg’s Sydney show has also been upgraded to the Metro (Thursday July 25), while James Blake has had a second show added at the Opera House to meet demand (Monday July 29). Sadly, if you wanted to catch Californian babes Haim, their Sydney and Melbourne shows have both sold out, with no word on second shows as yet (although there will be a small release for the sold out shows for those signed up to the secret-sounds.com newsletter). Tickets to the rest on sale now.

LAURA MARLING

Renowned for her whimsical, intelligent take on indie folk and her six-syllable album titles, precociously talented 23-year-old Laura Marling is bringing her ““beautiful, heartfelt,

searching, sublime” (Q Magazine) new album Once I Was An Eagle to our shores in July for Splendour. But she’ll also be taking up the unusual-venue gambit, with a series of (all ages) sideshows in churches around the country, including St Stephen’s Uniting Church in Sydney on Tuesday July 23. Tickets on sale Tuesday May 28 at 9am, or get on the presales train by joining the Heavenly Sounds mailing list.

ROCK’N’ROLL MARKET

Tattoos, brylcreem and drinks with fruit and foliage in them – if these things sound good to you then put Sunday June 2 in your diary, for the Sydney Rock ‘n’ Roll & Alternative Market is back at Manning House in Sydney Uni. The Detonators, Big Blind Ray, The Drey Rollan Band and the Chickenstones will be playing live tunes for your two-tone spats, there’ll be a Tiki Bar and all sorts of collectibles, vinyl and vintage fashion, plus (probably) more cut-outs of Elvis than you can shake a hip at. Entry’s $5, doors from 10:30am.

GYPSY & THE CAT

Melbourne duo Gypsy & The Cat specialise in swoony, dreamy indie pop with Cure basslines and dancefloor tendencies that betray their DJing pasts. They’ve just put out spacious, reverb-drenched new single ‘It’s a Fine Line’, which sounds like a hit to us, so we’re presenting their June Australian tour; they hit Oxford Art Factory on Wednesday June 26.

Get your tickets now from Moshtix.

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rock music news

free stuff

welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Natalie Amat and Nick Jarvis.

five things WITH

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM The Bellrays

KENNY-SMITH OF THE MURLOCS metal bands and such but I think we’re all comfortable doing what we do now. I want to play a show one day with a clown as a support just doing party tricks, that would be the perfect balance.

The Music You Make The two releases we have 4. put out so far have been our first self-titled EP and our second EP, Teepee. The first one was recorded with Matt Walker in his eight-track shack in the Dandenong Hills and the second one was recorded at my nan’s old house Ivanhoe with Mikey Young. Since then we’ve mixed our other recent recordings in a studio as well as in our bedrooms. In bringing our set to a live audience we seem to keep a similar routine which seems to work out most of the time, all you can hope for is at least a few feet tapping the floor.

1.

Growing Up As a child I felt inclined to fold my ears in half; it was a bad habit that I still haven’t grown out of. Hence my elf-like Dumbo ears that hide behind my girly locks.

My parents were both very much into music; blues music became a constant bed-time tradition. It helped brainwash me into being a

narrow-minded old man inside a seven-year-old’s body.

2.

Inspirations Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter and any other dudes into blue, although when I heard Wu Tang’s album The W I lost my shit on ‘Gravel Pit’ and went through a hip hop

JAKE BUGG

Have you bought tickets for rhythm and blues wunderkind Jake Bugg’s Splendour sideshow?

Then you’ll need to know that, due to demand, it’s been moved to the Metro (still on Thursday July 25, though). And if you haven’t got tickets yet, be snappy about it! (Ticketek’s the spot.)

EARS HAVE EARS

FBi 94.5’s showcase for interesting, experimental and challenging music, Ears Have Ears, is stepping into the three-dimensional world with a series of live shows, kicking off on Thursday May 30. Catch Queensland’s primitive pop purveyors Sky Needle and locals Desert Luck and soundscaper Exotic Dog on level four of our favourite hidden venue Hibernian House (342 Elizabeth St, skirt the junkies and follow the grafitti up the stairs).

Future editions take over 107 Projects (June 8) and The Red Rattler (July 25), more at earshaveears.tumblr.com

PASSION PIT TOUR

If you can make New Yorkers haul ass to a venue, despite blizzards and shut down roads, you know you’re onto a good thing.

Passion Pit’s sell out NY show was just one of the recent highlights for this band who also recently killed it at Coachella, Lollapalooza and the Hollywood Bowl. They’re also playing

phase for a bit. Then I snapped back to reality and started playing harmonica and guitar again.

Your Band We’ve got more songs than 3. we did at the start, we’re pretty lazy and sloppy yet productive and tight at the same time. Some of the other members have played in

at Splendour, but if you missed out on tickets for that don’t worry –you can dance on down to Enmore Theatre on Saturday July 27 for what will undoubtedly be an explosive performance (blizzards and shut down roads almost definitely not included). These guys haven’t been in Aus since 2010 so make sure you get a ticket at bigdayout.com

TIGER(IN)TOWN

The dynamic, dream-pop five-piece Tigertown have just released a brand new single, ‘What You Came Here For’ and they’re going on a massive tour to take it to all of Australia. The single is the first taste of a delightful new EP, their third, following 2011’s self titled and 2012’s Before The Morning. Recorded in the Blue Mountains, the single has soaked up all the dreaminess of the place, not to mention a luxurious melody. To hear your old favourites and discover your new loves, head to the Vanguard on July 6. For more details visit www.tigertownband.com

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

Do it how you want to do it, don’t follow the wolf pack. There are a lot of meat eaters that will suck your blood for all you’re worth, so keep to yourself. Peace, brown rice and Rolf Harris.

Where: GoodGod Small Club When: Saturday June 1

30 SECONDS TO MARS

You’ve seen him getting an arm sliced off in Requiem for a Dream, you’ve seen him pork up to play John Lennon’s killer and slim down skeletally to play an HIV victim – now see Jared Leto take on rock stadiums when 30 Seconds to Mars play Australia in support of their new album Love Lust Faith + Dreams (out now). They land in Sydney to play the Entertainment Centre on Sunday August 11 (all ages and presented by Brag) – tickets on sale 9am Monday May 27, or get on the presales list at frontiertouring.com/ thirtysecondstomars

Regurgitator

Electro-synth darlings Clubfeet are taking Heirs & Graces on the road, with the Miami Vice surf guitar sounds of Panama in support. Catch them at the Oxford Art Factory on Saturday June 29 – tickets are $15, on sale from 9am Monday May 20 via Moshtix.

30 Seconds To Mars

HIGH HIGHS HOMECOMING

Their wistful indie-pop may be the perfect complement to the glimmering lights of Vivid and the sparkly epicness of Empire Of The Sun, but despite being tour mates of ultimate hipsters Vampire Weekend, High Highs have still managed to make time for their original fans. The Brooklyn-via-Sydney duo are coming home for the festival of light and ideas, but will also squeeze in a not-so-secret show at Oxford Art Factory, thanks to Secret Sounds.

So if dreamy soundscapes seem like your cup of tea/coffee/OJ, get ready to descend the hallowed OAF stairs on Wednesday June 5 to catch these dudes in action.

SLEEPMAKESWAVES

Sultry, self-deprecating and searingly confessional songwriter Martha Wainwright is bringing her latest Come Home To Mama to the Opera House’s Concert Hall on Thursday June 6. Tickets on sale now.

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It’s not often a garage rock band mentions Kelly Clarkson, but then again The BellRays are one of a kind. Don’t worry though, they aren’t sampling her – they just equate telling you to go to her website with sending you to a special kind of hell reserved for the musically unadventurous. If you like soulful singing and sass, then you won’t want to miss their upcoming show. The US group is hitting Sydney on June 14 at Manning Bar, so for a chance to win a double pass, just tell us whether bell-bottom jeans ring your bell or bum you out.

CLUBFEET

Martha Wainwright

MARTHA WAINWRIGHT

THE BELLRAYS

Is it written into post-rock legislation that if your band makes eight-minute ambient soundscapes with heavy guitars and/or blast beat drums, then your album and song titles must be at least 10 words long?

And so it is with local ambient post-rockers sleepmakeswaves (check out their epic ‘one day you will teach me to let go of my fears’ on YouTube), who are touring their ARIAnominated album of last year, and so we destroyed everything, along with a stack of new material all throughout June and July.

Catch them at The Annandale on Friday June 28 and again a month later on Friday

July 26 (playing alternate sets each night).

Tickets from annandalehotel.com

VICE 10TH B’DAY

I remember ten years ago when Vice Australia was but a young whippersnapper, tentatively putting its first issue out into a world of trucker hats and Erik Lavoies. A decade later, they’ve thrown some kick-arse birthday parties soaked in sponsor booze (like that one in 2006 with Spank Rock and Temper Trap), and their tenth birthday is shaping up very nicely, with a zeitgeisty lineup of Flatbush Zombies and local garage champs like Straight Arrows, Housewives and Raw Prawn (plus music selections from the Halfway Crooks guys, Astral DJs and others). It’s at Goodgod on Thursday May 30 – if you want to go you’ll have to win tickets from vice.com/viceis10

A DAY TO REMEMBER

Indeed it is, because the reigning lords of ‘pop mosh’ ADTR are coming back to Australia in July with Anna Wintour’s favourite metalcore band (NB: this is not remotely true) The Devil Wears Prada and post-hardcore Melbournians Dream On Dreamer. Limber up your neck for their all-ages Sydney show on Saturday July 13 at the Hordern Pavilion – tickets on sale Friday May 24 at 9am through Ticketek.

BY OVERWHELMING DEMAND, A 3RD AND FINAL SHOW!

MONDAY 17 JUNE THE STAR EVENT CENTRE ON SALE MONDAY 27 MAY

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Industrial Strength Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer

the week. * Sydney’s Heroes For Hire are doing a 10-date UK tour from May 21 to 30 with US band Allister, taking in cities like London, Leeds, Glasgow and Manchester. Alpine play a final show at Melbourne’s Hi-Fi Bar on May 30 before going to America to tour with Crystal Fighters behind the US issue of A Is For Alpine. * Nine Inch Nails bass player Eric Avery quit, saying he couldn’t commit to another 18 months on the road “with all the intensity that Nails demands.” In other departures, LA-based Aussie band London Cries (who changed their name from Juke Kartel because radio said it sounded like Jew Cartel) have lost drummer Jaybro. Last month drummer Steve Jocz quit Sum 41. * Joel Madden blew his cool while dining with wife Nicole and their two kids (no, it wasn’t KFC) when he spotted six photographers. He stormed out and reportedly threw infamous clicker Jamie Fawcett’s camera to the ground. * Too much information: wrinkly old Rod

THINGS WE HEAR * Creed were named worst band of the 1990s by readers of Rolling Stone US. The Top 10 list included Nickelback, Limp Bizkit, Hanson and Nirvana. * Nick Cave admits he struggles to find young singers to do choral duties at his concerts – because parents ban their kids from singing his lyrics. * This year’s Festival of the Sun in Port Macquarie in December has a twist. The first night falls on Friday 13 so they’re encouraging attendees to come dressed for a horror / Day of the Dead theme. * As I Lay Dying frontman Tim Lambesis’ attorney says that the singer was set up by a police informant in the case he faces of trying to get his wife killed. * You couldn’t blame the 4000 Daft Punk fans, who journeyed three hours to Wee Waa to become the first in the world to hear the new album, for being pissed off.

A day before, the album was streamed via iTunes and featured as triple j’s album of

WHO HATES YA BABY!

debut EP launch in Brisbane well in advance and are about to do more dates.

An American poll that surveyed voters for major American parties found that they were united on one thing – Justin Bieber is one of the least favoured artists of today. 54% of Americans hate him: “a majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents all reported negative views of the singer,” the study states. Chris Brown, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z and Rihanna weren’t too loved either. When asked which pop star they would prefer to see as the President, Justin Timberlake had the highest rating with 34%.

Following were Adele (19%), Beyoncé (14%), Jay-Z and Lady Gaga (9%), Bieber (8%), Chris Brown (5%) and Rihanna (2%).

MARK LACKEY SETS UP WILDFIRE AGENCY After 17 months at Jessica Ducrou & Evan Davis’ Village Sounds, Mark Lackey has left to set up his own Wildfire Agency. It represents 22 acts: Ash Grunwald; Blue King Brown; Shihad; Mia Dyson; The Drones; Salmonella Dub; Dialectrix; Gareth Liddiard; Caitlin Park; Clutch; Geoffrey O’Connor; High Tensions; Kill City Creeps; Krash; Mat McHugh; Melbourne Ska Orchestra; Money For Rope; Regular John; Sons Of Rico; The Beautiful Girls; The Black Seeds; and The Fearless Vampire Killers. Contact is mark@ wildfireagency.com.au and 02 9550 5760.

TWO MORE ADDITIONS TO SELECT MUSIC Select Music has added two hot new acts to its roster. Sydney singer-songwriter Patrick James sold out two consecutive nights in Sydney when he launched his EP All About To Change and is currently touring nationally with Emma Louise.

The second signing, Good Oak, sold out their

FAN OF THE WEEK An American Airlines flight from Los Angeles to New York was forced make an emergency landing in Kansas City – to remove a woman who kept serenading the other passengers with

Stewart reveals that using steroids to smooth his vocal chords has shrunk his willie. * Bernard Fanning’s Brisbane and Perth shows sold out in 15 minutes, and his Sydney, Melbourne and Gold Coast dates have sold out as well. * San Cisco told triple j that a thief broke into their tour van in Bristol, UK, got locked in, cut himself trying to get out, and left his mobile behind. * The NZ Herald reckons Neil Finn’s tweets during X Factor NZ last Monday were as entertaining as the show. He critiqued the host (“one word: wardrobe”), defended the band Steamroller who dissed the show after they got thrown off and wondered if judge Stan Walker wears a buttoned shirt “because he is embarrassed about the writing on his neck”. When drag queen Ashley Tonga asked for a foot massage after being evicted, Finn recalled, “Kanye once had a foot massage in my studio but the girl, bless her cotton socks, refused to do it under the table as he worked.”

Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’.

An in-flight Marshall cuffed her to her seat but she kept a-singin’.

MODULAR SIGNS MOVEMENT Modular Recordings’ latest addition to the roster is Sydney trio Movement. Describing their sound as “seductive nocturnal music”, they release their debut single ‘Feel Real’ on May 24. It is launched on June 12 at Goodgod.

FOUR ACTS MAKE TRAKS TO ARTIST VOICE Four acts from the Elefant Traks stable – Urthboy, Hermitude, Horrorshow and The Herd – have left New World Artists booking agency for Artist Voice. Urthboy told Industrial Strength it was a solely professional decision and that he has nothing but praise for NWA – “they’ve been awesome at developing the live activities of our artists … Owen Orford is a great, energetic booking agent and Julia Davis works as hard as anyone I’ve ever met.” Of the new move he added, “We see the hook-up with Artist Voice as a great opportunity and we’re very excited to work with them. They’re an innovative and energetic agency and we can’t wait to collaborate with them in the live environment.”

AIM LAUNCHES TILT FORUM E HIFI 1300 THO M.AU THEHIFI.C

This Week

SE LL IN G

FA ST

Just Announced

Pludo

HTC & Speaker TV Presents

Sat 29 Jun

Birds of Tokyo Thu 23 May

Coming Soon

BriBry (IRL)

The Red Paintings

Sun 9 Jun

Fri 14 Jun

Municipal Waste (USA)

HTC & Speaker TV Presents

Sun 16 Jun

Thu 20 Jun

Dappled Cities

Mono (JPN)

HTC & Speaker TV Presents

Thu 27 Jun

Hungry Kids of Hungary

Hardcore 2013 Feat.

Youth of Today (USA) + More

Sat 6 Jul

Sat 13 Jul 18+ | Sun 14 Jul All Ages

O UT

Haim (USA) Wed 24 Jul

Nejo Y Dalmata (PUR) Fri 26 Jul

Airbourne Sat 27 Jul

Fri 19 Jul ENTERTAINMENT QUARTER, BUILDING 220, 122 LANG RD, MOORE PARK, SYDNEY

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GOOGLE BEATS APPLE TO STREAMING SERVICE Google beat rival Apple to a new music streaming service, which it unveiled last week at its annual developers conference in San Francisco. It operates like existing streaming services but without a free option ($9.99 a month in the US), and also works as a discovery and mapping device for new music. Google’s Play Music All Access is also a threat to providers such as Spotify, which currently has 24 million global users and all smartphones. Record companies hailed its arrival, as it would allow more consumers to play millions of tracks.

TWO VACANCIES AT FUTURE CLASSIC

SO LD

Saint Vitus (USA) & Monarch! (FRA)

The Australian Institute of Music (AIM) has set up the TILT (Tomorrow’s Ideas Leading Today) forum series. It will look at the challenges and solutions to the music industry’s changes. Rob Cannon, AIM’s Head of Entertainment Management emphasises, “TILT is going to be an interactive discussion on where we are now as an industry, where we want to be in the future and how we get there.” The format is inspired by TED Talks and ABC TV’s Q&A. Hosted by TV’s James Mathison, entertainment pros will argue for a big idea they feel passionately about in a 20 minute talk. These are then offered up to the room for a think-tank style open forum.

Speed-dating workshops allow attendees to talk to biz folk. The first TILT is on Friday July 5 (10:30am - 5pm) at 1-55 Foveaux St, Surry Hills. See aim.edu.au. Speakers announced so far are Sounds Australia’s National Live Music Coordinator Ianto Ware, Rdio Australia CEO Colin Blake, Google Senior Agency Manager Rhys Thomas, Gizmodo editor Luke Hopewell and AIM Digital Marketing lecturer and head of Foxtel’s digital dept. for music, Danny Yau.

Sydney record label and artist management firm Future Classic (Flume, Flight Facilities, Jagwar Ma, etc.) has two vacancies at its Redfern offices. One is a Financial Controller to work 1-2 days per week. You must be a bookkeeper with experience in

Lifelines Expecting: US reports suggest that Beyoncé, who’s currently on a world tour, is showing a baby bump.

Ill: Jagwar Ma had to cancel some European festivals and reschedule other dates after Jono was ordered by doctors not to fly for six weeks.

Hospitalised: members of The Seekers say that singer Judith Durham is recovering after suffering a brain haemorrhage. Durham, 69, fell ill after a show in Melbourne, which kicked off their extensive national tour.

In Court: musician Jay Tyson appeared in Dubbo Local Court after being arrested for swearing and screaming outside an alleged drug dealer’s house after his cousin OD’d. Police say they gave him five chances to move on. They allege he abused them for 40 minutes after and grabbed officers during a scuffle. He faces court again later this month.

In Court: US rapper Gucci Mane denied he hit a soldier with a champagne bottle at a nightclub earlier this year after he asked for a photo together.

Arrested: Puddle of Mudd’s Wes Scantlin for assaulting his ex-wife.

Cited: Chris Brown by LA City for a mural of brightly-coloured, deformed monsters on the walls outside his Hollywood Hills home.

Neighborus complain it’s an eyesore and is scaring children.

Sued: Alice In Chains by mother of late singer Layne Staley who claims they cut her out of royalties from their hits. The band says Staley’s heirs are only entitled to royalties from songs he helped write.

Sued: Usher’s former nanny claims a six figure sum for not being paid overtime, as he made her work past her 40 hours per week.

Sued: Beyoncé’s dad Mathew Knowles for $1.2 million by the US tax office for unpaid taxes in the years 2010 and 2011.

Jailed: Allen West, former guitarist for death metal bands Six Feet Under and Obituary in Bushnell, Florida. Police discovered the makings of a methamphetamine lab at his home after he called them to say two men had broken into his house by kicking in the door.

Died: Eric Kitteringham, bassist with Rory Gallagher’s ground breaking Irish band Taste, aged 66.

Xero and generating budgets, and understand financial reporting and analysis. Apply at jobs@futureclassic.com.au by May 23 with “Financial Controller Position” in the subject header. There’s also a full-time three-month unpaid internship (the last intern now works for them full time) for someone with strong social media skills, an eye for design and an ear to the ground music-wise. Hit them up at jobs@ futureclassic.com.au by May 23 telling them what you are good at, what you’ve done and why you want the position.

PVT LAUNCH REMIX COMPETITION PVT has launched a competition to remix their ‘Homosapien’ track. To enter, head to beatport. com, download the stems and start mixing and mashing. The public vote is between June 12 and 25. The winner, announced on July 10, has their remix released by Beatport. They also get a $3500 prize including the remix serviced to media by Secret Service Public Relations, M50 headphones and Audio Technica Merch. More info: play.beatport.com/contest/pvt-homosapien.

FUNDRAISERS FOR FBI Between June 14 and July 27, Astral People, Future Classic, Broken Stone, Rice is Nice, Popfrenzy and Modular are curating a series of All Our Friends fundraisers for FBi. See its website for the full list of dates, venues and acts.

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SETHSENTRY A

couple of months back Seth Sentry was riding high. 2012 was easily the biggest year of the Melbourne rapper’s career – Channel [V] had crowned him Oz Artist of the Year, his album This Was Tomorrow had debuted at number six on the ARIA charts and was featured by triple j. Massive single ‘Dear Science’ was on high rotation at radio stations across the land and confirmed him as a national favourite by romping home at 26 in January’s annual Hottest 100.

According to Sentry, the accolades and acclaim were just in time. “To be honest man, it was about time for some shit to finally start happening,” he says plainly. “I’d had four years of doing sweet fuck all – well, I’d been working on the album a bit – but it was really about time.”

The four years he refers to came in between his 2008 debut release The Waiter Minute EP and his first album. The EP gave audiences an inkling of his ability via catchy tune ‘The Waitress Song’, but Sentry was keen to show people he was capable of a whole lot more.

“I think I had a lot of anger,” he says. “I spent ten years working in hospitality, and that kept me pretty angry. It also meant I got to play a lot of videogames. Like, a lot.”

There was not a trace of anger in the Melbournian’s tone in early March. The South

by South West (SXSW) showcase in Austin and Canadian Music Week were beckoning, and he was experiencing some understandable nerves.

“This is actually the first time I’ve ever left the country,” he says. “I’m going to America for the first time and I don’t really know what to expect.

I’m not too worried – if anything I’d say I’m in a pretty happy place right now. Part of that is the fact that I’ve finally been able to quit hospitality, which in case you can’t tell is the industry I hate.”

Sentry’s change in circumstances has been born from more than a decade of writing raps, while relentlessly grinding away in small rooms to tiny audiences. And he plans on continuing to keep his head down and work hard. “I don’t feel vindicated by my current success,” he says.

“That idea is kind of annoying, because I’ve never been interested in any of that shit. I’ve never done anything to get famous, and that’s pretty obvious if you look at the last few years.”

The rapper is surrounded by a posse of similarly talented performers and producers, all of whom he credits for maintaining his energy and focus. “Collaborating keeps it really…well, it keeps the whole thing as pure as it can be.

My passion for what I do has been kept alive because of the people I work and hang with.

I’m inspired by guys like Styles, Grey Ghost, Mantra and [DJ] B.Two, and that’s a constant thing that never changes.”

What kind of expectations was he placing on the upcoming international tour? “Ah man, I’m setting my expectations real low. I find if I set my standards really low then I can’t be disappointed. As long as we all have some fun, and make it back, it’ll all be good.”

Fast-forward two months and everything is different. Seth Sentry has gone from cruising along as a national favourite to exploding across the stratosphere of international fame. During SXSW he won the Doritos Bold Stage

“When New Y we were ridi o n predic rk on the su g around t b going what the nex way I could t listenino be, from gr t stop was o g to ea st coaswing up t ‘90s r ap.”

12 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

Riding (Hoverboard) High

By Benjamin Cooper

competition, which meant he earned the right to open for rap legend and entertainment mega-star LL Cool J. “That was fucking weird – to be honest, I think what played in our favour was the fact that nobody saw us coming. No one thought an Australian was going to get up there,” he says of the experience. “It was the very first show in America, and there I am standing on this 70 foot Doritos vending machine. Then there’s the fact that the whole thing is being live streamed around the world, and I got picked to go first.

You never want to go first.”

Adding to the pressure was the fact that Public Enemy and Doug E. Fresh had performed on the same strange stage just prior. Despite the apparent disadvantages of following hip hop royalty and going first, the Aussie triumphed in the challenge, defeating Texan rapper Snow Tha Product and Philadelphia’s Devin Miles.

In addition to winning the support slot with LL Cool J, Sentry also became the first Australian rapper to appear on an American late night show. His appearance on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live was less worrying than the Austin show.

“Doing Kimmel was surprisingly casual,” Sentry says. “We thought it would be a kind of weird TV vibe with a few people up in the bleachers, but there was about a hundred people packed in nice and tight. It was actually quite a lot like playing in a pub, and I’ve obviously had a fair bit of experience doing that.”

After Los Angeles the tour headed north to Toronto, before winding south to the Aussie BBQ Showcase in New York. Visiting the Big Apple allowed Sentry and his crew to unleash their unabashed inner tourists.

“We went up the top of the Empire State Building, and I had that Jay-Z and Alicia Keys song going in my head – I don’t feel too bad, though, ‘cause I know everyone else did too,” he says.

“When we were riding around the city on the subway I actually knew where we were going; I could predict what the next stop was going to be because I knew the different boroughs from growing up listening to east coast ‘90s rap.”

Since arriving back in Australia he hasn’t stopped. He got home, washed his clothes and headed back up the Hume Highway to Dubbo in central NSW to play triple j’s One Night Stand. 40,000 people welcomed him back to the country alongside Flume, The Rubens and Ball Park Music.

“The One Night Stand was more daunting than anything I did in America. I’ve never seen a crowd like that. I was a bit nervous so I swore a fair bit more than I would normally. It was definitely the biggest show I’ve ever played, but then there’s just so much going on to make something like that happen. There are these huge cranes going out over the crowd – I think they call them jib cameras – and the kids are going fucking nuts. It was intense, but it was fun too.”

The big stages continued with his performances on the recent Groovin The Moo tour. “This is the first festival I’ve ever been on where I felt like I actually belonged there, you know? Touring with guys like Tuka and Ellesquire, and we’re having a great time hanging out and talking shit.”

The upcoming Dear Science tour throughout May gives Sentry the chance to get up close and personal with his fans again. “The festivals are great, but I love coming back to the smaller rooms. That shit is daunting in its own way, but I’ve got confidence in my live show. I think we’re all gonna have some fun.”

Where: Metro Theatre (All Ages) When: Friday May 24 And: This Was Tomorrow out now on High Score Records/Inertia

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The Rubens Never Be The Same By Chris Martin

“The first time that we ever had people singing along at our gig was a freaky experience.

I couldn’t imagine getting used to that.”

“I’d heard things about producers who’ll just time, but I was like, ‘I have to play here’… The sit there on the couch and just say, ‘I don’t like fact that I am is just stupid. It feels weird, it feels that’ – be very vague, and that’s not what we like I’m not appreciating it as much as I should needed,” Margin says. “We needed someone who – like the old me back then would want to slap could really direct us. Our songs were already me and be like, ‘Wake up, this is amazing.’ But written – it wasn’t about the song writing, it was I guess it’s because of the natural progression about developing us into a live band, helping [of our career], we’ve slowly built up venue sizes and you get used to it, you get ambitious and you us consider our parts a little more. [David] just refined the record, you know? want to play the next venue.”

“When I’ve been talking to people in the industry and explaining to them how we made the record, a lot of people seem surprised by the fact that we locked ourselves away for a month with David; we spent a month [just] doing pre-production in the States. Just pulling apart the songs, learning them live, putting them back together, playing them, changing the tiniest little things – like whether the hats should be slightly more open on this one bar. I think that kind of consideration of every little aspect of the song is going to continue So while the Sydney dates might be a big deal for on through our career. I’d recommend that to anyone.”

The Rubens, the singer-guitarist is sure he can handle the pressure. “Even though the Enmore will be the biggest headline shows we’ve played, After spending the first part of the year gigging around the UK, Europe and the US – The I think I’m just going to enjoy it, I’m not going to Rubens have already turned heads overseas, let my nerves ruin it for me.” thanks in part to some well-received shows at South by Southwest in Texas – Margin is looking The Margin brothers’ musical project started in map it out, we’ve been an extremely lucky band am Margin forms his thoughts carefully forward to a return to local stages and familiar far humbler surrounds – Sam even met drummer to end up where we are now.” and with a vague air of bewilderment. It’s Baldwin as a classmate at the same Menangle high audiences. exactly how a rock singer should talk. After school where his parents both taught – but their all, that regular ritual of ours – gathering in large It was only two years ago that Margin and his break came through a fortuitous meeting between “It was healthy going [overseas] and being brothers Elliott and Zaac were sitting in their crowds on beer-soaked carpets to repeat an brought back down to earth,” says Margin of a friend, Dean Tuza, and the renowned New York bedrooms in rural Menangle, fiddling with some artist’s words back to them at mass volume – is winning over new crowds in smaller venues. “It producer David Kahne (Paul McCartney, New demos on a laptop. “Just like, little concepts,” he a peculiar habit, no matter how often we do it.

Order). says. “We actually wouldn’t even have brought And the Rubens’ frontman Margin understands puts you in your place and makes you realise this exactly – it’s not that long ago he was on the our drummer [Scott Baldwin] on board yet.” Fastthat you’re not that big, you’re just starting out …

Soon after, Sam Margin was on a plane to the other side of the barrier. If he sounds a little lost, forward to 2013 and a 21-date headline tour [but] it’s going to be really nice to play to people States; the rest of the band followed a month later who’ve heard the songs, heard the whole record.” around the country including two dates at the it’s because now he’s the bloke at centre stage.

Enmore Theatre in Sydney – The Rubens’ biggest for their first-ever stint in a proper recording studio, where they cut their self-titled debut album. Joining Where: The Enmore Theatre engagements yet.

“The first time that we ever had people singing them was Will Zeglis, an acquaintance who “just at our gig was after ‘Lay It Down’ got played [on When: Friday May 24 / Saturday May 25 wanted to hang out” and ended up playing bass “To be playing the Enmore... I remember seeing the radio]; that was just a freaky experience. I And: The Rubens 2CD Deluxe Edition out with the group (now, Zeglis is a full-time Ruben The Shins there and I was way up the back, and couldn’t imagine getting used to that,” says now through Ivy League himself, making them a five-piece).

Margin. “When you think about it like that and you I was like, ‘Man!’ I wasn’t even in a band at the Margin has witnessed first-hand exactly where ambition can take you. In March, The Rubens opened Bruce Springsteen’s shows at Hanging Rock in central Victoria. “The guy’s a freak,” Margin says. “He’s just absolutely loving what he’s doing still – you can tell.” Margin didn’t get the chance to meet The Boss, but even standing among a crowd of some 17,000 people, he reckons it doesn’t matter. “It’s such a personal show; it feels like you met him anyway.”

S

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…Trail Of Dead And You Will Know Us By The Trail of HTML By Edward Sharp-Paul

A

ustin’s long-running …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead have developed a cult following over the course of more than 15 years and eight albums. However, none of those albums have garnered quite as much love and critical adulation as 2002’s Source Tags & Codes.

Singer/guitarist/drummer Jason Reece doesn’t seem fussed, though; he’s understandably proud of the album, and has fond memories of its creation.

“It was the first time we had a recording budget, so we could do a lot of the stuff that we’d always wanted to experiment with, like using strings and recording in a nicer studio [Prairie Sun Studios, Northern California, a favourite of Tom Waits].”

Partying wasn’t really an option, either. “We lived on a chicken ranch for two months,” Reece explains. “The nearest town was a biker town, full of burned-out hippies and Hells Angels. By the end of it we were turning into Jack Nicholson in The Shining. It was a bonding experience.”

The conversation turns to Trail Of Dead’s famously intense live shows. “It’s in our

nature,” Reece says, “we don’t know any other way. It didn’t seem right to us to be this ‘musicianly’ band. We were more into the cathartic release that you get from playing live.”

Such commitment, however, is not without compromises. “We’ve been on tour for six weeks now, and I can definitely tell you, I feel its toll (laughs). Keeping it up is very intense, physically damaging – my body is covered

“Morrissey liked us. He called us ‘…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Rock Stars’.”

in bruises and cuts. When you’ve played a mediocre show, it’s the worst feeling,” Reece says. “I’d rather play all-out and wake up sore the next day.”

It’s a gruelling way of life, and it’s been largely responsible for the steady turnover in personnel through the years. By way of explanation Reece offers, “Have you ever seen that Russell Crowe movie Master and Commander? That’s what being in our band’s like. Conrad and I have always been tough enough to pull through.”

Still, it’s an exciting time for the band, and they’re looking forward to renewing their

The Dillinger Escape Plan Out the Cinema Fire Exit By Joshua Kloke

acquaintance with Australia. Reece has fond, albeit hazy, memories of their first visit in 2002 on the Livid Festival tour. “We were trashing hotel rooms, taking loads of drugs, acting like assholes – it was great!

We went on a boat cruise with Oasis; Dropkick Murphys kept picking fights with us.

Morrissey liked us, though, he called us ‘…

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Rock Stars’. That was pretty awesome.”

What: Performing Source Tags & Codes in full with guests Sincerely, Grizzly Where: The Metro When: Thursday May 23

Trail Of Dead photo by Emily Cheng

While the recording process was all about monastic isolation, the mixing stage was rather more social. “We mixed the record in Ocean Way Studios, Nashville,” Reece explains. “We were sharing a studio with a rapper, Juvenile from Cash Money. We’d meet up in this lounge area, with TVs and a pool table, and we’d all get really stoned, drink and talk about music.

This was when nu-metal was happening, though, so they’d listen to our shit, we’d listen to theirs, and they’d be all, ‘Let’s do a track together!’ I’d be saying, ‘Mmmm, hey, maybe not!’ – in the nicest possible way.”

“We just fi nished a show in Columbus, Ohio and someone came onstage, grabbed my balls and twisted them.” community we’re a part of, that’s a huge part of what we do.”

Though Weinman now considers The Dillinger Escape Plan to be a contributing part of a community of musicians, this wasn’t always the case. A six-song EP released in 1997 got the band’s foot in the door, but they weren’t getting much help.

“When we started it wasn’t easy, because we didn’t have any friends in bands or anything so it was difficult to get involved,” he says of the band’s early days. Regardless, they forged ahead with intense and often violent live shows. Eventually, the band signed to Relapse Records and released their debut, Calculating Infinity. It was a bold debut for a band that was largely unheard of outside their New Jersey stronghold, with many taking note of their complex song writing, as well as the way their recorded material reflected the intensity of the live shows.

They haven’t lost their progressive touch on One of Us is the Killer, an album wrought with deft nuances that manage to pop their head up at the most opportune times throughout the thrashing madness.

B

en Weinman is in a bit of pain. The founder and only remaining original member of hardcore outfit The Dillinger Escape Plan is walking back to his tour bus when he takes my call, sounding equal parts exhausted and confused.

Pain and anger are nothing new to Weinman who, as a member of Dillinger Escape Plan for

16 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

“We’re a heavy band, and it’s an outlet for our frustration,” says Weinman of the intensity of the band’s sound, most notably on their latest full-length One of Us Is the Killer, their first in over three years. “It can come off like anger management, but it’s cathartic. It’s something we don’t take for granted.”

If The Dillinger Escape Plan have always thought of themselves as a heavy band predestined to deal with the collective frustrations of the band members, then on One of Us Is

the Killer they’ve gone a step further by adding an often terrifying visual aspect to the eleven tracks. ‘When I Lost My Bet’, the first film clip from One of Us Is the Killer, is brought to life with a demonic, bloody video that many would imagine to be their version of hell.

Still, Weinman acknowledges that it hasn’t been easy for the band to get where they are today. Enduring frequent line-up changes has become old hat. Risking testicular injury onstage might be a new one, but they’ve become adept at dealing with setbacks.

Weinman appreciates the graphic nature of the video and how well it brings the band’s vision to life. “This day and age, anything that feels tangible is good,” he says. “We’re in a time when people need constant sensory overload. Nobody knows what to pay attention to. For us, it’s never been just music. There’s the music, the shows, the

“Sometimes it feels like you’re taking one step forward and two steps back,” he admits. “You can’t go over the past too much; we’ve had the same line-up for the last two records and we’re in a good place right now.”

What: One of Us Is the Killer out now on Party Smasher Inc./Remote Control

xxx photo by xxx

“We just finished a show in Columbus, Ohio and someone came onstage, grabbed my balls and twisted them,” says the 37-year-old guitarist. “Sometimes, your fans want to hurt you. I really don’t understand it.”

15 years, has often turned to the band as an outlet for grievances as well as creativity.

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Junip Second Time Lucky By Alasdair Duncan

J

unip formed in Gothenburg, Sweden in the late ‘90s. Its members were refugees from various hardcore bands, who wanted to explore a softer, more acoustic side to their music. Just as they were starting to take off, their singer, one José González, released a solo album – his tremendous success put the band on hold for the better part of a decade. The band released their debut, a gorgeous and otherworldly indie pop album called Fields, just three years ago.

Since then, they’ve had a lot of catching up to do.

González and his friends wasted no time creating the follow-up – their second, selftitled album, came out earlier this year. “It was a short time between albums, at least for us,” González says with a laugh. “We’ve been spending around four hours a day working on music. I wouldn’t compare it to someone who’s really working, but for us, it feels like we’ve been working hard, and the album came together much faster than normal!

It’s been great, to go right from touring to recording and producing.”

As an accompaniment to the album, Junip have released two complimentary music videos by Swedish director Mikel Cee Karlsson. A documentary maker who has also collaborated with the likes of Fever Ray, his works are distinctive to say the least. His videos for the tracks ‘Line Of Fire’ and ‘Your Life Your Call’ tell the story of a strange and possibly incestuous relationship, across the generations. “When we asked Mikel to make the videos, we knew we wanted them to have the same characters in both, with one acting as a sequel to the other,” González explains.

“I think he did a really good job of creating a really unsettling feeling. The videos really capture the monotony of some relationships.”

The dense quality of Junip’s arrangements – certain songs feature multiple acoustic guitars, as well as layers of synth, organ, percussion, and even the occasional flute or two – makes it difficult to perform the album exactly as written, but Junip find ways. “We’re six people on stage, so that makes it easier,” González says. “It takes a lot of preparing on our part.

We’ve decided to use samples, because we use so many different types of sounds on the record that it’s difficult to bring all those

Xxxxx photo by Xxxxx

Junip has a slightly heavier and weirder feel than Fields – inspired, in part, by all the time the band have spent on the road recently. “I remember when we were writing ‘So Clear’, it was right after a lot of the touring with the first album, and I think it came really naturally, after we saw how people were reacting to the older songs. When we’d play a song like ‘In Every Direction’ and saw how people really liked it, we decided to try and hone in on the things that made that song work. I feel like now, we’re also more comfortable playing our acoustic guitars a bit louder.”

instruments on tour – I mean, we can’t all be playing flute, as much as we’d like to!”

Around the end of 2011, González himself put out a call looking for a place to stay so he could write a new solo album. There has been no word of it since, so I ask him how the process is going. “I’ve been gathering song ideas ever since we started this new Junip album,” he says. “It’s been a while and I have a lot of ideas. As soon as we come back from touring, I’ll spend some time with that.

I’m slow, so I think maybe next year, I’ll have something.”

Where: Junip is out now through Shock

Smokescreen Music Festival Smoke and Mirrors By Benjamin Cooper

W

hen street posters started appearing in early March advertising a new music festival, it piqued interest and got people talking. What was Smokescreen Music Festival? Did the font used for the title mean there was about to be a new national touring festival that catered specifically towards the tastes of metal music lovers?

Shortly after the festival’s presence was visually announced on street corners, things began to heat up. Social networking sites, music blogs and online magazines all began speculating about the exact nature of Smokescreen. An online video interview between ex-Killing Heidi singer Ella Hooper and promoter Michael Mike Michaels revealed a little more on April 6. The festival was to be headlined by rapper M4-CEMA and glam rockers The Coughin’ Nails, but it was the support acts who made things a little more explicit. Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Clogged Arteries and Yellow Teeth were all billed to appear at the event; these ‘acts’ made the whole scenario a lot clearer to the discerning punter.

Carl Gardiner is the managing director of marketing at the Mushroom Group, Australia’s largest and most successful independent 18 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

music and entertainment group. He has previously worked at Triple M and MCM Networking, and was a driving creative force behind the Sound Relief concerts and the Respect Through Music Schools Project.

“Smokescreen is an idea I’ve had for a while,” Gardiner explains. “In some ways it probably started with my own habits. I’ve dabbled in smoking over the years, and even though I was never a heavy smoker, it has always been hard to stop. I started thinking about why I started smoking, and I honestly couldn’t find a logical reason for it. What I arrived at was a conclusion that it must have been out of aesthetic reasons – due to it being a fashion – I reckon.”

Gardiner and Mushroom Marketing have been working with the Australian National Preventive Health Agency (ANPHA), the federally funded body behind Smokescreen, for a number of years on a range of projects. “One of the main things we’ve been working on is a project called My Solution, which is about challenging the culture of binge drinking. That work is all very real and genuine, and because smoking is a very different area I thought it needed a different approach,” Gardiner says.

“I wanted to figure out where and how the music industry’s sensibilities could be appealed or played upon,” he continues. “That was the genesis for it, which led to us looking at the methods promoters use to sell out festivals and events. One of the most iconic images and tools is the street poster - there’s the brand name of festival, with all the acts lined up, so there are lots of things on there that can be employed.

“The other things that are important are combining different channels like digital and print publications, which have an obvious connection to audiences.”

The aesthetic of the festival was one of the most important considerations. “Using music industry iconography was a must,” Gardiner says. “Smoking’s an interesting one because it can be tricky to get to the right population, which is usually those people who have decided to quit. The ANPHA told us more than 15,000 people die from diseases linked to smoking each year. That is a seriously large amount of people, and that’s all preventative.”

Gardiner says he’s pleased with the resonance of the campaign. “I think Smokescreen has

let the people with the purse strings know the music industry can be really innovative, and that our marketing offers great value for money.”

Where: ‘Smokescreen Music Festival’ AntiSmoking Initiative More: facebook.com/ smokescreenmusicfestival

The Cat Empire Finding The Light By Alasdair Duncan

F

or singer Felix Riebl, it was necessary to leave The Cat Empire behind in order to realise just what was special about the band. Two years ago, Riebl went solo, and toured the country with a set of gentle, acoustic songs – music in marked contrast to The Cat Empire’s raucous, carnival-like output.

“The atmosphere throughout that tour was completely different,” he tells me. “The Cat Empire’s shows are colourful and loud, whereas my solo shows were very quiet and still. The dynamic on stage was something really new for me.” After exploring his quiet side for a while, Riebl realised the potential that still existed within The Cat Empire. “Now I’m playing with the band, I can enjoy it for what it is,” he tells me. “I know now that it’s possible for me to express that quieter side of myself if I want to, so now I can just have fun.”

Riebl knew it was time to regroup with The Cat Empire when he saw the crowd’s enthusiastic reaction during a brief European tour last year. “I remember looking at the crowd and seeing a really broad range of ages, from teenagers to much older people,” he says. “I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, because the teenagers would only have been two or three years old when we were starting out.”

Seeing younger people in the crowd filled Riebl with confidence that his band was still growing and reaching people. “From there, it was all about falling back into the enjoyment of playing with the band. I love The Cat Empire’s sense of movement and when I play with the band, I feel the joy of letting go. I had to realise what the spirit of The Cat Empire was, then I could go back.”

The Cat Empire’s upcoming album Steal The Light has a festival-like atmosphere, and a sense of reckless abandon.

“I wanted to create something that was really magical and colourful,” Riebl tells me. The city of New Orleans proved a big inspiration for the tone and colour of the songs. “I went there last year for a weekend for the Jazz & Heritage Festival and ended up staying for two or three months,” he says. “You can go out there any night of the week and hear incredible music, and there’s just something great about the colour of the city.”

“The Cat Empire was so much fun for me to be involved in when I was in my early 20s.

Now, I’ve rediscovered that joy – I think a lot of us have.”

The single ‘Brighter Than Gold’ draws directly on the mixture of jazz and old Caribbean music that Riebl heard while staying in New Orleans.

“The chorus of that song is so great,” Riebl says. “The chords are really rousing and stirring – it’s almost like a religious song.” The seed of inspiration for the song came from a secondline march. “I really wanted to bring ghosts to life,” Riebl says. “I wanted to bring colourful and exciting and dark and haunted things together in a joyous procession. You could call it dark if you want, but I don’t think it’s a very dark song – I think it’s an attempt to bring a carnival to life. It’s our own carnival, an imaginary one. It was fun to write – I wasn’t taking myself overly seriously with that one, just trying to set the tone of the album, and that sets the tone really well I think.”

The Cat Empire have been making music together for a long time now – Steal The Light is their sixth album since they formed in the late ‘90s – and I ask Riebl what the future holds. “I haven’t thought about it too much,” he says. “For me, The Cat Empire was always a band of my youth. It was just so much fun for me to be involved in this thing when I was in my early 20s, when it started to pick up. Now, I’ve rediscovered that joy – I think a lot of us have. We’re better musicians now, and we put on better shows. We’ve reached a point where we can play big festival shows now.

In terms of the future, I don’t know. As soon as it doesn’t feel natural anymore, as soon as it stops feeling fresh, we’ll stop.”

Many of The Cat Empire’s oldest and best-known songs – ‘Days Like These’, for instance – are about young men kicking back and having fun.

I ask Riebl what it’s like to perform these from his older and wiser point of view, and he laughs.

“Recently, I’ve looked through some of the lyrics for those old ones, and sometimes I like them, but sometimes I think ‘Christ, who was this person who wrote these?’” he says. “It’s necessary for bands to write new songs in order to bring the older ones to life. With this new album, we really carry a lot of that spirit, but the lyrics have a more serious tone, and that’s really enjoyable.

Xxx photo by JXxx Xxxx

“I can sing those ones with a few older ones in between, and for me, that makes it a lot better, because I can take them with more of a grain of salt. That makes them more enjoyable for me. I really don’t want to be living in the past.”

Where: The Enmore Theatre When: Friday September 20 and Saturday September 21 And: Steal The Light out now through Two Shoes/Inertia

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SYDNEY WRITERS’ FESTIVAL More SWF Highlights

Ruby Wax: Sane New World Wed May 22, Sydney Opera House Comedian, writer and mental health campaigner Ruby Wax is here to show us how our minds can jeopardise our very own sanity. To beat stress and anxiety we need to understand how our brains work, rewire our thinking and find calm in a frenetic world. It’s all about achieving a saner world. Let Wax guide you!

Festival Club Thu May 23, Pier 2/3 Club Stage Join the festivities with some of Sydney’s newest and established writers, musicians and creatives in a casual environment where pretty much anything goes. Thursday’s installment of the Festival Club, in collaboration with Eddie Sharp, features a lineup of Erotic Fan Fiction, The Chaser’s Empty Vessel and SWF Up Late.

A Tale Well Told By Shannon Connellan

“I

’ve got a first edition of The Waste Land, which I adore. I’ve got this old edition, published by Olympia Press by Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer… I love Under Milk Wood. I love Nancy Mitford. I love Couples by John Updike.”

Jemma Birrell is the most active bookworm you’ve ever met. She swooned over limited editions when working for a Parisian publishing house. She managed to entice Will Self and Alain de Botton to a writer’s festival next to Westminster Abbey. This year she’s writing Molly Ringwald, President Obama’s Chief Digital Strategist and The New Yorker into her next chapter as the Artistic Director for Sydney Writers’ Festival (SWF). And as you’d imagine, reading the program for this year’s festival takes a good couple of Earl Greys, so we thought we’d let Birrell herself take us through some of the must-sees.

G IV EA W AY S

After a lifetime of reading and discovering narratives, it’s no surprise that Birrell has picked storytelling as the central theme running along the spine of SWF this year. “When I was a little girl, from my parents telling me stories, from reading me books and making up stories, it’s always been part of my life,” she says. “In Sydney I worked at Ariel Bookshop, which I had a real love for and I also worked at Allen & Unwin publishing house, where I used to love reading the manuscripts.” SWF is the next chapter for Birrell, who trekked back to Australia after becoming the first Event Director at London’s Shakespeare and Co., also working

in the French publishing industry for seven years. With SWF suddenly in her palm, she shipped her books and her bicycle to Oz and hit the ground programming.

interesting and Eli’s project shows that. It shows where we can take technology in an interesting way, in terms of storytelling… it’s nice to be at the other end of the spectrum.”

With past guests including Jodi Picoult, Jonathan Franzen and Louis de Bernierès, SWF has a knack for brining all the best wordsmiths to the yard. From opening line to closing statement, this year’s speakers examine and celebrate the simple act of telling a tale, kicking off with world-renowned yarn-spinner Daniel Morden. One of Europe’s greatest live storytellers, Morden will open the festival with his address The Ghost At My Shoulder at Sydney Theatre, the perfect opening paragraph for SWF. “Storytelling is that central theme and he represents that in such a pure unadorned form. So he’s bringing all these classic traditional stories that he’s hunted around the world for 23 years, collecting them,” she says.

For the vast majority of us who don’t craft such innovative iTales but hungrily consume their kind, there’s one mighty reader who can recommend your next delicious page-turner/screen-swiper.

James Wood, the Chief Literary Critic for The New Yorker, will feature at several SWF events that focus on the powerful players of the publishing world: the critics. Wood is one of those must-sees at this year’s festival. “He’s utterly erudite and aware of every book you can imagine,” says Birrell.

“He’s kind of a writer’s writer, most writers I know are really excited that he’s coming. He was the person who coined ‘hysterical realism’, so Zadie Smith’s White Teeth for example.”

The antithesis to Morden’s love of the oral tradition lies in the age of solitary Kindles and tablets. Eli Horowitz, former Managing Editor and Publisher of McSweeney’s, has stuck it to the haters and embraced digital storytelling, releasing a serialised novel for iPad and iPhone called The Silent History. Horowitz will chat to his novel contributors on a highly-anticipated SWF panel and yes, Birrell admits he was brought on board as a direct contrast to Morden’s grassroots ethos. “Well, I love what Eli said: it’s about time the creatives took control of the technology. A platform is only interesting if the story itself is

One of the biggest talking points in the SWF lineup has had Sixteen Candles fans a Twitterin’, with ‘80s Brat Pack icon Molly Ringwald bringing those Breakfast Club moves to Sydney. The auburn-haired cult film star has released her debut novel of short stories When It Happens To You, proving she’s much more than a detention-bound princess.

“Isn’t she impressive?” asks Birrell.

“That’s something I really admire, when people aren’t stuck, they don’t feel bound to stay in the same form necessarily.”

Ringwald leads a huge focus on the laydeez; much of the SWF program this year celebrates the strength and

creativity of women by launching London’s Southbank Centre’s WOW – Women of the World – festival in Australia. This year’s SWF lineup focuses on the work of some of the world’s bravest, funniest, most downright awesome ladies. Not just a girl’s club, these events are fit for all chromosomes; featuring Cheryl Strayed (Dear Sugar), Ruby Wax, Naomi Wolf and even Australia’s favourite ball-buster Leigh Sales (ABC’s 7:30) who will be onstage to talk political storytelling with Obama’s Chief Digital Strategist Joe Rospars.

Birrell was inspired by the WOW Festival, forming a collaboration with Artistic Director Jude Kelly when Kelly was visiting Australia with the Duchess of Cornwall (as you do).

“I feel there was a hunger for it in Australia as well, you know, looking at what’s been happening in our world and the whole ‘Destroying The Joint’ thing and what Julia Gillard’s been doing and saying. In a festival in Sydney, in Australia, it’s an important thing to talk about, in terms of women’s issues.”

Focusing on many, many more authors, readers and budding storytellers, Birrell’s quest to celebrate the art of a tale well-told doesn’t stop with these few above names. While we’ve just touched on some snippets in store for SWF here, the full program is a stimulating page-turner of events solid enough to rival any writer’s block.

What: Sydney Writers’ Festival Where: Various venues When: May 20-26 More: swf.org.au for full program

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL! SCREENINGS! WIN! O pening night of Sydney Film Festival (June 5) is fast approaching and if you’re anything like us you’re getting goosebumps just thinking about it! We want you in on all the sweet action so our buds over at SFF headquarters are offering a bunch of tix to a selection of screenings. Double passes to Australian mystery Nerve (June 12, 9.45pm), Russian psychological drama Betrayal (June 10, 10.25am), Sarah Polley’s intimate family portrait Stories We Tell (June 16, 2pm), American snowboarding documentary The Crash Reel (June 16, 5pm), and music flick Death Metal Angola (June 10, 4.30pm) are up for grabs.

WIN!

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Why Criticism Matters Fri May 24, Pier 2/3 Main Stage Happy to dish it out, but can’t hack it when it comes your way? SWF is here to help. Why Criticism Matters brings together literary critic James Wood, Literary Editor of SMH Susan Wyndham and James Ley, Editor of Sydney Review of Books to discuss the role of today’s critic with Sophie Cunningham, Chair of the Literature Board at Australia Council for the Arts.

I’m A Feminist – Can I Vajazzle?

Sat May 25, Sydney Town Hall Slut-slamming, porn on demand and the C word – all but familiar in today’s contemporary society.

Founder of WOW Jude Kelly, Mamamia’s Mia Freedman, comedian and writer Ruby Wax, feminist, author and editor Dale Spender, and columnist Jamilia Rizvi battle it out about the line between choice and pressure. So what’s your view on vajazzling, lipstick and leg hair?

MCA Zine Fair Sun May 26, MCA Go on, get your zine on, you know you want to. The sixth annual MCA Zine Fair is happening and there’s going to be oodles of vintage numbers to browse. And you can even make your own with drop-in workshops for budding zinesters. swf.org.au for full program

The Crash Reel

Just email freestuff@thebrag.com with your name and tell us which screening you’d prefer. Easy done!

five minutes WITH

LILY KATAKOUZINOS OF LATE NIGHT LOUNGE

Tabu [FILM] A Haunted Lisbon Where Something Went Wrong By Gerard Elson

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s part of Vivid Ideas, The Powerhouse Museum will host their inaugural Late Night Lounge. Bringing together designers, architects, artists and digital fabricators, the event will see designs turned into reality via 3D printing technology. The catch? The designs will be printed in chocolate!

Late Night Lounge aims to explore cutting-edge digital technology, its role in the language of contemporary design and how it will shape our future world. We caught fi ve with program director Lily Katakouzinos ahead of the museum’s first installment, Eat The Collection.

What’s Late Night Lounge all about? Late Night Lounge is the Museum’s new regular evening event. It’s a chance to have some fun, hang out with your friends in a cool club-like environment with lots of opportunities to be entertained, be playful and to get creative. We like to think of it as a fun night out with a bit of solid content – where you can feed your brain and learn something new. Especially around science, engineering, design – all the kinds of processes, characters and aspects of human ingenuity that we find fascinating because that’s what the Powerhouse Museum is really all about.

What will visitors experience on the night?

The Late Night Lounge events will be hosted in our new café/restaurant, which opens up to the Museum’s forecourt on Harris Street.

For our inaugural event, which is part of Vivid Ideas, you will have a chance to meet our designers who will be explaining their design process and inspiration. You’ll also get to see the 3D printing process in action. In addition, there will be a

W

Eat The Collection communal games table for people to get creative and have a laugh with their friends. We’ve lined up a hilarious selection of retro games like Hungry Hippos, Pick-up-sticks, Trouble, Connect 4, Operation and a giant puzzle.

How did you choose participating artists?

We wanted to include designers from a broad range of design and creative disciplines – but we also needed to make sure they were familiar with creating CAD drawings or 3D models. So we’ve got industrial designer, Adam Goodrum; designer, Angela Woda, architectural designers from AR-MA, architect and co-founder of the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA) Chris Bosse, artists and designers Chris Fox and Damien Butler, a team from design practice Frost Design, KINK Studio and architectural practice Supermanoeuvre, interior designer and artist Vicki Berglinden and sculptor, ceramist and digital fabricator Roderick Bamford.

Tell us more about the 3D printer. 3D printing is a fabrication technology that is not only revolutionising design – but our world as we know it. Practitioners from all sorts of fields are experimenting with it to create all manner of objects. One design

firm in the Netherlands is experimenting with recreating an entire canal house. And recently I heard that it might be used in the future to recreate human organs. It’s really one of those technologies that will impact our everyday lives and the products, services and environments we live in.

What are your thoughts on the digitisation of design? 3D printing is simply another step in an already digitised design world. I know it wasn’t that long ago that a designer studio would have been a vast space with drawing boards, mock ups, models and all sorts of devices to articulate their design vision. Now you will see a designer at their computer the majority of the time.

This is why a project like this is so appealing. It’s a chance to be playful and creative. And for many of the designers, it was a chance to get down to the Museum’s basement and be inspired and motivated by the hundreds of thousands of incredible things stored in the Museum’s collection.

What: Late Night Lounge Where: Powerhouse Museum When: Thursday May 30 More: powerhousemuseum. com

ill 2013 see a film harder to sell than Miguel Gomes’ quietly brilliant Tabu? Shot in black and white in the same squarish 1:37:1 aspect ratio that in recent years has framed both Andrea Arnold’s revisionist Wuthering Heights and Kelly Reichardt’s laconic feminist western Meek’s Cutoff, Tabu is in summary a difficult film to endear to non-boffin contemporary viewers. Quite apart from the deceptively mundane surface elements of its story — essentially, three middle-agedto-elderly women in modern day Lisbon navigate recent retirement (Pilar, played by Teresa Madruga), impending senility (Aurora, played by Laura Soveral) and domestic servitude (Santa, Aurora’s Cape Verdean housemaid, played by Isabel Muñoz Cardoso) — is the unusual fashion in which Tabu’s retrograde design extends to its soundtrack.

While The Artist scored a popular hit in 2011 by aping silent movie tropes, at heart it shared more with the exuberant entertainments of Hollywood’s golden age, like Singin’ in the Rain. Not so Tabu. Gomes’ film (his third, following 2004’s The Face You Deserve and 2008’s beguilingly sui generis Our Beloved Month of August) is a swoony yet paradoxically unsentimental meditation on memory, nostalgia and colonial guilt, improbably pervaded by a winning absurdist streak. It’s a rich and immaculately conceived fin de siècle of sorts that parallels the abrupt end of the Eden of youth with a murky chapter in Portugal’s past, and in which the impulse its characters feel for fiction and romance actually influences the form of its hypnagogic latter part, a poetic recount of (young) Aurora’s (Ana Moreira) youth in Portuguese-colonised Mozambique.

As Gomes puts it himself, “White people just having fun, playing Out of Africa and looking completely unaware of any political issue.”

In this, the second of Tabu’s two distinct halves (the first is captioned ‘Paradise Lost’; the second simply ‘Paradise’, a cue borrowed from the film’s F.W. Murnau-directed namesake, 1931’s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas), dialogue is foregone in favour of an exquisitely literary voiceover track and an expressionistic sound mix devoid of all but a smattering of judiciously elected diegetic noises. For Gomes, this was an effort to recapture a time – both historical and personal – when cinema’s power to transport and

Carloto Cotta and Ana Moreira in Tabu

convince was near absolute. “Cinema has now had more than 100 years of existence,” says Gomes. “The innocence viewers had some years ago is lost nowadays. People have seen more and more so they have all this memory of other films. This innocence is something that I would like to pursue, to regain something of this kind of wonder of watching a film and being completely amazed by the things you see. Maybe there is a connection between childhood and cinema, because while watching a film or while you’re a child, you believe in things you cannot believe nowadays.”

Addressing Tabu’s split narrative format and central thematic contrasts (past/present, youth/senescence, fact/fiction, memory/ imagination, naïveté/guilt, etc.), Gomes says he aimed to depict present day Lisbon as a place haunted by the sensation that “something went wrong”.

“First, you are in a post time – post-colonial, post-youth – because [the ‘Paradise Lost’ segment] is about old age,” says Gomes.

“The characters in [this] part are quite normal, they are not characters that ‘come from the cinema’. And I think normal people have the desire for fiction. So in the second part, literally it’s like a film that comes to them, with characters that look like characters of cinema, with rock bands and melancholic crocodiles and taboo love stories – everything the first part does not have. You get to see 50 years earlier all these white people having the time of their lives but maybe going too far – killing each other and doing stupid stuff.

Like having a colony.”

What: Tabu When: In cinemas now More: palacefilms.com.au/tabu

Broken [FILM] When Everything’s Broken By Alasdair Duncan Skunk, in terms of her personality and her naïve optimism.”

Tim Roth and Eloise Laurence in Broken

Broken photo Nick Wall

Norris and the producers saw close to 850 girls around Britain before deciding on Eloise Laurence for the part of the plucky 11-yearold Skunk. “We didn’t give up until we found someone we were really happy with,” he says.

“As soon as I met with her and started reading with her, I felt an immediate affinity. She was coming at it very fresh, because she had never acted before. We knew we wanted her to have a trusting relationship with everyone in the cast, especially Tim Roth, who plays her father. Everyone who worked with her got with the program, on the understanding that if we didn’t get a good performance from her, we didn’t have a movie.”

B

roken, the debut feature film from British theatre director Rufus Norris, is a story of fear and paranoia in the suburbs.

The protagonist of the story is a strong-willed young girl named Skunk, and it was the depth of this character that drew Norris to the project.

“I think that for me and for most storytellers,

the way into any story has to be personal,” he says. “I have two young children, and while they’re either side of Skunk’s age, the same issues come up. I worry about protecting them enough, and loving them enough, and the ways we all manage to screw up our parenting.

I myself also associated very strongly with

Roth and Laurence make for a convincing onscreen father and daughter – a fact that may be down to the bonding they did before filming began. “At the start of rehearsals, Tim asked for a day when he could take Eloise and Bill Milner, who plays her brother, and have a family day out. They went to the zoo, they mucked about in London, Tim spoiled them and they all took the piss out of each other. They had a great laugh together,” he continues, “and they created a family unit. Tim really gave himself over to it. Tim is a father, so he understands. He’s very much a family man. That was a crucial aspect of the film, and the bonding they did makes it seem far more real.”

Before embarking on Broken, Norris spent years directing theatre, and many of the lessons he learned in his former career carried over. “Film and theatre are very different mediums,” he says, “but there are many ways in which they cross over.” Ultimately, he says, your job as a director is to tell a story in the way that you want, and extract the best performances that you can from your actors.

“In that sense, they’re the same,” he continues.

“The visual style and the rhythms are different, the tools are different, but I think the basic craft is very similar. It’s often been said that there is a closer correlation between theatre and film than between theatre and television.”

If you go and see a piece of theatre, you leave the house, you go and sit down in a dark room with no distractions and watch the story unfold – if you don’t like it, it’s difficult to leave, unless you want to leave at interval. Film is similar, Norris says. “As a filmmaker, you can work on atmosphere – you know you have 90 minutes or 120 minutes to tell your story,” he explains. “With television, it’s different, because the audience is watching at home, and are therefore much more easily distracted – someone comes in and talks to them, they go and make a cup of tea, so as a storyteller, you have to keep people from reaching for the remote. There’s a very different pressure on you.”

What: Broken is in cinemas now

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Semi-Permanent [DESIGN] Giving Up Bad Design For Good By Shannon Connellan

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ndrew Johnstone and Murray Bell just want to help. Ready to kick off their 11th year of the Semi-Permanent design conference in Sydney, the co-founders have been connecting creatives, inspiring artists and celebrating new work across the globe every year since 2003. All you have to do is bring a pen, note pad and a shitload of business cards.

After 11 years of the event, Johnstone is more confident than ever in Semi-Permanent, a tried and tested formula which keeps punters coming back year after year. The secret seems to lie in its unwavering philosophy. “The event is about inspiring and enabling creatives, that’s kind of what we wanted to do right at the start,” he says.

“Inspiration has been the centre of everything we do. It doesn’t matter whether we’re doing it in Sydney, other parts of Australia or worldwide, that’s always going to be the core of what we do.”

After years of events held across Australia’s major cities, in the last few years SemiPermanent has expanded its horizons above the equator. The team have established events in Los Angeles, Portland, New York, London, Wellington, Auckland, Hong Kong and this year they’ll kick off in Stockholm with the aid of previous Semi-Permanent speakers Kurppa Hosk, one of Sweden’s top design agencies.

The formula remains the same in each city, a period of exhibitions, launches, competitions,

parties and workshops centered around a massive conference.

While predictably attracting the involvement of some of design’s biggest companies and studios, Semi-Permanent is largely borne of their own love of DIY, with this year’s bill featuring a swag of self-made-success stories like Sydney collective The Hours, US surf brand Saturdays Surf NYC, fashion label P.A.M (Perks And Mini) and independent magazine Stab. With such a solid lineup of speakers, Johnstone firmly believes you can’t always predict a highlight for the event, affirming that the best moments at Semi-Permanent can be quite unexpected. “It’s always the headliners that are the ‘best’, so everyone thinks it’s going to be the big names that are going to be the better presentations,” he says. “But a lot of the time you find it’s that young person who’s doing really cool illustration work. They just put a lot of passion into it and it turns out to be a really great presentation.”

Johnstone, who admits a slight lean toward photography as a favourite creative form, is particularly looking forward to the snappers in the bunch, including two last-minute lifesavers. “One of our speakers had to cancel, a photographer called Finbarr O’Reilly, he snapped his Achilles tendon about a week or so ago playing basketball. Thankfully we got a replacement, a photographer called Francesco

Head On [PHOTOGRAPHY] Highlights Unpacked By Kate Britton

S

ome ten years ago, the Head On Portrait Prize had its inaugural showing, a relatively small event designed to give lesser-known photographers a look in to the competitive circuit via its unique blind judging process.

By 2008, this modest prize had become the Head On Foundation, a not-for-profit devoted to consciousness-raising through photography.

In 2010, the whole shebang bloomed into the Head On Photo Festival, the enormous month long fiesta of all things photographic. This year, it can pretty safely be called gargantuan.

Featuring work from some 900 photographers in 200 shows at 100 venues, Head On can be a bamboozling experience for the uninitiated.

We caught up with festival director Moshe Rosenzveig to help us wade through the program, which in his own words promises to “turn the city into a big gallery”. From the big names to the small, commercial galleries to public parks, the festival sets itself apart from other photographic prizes and shows, in which, Moshe warns, “you end up with the usual suspects”. Pointing you in the direction of some more unusual suspects, here are four venues he reckons are not to be missed.

The State Library of NSW Housing a solid five exhibitions in its hallowed halls, the SLNSW is set to become a hive of activity during Head On. Start your journey with the eponymous Portrait Prize, which remains the heart of the Festival, before venturing further afield. Check out a selection of big names from the world-famous Magnum photographers, including some of the most iconic images of our time – think Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and Liz Taylor. Moving a little closer to home, you could opt for Black on White, an Indigenous show, or Street, comprising some “really exciting” images of Sydney. Rounding out the offering is Benjamin Lowy’s exhibition of images shot on his mobile phone in Afghanistan.

Lowy’s show is one of several forays into mobile phone photography the festival is making this year, continuing to pursue its primary mission, which Moshe says is to “expand the idea of what photography is”.

Tyler Shields

What: Semi-Permanent When: May 24-25 Where: Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre More: semipermanent.com for full program

Switched On at ISEA2013 The 19th Symposium on Electronic Art hits Sydney next month with a program of exhibitions, performances and panel discussions to enlighten audiences on the practice, significance and influence of electronic media arts. We’ve taken a look at two outfits from Switched On, the Performance Space lineup that will present for the Symposium’s program come June.

T MCLEMOI Gallery New kid on the gallery block MCLEMOI Gallery is presenting Suspense, the first Australian solo exhibition of LA photographer and ex-“vert inline skater” Tyler Shields. The art world has long been split over Shields, who Moshe refers to as “a bit of a shit stirrer”. You may have seen his pictures of Lindsay Lohan brandishing a gun, or Barbie doing coke, or brightly lit models handling steaks. Most recently he has been shooting Hollywood starlets jumping off buildings. You get the picture. Whatever your opinion of Shields, his show is bound to stir up some commotion.

Ultimo TAFE Ultimo TAFE has “a massive collection of work on show”, Moshe says. Ten shows will populate the campus, from overseas photographers to local graduates, as well as workshops, talks and special events onsite throughout the festival. Workshops include Portfolio Review (May 20), Shooting Beauty and Portraits with Peter Collie (May 21), Mobile Phone Photography with Benjamin Lowy (May 21-22), Food Photography with Penelope Beveridge (May 23), and the muchanticipated Magnum Workshop (May 20-24).

Check out the website for a full listing.

Centennial Park

What: Head On Photo Festival When: Until June 23 Where: Various venues More: headon.com.au

Perth-based collective PVI will bring their notorious Deviator game to Darlinghurst, before Aphids creative director Willoh S. Weiland wraps the show with Forever Now – the final installment in her acclaimed Space Trilogy. There’s something ineffably human about these works. Both look at the futurenoir demise of our society. One wants us to survive it into another time, the other wants to save us from it.

The message brought to us by PVI is simple.

The clusterfuck of the 21st century is upon us and we’ve got 45 minutes to play our way out of oblivion. “Once you press ‘go’ you’re in the work,” says Steve Bull, one of three big names behind PVI. It’s an appbased game that responds to the city via QR codes. The team bump in with a swag of local artists and set up a subversive scavenger hunt that will ramble across the East Sydney twilight.

With Deviator, serious intel behind the scenes has gone into giving you a pure experience. And the real beauty is that it’s going to engage passers-by just as it will the people playing. Bull digs hi-tech, immersive and audio-driven. He is not one for passive, proscenium arch theatre experience. Bull explains that the type of deviations they have in store “are quite subtle, but they are radical for the participants”.

In what looks set to be one of the most ambitious curatorial undertakings we’ve seen in some time, Forever Now will revise NASA’s 1977 Voyager phonograph record.

The Western canonical audio book of our then world, sent like a bottle into the cosmic ocean, was as a message to extraterrestrial life. In essence, Weiland is looking at the space game, radio science in particular, as one of the biggest knowledge industries of our time and insists that artists have a free voice in its cultural expansion.

The project, which launches on June 15, will run off a website designed by Icelab artist programmers Nerinda Readers and Max Wheeler until January 2014 when Forever Now’s record will be sent into space as part of MONA FOMA. For the first six months, in an international open-call, artists are being asked to submit work in a one minute

Deviator audio visual format. A handpicked team of heavyweight curators will reside on the website, keeping the dialogue rolling.

Weiland wants artists to send a new record of us into space and is earnest about the statement of immortality. When pressed about the technology involved she says, “For me it has to be a serious attempt, mainly because it is possible. In terms of the science, it’s not inaccurate to have hope in that possibility.” Weiland is talking about the Drake equation and she’s talking to NASA, leaving none in doubt: “We will try our very best to get this object into space.”

“For anyone to answer the question ‘what would you say to infinity, or to space, or to the future?’ what happens is that you get quite stuck in the attempt to describe universality, to communicate something that represents everyone. Once people start to do that, the content gets more reductive and more and more boring. The challenge is really about simplicity and trying to communicate something little about human experience,” says Weiland.

From one circuit to another, Switched On is about abstract ideas given legs by scientific solutions – and it seems to hold a different kind of transformative potential to anything coming out of the plastic arts.

What: Deviator and Forever Now for ISEA2013 When: June 11-16 Where: National Art School; forevernow.me (from June 15) More: isea2013.org for full program

Deviator photo by Lucy Parakhina

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Not just a bill of big-name presentations, Semi-Permanent forms an opportunistic show and tell for new, young designers, artists and photographers. Like any industry, the design market is all about networking. “A lot of the time [in the creative industry] it comes down to who you know rather than what you know,” says Johnstone. “It can be a tough industry…

So Semi-Permanent’s a really good place to possibly get your work in front of some very important people who might be able to provide your career with a boost in some capacity.”

With the creative eyes of Sydney looking forward to the big week, the young’uns of the creative business are busy embossing those business cards. While the decision between a Futura and Helvetica header might prove more difficult than which costume to wear to Comic-Con, attending Semi-Permanent has never been more crucial for a budding creative with a need for inspiration and a firm foot to wedge.

[VISUAL ART] To Infinity And Beyond By Alex Sutcliffe

Who doesn’t love a bit of outdoor art? As part of a new emphasis on landscape photography (including the launch of a brand new award), Head On is getting back to nature, with an exhibition from the Mobile Photography Network (MPN). The MPN has invited photographers from all around the world to snap pics with their mobile phones on the theme ‘Backyard’. The best submissions will be on show at the Superintendent’s Residence in the park. There will also be work hung amongst the trees on the Dog Walk. “You can picnic at the park and enjoy art at the same time”, Moshe says.

Ben Lowy

Zizola and he’s a really, really talented documentary photographer who’ll be speaking with a post-production and photographer called Claudio Palmisano. They’re going to be really, really great.”

Ten creative minds. Ten designs. All printed in chocolate.

See the latest in 3D printing technology. Hear the inspiration behind the designs.

As we open our doors after dark, enjoy great music, food, drinks and delicious fun.

Thursday 30 May 6pm – 9pm Adult $15 Members $12 Online or at the door

Concession $12

Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo Book online at powerhousemuseum.com

BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13 :: 23

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

■ Film

Johnson’s acting is actually pretty great.

There, I said it.

SNITCH In cinemas now For all its marketing collateral, Snitch appears to be your token action flick; Rock-hard frontman, guns-a-blazing to the cries of Sons-In-Distress. But ignore that burning semi-trailer on the poster – this film, created by a former stuntman, offers a surprisingly well-made, well-acted and well-written look into the US federal sentencing system. And it stars Dwayne Johnson. Win.

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The People’s Eyebrow is nowhere to be seen in Snitch. Johnson is surprisingly held back as John Matthews, a construction company owner whose son is wrongfully penned for a serious drug trafficking charge. Matthews puts himself undercover to dob in some dangerous dealers and score a Get Out Of Jail Free card for sonny boy. It’s with particular vulnerability that Johnson joins the ranks of an elite onscreen club: The Avenging Dads of Hollywood, when devoted fathers become Lords of Oh-No-You-Didn’t: Liam Neeson in Taken, Mel Gibson in Ransom, Bruce Willis in Live Free and Die Hard (trying to but not forgetting A Good Day To Die Hard).

Hinged around Johnson’s most genuine performance yet, Snitch is the fifth directorial effort from Ric Roman Waugh, former stuntman for classic action staples Total Recall, True Romance and Days of Thunder. Waugh co-wrote the screenplay based on the 1999 Frontline documentary Snitch, which investigated the use of minor offender snitch informants in the war on drugs. For a film written and directed by a former stuntman, the stunt-quota in Snitch is tastefully held to a few focused, storyline-based sequences.

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Waugh successfully avoids another Fast and Furious cookie cutter with his screenplay, denying his genuinely talented actors (Susan Sarandon, Jon Bernthal) the chance to lay down the law in crowdpleasing soliloquies or lame one-liners.

The real “what-the” in the film is the random casting of Benjamin Bratt (Law and Order, Miss Congeniality) as super drug lord Juan Carlos ‘El Topo’ Pintera.

Strangely, he is lazily hidden behind terrible sunglasses, George Michael facial hair and a vague Hispanic accent.

Snitch is a better film than the trailers will lead you to believe. With a solid cast, good script and predictably well-executed stunts, it’s a subtly convincing reflection on the problems with US federal mandatory minimum sentences. And Dwayne

Shannon Connellan ■ Theatre

THE BULL, THE MOON AND THE CORONET OF STARS Until June 8 Van Badham’s latest The Bull, The Moon And The Coronet Of Stars starts with the actors strolling onto the set, engaging in a moment of light banter and launching into 75 minutes of intimate, comical and lyrical storytelling. The characters tell us their story in a fun, conversational tone that manages to drop in and out of poetry and chat almost flawlessly.

The play is a modern day appropriation of Theseus and the Minotaur, focusing on the character of Ariadne. In Badham’s script, Ariadne is Marion (Silvia Colloca), an artist in residence at a museum and Theseus is the handsome heartthrob Michael (Matt Zeremes) – the minotaur who represents the forbidden office romance. On the surface, The Bull has all the charm, wit and snappy dialogue of a romantic comedy, yet the interwoven mythology provides the symbolism and depth necessary to explore the heartbreak and loneliness at the centre of this labyrinth script.

Van Badham’s work is a mix of intelligent writing, inspired direction and beautiful performance. Colloca is an absolute joy to watch – not an easy ask for a protagonist who undergoes all the misplaced sincerity of lust and the painful earnestness of a broken heart. And Zeremes switches from Michael to sleazy lady’s man Mark with consummate ease.

Lee Lewis’s direction is marvelous; highlights including possibly the best sex/ minotaur slaying scene in theatre. There is also a moment where the Coronet of Stars from the title light up around the actors heads – a trick of such beauty I actually gasped in a light, manful way. This is all the more impressive when you realise this feat is accomplished using the disco balls that had featured in the previous scene, a septuagenarian bacchanal dance party.

The Bull, The Moon And The Coronet Of Stars is funny, thoughtful and intricate. It comes highly recommended.

Patrick Lenton

DVD Review Even good guys have issues...

SAMSARA

Out now on Blu-Ray, DVD and digital download

RAVEL

SINGLE LAUNCH

THE STANDARD

THURSDAY MAY 23 JENNYBROKETHEWINDOW.COM

24 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:12

JENNYBROKETHEWINDOW

Samsara contains no words, no actors, no narrative. Shot over the course of five years, visiting twenty five countries sitting on five continents, Baraka director Ron Fricke offers up a visually magnificent documentary to make Attenborough weep, washed down with a big fat dose of perspective.

A stunning, access-all-areas pass to our beautiful, freaky planet, Samsara was given loving treatment by shooting solely on 70mm film.

Every single shot is a feast or curse for the eyes, whether wandering through Arizona’s Antelope Canyon or staring a slaughterhouse factory line in the face. Omitting Attenborough-like voice over, Samsara leaves the audience to attach their own commentary to the images, assisted only by a hypnotizing score. It’s the first film Fricke has released since the similarly epic Baraka (1992) and Koyaanisqatsi (1982), which followed the same non-linear, narratorless format. Fricke subverts expectation of documentary style, cutting the fat and leaving only the raw meat of his subject matter exposed (sometimes literally).

In Samsara, Fricke employs his signature style to attach an old, sacred concept to the modern world. ‘Samsara’ is an ancient Sanskrit word used to describe a cyclical process of life, death and rebirth; humanity stuck in a vicious cycle of reincarnation.

Fricke presents his personal view of ‘samsara’ on a global scale, handpicked moments of new life and decay, splicing shots of newborn baptisms with the ravages of the New Orleans floods.

Among sprawling time lapses of unbelievable places you’ll absolutely never get to visit, Fricke puts both mind-blowing environments and the messed-up nature of human consumption under his 70mm microscope, occasionally pausing for brief moments of human connection. Lingering close ups bring us face to face with fellow humans we might not always encounter, unless you’re tight with the CPDRC Dancing Inmates of the Philippines’ Cebu Province or the Thai Ladyboys of Cascade Bar. Samsara gently nudges us to take a huge gulp of perspective and appreciate the fragility of our bro Planet Earth.

Shannon Connellan

See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews

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

Free Stuff email: freestuff@thebrag.com

JACK REACHER! WIN!

■ Film

Based on best-selling author Lee Child’s wildly popular series of novels, Jack Reacher is an action-packed thriller following the titular character’s investigation of a mysterious homicide case. Directed by Academy Award-winner Christopher McQuarrie, the fi lm sees Tom Cruise take on the lead role in a gripping, powerful performance.

Catherine Frot in Haute Cuisine

HAUTE CUISINE In cinemas now Have you ever sat through a dinner party with perfectly pleasant but perfectly dull guests? That’s like sitting through Haute Cuisine. It’s not offensive, but you secretly wish you’d drunk a bit more wine before you arrived.

Jack Reacher is out on DVD and Blu-Ray May 22 and to celebrate, we’ve got fi ve copies on DVD to give away. To win, simply email freestuff@thebrag. com and tell us which book in Child’s series of novels Jack Reacher is an adaptation of.

Haute Cuisine tells the story of Hortense Laborie (Catherine Frot), a Périgord local renowned for her exemplary yet simple French cooking. Unexpectedly appointed as the French President’s personal chef, the film profiles Hortense’s journey into the treacherous presidential kitchens.

Resented by the jealous staff, Hortense sets about winning over the President’s palate. And while there’s some heated power play between Hortense and the disagreeable macho chefs, the film’s temperature remains somewhat tepid throughout.

Based on the true story of Danièle Delpeuch, who cooked for President François Mitterrand, Haute Cuisine melds fact with fiction as it tells the story of one woman’s battle to survive within a closed male establishment. Indeed, Hortense’s alienation within the Élysée is palpable. Enhancing this is the Antarctic setting that is woven throughout the film, where Hortense works as a chef on a scientific base after her resignation from the Élysée. Despite the starkness of Antarctica compared to the lavish Élysée,

Arts Exposed it is within this climate that Hortense finds true warmth and acceptance.

The one element that really does bring this film flavour is the Élysée Palace setting. Renowned as one of the most beautiful houses in France, the Élysée has interiors so ornate they’d give any Vegas casino a run for its money, and the film certainly benefits from a few full days’ shooting inside the premises.

There’s also some food photography that’s sure to quicken the pulse of any dedicated foodie.

Haute Cuisine has all the ingredients required to make a spectacular cinematic experience: the romance of a Parisian setting, the highly sensual and evocative subject of food and the story of a lone woman’s triumph over adversity. Yet, somehow, what’s served up on the screen is somewhat bland. However it is totally inoffensive, so take your grandmother. She’ll have a ball.

Amelia Saw

What's in our diary...

ANONYMOUS SÉANCE AND THE DOMES OF SILENCE Until May 26/Sat–Sun 1-6pm ALASKA Projects, Level 2, Kings Cross Car Park The disused spaces on Level 2 of Kings Cross Car Park are providing refuge for Ron Adams and Kylie Banyard’s first ever collaboration, Anonymous Séance and the Domes of Silence. Both Adams and Banyard normally work alone and so the exhibition Ron Adams Anonymous Séance is privy to the rarely-seen fusion of their differing influences and techniques; Banyard’s multimedia approach to rekindling optimism and the minimalistic core of Adams’ art. Expect an interesting combination of results that mix optics, colour and text. For more details visit alaskaprojects.com

ROCKSTAR PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS

CELEBRATING THE RETURN OF THE BRITISH & IRISH LIONS!

THE LIONS TOUR WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

HUNGRY KIDS OF HUNGARY

SYDNEY

FRIDAY 5 JULY HORDERN PAVILION

Friday 11th October - The Factory Theatre

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Tickets from: www.metalmassacre.com.au

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BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:12 :: 25

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

ALBUM OF THE WEEK XXX DAFT PUNK Cosmogramma

for the perfectly crafted pop-funk of ‘Get Lucky’; and on ‘Giorgio By Moroder’ the famed producer behind Donna Summer’s proto-house hit ‘I Feel Love’ explains how he constructed his “sound of the future” over an immersive metronomic Moog backing track.

Random Access Memories Warp Columbia x

Xxxx It was never going to live up to its own inflated hype, but R.A.M is an intriguing beauty and a must for fans with any concern for the history of dance music.

Random Access Memories is Daft Punk’s megaexpensive recompense for their regrettable role in shaping the landscape of today’s predictable, formulaic EDM. They’ve tried to make amends by revisiting the sounds of their original influences and in this respect it’s a faithful and, for the most part, outstanding success.

As genial and wide-eyed guides, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo take us on a wondrous tour through disco. With its vocoder harmonies, opener ‘Give Life Back To Music’ is the hit Dayton wish they had scored in the early ‘80s; the inimitable guitar style of Nile Rodgers is the foundation

MOUNT KIMBIE

DEPECHE MODE

Cold Spring Fault Less Youth Inertia

Mount Kimbie's brilliant debut Crooks & Lovers helped define the 'post-dubstep' sound. While some American dubstep artists were competing for listeners’ attentions by seeing who could be the most aggressively irritating, artists like Mount Kimbie, Burial and James Blake were taking the music in much more intimate, melancholic directions.

Warm organic sounds brushed up against conventional dubstep elements like stick’n’kick beats, finely diced vocal samples and rumbling bass; it was tender music that bled out from the speakers as sweet and slow as molasses.

Their new album refines that signature sound while effortlessly incorporating some new and unexpected influences.

There’s a much more obvious post-rock influence, most notably on ‘Break Well’ in which a swelling build-up of ambient synth melodies suddenly morphs into a gorgeous burst of jangly guitar riffs and pounding drums.

Many songs on Cold Spring Fault Less Youth feature vocals. Kai Campos’s fragile voice adds another layer of yearning to tracks like the bittersweet R&B opener, ‘Home Recording’. And there are two collaborations with King Krule – a sullen kid who half sings/ half raps in a slurred drawl that makes him sound like a belligerent drunk.

His distinctive style’s not for everyone, but it suits Mount Kimbie’s foggy atmospherics.

If there is one complaint about this album it's that too many tracks are frustratingly short. Several good songs seem to end prematurely just as they’re on the cusp of turning into something great.

While fans of Mount Kimbie won’t be disappointed by Cold Spring Fault Less Youth, it never quite reaches the transcendent peaks of their debut.

Delta Machine is one beautifully bleak, absorbing release in line with Depeche Mode’s best work.

Nick Mason

Adam Black

David Wild

BEACHES

FRANK TURNER

This reviewer’s had myriad reasons to steer clear of Frank Turner. All of those involve various songs/records/ gigs of his being ruined by the memory of some terrible person or another. In the interest of adulthood, I am now choosing to black out those blotches on memory in order to recover a love once lost.

‘Recovery’ being the key word, and – incidentally – the opening track, one that couldn’t have come at a more pressing time (for those in the southern hemisphere at least).

Shit is turning cold and depressing.

Relationships are crumbling. Your housemate is dating your most recent soul-destroying crush and she gives zero fucks etc, etc. Welcome to the hell on earth that is winter.

But don’t get too down, Tape Deck Heart – Turner’s third offering since England Keep My Bones ushered him into the auditory clutter that is mainstream radio in 2011, and record number ten in total – is going to guide you through this difficult time. Anyone with a tape deck heart will appreciate the painfully positive pop gem ‘The Way I Tend To Be’, a throwback to Turner’s (very) early folk strummings, only to be tossed back into their tumultuous teens with angsty folk punk anthem ‘Plain Sailing Weather’.

The middle-bracket is somewhat underwhelming – just your standard selection of acoustic balladry and self-indulgent whinings, interjected with ‘Four Simple Words’, which sounds like a Million Dead song re-worked (badly).

Turner manages to redeem himself towards the end of Tape Deck Heart with the dark droning of ‘Broken Piano’, which provides an interesting production-heavy alternative to the trusty four-chord formula, if nothing else.

Jess Shulman

There’s little hiding the fact that Beaches are one of the best guitar groups in Australia. The Melbourne five-piece’s rare live appearances are torrid affairs that draw in the listener with meaty washes of guitar sound, and then splutter-spit them unforgivingly out the other side.

Their self-titled debut in 2008 was a powerful announcement of intent, and the first indication that Melbourne producer (and friend of the band) Jack Farley was a talent to watch. After half a decade of waiting – with 2010’s excellent In A While 7” tiding fans over – Farley is back for their second record, and the combination has again produced a solid collection of tunes.

There are lush pop tracks like ‘Send Them Away’ and ‘Runaway’ that offer the requisite refrains that dip into more traditional song structures. The latter’s chaotic battle of a bridge is particularly enamouring - guitar lines slide over one another until the combined and insistent title vocals bring it home.

There’s also experimentation aplenty.

‘Veda’ has an Eastern backbone that sways without ever feeling like more than the sum of its parts. Michael Rother (Harmonia, Neu) adds another guitar to the nascent ‘Distance’, a track that doesn’t really require vocals. The short instrumental break in the middle muddies the guitar lines and intent of the band, and when drummer Karla Way’s vocals fade back in it feels like the attempt to create space has been crushed. This is a solid record, and that judgement is only given because the standards they have set are so high. At times the combinations are near perfect, as on the Justin Fullerfeaturing ‘Weather’ where spectral and distant vocals bleed into Way’s cacophonous percussion.

There is the hint that something big is coming for Beaches, and that’s probably no accident.

Benjamin Cooper

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK GHOSTPOET

Some Say I So I Say Light PIAS Ghostpoet doesn’t seem to give two shits about comparisons and critical acclaim.

The Brit’s 2011 debut Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam had everyone touting him as the next Roots Manuva, and even picked up a nomination for that year’s Mercury Prize.

On his sophomore Obaro Ejimiwe has ditched mentor Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings for Play It Again Sam (Dead Can Dance, Zulu Winter);

26 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

he’s also eschewed self-producing to collaborate with Richard Formby (Wild Beasts, Archie Bronson Outfit). He’s forsaken the easy pop of early singles like ‘Liiines’ to go even darker and more downbeat.

The results are assured and impressive.

Even when the sounds recall touchstones like Burial and Massive Attack – such as on opener ‘Cold Win’ – the unexpected arrives via muted psychotic horns that shatter the preceding pop of the track.

The repeated phrasing resonates on ‘Them Waters’ and ‘Dorsal Morsel’, sounding particularly lush through good speakers that frame the insistent rhythms buffering the raps. Guest vocalists pepper the album, with the addition of Gwilym

EVE

She Beats Chapter

Tape Deck Heart Xtra Mile

Delta Machine Mute/Columbia

Delta Machine, Depeche Mode’s 13th album, marks the end of an era – the completion of Depeche Mode’s trilogy of LPs with producer Ben Hillier. Their working relationship has culminated in a potent finale; Delta Machine is an engrossing release.

Typically, Delta Machine is a long, winding record of gothic electronica, mutating from track to track in captivating fashion. Opener 'Welcome To My World' simmers and swells in theatrical fits, setting the tone for a hardened and faintly industrial hour.

The languid blues of 'Angel' comes next, a prickly fuzz underscoring Martin Gore’s nervy vocals. 'Heaven' – the album’s first single – expands on the same ideas, simmering with bittersweet resignation.

Depeche Mode are known and loved for their songs of overwrought introspection and Delta Machine, in many and varied ways, taps into established patterns. Gore continues to command arresting tension and fragility. Occasionally, a clunky lyric sneaks its way into the mix, but for every poetic misfire, there’s a poignant turn of phrase or two in waiting. Similarly, Dave Gahan proves his credentials yet again with the stirring 'Should Be Higher'.

Delta Machine illustrates a band in fine form, with a hint of defiance in their endeavours. Depeche Mode have been playing to the exact same set of strengths since the ‘80s and, clearly, there’s no real necessity to change tact.

The lynchpin of the album is the track most likely to divide opinion. ‘Touch’ is an audacious three-act epic of high-camp featuring an ode to pioneering drummer Earl Young’s signature hi-hat work, a children’s choir, Salsoul vibes and sophisticated strings and brass. It’s both ridiculous and incredible. But in true disco fashion, the very thing that makes the album so refreshing is also the root of its flaws. There are a couple of occasions when the process has apparently become more important than the outcome and the laid-back groove crosses the line into muzak.

Gold (Golden Silvers) on the latter track transforming it into a moody slow anthem for lovers.

Lip Lock From The Rib Music/ Sony

In the 11 years since Eve’s last album, a lot has changed in the hip hop world and the music industry. She was the ‘First Lady’ of the Ruff Ryders crew (DMX, Swizz Beatz, Jadakiss) and one of the first female rappers to have a charttopping album. And the thing is, Eve still has a lot of interesting things to say, and she’s waited a long time and gone through a lot of label bullshit to do it on her own. But Lip Lock, Eve’s first album in over a decade, feels a bit flat.

‘EVE’ (feat. Miss Kitty) starts things off fairly strongly and ‘Wanna Be’, featuring Missy Elliott and Nacho is the closest to classic Eve that the album gets. ‘Grind or Die’ has a catchy Major Lazer-type beat but feels too short at two minutes.

‘Mama In The Kitchen’ which features Snoop in his Lion guise, is problematic in its title message – beyond that, the verses don’t gel in content or context. Single ‘Make It Out This Town’ features one of the guys from Cobra Starship and seems to be chasing the “success” of cross-genre collaborations between chart-successful dance and hip hop/ pop artists with a rap verse tossed in for good measure (see Ludacris feat.

Usher and David Guetta).

Eve has said this album was the first one she’d been able to work on herself, compared to the collaborative approach with Ruff Ryders. Unfortunately, it seems those collaborations pushed Eve to unleash some of her toughest verses while still creating fun, danceable hits; something which Lip Lock is largely lacking.

Lip Lock doesn’t feature much of the street smarts or sass Eve made her name with. The album feels scattered which makes for a disappointing comeback after more than a decade.

Natalie Amat

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

British artist Lucy Rose contributes vocals on ‘Dial Tones’, bemoaning romance’s “constant calamities, and overcooked stubborn ways.” She doesn’t exist to counter Ghostpoet’s protagonist, as both are defined by their uselessness and inability to move on.

EMANON - The Waiting Room CAVEMAN - Caveman OUTKAST - Stankonia

These are not the sounds of an artist seeking anyone’s approval. Ghostpoet knows exactly how to dwell in a darkness flecked with light - everyone else needs to catch up.

J DILLA - Dillanthology 3 SUPER WILD HORSES - Crosswords

Benjamin Cooper

snap sn ap

kingswood

PICS :: HL

up all night out all week . . .

frightened rabbit

PICS :: KL

08:05:13 :: The Beach Road Hotel :: 71 Beach Rd Bondi Beach 91307247

PICS :: KC

09:05:13 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9332 3711

valar single launch

city riots

PICS :: KC

09:05:13 :: Brighton Up Bar :: Level 1/77 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9572 6322

10:05:13 :: Brighton Up Bar :: Level 1/77 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9572 6322 D HONCHO) :: KATRINA CLARKE

S : TIM LEVY (HEA OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY MAR :: HENRY LEUNG :: KATE LEWIS

::

BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13 :: 27

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

PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY MAR

love songs aside, the highlight here was Sasquatch’s incredible, flawless rock voice.

TENACIOUS D, SASQUATCH, DAMIEN POWER

conics + bin juice

11:05:13 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711

julian marley

10:05:13 :: The Metro :: 624 George St Sydney 9550 3666

SUPER WILD HORSES, DAY RAVIES, FAMILY Goodgod Small Club Friday May 10

PICS :: KC

The intimate size of the backroom at Goodgod gives gigs a delightful loungeroom feel, with the bands setting up onstage only a few feet away, plugging in their equipment and testing sound levels.

It keeps things nice and relaxed, as Amy Franz and Hayley McKee sidle into a slightly scrappy hour-long set, plowing through most of their excellent new album Crosswords and a selection of older material.

blind valley

You can hear the influence of producer Mikey Young (Eddy Current Suppression Ring) in Crosswords – lots of simple ECSR-style driving, chugging, headnodding guitar lines to accompany Super Wild Horses' ear for a catchy three-minute garage pop tune with ‘60s girl group harmonies.

10:05:13 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100

And for a pair that professes to have been “barely able to play instruments” when they first caught the buzz wave, their instrument multi-tasking could put any one-personband to shame.

PICS :: KC

They’re both seriously kick-arse drummers and solid guitarists, but witness McKee punishing the drum kit while playing the bassline on a keyboard with one hand and simultaneously singing back-up vocals and tell me you don’t feel a little lazy and

bec & ben

10:05:13 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William St 9331 9900 D HONCHO) :: KATRINA CLARKE

S : TIM LEVY (HEA OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY MAR :: HENRY LEUNG :: KATE LEWIS

28 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

PICS :: AM

the griswolds

PICS :: HL

“What are we DOING here?!” asked an incredulous Jack Black, cementing the nervous, band-shirted sentiment from earlier It was a confused atmosphere before in the evening. The almighty Tenacious D Saturday’s gig. Punters in their least-ripped had exploded on stage to the loudest, most band shirts appeared nervous. A half-naked drunken roar ever heard under the iconic guy wearing devil horns and painted head-tosails, and upbeat second song ‘Low Hangin’ toe in red stared quizzically at an extensive Fruit’ had left them sweaty and breathless. wine list. The long tresses of interspersed “This is the Sydney Opera House. Bands like metalheads (some in suit jackets) were 01:05:13 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 OxfordusSt, Darlinghurst 9332 don’t play here! Oh, that’s3711 right – THERE unusually well-brushed. A puzzling picture ARE NO FUCKING BANDS LIKE US.” indeed, until you consider that the headline act was Tenacious D, playing at the Sydney It’s true, there aren’t. As JB and partner Opera House. in crime Kyle Gass launched into a highenergy set comprised of tracks from new The spectrum of genre and medium album Rize of the Fenix as well as plenty covered by the evening’s choice of acts was of classics including ‘Double Team’, ‘Cosmic vast, but couldn’t have been more perfect.

Shame’, ‘Kickapoo’ (with Kyle as Meat Comedian Damien Power took to the stage Loaf and Sasquatch as Dio), and the odd first, unleashing a barrage of stich-inducing Led Zeppelin track (‘Rock and Roll’) or political, social and philosophical anecdotes.

Beatles medley (‘You Never Give Me Your With award nominations for ‘Best Comedy’ Money’/’The End’); as Kyle traditionally quit and ‘Best Newcomer’ up his sleeve, Damien’s the band and re-emerged to join Black in a bio claims that he is known simply as ‘The touching rendition of ‘Dude (I Totally Miss Destroyer’ among comedy circles, after one You)’; and as a nearly sold-out crowd joined audience member laughed so hard during a together in a loud and off-key sing-along show that “she literally died.” I don’t know if of final encore ‘Fuck Her Gently’, punters that was quite the case at the Sydney Opera simultaneously laughed until their sides House, but he certainly had the Loudest hurt and marvelled at the skill of these Dude Ever behind me shrieking with glee. unbelievable songwriters.

I imagine it’s fairly easy to win over a crowd Multiple standing ovations (only one of rock dudes when you sprint onstage, prompted) were surely well-deserved dressed in a bigfoot suit, shredding out throughout this stellar evening of ‘Eruption’ on a wireless electric guitar – entertainment. The D may be getting on a bit as Sasquatch did with ease. One-man in age, but their energy, rock spirit and stage band Sasquatch functioned perfectly as show is unfaltering. a main support, hyping up the crowd with classic rock covers and brilliant original Sheridan Morley material. Without question, and yeti-themed

PICS :: HL

Sydney Opera House Saturday May 11

:: PHOTOGRAPHER :: ASHLEY MAR

incompetent.

‘Alligator’ and ‘Memphis’ are highlights, prompting extra enthusiastic head nodding from the circle of mesmerised, staring dudes with hands in pockets ringing the stage, and all too quickly it’s over, with no time for an encore because we have to clear out for the club night.

If this really was a lounge-room gig, right now we’d be demanding they exhaust their repertoire and play covers until the sun comes up, but as it is we just have to sidle out nursing little crushes.

Nick Jarvis

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

GASLIGHT ANTHEM, DAVE HAUSE The Enmore Theatre Sunday May 12 It had only been a month since I last saw The Gaslight Anthem live. In the blazing mid-afternoon sun in the middle of the California desert at the Coachella music festival, the four piece from New Jersey (well, when touring guitarist Ian Perkins is in the mix) seemed merely an interlude to the groups of spoilt kids that sat (yes, sat!) in the middle of the dance floor while the band played, checking their phones while waiting for the fucking Lumineers. And while I still enjoyed the band’s set, it was clear that the band members themselves were a little underwhelmed by the reception.

So the opportunity to see The Gaslight Anthem play a sold-out show at the Enmore Theatre was a thing not to be missed.

Support came by way of singer-songwriter Dave Hause. Having taken time out from fronting Philly punkers The Loved Ones to hit the road with The Gaslight Anthem, his heartfelt, blue-collar style was a great compliment to the headliners. He cut a solitary figure on stage, armed only with a couple of guitars. He gave an uncomplicated, earnest performance to an already jampacked main floor and the crowd were full of appreciation when he ended.

BOB EVANS, TIGERTOWN, DAVEY LANE Oxford Art Factory Friday May 10 You Am I guitarist Davey Lane opens the bill in solo mode tonight; his melancholic six-string rock a nice prelude to his later appearance as part of Kevin Mitchell’s stage band. In the meantime, it’s Tigertown – and what a discovery these guys are.

They’re like Fleetwood Mac raised on a diet of atmospheric synths and rolling African rhythms. Later, Mitchell calls them, “The bestlooking band in Australia … When I get on stage it gets older and uglier.”

Older and uglier it may be, but the Bob Evans show has come a long way since Mitchell’s first appearances under that moniker and outside Jebediah. He’s a thin, scruffy mess – he guzzles wine from a screwtop bottle and strums an acoustic guitar with Christmas lights gaffer taped around the frame for decoration. There’s even an old setlist scrawled on the back in marker pen.

Yet in spite of appearances, Mitchell’s abilities as a songwriter are incredibly well-rounded. The set opens with a

When The Gaslight Anthem took to the stage (to an INXS song, no less), the decibel level redlined. With little fanfare they ran through openers ‘Handwritten’ and ‘Howl’ before igniting the crowd with the anthemic ‘The ‘59 Sound’ from 2008. As this Australian tour was still on the back of their 2012 album Handwritten, the band managed to play the majority of the album throughout the night. The lead single from that record ‘45’ got the sing-along levels skyward along with well-trodden favourites ‘Great Expectations’ and a beautiful extended rendition of ‘Biloxi Parish’. And it wouldn’t be a Gaslight show without a cover song. At this show, it was Bon Iver that got the treatment with the band doing a version of ‘Blood Bank’.

The last chords of ‘Keepsake’ gave way to an obligatory encore which included a song from the vaults, ‘1930’ and the heart-wrenching lament of ‘Here’s Looking At You, Kid’ before finishing with the standard closer for the band, ‘The Backseat’. The overwhelming feeling in the theatre was happiness. There were screaming competitions, Whitney Houston sing-alongs and even quips about getting punched in the balls by native Australian fauna; a show where the band enjoyed it as much as the fans.

Rick Warner

pixie dreamland version of ‘Footscray Park’ before Mitchell and his four-piece band launch into the upbeat guitar pop that always underpinned Jebediah’s success but perhaps was never given the space to breathe. ‘Hand Me Downs’ gets a welcome airing, and though ‘Don’t Wanna Grow Up Anymore’ is a touch rushed, it remains a winner.

At this point, the band leaves Mitchell to his own devices. He takes the chance to offer tribute to Chrissy Amphlett via ‘I Touch Myself’, then strolls around the room for an unplugged and un-microphoned rendition of ‘Darlin’ Won’t You Come?’ After calling back his accompanists, Mitchell proves on ‘Don’t You Think It’s Time?’ that country can still be cool – it’s the biggest sing-along of the night.

The main set ends with ‘Pasha Bulker (Where Did I Go Wrong?)’ and a long, Pink Floydian vamp; Mitchell is down on the floor again with his acoustic guitar and some hair-ruffling devotees.

Encores include both the full band lineup and the singer on his own – Lily Allen’s ‘Not Fair’ is interrupted by various fits of the giggles, and ‘Wonderful You’ closes proceedings with an invitation from Mitchell to meet him after the show so he can thank everyone individually for coming. Aw. What a guy.

Chris Martin

THU 23 MAY FRI 24 MAY GANG OF YOUTHS / ROCKETS THE PREATURES DJ’S

TSARS HATTIE CARROLL CALLITHUMP KING COLOUR

SAT 25 MAY SUN 26 MAY CUMBIAMUFFIN RADIO MALEMBE

W ATheL K MOON SUPPORT: SWIMWEAR

THU 30 MAY FRI 31 MAY KAIBE SERVICE BELLS SONS OF ALAMO & MORE...

SANS NORMALITY / BLONDE BAND ROBOSEXUAL

Coming Up 1st 7th 8th

IN JUNE JORDEN LESSER / SWRLS TOTALLY UNICORN VS ROBOTOSAURUS LE1F + BROOKE CANDY + HOUSE OF LADOSHA

OPEN TIL 3AM RKE PHOTOGRAPHER :: KATRINA CLA

BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13 :: 29

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

pick of the week

ACOUSTIC & FOLK COUNTRY Musos Club Jam Night Bald Faced Stag Hotel, Leichhardt free 8pm

Bobby Womack

SATURDAY MAY 25

THURSDAY MAY 23 ROCK & POP

Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall)

Bobby Womack $59-89 9pm MONDAY MAY 20 ROCK & POP

Frankie’s World Famous House Band Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney free 9pm Liverpool Idol Wunderground, J Flat Sqared, J-Two + more Collingwood Hotel, Liverpool $15 7pm

Darlinghurst sold out 7pm Chris Read Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm Ziggy Pop Tuesdays The Lockhearts, Fox Company, The Bitter Sweethearts + DJs Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $5

JAZZ

Old School Funk and Groove Night Venue 505, Surry Hills free 8.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK Helmut Uhlmann, Chris Brookes, Massimo Presti Kellys on King Newtown free 7pm

TUESDAY MAY 21 ROCK & POP

5 Seconds of Summer Oxford Art Factory, 30 :: BRAG :: 513 : 20:05:13

WEDNESDAY MAY 22 ROCK & POP

Gay Paris Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle Heart.beats.mind Café Lounge, Surry Hills Hot Mosh Magazine Launch Party Doc Holliday Takes the Shotgun + Bachelor Pad + Bustlip

FBi Social, Kings Cross $10 8pm Kaki King Clarendon Guest House, Katoomba 9pm Matt Price Band, Lepers & Crooks, Jess Dunbar, UACSC The Annandale Hotel, Annandale $5 8pm Musos Club Jam Night Bald Faced Stag Hotel, Leichhardt Free 8pm Muzeek Presents Nitebug + Special Guests Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $5 Regurgitator, Alison Wonderland, Sun City Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm Replika Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket Free 10pm Zoltan Revesby Workers Club – Infinity Lounge Free 8:30pm

JAZZ

A Tribute to Nina Simone Lauren Lucille and Band Venue 505, Surry Hills $12-15 doors 6:30pm

Alex Hopkins Open Mic Night Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Beach Bar 7:30pm Andy Mammers Harbord Beach Hotel, Freshwater 8pm Anthems of Oz Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9:30pm Balmain Blitz; Lavinia Row, Sean Frazer, Sixplane and more Bridge Hotel, Rozelle $15 7pm Benjalu Armidale Club, Armidale $10 Birds of Tokyo, All the Colours, Asta The Hi-Fi, Moore Park. $60 7pm Bonjah Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $20 (+bf) 8pm The Brow Horn Orchestra The Vanguard, Newtown $15.80 8pm Cambo Observer Hotel, The Rocks 8:30pm Damien Leith Friends Restaurant, Sydney $135 (inc. 3 course dinner) Dan Spillane Dee Why Hotel, Dee Why 7pm Danielle Todd Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany 6pm Dave White Duo Maloneys Hotel, Sydney 9:30pm Gay Paris Moonshine Bar – The Steyne, Manly free 9pm Jay Birds Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket free 10pm Jenny Broke the Window, Gang of Youths, Rockets, The Preatures DJs The Standard, Surry Hills, $10 8pm Kaki King Heritage Hotel, Bulli Matt Jones Open Mic Night Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill 7pm Melody Pool Lizotte’s Restaurant, Kincumber $15 6pm Michael McGlynn Open Mic Night Kirribilli Hotel, Kirribilli 7pm Musos Club Jam Night Carousel Hotel, Rooty Hill free 8pm Phil Simmons Campbelltown Catholic Club – Caf, Samba free 6pm Redlight Ruby O’Malleys Hotel, Kings Cross 9:30pm Robosexual, Another Broken String, Office Jerk, Unbranded Animals The Annandale Hotel, Annandale $10 8pm The Shooters Party + The Darkened Seas + New Brutalists + Benny Bones Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $10 Str8 From Da Hood: Jay Two, Mix Masta Myme, Korza, Howlin Funk, Rayzed Hoods, J Peri, Pity Lane, Cloud 8 Valve Bar and Venue 7pm

FRIDAY MAY 24 ROCK & POP

Adam Gorecki Harbord Beach Hotel, Harbord 8pm Alex Hopkins

Wenty Leagues Club, Wentworthville Annabel Kay Milanos Restaurant, Lansvale Hotel & Resort NSW Andy Mammers Duo Town Hall Hotel, Balmain 9:30pm Australian Played Bull & Bush, Baulkham Hills 10pm Ben Finn Time and Tide Hotel, Dee Why 7:30pm Black Diamond Hearts Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest 10pm Bobby Womack Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall) $59-89 9pm Brendan Deehan O’Malleys Hotel, Kings Cross 8pm Cambo Observer Hotel, The Rocks 6:30pm David Agius Kings Cross Hotel, Kings Cross 7pm The Drain Baby’s + Dirty Dezire + The Chrome Pigs + Dirty Dan and the Barrettones Valve Bar and Venue, 7pm Elevate Springwood Sports Club, Springwood free 8:30pm Fallon Bros Observer Hotel, The Rocks 10:30pm Flamin’ Beauties Crown Hotel, Sydney free 8pm Flux Rock Lily – The Star, Sydney 10:30pm Gay Paris Fitzroy Hotel, Windsor free 8:30pm Gary Johns Novotel – Brewery Bar, Olympic Park 4:30pm Geoff Rana Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale 9pm Guess Who Duo Coogee Bay Hotel – Beach Bar, Coogee free 11pm Greg Agar Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest 6:30pm Greg Byrne Duo Kings Cross Hotel, Kings Cross 12am Harlequin Trio Mean Fiddler Hotel, Rouse Hill 8:30pm Heath Burdell Bavarian Bier Café, Parramatta 7:30pm Hello Cleveland Quakers Inn, Quakers Hill free 8pm The Hollow Bones Gallery Bar @ OAF, Darlinghurst free 8pm James Fox Higgins Trio Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Beach Bar 9pm Joe Echo Dee Why Hotel, Dee Why 7pm John Vella Collingwood Hotel, Liverpool Free 4:30pm Jon English & The Foster Brothers Twin Town Services Club, Tweed Heads $45 8:30pm Kaki King Lizottes, Dee Why Klay Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Sports Bar 9pm Kraftwerk – Autobahn (1974) Sydney Opera House sold out 7pm Kraftwerk – Radio-Activity (1975)

LEARN HOW TO

Sydney Opera House sold out 9:30pm Kurt Williams Figtree Hotel, free 8pm Luke Dixon The Ranch Hotel, Marsfield 5:30pm Luke Robinson Parramatta RSL, Parramatta 5pm Mandi Jarry Cyren Restaurant, Darling Harbour 6pm Matt Jones Duo Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill 8pm Matt Price + Jess Bunbar Duo Kirribilli Hotel, Kirribilli Marty Simpson Customs House Bar, Circular Quay free 7pm Messrs + Goldsmith + Andy Brown Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills Free Modern Daze Engadine Tavern, free 9:30pm The Music Makers Club The Money Go Round, Missing Children, Broken Royale, Vangate, Magic Bones, Em George Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Natalie Carboni Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale 5:30pm Nicky Kurta Stacks Taverna, Darlinghurst 5pm Owen Campbell Romano’s Hotel, Wagga free 9:30pm Pat O’Grady Chatswood RSL, free 5:30pm Peter McWhirter Huskisson Hotel, Huskisson free 8pm Replika The Winston, Winston Hills free 9:30pm Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks 8:30pm Tales in Space + Enola Fall + Louis London Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $10 The Sleep Walkers Club The Doll Rocker Movement + The Nugs + The Fontaynes + Royal Headache DJs + Ben Fester + Sleep Walkers DJs FBi Social, Kings Cross $12 8pm The Soul Edition Mike Champion, Thandiwe, Righteous Voodoo The Vanguard, Newtown $23.80 8pm The Sphinxes Vineyard Hotel, free 9:30pm Strangers, Born Lion, Sinking Teeth The Annandale Hotel, Annandale $15 8pm DJ Tom Annetts Campbelltown Catholic Club – Club Lounge, Campbelltown free 9:15pm The Tsars, Hattie Carroll, Callithump, King Colour The Standard, Surry Hills $10 (+bf) 8pm Uncovered Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket free 10pm Zoltan Cronulla RSL, Cronulla

JAZZ

Jazz Nouveau – Five Piece Revesby Workers Club – Infinity Lounge, Revesby free 8:30pm Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie Well Co. Café/Wine Bar, Glebe free 7:15pm

SING

Are you interested in learning how to sing?

Becoming the next winner on the Voice? or just singing for the pure love of it?

Well its now your time to shine. How do I do this you may ask?

Just pick up the phone and book your first lesson today...

I am Hayley Milano, I have been performing and teaching professionally for over 10 years, I have toured Australia and have a lot of contacts in the industry from people, gigs and inside the studio. I enjoy nothing more then to share my love and passion for singing with others. I have two studios - City and Vaucluse. Im looking for dedicated, hard working students who are committed to reaching there goals. I have students ranging from 8 - 65 year old students. It is very important to have a connection with my student so i can unlock the performer within. Hayley 0422 963 373

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

SATURDAY MAY 25 ROCK & POP

3 Way Split Moorebank Sports Club, Moorebank free 9:30pm Agent 69 Penrith RSL Club - Castle Lounge, Penrith free 9pm Alex Hopkins Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany A Man Called Stu, The Morrisons, The Rusty Spring Syncopators The Vanguard, Newtown $18.80 8pm Andy Mammers Castle Hill RSL – Terrace Bar, Castle Hill 9pm The Angels Illawarra Performing Arts Centre – IMB Theatre, Wollongong $60 8pm Angie Dean Castle Hill RSL – Piano Lounge, Castle Hill 6:30pm Back to the 80s Bayview Tavern, Gladesville free 10pm Ben Finn Duo Mean Fiddler Hotel – Fiddler Bar, Rouse Hill 9pm Ben Gunn Duo Pittwater RSL, free 7pm Big Rich Club Engadine, Engadine free 8pm Black Mamba, Lost Without Life, Fool Wit Valve Bar and Venue, 12pm Bobby Womack Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall) $59-89 9pm Bounce Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket free 10:30pm Brad Johns

Observer Hotel, The Rocks 5:40pm Bruce Mathiskie Zenith Theatre, Chatswood $48/$42/$30/$25 7:30pm Burning Blue Sky, Bones Atlas, Art Thieves Valve Bar and Venue 7pm Choirboys Lizotte’s Restaurant, Newcastle $45 Christie Lamb Band Campbelltown Catholic Club – Club Lounge, Campbelltown free 9:30pm The Conics, Jordan F Gallery Bar at Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm The Daft Punk Tribute Show Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Rave Doss, Tash Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm Danielle Todd Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Beach Bar 5:30pm David Agius Harbord Beach Hotel, Harbord 8pm Dee Minor & The Dischords The Annandale Hotel, Annandale $15 7pm Evermore, Adam Martin, New Empire Rooty Hill RSL Club – Tivoli Showroom, Rooty Hill $25 8pm Gemma Observer Hotel, The Rocks 4pm Gerard Masters Trio Penrith RSL Club – Castle Lounge, Penrith Free 2pm Good Oak + The Mountains + Nat Dunn Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $10 Greg Agar Kirribilli Hotel, Kirribilli 8pm Greg Byrne

Dee Why Hotel, Dee Why 7pm Heath Burdell Trio Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Sports Bar 9pm High Rollers Big Band Revesby Workers Club – Infinity Lounge, Revesby 8:30pm Hue Williams Overlander Hotel, Cambridge Gardens free 7:30pm Isaac Graham Band, Ivan Drago, Revellers, Nerdlinger The Square, Haymarket $12 8pm Jconnexion Carousel Inn, free 8pm Joe Echo PJ Gallaghers Ent. Quarter – Moore Park 7:30pm John Vella Duo Engadine Tavern, free 9:30pm Kaki King Lizottes, Kincumber Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express (1977) Sydney Opera House sold out 7pm Kraftwerk – The Man Machine (1978) Sydney Opera House sold out 9:30pm Mandi Jarry Panthers – Terrace Bar, Penrith 5:30pm DJ Markie Mark Mounties, Mt Pritchard – Terrace Bar, Mt Pritchard free 8pm Matt Jones Duo Brewhouse, Marayong 8pm Moduluxxx Showcase Gig Russell Hasewell, Four Door w/ Pia van Gelder, Nokes & Cook, Alex White The Red Rattler, Marrickville $15 8pm Nathan Cole

Abbotts Hotel, Redfern free 7:30pm Pop Fiction Castle Hill RSL – Cocktail Lounge, Castle Hill 10:30pm Seabellies + Bears with Guns + Clulow Forester FBi Social, Kings Cross $10 8pm The Shrooms Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest 10pm Soundproofed Hornsby Inn – Hunter St. Bar, Hornsby Free 8pm Stormcellar Warragamba Workers & Sporting Club,– Warragamba free 8pm The Sphinxes Riverwood Inn, free 8pm Ted Nash Picton Hotel, free 8pm Venus Mean Fiddler Hotel – Courtyard, Rouse Hill 6pm Watussi, Cumbiamuffin, Radio Malembe The Standard, Surry Hills $10-$15 (+ bf) 8pm The Zeppelin Show Bull & Bush, Baulkham Hills 9:30pm

JAZZ

Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie, Tony Burkys, Richard Booth Blacktown City Festival, Blacktown free 10am Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie Well Co. Café/Wine Bar, Leichhardt free 7:15pm

ACOUSTIC AND FOLK Mundy The Factory Theatre, Marrickville 8pm

SUNDAY MAY 26 ROCK & POP

Ace Campbelltown Catholic Club – Club Lounge free 6pm Andy Mammers Unwined Bar, Lane Cove 4pm Cambo Observer Hotel, The Rocks 8pm Chris Atkinson Campbelltown Catholic Club – Caf, Samba, Campbelltown free 1pm Dave Phillips O’Malleys Hotel, Kings Cross 5pm Dave Graney The Vanguard, Newtown $23.80 7pm David Agius Kemps Creek Bowling Club, Kemps Creek 3pm Evermore, Adam Martin, Silver Cities Hornsby RSL Club – The Showroom, Hornsby $25 7pm The Greg and Murray Show Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Sports Bar 6pm Greg Byrne Camden Valley Inn, Camden 1pm Heath Burdell Mill Hill Hotel, Bondi Junction 3pm Helpful Kitchen Gods, Redundant Technology, The Green Pool, Broken Heart Band Gladstone Hotel, Chippendale free 5pm Heritage Orchestra (UK) Music From Blade Runner

Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall) $59-$89 9pm Joe Echo Horse and Jockey Hotel, Homebush 3:30pm Kaki King Lizottes, Newcastle Kate Miller-Heidke Starcourt Theatre, Lismore $47 7pm Kraftwerk – Computer World (1981) Sydney Opera House sold out 7pm Kraftwerk – Techno Pop (1986) Sydney Opera House sold out 9:30pm Mandi Jarry Manly Skiff Club, Manly 3pm Mark Travers Ettamogah Hotel, Rouse Hill 1pm Marty Simpson Northies, Cronulla Hotel – Beach Bar 4pm Matt Jones Harbord Beach Hotel, Harbord 6pm Matt Price Mean Fiddler Hotel, Rouse Hill 12pm Nicky Kurta Duo Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel, Woolloomooloo 4pm Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks Sarah Paton Observer Hotel, The Rocks 4pm Stormcellar Botany View Hotel, Newtown free 6pm Vintage 4 Penrith RSL Club – Castle Lounge, Penrith free 2pm Walk The Moon, Swimwear The Standard, Surry Hills $35 (+ bf) 7:30pm Zoltan Revesby Workers, Revesby 1pm

tue

21 May wed

(9:00PM - 12:00AM) (9:00PM - 12:00AM)

thu

23

22

May

May

(9:30PM - 12:30AM)

fri

24 May (4:30PM - 7:30PM)

(9:30PM - 1:30AM)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

sat

25 May

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

SATURDAY NIGHT

(9:30PM - 12:30AM)

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

sun

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

May

SUNDAY NIGHT

26

(8:30PM - 12:00AM)

BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13 :: 31

gig picks

up all night out all week...

THURSDAY MAY 23 Birds of Tokyo, All the Colours, Asta The Hi-Fi, Moore Park. $60 7pm Bonjah Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $20 (+bf) 8pm The Brow Horn Orchestra The Vanguard, Newtown $15.80 8pm Gay Paris Moonshine Bar – The Steyne, Manly Free 9pm Doc Holliday Takes The Shotgun

TUESDAY MAY 21 Ziggy Pop Tuesdays The Lockhearts, Fox Company, The Bitter Sweethearts + DJs Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $5

Regurgitator, Alison Wonderland, Sun City Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach Free 8pm

Messrs + Goldsmith + Andy Brown Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills Free

A Tribute to Nina Simone Lauren Lucille and Band Venue 505, Surry Hills $12-15 doors 6:30pm

The Music Makers Club: The Money Go Round, Missing Children, Broken Royale, Vangate, Magic Bones, Em George Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm

Hot Mosh Magazine Launch Party: Doc Holliday Takes the Shotgun + Bachelor Pad + Bustlip FBi Social, Kings Cross $10 8pm

32 :: BRAG :: 513 : 20:05:13

The Shooters Party + The Darkened Seas + New Brutalists + Benny Bones Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $10

FRIDAY MAY 24

WEDNESDAY MAY 22

Matt Price Band, Lepers & Crooks, Jess Dunbar, UACSC The Annandale Hotel, Annandale $5 8pm

Jenny Broke the Window, Gang of Youths, Rockets, The Preatures DJs The Standard, Surry Hills, $10 8pm

Tales in Space + Enola Fall + Louis London Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $10 Regurgitator

The Sleep Walkers Club: The Doll Rocker Movement + The Nugs +

The Fontaynes + Royal Headache DJs + Ben Fester + Sleep Walkers DJs FBi Social, Kings Cross $12 8pm Strangers, Born Lion, Sinking Teeth The Annandale Hotel, Annandale $15 8pm The Tsars, Hattie Carroll, Callithump, King Colour The Standard, Surry Hills $10 (+bf) 8pm

SATURDAY MAY 25 Dee Minor & The Dischords The Annandale Hotel, Annandale $15 7pm Good Oak + The Mountains + Nat Dunn Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $10 Kraftwerk – Trans Europe Express (1977) Sydney Opera House sold out 7pm Moduluxxx Showcase Gig Russell Hasewell, Four Door w/ Kraftwerk

Pia van Gelder, Nokes & Cook, Alex White The Red Rattler, Marrickville $15 8pm Seabellies + Bears with Guns + Clulow Forester FBi Social, Kings Cross $10 8pm Watussi, Cumbiamuffin, Radio Malembe The Standard, Surry Hills $10-$15 (+ bf) 8pm

SUNDAY MAY 26 Evermore, Adam Martin, Silver Cities Hornsby RSL Club – The Showroom, Hornsby $25 7pm Heritage Orchestra (UK) – Music From Blade Runner Sydney Opera House (Concert Hall) $59-$89 9pm Walk The Moon, Swimwear The Standard, Surry Hills $35 (+ bf) 7:30pm

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

brag beats

inside

jimmy edgar

earl sweatshirt also + club g : + club s uide na + weekl ps y column

BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13 :: 33

brag beats

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

dance music news club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery

five things WITH TYLER OF

Growing Up Michael and I grew up in 1. the same neighbourhood so our group of friends would show each other a lot of music. In that way we came up on a lot of the same stuff. That’s probably helped us musically working together because we understand where each other is coming from most of the time. Also, coincidentally, I think our parents listened to a lot of the same music. Luckily, they had good taste, stuff like Talking Heads, David Bowie, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel and so on.

Inspirations We’re really into producers 2. like Quincy Jones and musicians like Brothers Johnson and a bunch of the funk dudes from around that time – really great musicianship on those records.

We’re also really into bands like Radiohead that started incorporating futuristic electronic

sounds into music before a lot of other people were into it. I remember buying Kid A the day it came out. I ditched school with a friend of mine because I literally couldn’t wait to hear it. I listened to it as soon as I could get it into a CD player and that was when I knew I wanted to make music for the rest of my life.

Your Crew We started making 3. electronic music together about eight years ago. Back then we didn’t know anything about DJing but we’d go out to some of our favourite producers’ shows and see that that’s how they’d perform, so we figured we’d better do the same. We started trying to DJ around town in L.A. and Hollywood but nobody had ever heard of us so no one would book us, so we just started throwing our own

Lapalux

CLASSIXX

parties in this basement I was living in on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park. People started coming and soon people wanted to DJ there and people would hit us up. That’s how we met our friends Cosmic Kids. After a while we started getting some gigs around town and we started meeting a lot of the people doing similar stuff to us like Poolside, Jerome LOL, all those guys. It’s a good crew now. There are so many people making dance music here in L.A. now and everyone mostly knows each other and is super nice.

The Music You Make I think now that a lot of 4. electronic music has become so aggressive people think of our music as being pretty chill. We’re more interested in a good groove than a heavy drop.

We also like pretty melodies

and nice chord changes. We’re interested in using pretty classic sounds that have proven to stand the test of time; from time to time we’ll try and sneak in some futuristic elements.

5.

Music, Right Here, Right Now The scene is fine. There is a lot of bad music, sure, but there has always been a lot of bad music. I think there’s also tons of good stuff coming out all the time. We’re really big fans of the music our friends make like Holy Ghost!, Cut Copy, Poolside, Cosmic Kids, Jerome LOL etc. I think it’s cool that most of our friends and the people we get linked to make music that’s not super gimmicky or trendy. It’s not super RIGHT NOW but it also doesn’t feel like it’s gonna go away.

What: Hanging Gardens out now on Future Classic

BLISS N ESO

Bliss N Eso

34 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

Hip hop trio Bliss N Eso will return to the touring circuit to support the release of their forthcoming new album, Circus in the Sky, which follows on from 2010’s charttopping Running on Air. Listeners can get their first taste of Circus in the Sky through the teaser track ‘House of Dreams’, which has been on heavy rotation on triple j of late. Bliss N Eso will be joined by Melbourne’s Pez, who recently dropped new single ‘The Game’, and Alabama’s rising star Yelawolf, renowned for his debut album Trunk Muzik and featured on tracks alongside the likes of Ed Sheeran, Big Boi, A$AP Rocky and Travis Barker. All three acts are at the Enmore Theatre on Thursday July 4.

FUTURE CLASSIC PARTY

Future Classic is throwing a soirée this Saturday as the Vivid festivities begin in earnest. The event will be fronted by twin headliners - the Flying Lotus endorsed, R&B-leaning UK beatmaker Lapalux and Norway’s own hip hophouse fusionist and high-end remixer Cashmere Cat. Sitting atop the LA-driven Brainfeeder label as its only British counterpart, Lapalux’s critically acclaimed debut Nostalchic was a brash mission statement of all the man stands for, while Cashmere Cat’s breakthrough Mirror Maru EP echoes the recent success of Future Classic wonder kid and last year’s Vivid LIVE graduate Flume. Van She founder Michael Di Francesco will also be throwing down in his indie-dance dominating Touch Sensitive guise alongside Brisbane producer Charles Murdoch, with the beats starting at 10:30pm at the Sydney Opera House Studio.

JAMIE 3:26

One of Sydney’s genuine underground brands, Boom Boom, will host Chicago’s Jamie 3:26 at Tatler on Sunday June 9 (and before you despair, it should be clarified that the following day is a public holiday). Jamie is touted as one of the musical sons of the Chicago house scene, which is closely associated with the energy and DJing style of the Music Box (his moniker ‘3:26’ is a reference to the Box’s physical address ‘326 North Michigan’). Over the years, Jamie has earned his stripes via collaborations with prolific producers like Marshall Jefferson, Chip E. Anthony Nicholson, Glen Underground, Boo Williams and Paul Johnson, with his latest releases and the Basement Edits series all apparently selling out within days of their release on the ParteHardy Records label. Support will come from the DJ duo of The Submarine DJs, comprised of Peret Mako and Stu Suttcliffe, along with Boom Boom resident DJs Daniel Lupica and Karim Mattha.

Presales are available online for a mere $10.

ASTRAL PEOPLE PARTY

OMAR-S (US)

AFRICA HITECH (AU/UK)

JOHN CONVEX (UK)

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE WESTERN FOYER THE STUDIO &

SATURDAY JUNE 1ST 9PM VIA VIVIDLIVE.SYDNEYOPERAHOUSE.COM

BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13 :: 35

dance music news

free stuff

club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

GRATITUDE

five things WITH

BRENDAN AND JACK OF CROCHET CROOKS The Shins and that east coast hip hop music. I always had a love for wordplay and stories. I remember the first time I heard Horrorshow’s The Grey Space. That was when I knew I wanted to do this. I’m inspired by firsts; the first time I feel something, smell something, see something, touch something.

I try to keep it new.

Your Crew B: We’ve known each other 3. since we were like 12, but we

Growing Up Brendan: Mum wasn’t a 1. muso by any stretch, but she started me playing the trombone when I was about six. Problem was, I was too small to reach the low notes. So I moved to the trumpet (which I hated) until I knocked my front teeth out in a freak tennis accident… I used

this to convince my mum (and the dentist) that I couldn’t play trumpet anymore. She responded by putting me onto the piano. I couldn’t win with her.

2.

Inspirations Jack: B and myself have pretty eclectic taste in music. I grew up on the Chili Peppers,

only crewed up in late 2010 when we discovered our mutual love of rap. I gave my friend Kai (now in Jackie Onassis) a call and he came through with some early beats and tips for us. We’re both pretty experimental when it comes to musical influences, though I do have a sneaky double life as a club rat so that heavy bass gets me going.

The Music You Make J: We try to draw aspects of 4. other genres into our own, whether that be a wobbly 808, a pitchy vocal grab, or a melodic guitar riff, we’re trying to make something different, but still uniquely us.

STEREOSONIC 2013

This year, the Stereosonic Music Festival will be expanding to a two-day festival showcase across the country. Prospective revelers will buy a two-day ticket allowing access to Stereosonic on both days in their allocated city. (No camping is permitted, so it won’t be a continuous party.)

In their official press statement, Stereosonic say the change is part of a growing trend in dance festivals around the world and are promising “the biggest EDM lineup Australia has ever seen” when it returns at the end of the year.

The value of the ticket will increase slightly, commencing at $199.95, to “ensure that patrons enjoy an additional day of entertainment for less than half a ticket more”.

RUDIMENTAL

British electronic outfit Rudimental return to Australia in September, following their performance at this year’s Future Music Festival.

Rudimental made their mark with the single ‘Feel The Love’, which occupied a position at the apex of charts worldwide and was described

by The Guardian as “the closest thing Olympic London had to an official soundtrack last summer.” Rudimental are fresh from releasing

People like our mates Jackie Onassis, Vegas Aces and Sticky Fingers are real masters of that, bringing in elements you mightn’t expect in their music. When we’re live it’s all ‘big everything’, lots of energy and movement. Looking people in the eyes too.

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

B&J: The Annandale Hotel (shout out to Matt and Dan Rule) gave us, as well as most of our mates, amazing opportunities from the very start. That’s a roster that includes Sticky Fingers, Hollow Bones, Horrorshow, Jackie Onassis, Spit Syndicate etc, etc…

To see it falling is a real shame and a challenge for the scene. There’s a lot on the musos to revive the industry in the face of regulatory obstacles. On a final note, look out for Macnaught. She’s the sound of our latest single, ‘Letters’. You can’t fuck with her.

What: Come Together Festival Where: Luna Park Big Top When: Saturday June 8

James Blake

JAMES BLAKE ENCORE

Touring Australia in the wake of the release of his sophomore album Overgrown, Englishman James Blake will play an additional show at the Sydney Opera House on Monday July 29 (tickets to his other Sydney show at the same venue the following night sold out rapidly). The North Londoner has amassed an impressive body of work since his 2009 introduction, and has displaced Jamie Lidell as the premier white boy crooner of the moment. With seven EPs and two albums, as well as numerous remixes, collaborations and singles – such as the recent ‘Retrograde’ – Blake has become one of the most recognised figures in the musical landscape. The question is, will you miss out on tickets twice?

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P-Money

their debut album Home earlier this month, an LP that topped both the iTunes and ARIA charts and traversed DnB, garage, R&B and house sounds. Rudimental play Enmore Theatre on Tuesday September 24, with presale tickets now on sale.

SPIRIT OF HOUSE

Renowned NYC disco and early house producer and DJ John Morales will headline a Queen’s Birthday weekend ‘Spirit of House Block Party’ alongside Sydney veteran Stephen Allkins, who’s known for his output under the guise of Love Tattoo. Having worked with, remixed or edited everyone from Marvin Gaye and Inner Life to Jocelyn Brown and Harold Melvin, Morales has been plying his trade for thirty years. Allkins can hold his own on that front, having started spinning in the late ’70s, with both headliners set to give younger dancers an education in the roots of contemporary club sounds. Soul of Sydney DJs Phil Toke, Shan Frenzie, Michael Zac and Eadie Ramia will also be spinning, with the revelry commencing in the early afternoon at a secret location, described as an inner city “disco oasis”. $15 presale tix available through Resident Advisor.

CHRIS LIEBING

CLR mainman and techno colossus Chris Liebing will spin at Chinese Laundry on Saturday June 8. The hugely respected German DJ has been one of techno’s most visible representatives over the years, having a huge influence on the underground milieu through his CLR imprint and his frenetic DJing schedule.

Liebing has consistently reaffirmed his status as one of techno’s top dogs with productions such as ‘Discombobulated’ and remixes of the likes of Planetary Assault Systems.

As someone who has endured the fads and trends of dance music – and techno in particular – over the past twenty years, Liebing’s remarks on the evolution of the sound are illuminating. “At the end of the ’90s, techno was quite fast and hard. It has slowed down but also the sound, the bass has gotten better,” he says. “The slower the music, the more space you can have between the bass drums, and more room to express. That was a typical statement made by people who don’t really know much about techno - it’s the misconception that techno is only for, and listened to by, shirtless guys on a lot of drugs.”

You can tell he’s never played the Australian festival circuit, can’t you?

If you weren’t excited enough at the prospect of seeing Liebing, Jeff Mills will also be representing.

Yes, you should have some, because we’re offering you the chance to win a copy of hip hop producer/DJ P-Money’s new album Gratitude. This latest offering features collabs with the likes of Talib Kweli, Aaradhna, Havoc, Freddie Gibbs, M.O.P., Buckshot, Skyzoo, Fashawn, Roc Marciano and Pac Div. The Kiwi DJ is soon heading to sunnier shores, hitting Australia for a tour to promote the self produced album, so you can catch the tunes live in early June. For a chance to get your hands on a copy of the album, just tell us what you’re grateful for.

Maya Jane Cole

MAYA JANE COLES

Vaunted UK producer Maya Jane Coles will (finally) release her debut artist album, Comfort, at the end of next month. MJC has risen quickly through the ranks of house music, first coming to widespread attention with the ’90s indebted organ-utilising house of EP What They Say and the ethereal Humming Bird EP, before consolidating her prominent position in the club realm by mixing a DJ Kicks compilation. She also records under Nocturnal Sunshine, and is one half of live duo She Is Danger with Lena Cullen, while she’s helmed multiple essential mixes, all of which explains why it feels like she’s been around for much longer than she has. Released on Maya’s own I/AM/ME label, MJC plays every instrument on Comfort, lends vocals to a couple of tracks and was seemingly in control of every facet of its composition, even down to designs for the artwork. Comfort also features guest spots from Hercules & Love Affair’s Kim Ann Foxman, veteran Bristol rapper Tricky, Swedish singer Karin Park and effervescent electroclash pioneer Miss Kittin.

ROBERT DELONG

Chris Liebing

Electronic wunderkind Robert DeLong will play a Splendour in the Grass sideshow at The Standard on Wednesday July 24. The Seattleborn, LA-based DeLong is a drummer, producer and programmer, and also a singer-songwriter, who showcased his ability to meld the realms of poetic self-expression and technological futurism on his debut album Just Movement which dropped early last year. The release was met with critical and popular acclaim, and led to DeLong performing at Coachella, Lollapalooza and now…The Standard.

Jimmy Edgar Parallel Realities By Simon Topper

J

immy Edgar, electronic musician and dancefloor king, is living in a parallel reality to the everyday shlubs amongst us.

It’s not that he’s literally, as his press release claims, a “Prophet. Freak magnet. Timetraveller…wayward star-child streaking across the cosmic dancefloor,” but speaking with the Detroit-born Berlin resident, who’s currently in Moscow, about his upcoming Vivid show in Sydney, it’s abruptly obvious that Edgar doesn’t subscribe to the same day-to-day suburban grind as the rest of us.

We’re discussing his upcoming album, tentatively titled Hot Inside, which follows on from last year’s well-received Majenta. Edgar speaks in a slow-paced deep monotone, every word completely deliberate, coming across like one of the Ramones, and even when the hotel calls mid-conversation to check whether room service was adequate, he sounds as cool as fuck.

“For me, it’s an entire package with a visual concept – this magical occult-inspired concept – and the music was just completely effortless. I actually made [the new album] on holiday while we were visiting Machu Picchu,” he says.

“Nothing about it had much outside influence.

I’ve been studying meditation and hypnosis for years and kinda came to the conclusion that they’re both based in the occult in a lot of ways, so that was a big inspiration. I think that dance music is obviously very hypnotic but it’s interesting how people all around the world go to clubs and all dance to the same rhythm. You know this hasn’t changed for thousands of years, indigenous peoples all did the same thing, and I think we’re only just living and rediscovering these things about ourselves.”

For over 12 years, Edgar’s live shows have been putting party people all over the world in hypnotic states, and he’s bringing his latest – complete with intense light show – to Sydney next month. This won’t be the first time Edgar’s visited Australia, but he has mixed feelings about his past shows here.

Edgar says that he’ll be interested to get a better read on the way Australians like to party. With his experience of playing clubs, warehouses and festivals on most continents, he’s been able to closely study different cultures and apply this knowledge to the way he plays each show.

“Last time I played a few warehouse parties and had a great time,” he reflects. “I feel like it’s been different each time I’ve played there. The first time I came out was supporting Egyptian Lover, and I felt like the crowd were maybe his fans more than my fans. This time from what I’ve seen they’ve got it just right, I’m looking forward to it.”

“European culture likes to gradually increase the vibe of the party, over a period of eight or 12 hours,” he says. “In America, just the way the whole establishment is set up, you really don’t go out for eight to ten hours at a time, so people are looking to get in all their good vibrations and peaking by 2am, because they’re probably only going to stay out to 4am.

Earl Sweatshirt Your New Favourite Sweater By Jody Macgregor

L

ast year, Earl Sweatshirt returned from two years at a Samoan reform school with new song ‘Chum’ in tow. But instead of a howl of triumph celebrating his freedom we heard him sounding unusually vulnerable.

“I’m indecisive, I’m scatter-brained and I’m frightened,” he admitted, finishing the final verse with, “Been back a week and I already feel like calling it quits.”

It wasn’t the Earl Sweatshirt we were used to. His first album, Earl, was a parade of monsters. As his frequent guest, collaborator, co-pilot and big-brother figure Tyler, the Creator, said, “This is my zombie circus / you better get a fuckin’ ticket.”

Together they pretended to be vampires and devils as well as serial killers and rapists, not seeming to realise or care that there was any difference between fantasising about being John Wayne Gacy or Count Dracula.

EarlWolf was another of those monsters, one they formed when combined together, a twoheaded angry teenage misfit who hated the world because it was full of homework and parents who were either absent or overbearing.

The skit where Earl’s mother tries to wake him up for school by saying she won’t make him breakfast if he doesn’t get out of bed, to which he replies, “I can fix myself breakfast, I’m 16!” might be the most perfectly self-aware satire of teenage rebellion ever recorded.

But Tyler’s last album, Wolf, wasn’t about annoying old people, taking the piss out of himself or playing Halloween dress-up as Satanists and rapists. Reviews called it “deeper” and were surprised to hear him sounding “remorseful”. Tyler found more mature things to rap about, just like Earl, who told the New York Times that after working in a crisis support centre in Samoa as part of his counselling and talking to victims of sexual abuse it wasn’t possible to write songs about the subject any more, “if you have any ounce of humanity.”

“I think I speak for me and him both when I say it happened naturally ‘cause it was just like outgrowing it,” he says of the change in his and Tyler’s music. “Like, enough shit had happened to the point where we didn’t have to rely on that or have to go there, because there was other subject matter. There’s other very pertinent, very personal subject matter for us to touch on.”

While he was in Samoa Earl had to talk to therapists every day and take educational

“But there’s a whole deeper undertone to that which is that all humans react the same to certain sound stimulus and colour stimulus and it just really makes you realise that we are all the same species at the end of the day.”

It’s comforting to know that some truths are universal, no matter which reality you’re from.

What: Terminal Projekt Where: Vivid Terminal Bar, Customs Hall, Overseas Passenger Terminal When: Saturday June 8

“All right, man. Fucking jump through this hoop and beat this wizard and you can be down with Odd Future.”

courses, but he also found time to read Richard Fariña’s novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me (“I fucking love that book, like I read that book like 10 or 11 times”), and learn the basics of playing piano (“I just try and find chords that I think are cool”).

Those experiences are part of what’s going into his next two albums, Doris and Gnossos, the second of which is named after the main character of Fariña’s book. He’s eager to have the releases ready and a little frustrated by performing with Tyler on his current Wolf tour and getting bigger reactions when he pulls out the old stuff.

“I’m having a lot more fun performing now,” he says, “but I just really want this album to come out so the crowds can be familiar with it when I play new stuff ‘cause I’m not sick of the old stuff, it’s just that at this point I’m transitioning out of wanting to play it all the time.”

The EarlWolf shows, which they’re currently touring around the US before they come to Australia, feature Earl and Tyler performing a joint set, with backup from fellow Odd Future members of Jasper Dolphin and Taco as their hypemen.

“There’s like a tentative setlist but me and him have a bunch of songs that we’ve done together.

Like, I have solo shit, he has solo shit, so it’s just a mixed bag of all that stuff.” If it’s anything like the footage on YouTube of them performing together it’s likely to be chaotic, featuring them changing their mind about which songs they want to do halfway through and Earl having to talk Tyler into doing ‘Tamale’, the goofiest, bounciest and least mature song on Wolf. “Yeah, that’s the most fun song in the entire world,” Earl says. “We played that two times last night.”

Watching footage like that of the two of them on stage, clowning and goofing off, Earl and Tyler seem so closely connected that it’s weird to hear that they weren’t always so tight. But when they first met, Tyler having tracked down Earl after hearing him rap on MySpace, their meeting was underwhelming. “We didn’t really like each other at first,” Earl says. “I don’t know, we both thought we were annoying.”

Plenty would agree with that first impression, but somehow they got past their mutual abrasiveness and Earl became an essential part of Tyler’s posse of skate kids and rap brats.

“There was no, like, joining processes,” Earl says of becoming part of Odd Future. “We did songs and then that’s how that happened. We

just started doing music together. We did ‘Couch’ and ‘Asthma’ first out of anything and then it just happened naturally. It wasn’t like, ‘All right, man.

Fucking jump through this hoop and beat this wizard and you can be down with me and my homies.’”

Where: Enmore Theatre (all ages) When: Thursday June 6 And: Wolf by Tyler, the Creator out now on Odd Future Records/Sony

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

club pick of the week SATURDAY MAY 25

Lapalux

Farley, Ray Ray, Andy Garvey, Front Left free 9pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Regurgitator, Alison Wonderland, Sun City free 8pm Ivy, Sydney Salsa Resident DJs free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KIT Wednesdays Resident DJs 10pm The Lewisham Hotel Garbage 90s Night Garbage DJs free 7pm Goodgod Front Bar Big Lebowski Trivia free 8pm Whaat Club, Potts Point Whip It Wednesdays DJs: Camo, Snillum, Jaimie Lyn free 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Redial, Lights Out, Clockwerk, Deckhead, Singha, Brothers Grimm, Matt Ferreira $5 8pm

THURSDAY MAY 23

Sydney Opera House Studio

Future Classic Vivid LIVE feat.

Lapalux (UK) Cashmere Cat (NOR), Touch Sensitive, Charles Murdoch, Ze, Modern Fairytale, Milk DJs, Adi, Future Classic DJs $35 10.30pm MONDAY MAY 20 Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket Mother Of A Monday DJ Smokin’ Joe free 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Latin & Jazz Open Mic Swim Team DJs free 7pm Santa Barbara, Potts Point Come Down Mondays Hannah Gibbs, Steven Sullican, Dan Baartz, James Taylor 38 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

TUESDAY MAY 21 Brighton Up Bar Ziggy Pop Tuesdays Guest DJs $5 Scruffy Murphy’s, Haymarket I Love Goon Resident DJs free 7pm The Establishment, Sydney Rumba Motel Salsa DJ Willie Sabor free 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross

Coyote Tuesday Resident DJs free 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Chu $5 7.30pm

WEDNESDAY MAY 22 Abercrombie Hotel, Chippendale The Nark Collective Moonbase Commander, Stoney Roads DJs, Daniel

Bridge Hotel, Rozelle Balmain Blitz $15 7pm Exchange Hotel, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs $15-$20 8pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Miami Nights Jay-J & Friends Residency Jay-J, Karl Prinzen, Tikki Tembo, Tom Kelly free (before 10 pm) 9pm Goodgod Front Bar Dip Hop Levins, Joyride, Elston free 8pm Ivy Pool Club, Sydney Pool Club Thursdays Resident DJ free 5pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs 10pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Rewind Resident DJs 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Take Over Thursday Resident DJs $10 9pm Whaat Club, Potts Point Chakra Thursdays Robust, Brizz free 9.30pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Gillex, DJ Moody Free for students/$10 9pm

FRIDAY MAY 24 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Fresh Fridays free 8pm Candy’s Apartment, Darlinghurst Something Wicked DJs Robust, Prolifix, Audiotrash, Harper, Aydos, Oh Dear $10-$15 8pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Boss Bass LDRU, Hydraulix, Autoclaws, Pop The Hatch, Chenzo, Kemikoll, Bocue, Kombat 10pm FBi Social, Kings Cross Hotel Hands Up! Clockwerk and friends free before 12am Gay Bar, Darlinghurst DJ Alex Taylor free 5pm Goodgod Danceteria Haha Presents: Auntie Flo (UK), Lorna Clarkson, D&D, Drums by Malik Senegal, $20 + BF early bird 11pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour The Guestlist $15-$25 9pm Jacksons On George, Sydney $5 @ 5 On Fridays Resident DJs free 5pm

Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Fridays Resident DJs 10pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Mashup Fridays The Faders & Super Square $20 10pm Oatley Hotel We Luv Oatley Hotel Fridays Resident DJ free 8pm Omega Lounge, City Tattersalls Club, Sydney Unwind Fridays DJ Greg Summerfield free 5.30pm The Soda Factory, Surry Hills Factory Fridays, 5pm Spice Cellar SOFT & SLOW Knightlife, Pink Lloyd, DreamCATCHer Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross TGIF Resident DJs 10pm Whaat Club, Potts Point Think Fridays DJs 8pm $10-15 The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM MUM DJs $10-$15 8pm

SATURDAY MAY 25

SUNDAY JUNE 24

Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Strange Fruit free 9pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Daft Punk Tribute Show, Falcona DJs free 8pm Candy’s Apartment, Potts Point Vengeance Sherlock Bones, SMS, Front To Back, Tova, Wrecks, Bronx, Bustacapp, Buu, Amadoro $20 8pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Elite Force (UK) + Sound Remedy (USA), A-Tonez, Mars Monero, Rodskeez, Reno, Fingers, Mike Hyper, Raulll, Heres Trouble, 9pm Gallery Bar @ OAF, Darlinghurst Skyzoo (USA) $15 (+ bf) 11pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Goldfish Saturdays with Alex Taylor, Johnny Gleeson, Tom Kelly, free before 10pm Goodgod Danceteria Love Kings, Levins, Radge, Nacho Pop, Leon Smith, $10, 11PM Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour Homemade Saturdays Resident DJs $20-$25 9pm Ivy, Sydney Pacha Oliver Twizt, Uberjak’d, Danny T, Baby Gee, Jace Disgrace, Spenda C, Fingers, Deckhead, Kristy Lee, Cassette, Pat Ward, Trent Rackus, E-Cats, Heke, Adam Bozzetto, Lola Siren $35/$40 6.30pm Jacksons On George, Sydney Resident DJs free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Kitty Kitty Bang Bang Resident DJs 10pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Timmy Trumpet and Super Square $30 9pm Opera House Studio

Future Classic Vivid LIVE feat. Lapalux (UK), Cashmere Cat (NOR), Touch Sensitive, Charles Murdoch, Ze, Modern Fairytale, Milk DJs, Adi, Future Classic DJs $35 10:30pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Flight Facilities sold out 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Resident DJs 8pm Soho, Potts Point Usual Suspects Denzal Park, Nukewood, Danny Lang, Mike Rukus, 9pm Spice Cellar Morgan, Le Brond, Hannah Gibbs $20 +bf 10pm The Soda Factory, Surry Hills Soda Saturdays, 5pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour Skybar Saturdays Resident DJ $20 9.30pm Whaat Club, Potts Point After Dark DJs $10-15 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Tigerlily, Nukewood, Go Freek, Jack Bailey, Brown Bear, Farley, Thomas Lisse, Deckhead, Nanna Does Smack, Miss Adventure, Pablo Calamari, Mike Hyper, Tektro, Fiktion $10-$30 8pm

SUNDAY MAY 26 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays N/A, Spacey, Ben Ashton, Andeans Ilicit, Dan Baartz & Benji, Sam Arellano, Matt Weir, Kerry Wallace $10 2pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 3pm Crane Bar Restaurant, Potts Point DUST, Shivers, N.E.S., Hannah Gibbs, James Taylor $10 10pm Gay Bar, Darlinghurst Resident DJ free 3pm Goldfish, Kings Cross Martini Club Straight Up Steve, Tom Kelly, 6pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Easy Sundays Resident DJs free 10pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sessions DJ Tone free 7pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Flight Facilities sold out 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Sundays Resident DJs 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice After Hours $20 4am The World Bar, Kings Cross Soup Kitchen The Soup Kitchen DJs free 7pm

The Faders

club picks up all night out all week...

WEDNESDAY MAY 22

SATURDAY MAY 25

Abercrombie Hotel The Nark Collective Moonbase Commander, Stoney Roads DJs, Daniel Farley, Ray Ray, Andy Garvey, Front Left free 9pm

Chinese Laundry, Sydney Elite Force (UK) + Sound Remedy (USA), A-Tonez, Mars Monero, Rodskeez, Reno, Fingers, Mike Hyper, Raulll, Heres Trouble, 9pm

THURSDAY MAY 23

Gallery Bar @ OAF, Darlinghurst Skyzoo (USA) $15 (+ bf) 11pm

Goodgod Front Bar Dip Hop Levins, Joyride, Elston free 8pm

Goldfish, Kings Cross Goldfish Saturdays with Alex Taylor, Johnny Gleeson, Tom Kelly, free before 10pm

FRIDAY MAY 24

Goodgod Danceteria Love Kings, Levins, Radge, Nacho Pop, Leon Smith, $10, 11PM

Chinese Laundry, Sydney Boss Bass LDRU, Hydraulix, Autoclaws, Pop The Hatch, Chenzo, Kemikoll, 10pm Goodgod Danceteria Haha Presents: Auntie Flo (UK), Lorna Clarkson, D&D, Drums by Malik Senegal, $20 + BF early bird 11pm Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Mashup Fridays The Faders & Super Square $20 10pm

SUNDAY MAY 26 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays N/A, Spacey, Ben Ashton, Andeans Ilicit, Dan Baartz & Benji, Sam Arellano, Matt Weir, Kerry Wallace $10 2pm

Moonbase Commander

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Deep Impressions Underground Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery

Jon Hopkins

T

he considerable buzz surrounding Jon Hopkins’ forthcoming album Immunity, due out early next month, will only grow louder following the release of lead off single ‘Open Eye Signal,’ a cut which confirms that Hopkins is veering more towards the nightclub dancefoor than he has previously. The single evokes the Border Community label, and includes remixes from Luke Abbott and Lord of the Isles, who have both reworked the driving eight-minute original, which will surely hit the spot for those with a penchant for analogue synths or the output of people like James Holden and Clark. Anyone who attended the inaugural Vivid Festival in ’09 will remember Hopkins performing alongside Underworld’s Karl Hyde and Eno himself at the festival finale at the Opera House, partaking in a memorable improvisational piano duet with Chris Abrahams of The Necks that evoked the early Obscure Records Michael Nyman release Decay Music. In addition to releasing three solo LPs, Hopkins has also released collaborative albums with Brian Eno and King Creosote, and remixed and been remixed by Four Tet and Nathan Fake; but from all reports Immunity will be his masterpiece. Not that I’m getting overexcited or setting up readers for disappointment of course…

Berghain resident Marcel Fengler will release his debut album, Fokus, in July on the Ostgut Ton imprint. Fengler has held down a residency at the notorious clubbing hotpot for almost a decade, and has been releasing EPs on its in-house label and Mote-Evolver since ’07. Fengler was also responsible for the fifth entry into the Berghain mix series, a compilation that received suitable praise on this page when it dropped a few years back. Fengler has informed online rags that while Fokus will trade in house and techno sounds, there will be, “many new approaches that were not necessarily expected.” As for the delay in finally releasing an album, Fengler remarked that, “it has just taken a while for me to sort out what I wanted to express with an album and how it should feel.”

We’ll leave that there, since old Fengler really isn’t an engaging interviewee, but while I may dismiss his words, you should dismiss his sounds at your own peril!

The 4our crew will bid farewell to one of

their lynchpins Trinity in suitable fashion, with an inner city warehouse party on Saturday June 1. One of Sydney’s most respected DJs, Trinity has been pushing beats in Sydney’s underground scene for over a decade, and is now heading over to Berlin for the European summer.

While her DJing prowess is a well-known fact that anyone who has attended her Loose Kaboose parties will attest to, Trinity has also established herself as an internationally-renowned producer in recent times, with her productions being picked up

by Sasse’s Moodmusic label and remixed by the Australia-bound Frenchman, Alexkid.

Accordingly, Trinity will be showcasing both sides of her sonic personality at this party, playing a DJ set and a live set. Residents Kate Doherty and Magda Bytnerowicz will also be representing, and with dancers free to BYO this is shaping up as quite a farewell.

To end, one for the heads: previous Deep Impressions headliner Sasu Ripatti, who makes music under the mantles of Vladislav Delay and Luomo, has teamed with Mark Fell for the latest addition to the Sensate Focus catalogue, entitled 1.666666666. Like the other records in the series, the tracks are unnamed save for being labeled ‘X’ and ‘Y’, but unlike the more obvious house influence of previous records in the series, this is a decidedly more stuttering and experimental affair. Fell’s rhythms form a fascinating counterpoint to Ripatt’s distinct low-end frequencies, which evoke his recent Vladislav Delay album Kuopio, to create a product you’ll be able to purchase either digitally or on vinyl in late June.

Sasu Ripatti

LOOKING DEEPER FRIDAY MAY 24 Auntie Flo Goodgod Small Club

SATURDAY JUNE 1 4our ft. Trinity Warehouse Party

Omar-S Sydney Opera House

MONDAY JUNE 10 Omar-S

Alexkid The Abercrombie

Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand. Contact through deep.impressions@yahoo.com 40 :: BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13

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NICHE PRODUCTIONS PRESENT

up all night out all week . . .

pelvis

PICS :: AM

FLATBUSH

live review

10:05:13 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587

OPIUO, SPOONBILL, GHETTAFUNKT The Hi-Fi Sydney Friday May 10 Opiuo has managed to carve a niche in electronic music where melodic bass meets glitch, funk and psychedelia. It’s precisely this melodic, wobbly, warm touch in his productions and the sense of tunefulness that makes his music stand out – and tonight’s show was no exception.

With Opiuo not hitting the stage till 1am, there was plenty to keep the masses at The Hi-Fi warmed up on this chilly night. Ghettafunkt got the night under way with some pretty good bass-driven glitch, but it was Spoonbill who took us through a perfectly crafted soundscape, showing the true musicality of his creative endeavours with tracks from his EP, Airborne. When he opened with the meticulous, intensive and cutting-edge sounds of ‘Tropical Space Race’ and ‘Pirate SquidBot’, it was clear that Spoonbill’s set was in good shape. He kept delivering, ending with ‘Interstellar Safari’ (much

to the crowd’s delight), and left the crowd enraptured in dance-offs across the floor.

Opiuo entered shortly after with a burst of energy. For the entirety of the set, we stood (or should I say, danced) in awe and admiration of his scrumptious, glitch-laden, bass-heavy set which included many songs off his Butternut Slap EP trilogy; ‘In Search Of King Anchovy’ and ‘Wiggle Sticks’ set the crowd off.

NICHEPRODUCTIONS.COM.AU

Behind the decks, Opiuo spent every spare second acknowledging and interacting with his audience with smiles and hand gestures while creating audible treats, like when he dropped ‘Patchouli Dump Truck’ part-way through a track. Each track was punchy in all the right places, which meant that he did not rush to impress and left some exciting tracks towards the end, such as his remix of Danger Doom’s ‘Benzie Box’. It’s fair to say nobody wanted the night to end but unfortunately it had to, and Opiuo finished things off with ‘Moose Tooth’ from his 2011 EP, The Squiggle.

Carla Pavez

Sundays 26 MAY

N/A PICS :: HL

owl eyes

Spacey Ben Ashton Dan Baartz & Benji Andeans Illicit Matt Weir Kerry Wallace

11:05:13 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100 RKE ::

:: KATRINA CLA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: :: ASHLEY MAR HENRY LEUNG :: KATE LEWIS

BRAG :: 513 :: 20:05:13 :: 41

snap

loefah & chunky

PICS :: AM

up all night out all week . . .

11:05:13 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587

natural progression

10:05:13 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999

party profile

alex niggemann

PICS :: AM

It’s called: Natural Progression.

It sounds like: A night at We Love Space Ibiza, Cocoon @Amnesia and DC10 Ibiza.

Acts: Alex Taylor, Johnny Gleeson, Tom Kelly.

Three songs you’ll hear on the night: 1: ‘Tech This Out’ – Siwell; 2. ‘The Mixologist’ – Honey Dijon & Sebastian Manuel; 3. ‘It’s You’ (MK Mix) – FCL. And one you definitely won’t: Anything Top 40.

Sell it to us: The best quality deep house, tech house and progressive house available. From three DJs who really know how to down and back around again to leave you totally ‘work’ a room - build it up, take it satisfied.

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: How good the music was. All night.

Crowd specs: Great cocktails, fun and friend ly venue nestled in the heart of Kings Cross.

Wallet damage: Free before 9pm, $10-$15 afterwards.

Where: Goldfish, 111 Darlinghurst Rd, Kings Cross.

the wall: battle royal

PICS :: HL

When: Saturday May 25.

fred v & grafix

PICS :: AM

08:05:13 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 93577700

10:05:13 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999 42 :: BRAG :: 512 :: 13:05:13

:: KATRINA CLARKE :: AVERIE S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) LEY MAR :: PEDRO XAVIER :: OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER ASH :: NG LEU RY HEN :: IS LEW HARVEY :: RYAN KITCHING :: KATE

Strong coarse language, nudity and crude humour

thehangover3movie.com.au

IN CINEMAS MAY 23