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rock music news welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town...with Chris Martin and Helen Vienne

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five things WITH

MADELAINE LUCAS FROM DEVOTIONAL song without meaning it. Growing up watching him taught me the most important thing in music is to put your whole heart and soul into every song. I’ve taken a lot from the DIY punk ethos too. When I was 17, I started recording my own music in my bedroom, and with Devotional we still record and release our music independently.

new lineup, featuring Ben James (ex-Talons, Songs) on drums and Robert Irish (our former drummer) on guitar. Being in a three-piece means that every part is crucial, and there’s nothing to hide behind.

This gives our music an element of rawness, and means that space plays a big part in our songs. It is about the contrast between restraint and letting go.

Inspirations As a songwriter, I’m inspired 2.

The Music You Make mainly by other songwriters. I love Joni The music we make is dreamy 4.

Mitchell for her angel’s voice and for and slow-burning. An American

Growing Up I grew up in a house of music 1. where records were always playing and instruments were kept within arm’s reach. My father, Steve Lucas,

was the lead singer of the Australian punk band X. Though my own music couldn’t be more different, I learned a lot from Dad – about emotion, and delivery. I never heard him sing a

being the godmother of confessional songwriting; Lou Reed for teaching me of love and ambivalence; the Dirty Three for encompassing all the chaos and beauty in the world in a way that is uniquely Australian. Stevie Nicks for her poetry, Karen Carpenter for her sincerity, Mazzy Star... The list could go on! All my favourite artists offer up both great courage and great vulnerability. I think that is the common thread connecting all the people I admire.

Band We’ve recently established a 3. Your

blog recently described our songs as “lullabies for grown-ups”, which I think is fairly accurate. At the heart of it, they’re love songs. I draw a lot from classic images – the ocean, highways, the landscape and the moon, dreams. I like these images because they evoke a lot with only a few words, and leave the songs open for interpretation.

With our live shows, we try to evoke a particular mood, and make each performance a special event. I want people to feel something when they come to a

Devotional show. I want to carry them away.

Music, Right Here, Right Now On Thursday November 28, 5. we’ll be headlining Goodgod Small Club and sharing the stage with two of our favourite bands in Sydney – Terza Madre and Daisy MT. Terza Madre are an eight-piece supergroup featuring members of Psychonanny and the Babyshakers, Songs, Regular John, Quaoub and more. They play Italian pop songs from the ’60s and ’70s in the original Italian, and their live shows are extravagant and spellbinding. Daisy MT is the former violinist from Sydney group Bridezilla, and her solo music is beautiful and haunting. There is a lot of diversity in the Sydney music scene, you just need to know where to look for it Who: Devotional with special guests Terza Madre and Daisy MT Where: Goodgod Small Club When: Thursday November 28 More: Presale tickets are available from devotional. bandcamp.com/merch

ICEHOUSE/DUBHOUSE

EDITOR: Chris Martin chris@thebrag.com 02 9212 4322 ARTS EDITOR: Lisa Omagari lisa@thebrag.com 02 9212 4322 STAFF WRITERS: Alasdair Duncan, Jody Macgregor, Krissi Weiss NEWS: Chris Honnery, Chris Martin, Helen Vienne, Lily White ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Karl Braasch, Katrina Clarke, Ashley Mar

GIG & CLUB GUIDE COORDINATORS: Lucy Smith, Helen Vienne, Nick Timms, James Dunlop gigguide@thebrag.com (rock); clubguide@thebrag. com (dance, hip hop & parties) AWESOME INTERNS: Mina Kitsos, Helen Vienne, Rebecca Whitman, Callum Wylie

The Phoncurves

JAMES TEAGUE

Alt-folk pied piper James Teague’s voice has been described as sounding “...like Elliott Smith and Jeff Buckley’s ghosts are somewhere nearby.” Better get those sage candles out for his upcoming shows at The Commons in Newcastle on Friday November 22 with Emma Davison and The Newsagency on Saturday November 24 with Imogen Bel. Teague’s debut album title Lavender Prayers may sound as if it was named by his nanna, but it incorporates a wide array of instruments including banjos, fiddles, mandolins and even a Hammond organ, providing the perfect backdrop for his haunting vocals.

ELLIE GOULDING

Ellie Goulding just can’t get enough of us.

The sparkling British pop powerhouse is returning to Australia after her Future Music dates earlier this year, this time for a national

REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Nat Amat, Marissa Demetriou, Christie Eliezer, Chris Honnery, Cameron James, Lachlan Kanoniuk, Jody Macgregor, Alicia Malone, Daniel Prior, Amy Theodore, Raf Seneviratne, Leonardo Silvestrini, Rick Warner, Krissi Weiss, Augustus Welby, David Wild, David James Young

run of headline dates. Last month, Goulding beat the likes of Jake Bugg and David Bowie to the title of Q magazine’s Best Solo Artist – not that her Australian fans needed the reassurance. We’re set to fall for her all over again at the Hordern Pavilion on Tuesday June 3. Tickets go on sale via Ticketek on Tuesday November 26.

Phoenix

Mango Groove is one of the biggest things in South African pop, and the supergroup is on its way back to Australia. The band came together in 1984 and has scored 12 number one hits in its homeland, blending mainstream pop with the local influences of township jive music. Having performed everywhere from Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration to Montreux Jazz, the 11-piece will be at Luna Park’s Big Top on Friday February 28. As far as a reflection of the national consciousness goes, they’re South Africa’s version of Chisel – so they’re well worth a look, even if frontwoman Claire Johnston is no Barnesy.

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Hold the phon. Brissy duo The Phoncurves have announced a tour in support of their upcoming single, ‘Heartstrings’, which precedes a 2014 EP release. They’re another of the folkpop brigade, but they have the CV to make it count, after filling support slots for Josh Pyke, Thelma Plum and more.

See them with All Our Exes Live In Texas and Richard Cuthbert at the Factory Theatre Floor on Thursday December 5.

MANGO GROOVE

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THE PHONCURVES

NEIL FINN

PHOENIX

Lisztomaniacs unite! Infinitely danceable French indie pop collective Phoenix have announced an Australian headline tour for 2014. Alongside their Future Music Festival dates, Phoenix will step out on their own for sideshows on the back of their fifth record, Bankrupt! They’ll play the Hordern Pavilion on Wednesday March 5 with support from World’s End Press. Tickets on sale Thursday November 21 via Ticketek.

Adopted Aussie voice of a generation Neil Finn stood alongside his peer Paul Kelly on the Sydney Opera House stage this year and laughed, “They finally let me inside.” It had been many moons since Finn’s farewell concert with Crowded House on the steps outside – and it must have worked out, because Finn’s heading back to take the stage again. He joins a bumper Summer at the House program, and will feature his new record Dizzy Heights, out in early February. Finn plays the Opera House on Saturday March 22, with support from Joshua James. Tickets on sale Friday November 22. thebrag.com

Phoenix-General 1- Arnaud Potier

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Aussie icons Icehouse are taking a sharp left turn and becoming Dubhouse for a December show in Sydney. Songwriter and figurehead Iva Davies has decided his act needs a new spin, so he’s reinterpreting the classics as a Christmas gift to fans. Disappointingly, the ‘dub’ in the new moniker stands for reggae, not dubstep – so we won’t be hanging out for the mother of all bass drops on ‘Electric Blue’.

Wub-wub-wub-wub. Dubhouse play Oxford Art Factory on Saturday December 7.

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rock music news

free stuff

welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town...with Chris Martin and Helen Vienne

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

speed date WITH NICHOLAS

GRIFFITH FROM HIGH-TAILS recent single launch at Brighton Up Bar. We’d just released our debut song ‘Maps’ and all of our mates came down to support us. We had some great support acts on that night including The Dead Heads, Jack & Elmo and Pretty City. Everyone was dancing and having a great time and it really helped remind us that what we were doing was worthwhile.

Current Playlist One of the great 4. things about playing in

What Do You Look Keeping Busy For In A Band?

For the past few 1.

2.

A band that likes to party, months we’ve been working but not too hard. There still must be energy remaining to write those good oldfashioned pop songs. Is forward-thinking, but not too stubborn to learn from our musical ancestors.

on our upcoming debut EP. It’s called Sipping Tea To Make Music To Sip Tea To. It’s been quite a while in the making but it’s very close to being finished, so keep an eye out for the release date.

Also, at the moment we are mid-tour on an east coast run with Kite Club. We’ve done Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Melbourne. Our home town is next!

Best Gig Ever We had a really 3. good time at our

High-tails is we’re all really open-minded listeners of music and always listening to a wide variety of artists.

Felix, our bass player, is a big hip hop fan and has been recently revisiting the discography of The Streets. I have been going through a massive Björk phase, including old Sugarcubes records as well as her newer material.

Our guitarist Mason is digging the psychedelic

waves of Black Moth Super Rainbow, while our drummer Toby has The Roots’ How I Got Over on repeat.

Your Ultimate Rider A bunch of grapes, 5. cheese and crackers, four times gold woven underwear (microwaved if possible) to wear after the show, Bill Clinton to be making us margaritas while soloing on his legendary saxophone… and finally, for the manager of the venue to tell Toby how good he looks before, during and after the show with no strings attached.

Unfortunately our rider will usually consist of two free beers each and occasionally hitting the jackpot with a $100 drink card.

With: Kite Club, Fox & Fowl, The Carraways Where: Brighton Up Bar When: Thursday November 21

HAMISH ANDERSON

This guy is turning heads. Melbourne’s Hamish Anderson dropped his debut single, ‘Howl’, earlier this year, and followed it up with a self-titled EP that featured members of Foo Fighters, The Wallflowers and Angus & Julia Stone’s band. Safe to say he’s doing well for himself. Anyhow, Anderson’s back with another single, ‘Winter’ – a little late for the season, but there you have it – and while he’s venturing off for his first-ever overseas date in New Zealand, he’s also dropping in at Brighton Up Bar on Wednesday November 27.

Claim him as ours before the Kiwis do.

That’s a thing they do too, right?

For your chance to win one of two double passes, head to thebrag.com/freeshit and tell us who or what Australia has claimed from NZ that you’d just like to give them back.

KINGSWOOD & CALLING ALL CARS

It’ll be sweaty rock’n’roll all up the east coast as Kingswood and Calling All Cars head out on their summertime Life’s A Beach tour.

Kingswood have been kicking goals on the way to a debut album release, due in early 2014 and recorded in Nashville with Vance Powell (Arctic Monkeys, Jack White). Old hats Calling All Cars, meanwhile, have re-emerged with ‘Werewolves’, the first single from their forthcoming record. They’ll join forces at the Mona Vale Hotel on Friday January 3, The Entrance Leagues Club on Saturday January 4 and Newcastle’s Cambridge Hotel on Sunday January 5.

Kingswood

LEGEND… WAIT FOR IT…

Actually, the wait is over. John Legend is on his way for an extended headline show at the Sydney Opera House. On the back of his fourth album, Love In The Future, Legend has added standalone dates to his December tour alongside Alicia Keys. He plays the Opera House on Tuesday December 17. Tickets on sale 9am Monday November 18 via Live Nation. It’s gonna be… Legend.

official snapper between 1970 and 1977, Bonja captured some properly intimate moments in the great man’s life. It’s all part of the special Christmas edition of the famous markets, held at Sydney Uni’s Manning Bar on Sunday December 1.

MOUNTAIN MOCHA KILIMANJARO

Mountain Mocha Kilimanjaro is a mouthful but their heavyweight funk is definitely easy to swallow. From the outskirts of Tokyo, these

Periphery

MAT MCHUGH

EYEHATEGOD

Beautiful Girls frontman Mat McHugh has released dates for his solo tour in the new year. Fresh from his 2013 tour around the US and South America to promote his new album Love Come Save Me, reggae and blues singer-songwriter McHugh begins 2014 with the Summer Come Save Me Tour. The new album sees him in experimentation mode, combining stripped-back acoustic guitar and vocals with more diverse electronic arrangements. See him at the Brass Monkey on Tuesday January 2, Friday January 3 and Saturday January 4, and at the Mona Vale Hotel on Friday January 24.

You wouldn’t mess with a band called Eyehategod, would you? And a higher power must be smiling upon them from above, in any case – they’ve been together 25 years now, and as yet are showing no signs of being cast into a fiery hell. Onstage is where you’ll find the firestorm, and as an anniversary gift to their Aussie fans the New Orleans five-piece is on its way to play The Hi-Fi on Saturday January 18.

THE PIERCE BROTHERS

The Pierce Brothers have revealed a string of tour dates in support of their foot-stomping new single, ‘Tallest Teepee In Town’. Known for their high-energy performances and delectable harmonies, the twins’ sound lies somewhere between Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Young and Mumford & Sons. This sound has taken the brothers from big festival stages to supporting slots with the likes of The Beards, Ash Grunwald and Donovan Frankenreiter. Catch The Pierce Brothers’ show at the Beach Road Hotel on Thursday December 12.

IMAGES OF THE KING

Get amongst this hunka hunka burning love, you know what I’m sayin’? Elvis Presley is on exhibit at the Sydney Rock ‘n’ Roll & Alternative Markets next month by way of over 140 photos taken by his former tour manager and photographer Ed Bonja. As the King’s 10 :: BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13

cats have a reputation for playing some of the deepest funk, but with the intensity of a rock’n’roll band that will surely have you shaking your moneymaker faster than you can say “Mountain Mocha Kilimanjaro”… actually, that takes quite a while to say. Get in on the action of their Falls Festival sideshows at The Basement on Friday January 10 and Saturday January 11.

RON ASHETON TRIBUTE

PERIPHERY & ANIMALS AS LEADERS

“All that metal stuff sounds the same”? Nuh-uh. Innovative and hard-rocking Washington, D.C. outfit Periphery is here to prove you wrong. The sextet got together in 2005, and with a triple threat of guitarists they layer together complex and challenging melodies as last heard on Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal – but there’s more new material on the way.

In the meantime, they’re on the way Down Under, and bringing Tosin Abasi’s Animals as Leaders along with them. It’s all set for the Metro Theatre on Saturday February 1.

To commemorate the untimely passing of Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton in 2009, a stellar line up of Aussie bands will be playing a tribute show at Manning Bar on Friday December 6. The Visitors will headline on the night with special guests Hoodoo Gurus, plus support from The New Christs, The SC5 and The Four Stooges. “Ron’s distinctive guitar style and its impact on rock’n’roll around the world can’t be underestimated and this is a small way that we can honour his memory and support a great cause,” says Deniz Tek, frontman of The Visitors and organiser of the night. Proceeds from the show will go to the Ron Asheton Foundation, a fund for animal welfare and sponsor of music for children. Tickets are $20+bf, available from oztix.com.au. thebrag.com

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Industrial Strength Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer

THINGS WE HEAR * Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2 went straight to number one in the US, selling 792,000 copies in the first week. He’s also the first lead artist since The Beatles to chart four songs in the US Top 20 at the same time. * A Michigan university has reinstalled a swinging pendulum sculpture that was causing a stir on campus after students used it to mimic Miley Cyrus’ ‘Wrecking Ball’ video, which showed the singer riding on a wrecking ball, naked. * Robbie Williams claimed he had to pay RCA ÂŁ1.5 million (A$2.58 million) to release him from his Take That record

contract. * Mullum Music Festival has announced the winners of its youth mentorship, with the young talent chosen by an established act on the bill. Singer-songwriter Asha Jefferies (Brisbane) will be mentored by Caitlin Park.

Byron Bay band Function will be overseen by Skipping Girl Vinegar. Singer Emmuna Aloni (Mullumbimby) will be mentored by Aluka, and youngster Mali Biggin (Ewingsdale) by Mr Cassidy.

Winners get a rehearsal session with their mentor and a 20-minute set at the festival, plus advice from industry people through the year. * TEDxSydney founder Remo Giuffre is eying a four-storey

LIVE NATION BUYING U2, MADONNA MANAGEMENT Global tour promoter Live Nation is buying out U2 manager Paul McGuinness’ company Principle and Madonna’s management company Maverick (run by Guy Oseary) for US$30 million. McGuinness, who has guided U2’s career from the start, wants to give up some of the Irish superstars’ day-to-day operations. He’ll become chairman of the new merged company while Oseary will take over U2’s daily stuff.

‘LIVE AND LOCAL’ CELEBRATES SYDNEY LIVE SCENE Live and Local is a week-long showcase of Sydney’s inner city live music venues, running between Monday November 25 and Sunday December 1. It is put together

by APRA AMCOS and AHA NSW as part of ARIA Week. It’ll feature everything from singer-songwriters in cafes and jazz trios in hotel foyers, through to punk bands in pubs and indie rockers in bars. Nathan Farrell Entertainment (booker for The Basement and Newtown Festival) will coordinate the gigs.

Darlinghurst building to open a membership-based city cafe, live events space, rooftop bar and seven-days-a-week live video streaming hub of content coming out of the site’s daily talks, discussions and presentations, Mumbrella have revealed. * Darling Harbour live entertainment venues The Watershed Hotel and Cohibar are up for sale, as is The Palms nightclub. * Jaymie Murray’s Upbeat Music Centre store in Asquith won the People’s Choice Award in NSW Fair Trading’s I Love My Local Business awards. * While the battle over closing time intensifies in Byron Bay, a poll by Tamworth newspaper The Northern Daily Leader

Venues that already have live music booked in that period can register to participate by submitting details of the gigs on ariaweek. ariaawards.com.au. Those who want to get involved can contact Farrell at nate@ nfentertainment.com.

‘HIGHWAY TO HELL’ #1 FOR XMAS? The odds on AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’ bagging the UK Christmas Number One slot have been slashed from 10/1 to 3/1. A Facebook campaign for people to buy the track attracted over 100,000 likes in four days. The idea is to stop the X Factor winner from getting the slot. In 2009, a campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s 1993 single ‘Killing In The Name’ to top spot saw Joe McElderry become the first X Factor contestant to lose a Christmas Number One battle.

I KILLED THE PROM QUEEN SIGN WITH EPITAPH The reunited I Killed The Prom Queen have signed with hardcore label Epitaph. Guitarist Jona Weinhofen got to know how the label

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Just Announced

Noisia & Foreign Beggars

Eyehategod Sat 18 Jan

Thu 5 Dec

Supernova U18s Headhunterz

Children of Bodom

Kylesa (USA)

Looptroop Rockers (SWE) & Sage Francis (USA) Fri 13 Dec

Thu 23 Jan: U18s

Fri 9 May

Coming Soon

Insane Clown Posse (USA)

Deerhunter (USA)

Melvins (USA) & Helmet (USA)

The Brian Jonestown Massacre (USA) Thu 19 Dec

Tue 10 Dec

Thu 12 Dec

Sat 7 Dec: All Ages

Sun 15 Dec

Waka Flocka Flame (USA) Fri 20 Dec

Earthless (USA) & The Shrine (USA) Sat 4 Jan

Kerser Sat 8 Feb: All Ages

Dark Wehrmacht (USA) Rotting Christ (GRE) Tranquillity (SWE) (SWE) Fri 17 Jan Grave Sat 29 Mar (USA) Primate Sat 11 Jan ENTERTAINMENT QUARTER, BUILDING 220, 122 LANG RD, MOORE PARK, SYDNEY Crystal Fighters (UK) Thu 9 Jan

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found that 49% of the country music capital’s residents wanted pubs and clubs to close earlier, almost 34% want stricter responsible service of alcohol measures, 13% backed ID scanning technology at venues and 5% thought more security guards would help.

There’s been a rise in alcohol violence in the Tamworth CBD: in one week this month, three people were knocked unconscious. * Justin Timberlake pocketed $1.3 million for a solo acoustic set at the tenth wedding anniversary party of Smartwater and Vitaminwater founder J. Darius Bikoff and wife Jill. There were burlesque dancers modelling on each table.

operated while playing with Brit metalcore merchants Bring Me The Horizon: “I knew exactly what Epitaph was capable of and that it would be the perfect home for I Killed The Prom Queen.� The band’s third album, tracked at Studio Fredman in Sweden with Fredrik Nordstrom (Bring Me The Horizon, In Flames), is out next year.

LORDE SIGNS $2.5M PUBLISHING DEAL Lorde celebrated her 17th birthday by signing a A$2.5 million publishing deal with a small US music publisher, Songs Music Publishing. With ‘Royals’ spending its seventh week at number one in America, bidding for her publishing was heated.

Among the suitors was Sony/ATV who signed her co-writer Joel Little but dropped out. Publishers seldom pay newcomers this kind of money. Lorde’s manager Tim Youngson said, “Even before signing her they were bringing her options for collaborations and introducing her to other songwriters. The decision wasn’t made on money.� Songs Music founder and CEO, Matt Pincus, son of private equity mogul Lionel Pincus, said he began chasing Lorde in February. Lorde was recently cited

by Time magazine as one of most influential teenagers in the world, alongside NZ golf champ Lydia Ko (16); Malala Yousafzai (16), the Pakistani activist who was shot in the head for standing up for the education of girls under Taliban rule; Malia Obama (15), one of the US President’s daughters; and Justin Bieber.

UNIVERSITIES BAN ‘BLURRED LINES’ Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ has now been banned by over 20 UK universities.

The students’ guild at the University of Exeter said: “A song that implies a woman is ‘an animal’ and who ‘wants it’ because of the way she is dressed is not acceptable.

The language within the lyrics and the images within the promotional video are utterly degrading to the female subject. Any song that expresses an author’s frustration at ‘being sick of blurred lines’ is beyond unacceptable.� Thicke argues, “If you listen to the lyrics, it says ‘That man is not your maker’ – it’s actually a feminist movement within itself.� He explained that the song was actually about his wife, the actor Paula Patton. “She’s my good girl. And I know she wants it because we’ve been together for 20 years.�

FIRST SINGLE IN 20 YEARS FOR TURNBUCKLES The Psychotic Turnbuckles are releasing their first single in 20 years, entitled ‘You Hurt My Head’, which they describe as a “crushing garage punk stomper.� It will only be available at their upcoming gig at the Annandale on Saturday November 30, with 200 given away. The CD comes with eight live tracks. Joining them at the show are the Hard-Ons, who opened for them in 1984, and The Dunhill Blues.

MUSICOZ LEGENDS AND WINNERS Musicoz’s Australian Independent Music Awards saw Bliss N Eso, Native Ryme, Irwin Thomas, Tania Doko, Kate Monroe, The Three Waiters and Mel Jade lauded as Musicoz Legends. London-born and Sydney-based I Am Sam was named Artist of the Year. Winners’ songs included those

by The Short Fall (acoustic), Battleships (alternative), Mama Kin (blues/roots), Jono Fernandez (producer/DJ), Silver Cities

(Christian/spiritual), Kate Cook (country), Rose Wintergreen (dance/electronica), Oumi Kapila (instrumental), Colin Bullock (international), Claude Hay (live), Manjia Luo -Manjia Music (jazz/classical), Gay Paris (metal/hardcore), Exit (pop, schoolies), July Days (rock), Blaq Carrie (urban), Leisure Bandits (video) and Gypsys Gift (world/folk).

VANCE JOY GOES TRIPLE PLATINUM Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’ has gone triple platinum (210,000 copies) and his God Loves You When You’re Dancing EP has been certified gold (35,000). The EP is released this month in the UK while the singer-songwriter is in Seattle cutting tracks for his debut album with US producer Ryan Hadlock.

NEW FESTIVAL #1: FREE ENDLESS SUMMER HITS CRONULLA The inaugural Cronulla Endless Summer Festival (Friday December 27 to Saturday December 29) – with music, food and art, craft and stalls – will be held at the picturesque Gunnamatta Park. The free event is the brainchild of Mario Kalpou, owner of Southside Events, and local restaurant The Old Library. Kalpou said, “Until now Cronulla didn’t host anything that showcased all this great suburb has to offer.� The live music will be held in the natural amphitheatre. Bluejuice and The Preatures have been announced, with up to 12 local bands a day.

NEW FESTIVAL #2: CRE8 FOR COFFS HARBOUR Coffs Harbour is getting a new three-day festival called Cre8 Coffs Coast Arts Festival, to be staged on the Australia Day long weekend (Friday January 24 to Sunday January 26). Held at Opal Cove Resort, it will cover music, visual arts, performance, digital media, dance, artisans and the written word. Festival founder Cheryl Ward says all proceeds go to Headspace and the Frontier Projects charity.

Lifelines Ill: former UFO bass player Pete Way, 62, is suffering from prostate cancer.

Sued: Jay-Z by US label TufAmerica, which claims that he illegally sampled the mid-’90s song ‘Hook & Sling’ (sung by Eddie Bo and produced by Al Scramuzza) for his 2009 hit ‘Run This Town’ which featured Rihanna and Kanye West. In the past the label has also sued John Legend, Christina Aguilera (for ‘Ain’t No Other Man’) and Kanye (twice!).

Died: Byron Bay jazz musician/ surfer Dave Ades, 52, after an 18-month battle with lung cancer.

He had earlier nursed his wife Melissa as she died from the same disease, and musicians set up benefit concerts in Sydney, Melbourne and Bangalow so he could have expensive treatment in Germany. Ades was born in the UK and moved with his family to Australia in 1969. In his early teens he discovered surfing and taught himself to play drums and flute. At 18, he found jazz pioneer Charlie Parker and, inspired by how someone “interpreted their life through their music�, had a lifechanging experience. He recorded and played with some of the best jazz musicians here and abroad, living in New York for a few years where he experienced first hand the best players. In August he went back to New York, knowing he was at the end of his life, and recorded his final album A Life In A Day. At his memorial in Byron Bay, a Dixieland band played while surfers took his ashes to his beloved ocean.

Died: Algerian-born, San Franciscobased global house DJ, producer and musician, Cheb i Sabbah, after a two-year battle with stomach cancer. He was 66. Born Haim Serge El Baz, he moved to Paris and then to America where in 1989 changed his name to Cheb i Sabbah (“young of the morning�).

His albums mixed world music, poetry and theatre.

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piderbait’s reworking of the ‘Lead Belly’ Ledbetter classic ‘Black Betty’ may have catapulted the DIY trio into the Oz rock stratosphere in 2004, but they had long been superstars of the sweaty indie underground.

Sure, the ’00s saw their music smash through in US television and film as well as the odd EA computer game, but the aftershocks of their seminal 1997 album, Ivy And The Big Apples, are what resound even today.

They’ve managed to transcend genre and generations – recently supporting Pink on her final Brisbane show – and have consistently and cleverly packaged Kram’s guttural rock jabs neatly in between Janet English’s saccharine and schizophrenic pop gems in a way that has left rock dogs and pop teens unwittingly sharing a common bond: their love for Spiderbait.

Spiderbait have never really gone away, so referring to their latest, self-titled release as a ‘comeback album’ is unfair – but it has been almost ten years since they’ve brought out a new studio record. Spruiking LP number seven, Kram has just got off the phone with an interviewer who has left him aghast with a particular line of questioning, and we begin with a debrief. “[In] years gone by, I would’ve said, ‘Dude, you’re a dickhead, fuck off,’ but he was an OK guy. I can segue pretty easily out of a bad question.”

After a nine-year gap since Tonight Alright, do these moments serve a reminder that releasing an album isn’t all fun and games?

“Nah,” says Kram. “It’s not really that bad.

The reason we’re doing [another album] is just simply that we wanted to. Our label was really keen – we’ve been with Universal for over 20 years now and our manager and all these people seemed happy. We started to write the album over two years ago but when Franc [Tetaz, producer] came on board, I think that was the clincher. I think the fact that Franc wanted to do it and was so enthusiastic – he’d just worked with Gotye – having that outside excitement helped us get our shit together and get organised.

14 :: BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13

SEVENTH HEAVEN •BY KRISSI WEISS

album with Franc at the time … it turned out we already knew him from way back in the day. He’s an old-school Melbourne cat, and [Bert] said that she was really sad at the end when the recording was over and to everyone else it [was] just beginning. I don’t usually feel like that with a record, but I do with this one; there’s an element of sadness to know we’ve stopped recording because it was such a pleasurable experience.”

For a while before entering the studio, Kram had already been smashing out some demos in his own little piece of paradise in northern NSW. Although he talks about home with absolute fondness, the man who has travelled the world with his music and tangled with the rock’n’roll lifestyle approaches his surroundings with a healthy scepticism. He’s been fronting (and backing) this band from almost 25 years, and he seems to look at the industry through the same lens that inspired ‘Buy Me A Pony’ – the one that says there’s good and bad in everything.

“I live really close to the beach and it’s a magical place. On the one hand it’s really lo-fi, you can ride your bike everywhere – there is a lot of music around here, I know Xavier Rudd lives a little way down the track from me – but yet if there was a tsunami, I was saying this to a friend the other day, none of us would survive. No matter where you are, there’s always some impending doom, in a way. I guess what I’m trying to say is, no matter what positive you find in a place there is always a negative to balance it out.”

The metaphor extends to Spiderbait’s yearly routine – experience allows them to bust out shows with the best of them, but the hard part is writing new material. “We play two or three shows a year and then we’ll do a festival like Splendour that’s pretty big, and people go, ‘Wow, why are you doing this, why haven’t you made a record?’ That’s the easy part for us. It’s easy for us to turn up, and we know enough and have played enough to be able to kick arse onstage and have a great time.

“WE STILL FEEL RELEVANT. WE STILL GET PLAYED ON TRIPLE J, WE STILL GET PLAYED ON TRIPLE M, AND WE KINDA FEEL LIKE WE’RE STILL DOING OK. BUT AT THE CORE OF EVERYTHING IS THAT WE MAKE MUSIC TOGETHER, AND THAT’S THE ONE THING THAT WE HADN’T DONE FOR A WHILE”.

Spiderbait marks another significant chapter in the band’s ever-growing timeline, says Kram.

“We were originally going to try and do this as a 21st birthday celebration for the band, but it’s taken a while to get together and by the time the album comes out properly we would have been together for almost 25 years. We’re pretty proud of that; we think that’s kinda awesome because nobody really survives in this business for very long. If we were just playing in Shitsville and hadn’t had a hit for 20 years than it would all be a bit crap, but that’s not the story. We feel our most recent release was a huge hit, even though that’s getting on a few years now, but we still feel relevant. We still get played on triple j, we still get played on Triple M, and we kinda feel like we’re still doing OK. But at the core of everything is that we make music together – and that’s the one thing that we hadn’t done for a while – so we knew that was the thing we wanted to do together again.”

In true Spiderbait style, it’s turned out well.

The band’s attitude to work is probably their greatest attribute; they’ve never been consumed by their success, and as a result continue to deliver. The sound they were looking for on this album came out of that state of mind. “Because I’d done solo [work] since our last record, I had a big focus on how we would put it all down,” Kram says. “In this group there are three individuals, three duos and one trio, and that was what we wanted represented. This album is the story of our whole band”.

What: Spiderbait out now through Universal Music Australia xxx

“We got to know Franc through Bertie Blackman, who I met through the Nick Cave Straight To You tour – I got to know a heap of guys through that. Bert was making her

SPIDERBAIT

“Creating an album is a different story. You have to be able to connect on a different level; you have to be able to connect in that creative space and that takes some time, even though we’re best friends. We’d all gone off and done a lot of things in our own lives – Janet’s got one kid, I’ve got two and Damian [Whitty]’s been doing his own thing. It’s easy to separate.

[Playing] gigs kinda kept us together in a way, even though we were doing really well in publishing and have been fortunate with that.

Gigging has always been a great social event for us, and it rekindles our belief in each other and the audience – our belief that people want to see us play.”

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BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 15

Alex Cameron Not For Sale By Lachlan Kanoniuk

I

going to get any of the things that are sold as an idea. The idea of being a successful musician is now sold as a product. You can forget about it. Advertising is already way ahead of you. If you’ve got some sort of ambition to be a successful musician, it’s more likely that you got the idea from a Coke ad, or a goddamn insurance ad, rather than from listening to a goddamn record. So I wanted to project that, wanted to make sure that’s what the lyrical content, the songs and the poetry stressed. I wanted it to be clear.”

t’s hard to picture the Alex Cameron who’s releasing his debut full-length solo album, Jumping The Shark, as the same Alex Cameron who has recently eased into the role of frontman for revered electronica trio Seekae. Solo, Cameron is possessed by something more twisted, projecting an image of delusion and arrogance superfluous to the moody synth atmosphere of his album. Not too far underneath the veneer of his hideous web presence and fracas with bandmates onstage, there is a sense of truth and sincerity.

Speaking on the phone (seeing as I couldn’t agree to the outlandish terms and conditions of a face-to-face interview as outlined on his website), Cameron recounts his recording process.

“I started making the record around this time last year. I wrote a couple of songs, then [with] a good friend of mine, Mclean Stephenson, we worked on some different visual ideas as well.

Then I took a trip over to Paris and London, then to Cornwall in the south of the UK, and I decided to do the rest of the record over there.

Then I returned and hit the studio with the producer, Fanny V, and just knocked it out. It’s been done for a while to be honest, it’s just taken time to organise the online side of it and arrange shows.”

Belying the varied geographical points of conception, Jumping The Shark is bound by overarching aural and thematic cohesion.

“It’s very intentional, there’s a strict theme on the record that I wanted to adhere to.

Each track may tell a different story, but my intention was to have all of them come from the same world. I wanted it to be a record laced with the reality of failure. I wanted to also represent my experiences within show business. I’ve been making music for quite some time, I’ve been touring, I’ve been a part of all these different circumstances –

they’re the things I wanted to project on the album.”

The idea of success is relayed with an air of scorn on Jumping The Shark, but it’s more a meditation on dissatisfaction than a dismissal of aspiration within the paradigm of contemporary music. “There is a desire for absolute success and absolute security, there’s a massive desire for that. A lot of the anxiety on the record comes from that craving to be validated in an industry that doesn’t offer that. You’re never going to get a decent pay cheque; you’re never

“I don’t really care how people hear the music,” Cameron adds, cursing like a Vonnegut protagonist. “The whole time I’ve been in this racket people have been telling me, ‘Maybe you’re in the wrong industry if you’re trying to make money.’ Everyone tells you that. People who give you contracts tell you that. It’s a goddamn sham, the whole thing’s a mess. I want to do things on my own, and that’s the only way to truly make a statement. People make compromises every day; people make compromises in their artwork just to achieve something like success. It’s kind of sickening.”

What: Jumping The Shark out Friday November 22 through Crawfish Records

Fozzy Jericho In Front Shane Pinnegar

F

ozzy lead singer and pro wrestler Chris Jericho may be a dedicated family man and father of three, but he’s not concerned about sharing a backstage area with notorious advocates of the “groupies and blow” lifestyle, Steel Panther.

“I’ve been on the road since 1990, so I’m actually no stranger to all that stuff,” he says.

“So I think Steel Panther will have to try to pull up their socks to keep up with Jericho sometimes – especially when it comes to the straight vodka. The groupies and blow are all fine and dandy, but the straight Grey Goose – that’s where my prowess and expertise lays!”

Shenanigans aside, Jericho is amped to be heading back to Australia for the second time this year, having played Soundwave Festival in February and March.

“Absolutely – we like Australia and we think Australia likes us,” he says, “which was really apparent at Soundwave this year when the crowds that we had for our set early in the day really blew me away. I mean, thousands of people… to get that sort of a crowd at two-thirty in the afternoon, I think we’re doing something right here.”

Jericho quickly debunks the theory that it may have been a surprise to be invited back Down Under so soon.

“Well, I dunno if it was a surprise; I think it was more warranted,” he counters. “It shows that the people who organise Soundwave were paying attention. Like, we were like a destination band at Soundwave – people grabbed their programs at the beginning of the day, looked at the set times, said, ‘We’re gonna go see Fozzy at this time.’ Like I said, the response we got was off the charts. So for me it’s kind of a no-brainer to bring us back

again, because we obviously did our part at Soundwave.”

This time around, Fozzy are part of a diverse billing at the Hordern Pavilion, with their oldschool heavy metal grooves standing shoulder to shoulder with the sleaze-dripping party metal anthems of headliners Steel Panther, plus Buckcherry.

“In some ways it makes perfect sense,” Jericho says of the lineup, “’cause I think all three bands are very entertaining live bands and all very exciting live bands, and all very much have the same kind of motto – which is, have a great time!

“We’re making sure that people have a blast at these shows, and it’s good-time metal.

That’s one of the reasons Fozzy has been so successful over the past few years, because we’re very versatile. We could open for Slayer, Shinedown, Steel Panther, and get great reactions with all of those fans.

“Sometimes ‘fun’ is almost a dirty word in rock’n’roll, and this is gonna be a fun show. I think everybody knows that – the people that know Fozzy know that’s what we bring, and same with Buckcherry and same with Steel Panther. And when you do shows like this it really works, ’cause you’re getting new fans for all the bands. I think there’s enough of a grey area between all three of us that fans of Fozzy will love Steel Panther, fans of Steel Panther will love Buckcherry, fans of Buckcherry will love Fozzy and so on. It’s actually a really good mix … It’s gonna be one hell of a party, man!”

What: Steel Panther supported by Fozzy and Buckcherry Where: Hordern Pavilion When: Saturday December 7

Twin Forks The Road Ahead By Krissi Weiss

W

ith the world as it is, and information transported at a speed nearing light, it’s now impossible to come into the arms of Florida’s Twin Forks and their music without being aware of their lineage. It’s a shame too, because with knowledge of their impressive pedigree comes a barrage of assumptions, bias and expectation. Any damage done by those first two preconceptions is squarely the fault of the listener. The high expectations, however, are not only met but exceeded. In a time when alt-country and folk is threatening to become more diluted and commercialised than ’00s punk, Twin Forks distill the alt-rock and punk roots of their members into a sweet mash of folk bliss.

Frontman Chris Carrabba (taking an indefinite time-out from a little old band named Dashboard Confessional) is throwing all of himself into Twin Forks. “I feel pressure at the moment, but it isn’t Dashboard so I don’t feel like I need to please any existing fan base necessarily,” Carrabba says. “But I do feel as though I need to please myself. There’s a freedom in this where I can follow my vision.

I’ve really made an attempt to not promote this through Dashboard – we’re trying to build it up honestly, and although there’ll be plenty of carryover from our other bands, we’re being clear that this is a whole new thing. But anybody that is a creator or an artist of any kind – oh God, I just called myself an artist… anyway, it’s inherently daunting when you start the next thing.”

16 :: BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13

What, then, is the pot of gold on the Twin Forks journey? “I would like to be in bigger rooms because people embraced Twin Forks for Twin Forks and not because of Dashboard,” Carrabba says. “I don’t think I’ll start doing Dashboard again until I’ve succeeded with that goal in mind. I’ve been in so many [big rooms] and I’ve been so lucky and I’ve got these great friends that I’ll never lose that I’ve gained particularly from Dashboard, but there’s this special joy that’s palpable in Twin Forks. I can see it between the band and the audience as well, and while I don’t really know what the end goal is – this is gonna sound weird – but when we got to the absolute highest points in Dashboard, it never felt completely right to me as a performer, although it was amazing in a way, so I dunno, I don’t think I ever want to be that big again.”

What: Twin Forks out now through Dine Alone/Cooking Vinyl With: The Falls Where: Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst / Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle When: Sunday December 1 / Friday December 6 Xxx

With mandolin player Suzie Zeldin hailing from The Narrative, drummer Ben Homola of Bad Books, and the band rounded out by renowned session bassist and songwriter Jonathan Clark, the four-piece is putting everything it has behind this new project.

Carrabba felt he had suppressed his folk influences for a while, and the timing of this project seems fortuitous. “I buried some of my fundamental influences very early on in Dashboard because it was pretty evident that

they were typical folk-based, singer-songwriter influences and at that point it wasn’t fulfilling me creatively, so I instead focused on my greater influences of punk rock and hardcore.

I guess the more experienced I got the more I realised it was perfectly right to allow many influences to show their hand within those parameters,” he says. “For the last three years I’ve been working on this music with my friends and I think, luckily for us, that folk sound has reached the greater consciousness now. Suddenly something that I would’ve thought could’ve been off-putting was not offputting – but I guess three years ago, if you’d asked me to put money on what would’ve been on the Top 40, I never would’ve picked a banjo and a couple of folk singers like Mumford & Sons.”

thebrag.com

The Crooked Fiddle Band Oceans Apart By David James Young

H

e is regarded as one of the most intense people in his field – a menacing, no-nonsense workhorse whose wrath has been felt by everyone from Amanda Palmer to the people that dared to touch his mixes on Nirvana’s 1993 classic In Utero. So, what do Sydney’s gypsy/folk/metal/baroque/whateverelse-have-you specialists The Crooked Fiddle Band make of legendary producer, musician and engineer Steve Albini?

“He’s a pussycat,” says drummer Joe Gould with a laugh.

No way!

“Way! I mean, he’s full of opinions; that much is true. It can reflect badly on him. He’s actually quite gentle and a very genuine guy. I had the same fear going into recording with him, thinking about his reputation. In the end – and this is fitting, given Lou Reed passed the other day – he just doesn’t value the media that much, and in turn it means that he doesn’t value interviews.

So when he’s getting interviewed, he doesn’t always come across as the most pleasant guy.

In the studio, though, his whole philosophy is that he wants to make the record sound exactly the way the band wants it to sound – it’s such a luxury, really.”

The band went into the studio with Albini in Chicago earlier this year to record their second album, Moving Pieces Of The Sea. The release showcases the band’s typically chaotic approach to what they describe as “chainsaw folk”, with violin screeches and galloping drums aplenty. It also offers a different side to the band, incorporating longer and more progressive movements, as well as the inclusion of vocals.

Gould feels that the changes that have come with the writing and recording of the album are greatly reflective of the band’s present identity.

“I guess this was more an exploration of staying on an idea,” he says. “Anyone who knows The Crooked Fiddle Band will know that we often jump around in styles and genres and what have you. After listening to and being inspired by a bit more post-rock – that epic, soundscapey sort of stuff – we were really interested in exploring the possibilities of just a few notes. It was something that we hadn’t really done before – the first track, ‘The Vanishing Shapes Of A Better World’, felt like a statement, in that regard.”

“The momentum of the crowds and the cities we play to can defi nitely change over the years. Various places can really feel like home”.

The band has just begun a national tour in support of the album, taking in several capital cities as well as some parts less travelled by.

For Gould, it’s all a matter of seeking out their kind of people – and the community that builds from there.

“The momentum of the crowds and the cities we play to can definitely change over the years.

Various places can really feel like home at different times. Sydney is obviously our home town, but for years we’ve really found that Newcastle just feels like home – we found that DIY arts scene really early on. Just about everywhere has it, it’s just a matter of whether we’ve found some friends in other bands or we’ve played the right pub where those sort of people go. Sometimes it’s hard to work that out from the outside, but we love what we’ve found.”

What: Moving Pieces Of The Sea out now through Bird’s Robe Records With: Captain Kickarse and the Awesomes, Greta Mob Where: The Standard When: Saturday November 23

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As for the newfound vocals – which are shared on the album between Gould, guitarist Gordon Wallace and violinist Jess Randall – they were apparently brought into the mix by Wallace. Gould claims their inclusion was a long time coming for the band.

“We’ve sort of dipped our toes in the water over the years, but we really went for it with this record.

Before The Crooked Fiddle Band, Gordon was in a folk duo with another singer-songwriter. He wrote songs and sang them in that duo all the time. If anything, we’ve just been holding him back from singing again! We have just utilised a skill that’s always sort of been there within the group. We found a way to put it in the forefront whilst still being mostly instrumental.”

Since forming in 2006, The Crooked Fiddle Band has managed to secure a live reputation that could rival even the country’s most popular acts. The theory often goes that, no matter what you make of its recorded material, seeing the band live is necessary to catch its vibe. It’s a reputation that is not lost on Gould and his bandmates.

“We’ve gone about capturing the live energy in a few different ways now,” he says. “On our first album [2011’s Overgrown Tales], that was the entire aim. The sum of it was that we were going to try and record in a way that makes it sound like what we are when we’re onstage. With this one, it’s kind of combining that with a little more recognition of the fact that in order to have as much X-factor as the live show, it’s got to have some extra dimension in the recording. So the album is us live in the room, plus some cinematic elements – there’s some cello overdubs, I did some extra percussion stuff, some extra vocals.

It’s not a whole lot, but these days it’s assumed that most albums are layered up with lots of extra layers. Compared to that, it’s quite bare-bones.” thebrag.com

BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 17

Sonny & The Sunsets Crossing Over By Patrick Emery

“I don’t know if I have one feeling toward Oakland,” Smith says, when I ask what he thinks of the city these days. “It does seem to be getting more and more violent – San Francisco is as well. I think maybe because the affluence that’s happening in Oakland and San Francisco is making the difference between rich and poor even bigger. I just went through Fruitvale the other day, and it’s looking a lot different these days – it’s been gentrified a bit.”

Smith found, however, that his nascent screenwriting ideas began to morph into songs. “I started singing these long, rambling songs that had a lot of characters and a lot of dialogue, and sometimes would even have screenplay direction – ‘cut two!’, stuff like that,” Smith says. “So when I went back to San Francisco, I had more of a focus

on being a songwriter. So Central America was really the pivotal place where that happened.”

Smith grew up in California’s Bay Area, before moving east to Colorado when he was about 17.

Smith’s 2006 album, Fruitvale, looked back on his time living in the city of Oakland (Fruitvale being a district in Oakland with a high Latino population). Often dwarfed by the rich history and colourful artistic scene of neighbouring San Francisco, Oakland has played a pivotal – and occasionally violent – role in contemporary American history. It was there that Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale formed the Black Panthers in the ’60s. In 1973, the Symbionese Liberation Army shot and killed a school official, and wounded another, as part of their radical political program.

In 2009, Smith embarked on his ambitious 100 Records project, in which he created 100 fictional bands, each with a single featuring an A-side and B-side written by Smith. Apparently, a Japanese label took interest in one of the bands and asked to put it on a compilation – not realising that it wasn’t a ‘real’ band.

“I can only vaguely remember that,” Smith laughs. “I think it was Danny Dusk & The Twilights. I’ve tried to

The sci-fi, psychedelic overtones of Smith’s latest album, Antenna To The Afterworld, render it a stark deviation to his previous countrystyled album, Longtime Companion.

While Smith does enjoy the challenge of artistic reinvention, it’s not necessarily a conscious pursuit.

“I don’t set it as a goal, but it’s more of a by-product of me getting bored very easily – I have a very restless impatience with identifying with one thing. So I’ll get into country music, but even before I’m done I’ll be like, ‘I’m bored – what else interests me?’

It’s not so much an artistic manifesto – it’s more that I’ve got artistic short attention span,” he laughs.

Antenna To The Afterworld was written at a time when Smith was dealing with the grief and tragedy of the death of a close friend.

Notwithstanding, Smith says the album was more about exploring the notion of death, and what lies beyond life, than engaging in a cathartic activity.

“I was certainly sad at the time, but the record wasn’t exploring grief at all – it was actually exploring more the curiosity of death and the afterworld,” Smith says. “There were a few contributing things that seemed to put death just around.

Another friend had died; I’d gone to see a psychic – I was ‘visited’ by one of them. The afterworld was just all in the conversation of my mind. It was really just exploring the curiosity of that, rather than dealing with grief.

But I hope that doesn’t make me seem cold!”

Despite his artistic and personal explorations, Smith says he doesn’t

have a particular vision of the afterlife. “I have no idea what it is – I’m none the wiser after making a record about it. I have no clue what’s out there, and that’s kind of the beauty of it. Anything’s possible.

I was talking to my son about aliens, and we were drawing pictures of them. Our human concept of what aliens are is pretty small – it’s just a reflection of ourselves.

xxx

W

hen Sonny Smith was in his late teenage years, he packed his bags and headed to Central America. Smith found himself living in the jungle, writing screenplays for films he hoped would eventually see the light of day when he returned to the United States. “I was already a musician, but I thought of music more as a side thing, and that I was going to be directing movies and stuff,” Smith says.

By the time he did Fruitvale, Smith’s artistic pursuits had broadened to include visual arts, poetry and longer-form writing, as well as his songwriting and screenwriting activities. “I’ve noticed over the years that I will often be working on something – like a song – and I’ll see part way through that it’s really meant to be a play, or that I set out to write a play, and that it’s supposed to be a comic book. So to that extent they all come from the same place and they have to find their own identity, and I tend to be open to different mediums. So if a song isn’t working, rather than throwing it away, I’ll make it a drawing. And sometimes I’m surprised at what it becomes – it’s not always what I set out to do.”

put out a few of the bands as if they were regular bands, and I’ve got a lot of interesting emails in response.”

“I’ve noticed over the years that I will often be working on something – like a song – and I’ll see part way through that it’s really meant to be a play, or that I set out to write a play, and that it’s supposed to be a comic book.”

“When you think about it, maybe the atoms that make up our planet are aliens, or emotions are aliens. Love could be an alien that sucks on your heart, that takes a couple of years to get rid of!” he laughs.

What: Pop-Friendzzzy With: Surf City, Songs, Adults Where: Goodgod Small Club When: Thursday November 21 And: Antenna To The Afterworld out now through Polyvinyl/ Popfrenzy

Morcheeba Online Songs By Rachel Davison It’s morning in Surrey, England – just gone quarter past ten, to be exact – and the chatty Edwards hasn’t yet had breakfast. She’s just dropped the kids off at school and she’s sewing: making a winter coat.

It’s not very rock’n’roll, but it’s refreshingly homely – the antithesis of the glamour you see from Edwards onstage and in the video clip for catchy single, ‘Gimme Your Love’.

Morcheeba’s making of this album, and of their previous 2010 effort, Blood Like Lemonade, have very much fit around their individual lives and families. With Paul living in France and Ross in Los Angeles, the process of writing and collaborating has been a mostly online affair; very different from their early days spent smoking weed in the Godfreys’ London apartment.

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“Paul has two teenage kids who are really into dubstep and he mentioned Skrillex – and it wasn’t like we were going to go off and start doing dubstep, but we did take that on board,” says vocalist Edwards on the phone from her home. “We kind of listened to what our children were listening to and took tiny little elements, which you can hear in songs like ‘To The Grave’ and ‘Make Believer’ – a bit of a new production style.”

“Then Ross would put the guitar and chords on them and then I would write a melody for it, and it would go back to Paul and he would write lyrics and then I would record a demo version. So there was a lot of emailing and passing

“I guess we communicated more because it was really important to keep on emailing each other and letting each other know what we were thinking, and then when the time came we would get together and record the bulk of it. In the past – going back 18 years now – Ross and Paul lived together, I would go over to their fl at and it was just getting stoned with a guitar and writing that way. But we all have our own lives now outside of the band, so it works well this way.”

It also worked this way with most of the guest collaborators on the record, including Chali 2na from Jurassic 5, who’s over in America; Ana Tijoux from Chile, whom Paul approached after hearing her on an episode of Breaking Bad; and the interesting collaborations with White Denim guitarist, James Petralli. “It’s just the nature of the world now – it’s really possible that we can do it that way and it works well,” Edwards says.

After a falling out with the brothers, Edwards departed Morcheeba in 2003, releasing two solo albums and a third last year. The Godfreys made The Antidote and Dive Deep with a range of guest vocalists.

Edwards talks openly about that difficult time.

“They didn’t beg me, they asked me to come back,” she laughs when I suggest Morcheeba just wasn’t the same without her and the brothers had finally come to their senses.

“After they did The Antidote they

asked if I would like to do a couple of songs on Dive Deep and I said no, and then they asked again via management if I would like to come back and I said no again. It took a lot of convincing and my husband… we had a lot of arguments over it and I really didn’t want to go back, but I’m glad that I did actually. I really am happy to be back … and I think it shows with Head Up High that the relationship is pretty strong.”

Why didn’t she want to go back at first? “We didn’t like each other, to put it bluntly. There was a lot of hurt there still. I didn’t want to go back to that, but they were sorry and it’s all pretty cool now.” In any relationship, you sometimes just need a break. “Yeah, exactly; it’s pretty much like that. It’s like a marriage. And I had two husbands and then a messy divorce and we fought over the kids – which is the studio or whatever – and then they got a couple of new wives – which were the new singers – which was a little bit weird and it didn’t work out and now we’ve resolved our differences. We’ve not been through counselling, but I dunno, maybe they’ve done their own counselling and we’re back and happily married.”

What: Head Up High out now through [PIAS] Australia With: Chali 2na Where: Metro Theatre When: Thursday April 17 And: Also appearing alongside John Mayer, Dave Matthews Band, Erykah Badu, John Butler Trio, Jack Johnson and more at Bluesfest, Byron Bay, Thursday April 17 – Monday April 21

thebrag.com

Morcheeba photo by Alex Lake

U

K trip hop trio Morcheeba are now in their 18th year and are still kicking on, having recently dropped their eighth album, Head Up High. On this latest offering, Skye Edwards and the Godfrey brothers, Ross and Paul, haven’t strayed too far from their pioneering sound, blending pop, hip hop, jazz and electronica – except for perhaps an added dose of maturity and a slice of inspiration from their teenage kids by way of some post-dubstep.

“Before we started writing anything new we had a few meetings, and when me and Ross were on tour and over near where Paul lives [Paul doesn’t perform in the live shows], we would talk about tempos and the kind of album we wanted to write,” Edwards explains.

“We all agreed we wanted it to be more up-tempo – Paul described it as ‘Morcheeba with a pulse’, and so he went away and got together with the drummer and recorded lots of different rhythms and beats, and then edited those and sent us copies of 20 or 30 or so.

the baton until we were happy with each song. Once we had about 15 or so tracks we went into the studio”.

White Denim Garage Rock Genes By Jody Macgregor

W

hite Denim have an advantage at the South by Southwest festival, what with being Texan locals, and having played there several times. Austin Jenkins, the Southern garage rockers’ guitarist, has a pretty good idea of what it’s like. The annual festival transforms Austin – the city where it takes place, not the guy I’m talking to – into a frantic flurry of people racing from stage to stage each day, and things can get pretty hectic for the bands as well. Soon after joining White Denim in 2010, Jenkins played 11 shows over the course of three days at that year’s festival. “We played in a giant Doritos vending machine one time,” he casually adds, as if that’s not the most amazing detail.

As SXSW attracts more and bigger corporate sponsors, the stages get more outlandish.

Doritos’ ‘Jacked’ stage was over 17 metres high and had the band playing in the bottom section of a vending machine – the bit where your chips comes out – with three levels above that where packets of Doritos bigger than people hung from pegs, as if you could buy one for $3.50 and then live like a king. “It’s almost like a Vegas kind of spectacle,” says Jenkins.

Cramming in almost a dozen shows like that over three days isn’t easy, but fortunately the showcase sets tend to be a bit shorter.

“Sometimes they’re so short that they’re over before you realise they really happened,” Jenkins says. “Yeah, I’d say pacing yourself is a good thing. Usually it’s hot as all hell when South by Southwest hits as well. You’ve got to make sure that you have a healthy mix of water as well as beer, and then I think the adrenaline’s pumping so hard that it just rolls you through it.”

White Denim photo by Mark Seliger

Those gigs earned White Denim a reputation for no-frills rocking out. Wasting no time, they’d barrel through their songs one after the other, with plenty of energy. “It’s not like GG Allincrazy or anything like that,” Jenkins says of their live show, “but we used to not stop playing at all. We would just play continuously for however long the amount of time was, so if there was 45 minutes we would play 45 straight.” They’ve learned to slow down a little in the last few years, however. “Now we’re putting more pauses into the set just to give us a rest. It could be pretty assaulting at times I guess.”

The new outlook is helped along by the mellower songs on their latest album, Corsicana Lemonade. In the past they tended towards blues rock blasts with diversions into surprisingly complicated math-rock fiddliness, and while the new album is still upbeat, it’s also more classically structured, drawing on influences that have them sounding, to Australian ears at least, surprisingly like Powderfinger at times. “You can be mellow in those tunes even though they’re upbeat, I agree with that for sure,” says Jenkins. “They’ve lent themselves a little bit more to some space … Lately we’ve been interested in putting together medleys of songs; we were going, like, ‘Let’s put four songs in a row from four different albums.’ We’ve been trying to have some fun like that, mixing that into it. It’s just, the more material you have the more you get to paint with.” thebrag.com

Two of the songs on Corsicana Lemonade were recorded with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco after White Denim supported them on tour. They travelled to Chicago to work in the Loft, Wilco’s studio, and recorded ‘A Place To Start’ and ‘Distant Relative Salute’, which laid the foundations for how they’d work on the rest of the album. “If someone wanted to do an overdub, [Tweedy] would say, ‘Picture this person onstage playing this, is this someone that’s in the band actually playing the part or is this filler?’ It showed the need to think about overdubs in a more limited kind of sense, then also to really hone down what was integral to each track. I wouldn’t say [he’s] a minimalist or anything like that but he’s really got a refined sense of purpose for each instrument and each voice on a song.”

After that they travelled back to Texas and built their own studio in a house overlooking a cliff. Inspired by the open floor plan of Wilco’s they created something similar, although with a vital Southern touch. “Barbecue. We barbecued a lot of meat out there on the patio. That was pretty essential.”

“Lately we’ve been interested in putting together medleys of songs … The more material you have the more you get to paint with.”

Having been in White Denim for three years now, Jenkins has become an integral part of the band, but he modestly downplays his own contribution to the group’s direction.

“Oh shoot, I don’t know if I’ve had much of an influence at all. I think I’m just catching up! These guys were such a heavy and intense trio, one of my favourite groups to see in Austin. I think I saw them the first day I moved to Austin and they just blew my mind. I think of it like learning a language; they had their own language developed and I’ve just gotten to get inside of it and learn it from there. I don’t know if I’ve influenced them in any way – they’ve definitely influenced me. I get to come in and do some guitar work and free James [Petralli, frontman] up to do his thing a little bit more as well, which is exciting. I get a really fun role, I get to play in the rhythm section and then dance on top of it a little bit as well. It’s a sweet gig.”

What: White Denim and Hanni El Khatib supported by Greta Mob Where: Annandale Hotel When: Tuesday January 7 And: White Denim join Vampire Weekend, The Wombats, Neil Finn, MGMT, The Preatures, Flight Facilities and more at The Falls Music & Arts Festival, Byron Bay, Marion Bay and Lorne, Saturday December 28 – Friday January 3 More: Corsicana Lemonade out now through Downtown/PIAS

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arts frontline

free stuff

arts news...what's goin' on around town...with Lily White

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

five minutes WITH

SINDY SINN

Tell us about your background in illustration and how you started out.

I entered the world of illustration through the sneaky backdoor known as the music industry.

Having been involved with rock’n’roll bands all my life, I started drawing posters for the bands that I liked. Next thing you know, I’m being hired to draw posters for bands all over town. Over the past few years I’ve worked for some truly amazing bands, brands and people. I love what I do and I’m really proud of the work I put out.

S

indy Sinn is a Sydneybased illustrator who’s been handpicked

by Harley-Davidson to feature in a unique exhibition alongside some of the country’s hottest street artists. For The Love Of Lids showcases a selection of motorcycle helmets, each sporting a custom design by participating artists, reminding us that creativity and art extends beyond the traditional gallery space. We caught five with Sinn to get the lowdown on what to expect from the exhibition.

What can we expect from your For The Love Of Lids design and what inspired it?

When I first got the shiny black Harley-Davidson helmet, I placed it on my studio desk and stared at it. I was very aware of the one-shot-ness of it – you can’t just scrunch it up and start again. So I went to the pub for a brainstorm and after a few beers, I ended up stealing the 8-ball from the pool table. I went to my friends at Bad Garage and

BOB SAGET DOWN UNDER

Comedian Bob Saget, AKA Full House’s heroic single dad Danny Tanner, is headed Down Under for his first ever appearance in Oz. On Thursday May 15, Saget will take to the Enmore Theatre stage to bring the LOLz. The multi-disciplinary comedian – Saget’s career spans TV, film and Broadway – is known for his filthy material. “There’s nothing wrong with being a good person, but it’s also OK to be a dirty bastard if that’s what you find funny. I just do the stuff that I find funny,” sais Saget. Tickets go on sale 9am Wednesday November 20 via livenation.com.au.

NGALPUN MUDTH

NAISDA Dance College is returning to Carriageworks from December 11-14 to present

LA SYLPHIDE! TIX! WIN!

custom built an 8-ball gear shifter, which we attached to the helmet.

My concept? That the wearer of this helmet isn’t phased by danger – it’s the helmet of a risktaker, a gambler and a daredevil. I hand painted the helmet with grim reapers, but it isn’t supposed to be morbid. This is the helmet of a fearless rider that enjoys every moment.

audiences learn from the diversity of talent on offer?

Audiences of For The Love Of Lids will get to see some mindblowing helmets customised by artists who are at the top of their game. From the progress photos I’ve seen and the talk I’ve heard, this is looking to be one of the most anticipated exhibitions of the year.

How would you describe your aesthetic to someone who’s never seen your work before?

My artistic style is a mystical thing that takes over my hand from the moment I pick up a pen. It comes from a lifelong obsession with cartoons and beer, mixed with a fierce work ethic and some late nights. I like big outlines, bold colours and characters that jump off the page and strangle you with their breath … I like making evil things look friendly and friendly things look menacingly mental. I also have a weird addiction to crap jokes and burritos.

Any exciting future projects we should know about?

I’ve got an exciting few weeks ahead with the announcement of lots of gig posters including some work with The Misfits. I’m currently planning my first solo exhibition as well as a massive collaboration with Mike Watt. I’ll be launching another run of my own Sindy Sinn branded t-shirts and artworks. Not to mention some rumours of children’s books and more street art on the horizon.

For The Love Of Lids features a slew of reputable artists including jeweller Sofia Fitzpatrick and Eddy-Lou among others. What will

Ngalpun Mudth, a showcase of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island contemporary and cultural dance. Forty dancers will perform works created by nine professional choreographers and there will also be two student works in the mix. Ngalpun Mudth translates to ‘our home’ in the Kala Lagaw Ya language of Moa Island – a motif Production Director Raymond D Blanco sees as defining who we are as individuals. “We as human beings are blessed with memory and recall, and by utilising this quality we take parts of our home with us always – a scent that reminds us of home, a sound that initiates an emotion of people and place,” he said. Involved choreographers include Gary Lang, Frances Rings, Vicki Van Hout, Sani Townson, Pam Williams, Paulina Quinteros, Kristina Chan and Aku Kadogo.

For more information and tickets, head to carriageworks.com.au.

What: Sindy Sinn featured in For The Love Of Lids Where: Mary’s, 6 Mary St Newtown When: November 20-30 More: sindysinn.com.au

SYDNEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL

A witch in drag, sylphs (mythological fairy-like creatures for those wondering), infidelity and a tragic love story. We’re talking about La Sylphide, one of the last surviving ballets of the Romantic period, currently being presented by The Australian Ballet at the Sydney Opera House until November 25. Story goes: A man named James is engaged to a local girl called Effie, but in the dark of the night James is visited by a magical sylph who he falls in love with. James then leaves Effie for said sylph and thereafter unfolds a tale of betrayal and love lost.

We’ve two double passes to give away to a season performance of La Sylphide (double-billed with Paquita). Head to thebrag.com/freeshit and tell us what mythological creature you’d like to spend the day as and why.

La Sylphide

Macbeth

Sydney Independent Theatre Company is presenting Sydney Shakespeare Festival at the Old Fitzroy Theatre from November 20 through December 21. The Bard’s classic, King Lear, and comic exploration of justice, Measure For Measure, will present on alternate nights at the festival’s new home (Bicentennial Park on the Glebe Foreshore was the former home of Sydney Shakespeare Festival). Both productions are directed by Richard Hilliar with set and light design by David Jeffrey and costume design by Rachel Scane. Then of course there’s the talented ensemble cast comprising Danielle Baynes, Kieran Foster, Jasper Garner Gore, John Grinston, Nick Hunter, Leof KingsfordSmith, Richard Mason, Hailey McQueen, Amy Scott-Smith, Roger Smith, Alexander Spinks and James Townsend. For more information and tickets visit sitco.net.au.

SYDNEY MINI MAKER FAIRE

Christian Boltanski, Chance (detail)

With a recently-expanded space and growth in attendance numbers, multi-purpose arts precinct Carriageworks will double the number of artistic projects and major events it presents in 2014. “In 2014, Carriageworks unveils an artistic program that is ambitious, risk taking, and above all is artist-led and unrelenting in its support of artists. We remain committed to delivering distinctive, high-quality urban cultural experience to our audiences,” said Director Lisa Havilah. 2014 program highlights include Christian Boltanski’s Chance, presenting as part of Sydney Festival 2014 from January 9-23, Back to Back Theatre’s premiere of Ganesh Versus The Third Reich from March 12-15, design conference Semi-Permanent running from May 22-24 and a slew of music and dance presentations such as Sydney Chamber Opera’s new work Mayakovsky showcasing from July 28 through August 2, and Sydney Dance Company’s spotlighting of new choreography by emerging artists, New Breed, from November 5-8. But perhaps the highlight of Carriageworks’ 2014 Program is the 19th Biennale of Sydney launching on March 21. Marking the first time Carriageworks has been included as a major venue partner, we’re hella keen to get in on the action. What about the food and booze? Rootstock Sydney is a new sustainable food and wine festival that will take to the floor on February 8-9 to bring together international chefs, wine makers, sommeliers, writers and artists who share common philosophies on sustainability. Visit carriageworks. com.au for the full program.

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SAM SIMMONS

He’s a dickhead idiot who doesn’t like couples holding hands in the street, watching men over the age of 32 flying kites on the beach, clowns because they’ve got massive clown shoes and he’s also generally got no time for cats. I know, right? Why bother? Because comedian Sam Simmons is the master of suburban absurdism and he’s headed back to his homeland after touring the US to play Sydney Comedy Store on Saturday December 7 and Friday December 13. Most will know Simmons, his shiny bald head and questionable moustache from last year’s offbeat sketch comedy, Problems, in which he proved himself to be a true craftsmen of all things silly. Head to comedystore.com.au for further information and tickets.

OLD 505 LAUNCHES 2014 SEASON

The Old 505 Theatre has revealed a dynamic lineup of works spanning free development shows, mainstage productions and fresh works that will present as part of the company’s 2014 season. Riffing on the idea that process is as important as final product, Artistic Director Kerri Glasscock and Associate Artistic Director Gareth Boylan have selected a range of works to demonstrate the innovativeness of today’s emerging writers, directors and actors. Of the season’s four mainstage productions, first up is Oleg Pupovac’s We’re Bastards, a dark and twisted story that follows two siblings’ struggle to escape emotional torment, showcasing from February 5-23. Next, from March 12-30, Jane Bodie’s Hilt will expose audiences to one couple’s attempt to rediscover a lost intimacy in a bittersweet reflection on urban living. Emily Ayoub and Mini Cerci’s A Hunger Suite, running from May 7-25, takes its cue from Kafka’s A Hunger Artist and invites punters into the world of the struggling artist. Bringing the season to a close is a post-modern investigation of fate in Jon Fosse’s Winter, presenting from June 4-22. For more information and the full program, visit venue505.com.

thebrag.com

Xxxxx

CARRIAGEWORKS 2014 SEASON ANNOUNCED

On Sunday November 24, The Powerhouse Museum will be transformed into an inventors’ paradise when the first Mini Maker Faire hits Sydney in celebration of the global Maker Movement, which embraces invention, resourcefulness and imagination. It’s set to be one of the biggest show and tells we’ve experienced yet – think backyard tinkerers, tech-obsessed geeks and everyone in between presenting their inventions across kitchens, garages and workshops. There’ll be 3D printers, satellites, vegan food, green technology, hacker-spaces, student projects, origami, biochemistry and wheelie-bin sound-systems. “Every invention emerges from a culture. The closer the access to a rich and diverse pool of technologies and ideas, the greater the potential to take the next innovative step. The Maker Faire is like a hot-house for inventions,” said Powerhouse Museum spokesperson Peter Mahony. For further details visit powerhousemuseum. com

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FILTH The Bad Lieutenant Within

By Cameron James

B

ruce Robertson is the world’s worst police officer. He drinks on the job, he’s a drug addict, he blackmails his “friends”, he treats women and children like dirt; and he does it all with a laugh. Thankfully, he’s only the main character of upcoming film, Filth, adapted from Irvine Welsh’s (Trainspotting) novel of the same name by filmmaker and fellow Scotsman, Jon S. Baird.

For a character so dark, who could possibly imagine the evil and twisted influences that lurk inside the mind of his director?

“I’ve actually always loved musical theatre,” Baird says. And after seeing the film, somehow, that makes sense.

The brutally human violence swells like violins. The actors practically sing four letter words in a rhythmic Scottish brogue. And every inch of the screen is packed with overwhelming colour; from bleak grey skies, to mountains of white cocaine, neon blues, and scarlet blood. Filth is a musical without the songs.

“My uncle worked on the south coast of England as a joiner, and we’d visit a couple of times a year,” Baird says. “I saw My Fair Lady on those trips. Oliver, Phantom Of The Opera... I remember that euphoric feeling as I left the theatre each time.” And it seems that sense of euphoria has trickled into his filmmaking. Filth operates on a level of sensory overload. It’s somehow both grittily real and surrealist. It’s a crime procedural on the surface and a neon nightmare underneath. So, how deliberate was the heightened language of the musical to the film?

Filth

James McAvoy as Bruce Robertson in Filth “People had tried to adapt this book in a realist style before, but it never worked,” Baird refers to Welsh’s novel, which has been labelled unfilmable countless times over. Apparently, it wasn’t. Baird admits that the theatre experiences from his childhood had “crept in” to the film even as early as the writing stage. “For it to work, it needed to be bigger in every way,” he continues. “The score, the costume design... Everything had to be dialled up to ten.”

All of this heightened madness is anchored by what is quickly being proclaimed as the performance of James McAvoy’s career. And, rightfully so. McAvoy is primarily seen

as the pretty face at the front of cute kids films such as The Chronicles Of Narnia. Yes, he’s the goat person, AKA Mr. Tumnus. (Feel like ruining your childhood? In this film we learn that Mr. Tumnus likes being choked during sexy times. I know, right?)

And yet this film sees McAvoy in psychotic meltdown mode as he drinks, snorts and punches his way through the Edinburgh crime world.

He’s clearly relishing his chance to play the bad guy, so keeping him in check must have been quite a task for Baird. “James loved the script, but we knew we had to keep [his character] empathetic,” he says. “And that’s where the comedy plays such a huge part in the film.”

And it’s funny, in the blackest interpretation of the word. Police brutality, murder and drink spiking are all played with a (sometimes literal) wink to the audience. This type of so-black-it’s-smoking comedy has long been a fixture of cult films, but has seldom crossed over to a mainstream audience.

“Yes, if you don’t laugh in the first five minutes of this film, then it’s going to be a tricky film for you,” Baird says of an opening that lays all of Bruce’s, let’s say, idiosyncrasies out in the open.

“If you get that it’s not racist or homophobic, that it’s going to come back to haunt him, you’ll enjoy it.

If you don’t get it, then you might struggle with this movie.”

We’re no strangers to the cocktail

of dark comedy and crime. In fact many of Australia’s most successful films and TV shows have mined this territory. It’s a genre that Baird says is common between us and the Scottish, sharing a darker sense of humour. Does this make Baird a dark character himself? “I just thought it was funny,” he laughs.

And for a man with a background in BBC Comedy, and a love of theatre, this is entirely plausible. Both forms take on failure and misery as prime sources of entertainment. In fact, with the increasingly mainstream pull that US cable series such as Breaking Bad and Eastbound & Down have, it seems that now more than ever, the world is embracing the anti-hero. But why?

“Because they’re more real. Because we’re flawed as a species,” Baird says. “If you like escapism, that’s fine.

But there’s something more exciting about watching somebody who’s morally uncertain, and recognising parts of yourself in them.”

This is brave storytelling, as it seems designed to push a portion of the potential audience away. If you’re asked to recognise yourself in an evil character, what if you don’t like what you see? Surely there’s a risk in creating a film that asks these questions. “Every day was a risk,” Baird says. “But that was the very thing that eventually attracted everybody to do it. It was a difficult film to finance initially.” When pressed

hey season the party with extra zest, but no-one really ever gives them the true recognition they deserve. Until now, that is.

20 Feet From Stardom directed by Morgan Neville shines a spotlight on the untold true stories of the backup singers behind some of the greatest musical legends. Giving life to those in the shadows of superstardom, Neville intertwines interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Mick Jagger and Sting among others with the stories of those who’s trade it is to make the greats even greater.

Feel like cheering these champs on? We’ve ten in-season double passes to give away to 20 Feet From Stardom and for your chance to win, just head to thebrag.com/ freeshit and tell us who you’d like to be a backup singer for and why.

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WIN!

The risk, it seems, has paid off. Filth is now the second highest grossing R-rated film in the UK of the year, behind only Django Unchained.

This qualifies it to sit amongst Trainspotting and Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels in the top ten R-rated films in UK history. Baird is quick to credit the cast, crew, the source material and the marketing campaign in taking the film from being an “arthouse movie” to a “mainstream film”.

But there’s more to it than that. Sure, McAvoy is dynamite on screen.

The rest of the cast is superb. The production is top notch, and the marketing was exciting. But this is the first UK film in years that has felt legitimately dangerous. Like anything could happen at any time. And that all comes down to Baird’s directing.

So, with this his second feature film, what’s next for the young filmmaker?

Will we see more punk-rock violence?

Or perhaps a musical from the self-professed Baz Luhrmann fan? “Whatever it is, it needs to be interesting, and it needs to be bold,” he says. “What’s the point of doing something that everyone else is doing?”

What: Filth opens in cinemas on Thursday November 21.

S AY W EA IV G

20 FEET FROM STARDOM! TIX! WIN! T

for a reason, he answers simply, “Nobody wanted to touch it.”

Good Vibrations

Good Vibrations

[FILM] Riffing On Punk Rock By Ian Barr

G

ood Vibrations is a chronicle of a particular time and place whose broader context is no stranger to cinematic representation: the ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland that originated in the late ’60s, known as The Troubles. But the particular milieu it depicts is the punk rock scene of late ’70s Belfast, fostered by the legendary local record label and shop of the film’s title, founded by Terri Hooley (Games of Thrones’ Richard Dormer), and the film itself is a buoyant comedy in the vein of Michael Winterbottom’s Tony Wilson/Factory Records chronicle 24 Hour Party People. Lisa Barros D’Sa – who co-directed with Glenn Leyburn – explains that Hooley’s story was close to her as a local. “I grew up in Belfast, and Terri’s very much a local legend in Belfast and Northern Ireland – the stories of the music that he got out into the world, and also he just has a very richly lived life. And also the courage he showed, sticking his head above the parapet in some very dark times.”

But more than just being a remarkable figure, D’Sa felt it was the universal resonance of his story that lent itself to the biopic form, however loosely the film fits the genre (it’s as much a biopic of Hooley as 24 Hour Party People was of Tony Wilson). “Not only was [Hooley] an extraordinary man living through some pretty extraordinary times, but there was a real universal story there, about youth and

Brown Council

resistance and the power of music to defy even the darkest of times. So I think that’s why we though it would bridge the gap between being a great local story and something that could speak to people hopefully around the world.”

Unlike the Thatcher-inspired indignation that characterised most British punk rock of the same era, the Good Vibrations bands lived up to their label’s namesake. “A lot of people associate punk with London, with the Sex Pistols, with that whole kind of scene... For us, Belfast really stood out against that in a way. It wasn’t about dissatisfaction, it wasn’t about anarchy, it was really about the opposite in many ways. It was about kids whose most radical wish was to have a normal life.

“A lot of the songs from bands like Rudi and The Undertones and The Outcasts, they’re singing about things that are so much more simple and innocent than we would associate with our idea of punk … they’re singing about some girl they might fancy on a bus. What they’re hoping for is to go out and listen to music on a Saturday night. You know, very simple things that are to do with being young.

Because those were the experiences that were really denied to them by the very dark events that were happening on their doorstep. That’s what Terri was trying to live and trying to offer to a lot of the young people, an alternative way

to do with music and being young and being alive. So I think that’s the distinction.”

Additionally, D’Sa posits that Hooley’s story has added resonance given the ways in which music is disseminated and consumed today.

“Terri, like a lot of music lovers, was obsessed with the idea of the physical object of a record… The Good Vibrations shop back in those days was a place to sell music, but more importantly, it provided a community space for a lot of kids. It was a place where they could get together and be likeminded together. And I think that’s the case still with local record

stores, many of which are under threat and are now trying to survive. It’s a different era, but there’s certainly things that have been lost in that transition to our new way of doing things.”

What: Good Vibrations screens at the British Film Festival Where: Palace Norton Street / Palace Verona When: November 22, 29 / November 23, 28 More: britishfilmfestival.com.au

This Is Barbara Cleveland [VIDEO] Rewriting Art History By Emma McManus mysterious disappearance from art history. Part of an ongoing project, This Is Barbara Cleveland is a video work that reconstructs a portrait of one of Australia’s forgotten performance artists.

The work will be presented as part of Performance Space’s 30th anniversary celebrations, the You’re History showcase.

The group’s interest in Cleveland started when Diana Smith (one fourth of Brown Council) was working as a researcher on a project at the University of New South Wales’ College of Fine Arts. Here Smith came across an archive box of Cleveland’s work, which contained lectures and instructional performances. Smith was intrigued by the fact that she had never heard of Cleveland, so she took the box and showed it to the rest of Brown Council. Ever since then they’ve set themselves the task of recovering the memory of Cleveland.

W

ho was Barbara Cleveland? Despite an extensive body of work and active involvement in the ’70s performance art scene, Barbara Cleveland is a figure who seems to have disappeared from Australian art history.

Sydney’s Brown Council are determined to find out more about Cleveland, her work and her

The project started in 2011 – its first iteration was at Artspace as part of Nothing Like Performance. This stage of the work involved the re-enactment of a lecture from the box, remembrance performances twice a week where the artists would stand and remember her, as well as limited edition t-shirts that people could take away and wear to spread the word

about Cleveland. Since then, Brown Council has been researching its subject, talking to her contemporaries and have even travelled overseas on a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the places Cleveland had been in an attempt to discover more about her.

This research has culminated in a new documentary-style video work, This Is Barbara Cleveland, which not only tells Cleveland’s story but involves re-enactments of her works. Brown Council say that the video is created with the intention of breathing new life into Cleveland’s work as well as making an attempt to reinsert her into performance art history. “We’re very interested in the way that history is written ... historically women have been left out of history and since the ’70s there’s been a lot of work done to [rectify this]... When we found this box of Cleveland’s work we realised that this was an artist who had suffered a similar fate so we decided to take on the role of almost art historian [and] reinsert her back into history.”

Performance is known for its ephemeral nature and Brown Council say that it leaves a lot of room for confusion around fact and fiction.

Often the only evidence of performance work taking place is through blurry black and white

photographs and what has been written about it. Brown Council describes the relationship between performance and its documentation as a “kind of slippery space between what actually happened and what has been recorded through writing about these kinds of works. In Australia there has been very little written about performance art and certainly women are often left out of that story more broadly.”

This work continues themes Brown Council has explored in previous works – not only the relationship between the performance and its documentation, but also between performance and feminism. “We’ve been looking at the idea of disappearance and appearance within performance practice. We’ve been interested in the fabrication and re-enactment of performance documents and performance itself and Barbara Cleveland seems to be a figure that encapsulates those threads as well.”

What: This Is Barbara Cleveland Where: Performance Space, Carriageworks When: November 20 – December 1 More: performancespace.com.au / browncouncil.com

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire [FILM] An Entirely Different Game By Alicia Malone

A

little over a year ago, The Hunger Games, a movie flippantly described as “the next Twilight”, did something very un-Twilight … it won critical praise and box office success. The movie, based on the first of the Hunger Games book series, scored great reviews for it’s cast – a mix of young stars and established actors – as well as for its dark themes and political message.

Now comes the sequel, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, which delves deeper into those themes. Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), victors of the last Hunger Games, are sent to compete once more by President Snow who wants the world to watch as Katniss, a symbol of hope in a dystopian future, is destroyed.

“Huge, and emotional,” is how Lawrence describes the sequel. “We see so much more of the world – everything is more elevated.

The stakes are much higher. It’s a lot more heightened and more emotional.”

“I really feel like this is a thriller,” agrees Elizabeth Banks, who reprises her role as Effie Trinket, escort of Katniss. “The whole second half I was on the edge of my seat, anxious the entire time, even though I know how the story ends! It was very tense. I love that.”

Though the film is intense to watch, the cast says the mood on set was exactly the opposite. Woody Harrelson, who again plays Katniss’ mentor Haymitch, says every day on set was a joy. “I love it. This is the most fun film I’ve ever worked on – it’s like going to work in a playground. I look forward to going to work. And it really starts from the Queen Bee, Jennifer, down. She sets this tone of anything goes. It’s fun and wild. Her sense of humor just keeps everybody laughing, the cast and the crew, everybody.”

“Two people really set the tone,” agrees new cast member Jeffrey Wright, who plays Beetee, a fellow Hunger Games contestant.

“Firstly Francis, who is very unassuming, collaborative, and gives a lot of freedom. And then Jennifer who just takes advantage of that freedom to be as insane as she possibly can!

Josh Hutcherson too. The two of them make Laurel and Hardy look boring and humorless.

But then once the cameras roll, they focus on the task, which is really impressive. I’m still not convinced that the two of them aren’t actually 75 year olds, because they are far more sophisticated than folks of that age should be.”

“It’s Woody who gets us into trouble,” Lawrence laughs. “Josh and I are crafty at being bad; like

we’ll be bad but then when they start rolling we’ll get it together.

And when someone else is goofing off camera I can hold a face, I will not crack.

Woody on the other hand is the worst, he will just lose it.”

Since the first Hunger Games hit the silver screen last year, Lawrence received her second Oscar nomination, and won, for her role in Silver Linings Playbook. Though Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Lawrence insists her life hasn’t changed, to Katniss going back into the games; she’s Francis explains how a veteran, has done it all before, and sees it her Oscar experience found its way into the differently. The first time was one thing, but this sequel. “The first time she was nominated is an entirely different game.” was for Winter’s Bone, and it was like the first Hunger Games – you’re 17 years old going to all these parties and you’re a deer caught What: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire in the headlights. The second time she went opens in cinemas on Thursday November 21 back, for Silver Linings Playbook, it’s similar

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Theatre Reviews Hits and misses on the bareboards around town

■ Theatre

ALL MY SONS Until December 1

Sweet Nothings ■ Theatre

SWEET NOTHINGS Until November 23 Sweet Nothings, directed by John Kachoyan, is the latest work produced by the Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) in conjunction with Under The Wharf Productions and it’s one with quite a pedigree. First performed at London’s Young Vic in 2010, writer David Harrower’s script is based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1895 work Liebelei.

Schnitzer was a prominent Viennese playwright whose explorations of human sexuality earned him the respect of Sigmund Freud and the revulsion of the Nazis. More recently, Stanley Kubrick and David Hare have noted his influence in their respective film’s Eyes Wide Shut and The Blue Room.

The play opens with friends Fritz (Graeme McRae) and Theodore (Owen Little) discussing the former’s affair with a married woman. Theodore is attempting to quell this affair by settingup Fritz with the innocent Christine (Matlida Ridgway) who soon arrives for a dinner party along with Theo’s sassy lover Mitzi (Clementine Mills). Christine is enamoured with Fritz and is rapidly falling in love, while Mitzi and Theodore are comically pragmatic in their pursuit of a good time. The party descends into drunken debauchery but is interrupted when the husband of Fritz’s lover makes an appearance. The evening’s merriment turns menacing and the game of love now has real consequences.

Harrower’s script speaks to Schnitzler’s famously favoured topics of love and death, while also exploring excess and class. While the first half features machine gun banter reminiscent of Oscar Wilde, the second half addresses the outcomes of such frivolity.

Darlinghurst Theatre Company’s inaugural production, All My Sons, left audience members gasping for breath after the impressive Marshall Napier spoke his last words. The play, written

by Arthur Miller and directed by Iain Sinclair, tells the tale of a profi teering father and a grieving mother within the context of World War II. Story goes: father and businessman, Joe Keller (Napier) lives an insufferable life after narrowly avoiding the loss of his livelihood by shipping out a known batch of defective machine parts during the war. These parts, used in the air force, cause 21 young men to lose their lives. Keller and his business partner Steve Deever are trialed and although Keller walks away a free man, Deever remains in jail. Amongst this devastation, the eldest Keller boy, Larry, doesn’t return from the war and remains missing for three years.

The Keller family live in an excruciating little American town where Joe’s wife, Kate (Toni Scanlan) has whittled away to nothing as she mourns for Larry and holds onto guilt for Joe’s actions. Chris (Andrew Henry), the youngest Keller son is an admirable character who will forever live in the shadow of his father and brother. The love of his life, Anne (Meredith Penman), the son of Joe’s ex-business partner, is a prominent war widow and Penman blew this character out of the water.

Miller wrote All My Sons after his stepmother read him a similar story from the paper one morning. First performed on Broadway in 1947, only weeks before the timely World War II peace treaty was signed, All My Sons was, and still is, a fi ne example of a text refl ecting immediate realities of any given time and place onstage.

Miller succeeded in dialoging a true American family and the magnifi cent cast preceded the standards this play has always kept.

Louise Jeckells

Clear stand-outs are Mills as the realistic Mitzi and Lucy Miller as Christine’s nosey, moralistic neighbour. While both characters may have the wittiest lines, both actors own their roles making the audience want to befriend one and slap the other. However Mark Lee (Gallipoli) as Christine’s musician father feels wooden compared to the youthful cast.

All My Sons

Lee Hutchison

See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews

What's in our diary...

War Is Over! (If You Want It): Yoko Ono Museum of Contemporary Art Until February 23 John Lennon once described his artist, peace activist and musician wife, Yoko Ono, as “the world’s most famous unknown artist”.

War Is Over (If You Want It): Yoko Ono is currently presenting at the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the Sydney International Art Series and runs until February 23 next year. A selection of Ono’s work spanning a range of mediums – sculpture, immersive installation, written texts, film, sound composition and participatory artwork – will involve punters in a number of hands on activities including arranging broken crockery, stamping world maps with peace signs and writing personal message of love to their mothers. For further information and tickets, head to mca.com.au.

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Yoko Ono photo by Matthu Placek. Image courtesy and copyright the artist.

Arts Exposed

Game On Gaming news with Adam Guetti

2013

month for gamers. That’s because both Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One land on our shores, kick-starting the long-awaited next generation of gaming. Get excited.

Xbox One drops on November 22 and will set punters back $599, but will come packaged with the console, a controller and the brand new version of Kinect – the motion sensing camera that can recognise your voice and body movements.

On the same day expect to see a slew of exclusive launch games hit shelves alongside the One. First up, there’ll be Ryse: Son of Rome, an immense action-adventure story following a fearless Roman soldier named Maruis Titan who joins the army to avenge the death of his family. Corpse fans will want to check out Dead Rising 3, the third instalment of popular zombie-slaying franchise, while Forza Motorsport 5 will satisfy anybody wanting to burn some rubber with high-speed racing.

November 29 sees PlayStation 4 release for $549, which includes the console itself and a reworked DualShock 4 controller. Like the Xbox One, the console also has exclusive titles launching with it including Killzone: Shadow Fall, a futuristic First Person Shooter where you’ll be tasked with preventing an all-out war between two violent factions. Then there’ll be the more family friendly Knack that has you playing as the small-titled character whose role it is to win the war against a goblin army. The creature is also capable of changing size and turning invisible to help him in his task.

Big-hitters like Call Of Duty, Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed and FIFA will also launch prettier ports for both systems so prepare the wallet for some heavy spending.

The Return Of PAX Australia

You might have just barely recovered from all the chaos that was EB Games Expo 2013, but details of the next PAX Australia have already landed. The forthcoming event will be held from October 31 through November 2, 2014 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

AUSSIE NEWS

Releases NOV New November is one mammoth

As she announced the details, Victorian State Minister for Innovation, Services and Small Business Louise Asher said “PAX is the world’s leading games festival and the return of PAX Australia to Melbourne for the second consecutive year highlights Victoria’s reputation as a key hub for games development in the Asia Pacifi c region.

Video Game Facts

Potentially the largest misconception of the video game world is that it’s a medium dominated by young children and teenagers. According to the latest Digital Australia 2014 report, however, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

The report states that a whopping 76 per cent of Australian gamers are now over the age of 18, a statistic up from 73 per cent in the 2012 fi ndings.

“When we conducted the first report in 2005, video games were seen as a medium aimed at younger children who only played on a console or PC. Today, the profi le of the typical gamer is nearly synonymous with the profi le of the typical Australian,” claimed Professor at Bond University, Dr Jeff Brand, in the report.

Kickstarter Kick-started

Local game creators will now be able to launch Kickstater projects with the crowdfunding tool opening up to both Australia and New Zealand this month.

Internationally, the tool has played a major role in launching a wealth of successful projects over the last year.

Review: Batman: Arkham Origins

Following on from two critically-loved Batman games from another developer, the pressure behind Batman: Arkham Origins was immense. But could new kids on the block, Warner Bros. Montreal, deliver an experience worthy of the Arkham name, or would they falter? After donning the cape once more, we can assure you it does, even if it doesn’t really present anything new.

Set several years before the events of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, Origins tells the tale a younger, unrefined Dark Knight who, for the most part, is still honing his skills.

That all changes on one fateful Christmas Eve, however, when DC villain Black Mask puts a $50,000,000 and a onenight deadline bounty on Batman’s head.

Naturally, the money draws the attention of eight of the best contract killers in the world (like Deadshot, Deathstroke, Firefly and Bane) who Batman must defeat one by one while earning the trust of Police Captain James Gordon.

What follows is a largely similar experience to the previous games in the series sans a few neat changes. Combat, for example, while still utilising the same basic mechanics, now features refreshingly unique boss battles as well as a few new enemy types that prevent the stockstandard button mashing solution.

There’s also a much-improved detective mode, that although doesn’t fully explore what it means to become the World’s Greatest Detective, does an adequate, albeit fairly guided job of analysing a number of crime scenes.

As a whole package, Batman: Arkham Origins does well to uphold the quality of the Arkham games with a large open world to play in, baddies to take down and gadgets to fiddle with. The real issue is that it just feels a little too safe which we’re hoping the inevitable sequel will only but rectify.

Adam Guetti

Visit dustycartridge.com for more gaming news. thebrag.com

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

ALBUM OF THE WEEK ROLLER ONE Beautiful Fountain Torn And Frayed

Xxxx Roller One is a band that explores and touches the soul of human existence. You can’t make this shit up: it comes from the human soul, wherever, and whatever that is.

Is there a soundtrack to the soul? The mere location and identity of the soul is itself a subject of perennial pop-scientific and specious philosophical musing; to the extent that an objective concept exists, it’s considered an ethereal construct, well beyond the analytical constructs of post-enlightenment discourse. Yet, like pornography and art, the soul is there when you know it. And the soul is everywhere on Roller One’s new album, Beautiful Fountain.

Take, for instance, the opening track, ‘All The Windows In This Town Are Closed’: using Roller One’s bare-bones acoustic folk-country-psych musical aesthetic, Fergus McAlpin casts his eye across a deserted country town and

imagines what lies behind closed doors and beyond the dead-end streets; the town becomes the metaphor for his inner emotions.

‘I Saw Her There’ is heartfelt: an image of beauty, a moment of happiness, a sense of wonder; in a world of cheap social media commentary, this is as real as it gets. ‘Sea Of Mundane’ tempers the good with the bad – behind the facade lies the harshness of reality. It’s sparse and almost brutal: drugs, despair and tragedy. The dark atmosphere rolls in quietly like an encroaching storm; the bleakness never breaks, yet by the end there’s a sense of resignation that the dye has been set.

Finally, there’s ‘Someone Like You’, and love is in the air, in all its fascinating glory. We ride out across an ocean of hope, fiscally challenged and romantically excited.

Patrick Emery

LOS LOBOS

DAY RAVIES

GLASSER

Disconnected In New York City Savoy/Universal Music Australia

Tussle Popfrenzy

Interiors True Panther/Remote Control

Los Lobos are marking their 40th anniversary as a band with the release of this live record, Disconnected In New York City, which is about as low-key as a ruby anniversary gets. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, just unnecessary.

The setlist spans a number of years, but it’s not definitive or celebratory (like a 40th anniversary should be).

In particular, there are no inclusions from Los Lobos’ best album, Kiko, which is a huge disappointment.

It’s an acoustic live album, which has its own pros and cons; the guitars and especially the horn section sound fantastic, while deficiencies in David Hidalgo’s and Cesar Rosas’ vocals are more exposed than they would be in the normal electric set-up. This means the upbeat songs, relying more on horns than vocals – such as the excellent ‘Chuco’s Cumbia’ – are the ones that work best in the set.

Disconnected thus goes against the grain of most acoustic albums, which favour a slower, more meditative pace to cast songs in a different light (and thus make them worthwhile).

So with all the upbeat songs doing the heavy lifting, and no defining ‘moment’ for the concert to cling to, it ends up being a pleasant if forgettable collection of acoustic Latin pop-rock.

And in an age when every phone has the ability to record high quality audio and a quick YouTube search for a particular song comes up with thousands of results, I’m not sure there’s a need for live albums like this anyway. Los Lobos now have four of them (two acoustic), which seems more than a little superfluous.

Los Lobos are a great band, but for their 40th anniversary they deserved better than Disconnected In New York City.

If you were to pick up and listen to Tussle without previously having heard Day Ravies’ fuzzy demos, you would probably never figure out that it’s a debut album. Tussle has a sense of maturity about it that some firsttimers fail to grasp in their formative years and it shows through fervently, all the while dreamily drifting from ’90s pop to shoegaze and back again. Opening with ‘Leaky Tin’, the soft tones of Caroline de Dear nudge you in to the Tussle experience, just before feedbacking into a slow, melodic drag accentuated by guitarist Sam Wilkinson taking the vocal lead.

While it’s hard to pick a clear-cut favourite, ‘I Don’t Mind’ is definitely one of the album’s strongest tracks – to put it simply, de Dear’s delicate vocals and Wilkinson’s guitar melody go together like… at first I was going to say cheese and wine, but it seems more suited to beers in the backyard on a sunny day, and that’s exactly how you should be listening to this.

Tussle is a solid repeater record for the summer, providing the soundtrack to lazy hot afternoons or going on a long drive out of town.

While it may be following hot on the tail of the likes of Dick Diver and Twerps, Day Ravies is a band that stands up proudly on its own, with sounds that are dazed and dreamy but with a big enough melody to get you to stop nodding along and start moving.

There need to be more debuts like Tussle. This quartet simultaneously stumbles out into the unknown while having a firm idea of where it wants to go. With pleasant surprises around each corner, it’s not an album to grow tired of easily.

It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture. If you’re on the fence about music journalism, I’d suggest you cast your eyes elsewhere while I write about music about architecture that you can dance too.

Blame Glasser. Her shift to New York City was the inspiration for her new album’s exploratory tension between exterior and interiors, its wide open spaces juxtaposed with claustrophobic grid-like patterns.

This analytical viewpoint is given an off-kilter spin, which you can pick up from the titles and track listing alone: the meticulous ‘Window’ triptych fails to follow the chronological order of its parts, while ‘New Year’ is the only song title that doesn’t reflect form or space in some way.

Within these formal trappings, the lyrics uncover dark secrets, dreamlike states and glassy-eyed moments of romance.

The music itself isn’t as strange as you might expect, with Glasser and co-producer Van Rivers (Fever Ray, Blonde Redhead) concocting a more polished, pop sound than on the more fragmented debut effort, Ring.

If anything, Interiors is more hemmed-in than spaced-out.

Its subtle, shifting music gives off a sense of unease without disorienting, while Glasser’s accessible, intimate vocal consistently provides the entry point into a lush world of comfort, but never dullness.

Chris Girdler

Kirstie Sequitin

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK Slow Motion Music Create/Control Following his debut 2011 Dreams EP, Oliver Tank’s Slow Motion Music explores the same melancholic themes and dreamy soundscapes, albeit on a grander scale. Over the past 18 months, Oliver Tank has supported Lana Del Rey, James Blake and Lorde, so the 23-year-old Sydney producer’s release comes at an opportune time for him to build on his strong live fan base.

Rather than a collection of songs, this EP comes across like a soundtrack, ushering

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Like the EP title suggests, the songs unravel slowly, moving at an elegiac pace. The opener, ‘Stay’, drifts through a lush backdrop of moving strings as Tank and Fawn Meyers engage in romantic entreaties. The measured yet affecting ‘Different Speed’ features the nuanced production of Ta-ku, who delivers layers of plucked violins and subtle glitch beats reminiscent of Four Tet with a wobbly dub edge.

Not one to shy away from collaboration, Tank also teams up with Hayden Calnin on the uplifting ‘You Never Know’ and UK

Home & Hosed MGM

Oblivion Firestarter

The perverse irony of the Californian pop-rock scene of the 1970s lies in its internal contradiction: on the one hand, there was the sentimental and philosophical rhetoric; on the other, the drug-induced egotistical psychotic behaviour of its protagonists. You’re singing about peace, love and forgiveness, while at the same time snorting lines of coke, waving guns at your bandmates and shagging everything with a pulse. Go figure.

Pink & White Bridge’s music takes you back to one side of that paradoxical equation – the good side, that is. ‘Bring Our Love Home’ is the harmony-laden soundtrack to the moments of love that fill a thousand great songs; ‘With A Song’ skips up a beat, and embarks on a ride through the Mojave Desert with Crosby, Stills and Nash. ‘Watch Me Plead’ leans over the piano and bangs out a heartfelt lament for a bond destroyed by human foibles; ‘Run For Cover’ has got a bit of Neil Young grunt and guts to get through the tough times – maybe with a whisky chaser for good measure; and ‘Home Again’ whisks you through the door to find Jackson Browne singing some beautiful music.

If Donald Horne had copyrighted the phrase ‘The Lucky Country’, he’d have made a million; if he’d written the track of the same name on this album, he’d be a happy man. ‘Always Complaining’ could be John Lennon in a moment of personal reflection when all the bitterness had drained from his body, and ‘Who’ll Stop Me Now’ strikes a pose and swaggers like Cold Chisel at the Largs Pier Hotel in 1975.

Patrick Emery

the listener into intimate, ambient textures where Tank’s hushed, drawn-out vocals provide an underlying human pathos.

BOUND FOR RUIN

There’s a lot to see and hear on this record, and it’s all good.

Leonardo Silvestrini

OLIVER TANK

PINK & WHITE BRIDGE

producer Stumbleine on the cinematic but somewhat meandering ‘Her’. Contributing to the blissed-out, lost-in-space mood are a number of atmospheric tracks such as ‘Home’ and ‘Time Slows Down When You Walk Into The Room’, which will probably end up on the playlist at your favourite inner city cafe.

Though the record lacks the hooks and catchy melodies on his debut EP, it is a step up in producing a more full-bodied sound. If you’re in the mood to find solace in dreamy ambient electronica, then Slow Motion Music is a proper treat – but I have a feeling that Oliver Tank has more to offer.

This relatively new Brisbane act has created a very solid heavy music release here. This album certainly ticks all the boxes, as far as the checklist for modern metal is concerned.

What strikes you initially is the quality of the production. It is very strong, clear and powerful without being too overwrought or overly slick. The guitars are in your face, the drums are punchy and the vocals are just sitting above it all, exactly as they should.

The performances are strong, without setting the world on fire. But that’s totally cool; not everyone can be Gene Hoglan, Mikael Akerfeldt or Dimebag Darrell.

Then of course, is the make or break factor. The songs. These guys construct a solid tune, with strong dynamics and light and shade. They avoid the trappings of many modern metal acts, of trying to be too ‘relentless’ in their brutality. These guys know when to play brutally, and when to hold back, and it makes for more interesting, more varied listening. They also know the value of a good, strong melody, and how this can lift a heavy song above a mere collection of riffs, grooves and screams or guttural growls.

Ultimately, a lot of bands do these things, and a lot of bands – even just in Australia – are doing the groovebased melodic metalcore thing. Bound For Ruin need to find something a little extra, something that makes them distinctively them.

Whether it’s something percussive, a different vocal technique or excursions into another style of music – if they find that missing element, they could be well on their way to national and international recognition.

Rod Whitfield

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

WEEN - La Cucaracha LAURA MVULA - Sing To The Moon LILY ALLEN - It’s Not Me, It’s You

LED ZEPPELIN - Led Zeppelin II KINGS OF LEON - Only By The Night

Larry Lai

thebrag.com

SuNdAy 3Rd SuNdAy 10Th GANG OF BROTHERS

ALL THE DEAD COLOURS DEAF DEARS

SuNdAy 17Th

FRONT END LOADER SPARROWS THEM DREAMERS CELEBRATING DRUM and PERCUSSION CO OP OPENING

SuNdAy 24Th NEVER MIND

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live reviews Oxford Art Factory Thursday November 7 The No Dice Paradise night began with the timid arrival of Okin Osan, who awkwardly bantered between the sparse crowd and one another. This didn’t last long, however, as they quickly picked up the pace with their charming, clattering guitar pop, led by the sibling duo of Rose and Rainbow Chan.

Big smiles and even bigger dance breaks ensued. Simply put: if you weren’t crushing on this party-friendly power trio by the end of their all-too-brief set, you were at a different show altogether.

Whereas Okin Osan revelled in their skewiff garage performance, jazzy Sydneysider Jack Colwell did not put a single foot out of place. Backed by an impeccably tight band, Colwell shimmied and shook in time with their swinging rhythms. All the while, he lay down a husky baritone recalling James Blake or Jack Ladder, crooning with some serious conviction. Although a wide array of influences were present and accounted for, they added up to something much, much greater – something wholly unique and striking to experience.

Brendan Maclean has been blurring lines since long before Robin Thicke even

thought of doing so, albeit his are the lines of genre. One day you’d catch Maclean unleashing his inner Rufus Wainwright with piano-driven sad bastardry, the next airing his inner Liza Minelli with vamping, exuberant pop. There seems to be no time for middle ground in Maclean’s world, and tonight’s set is no exception. Accompanied by two keyboardists and the eccentric Betty Grumble (as well as, for whatever reason, Colwell sitting behind a computer and reading a book), Maclean dipped and dove between sounds and styles without so much as batting an eyelid.

little bastard

08:11:13 :: Brighton Up Bar :: Level 1/77 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9572 6322

We were treated to some bright-eyed and bushy-tailed electropop in the form of original material from Maclean’s forthcoming crowd-funded debut album.

This, however, was also matched with moments of introspect, like a tender solo version of single ‘OnlyOnly’ and an intense ‘Jesus’ which left the crowd in shocked silence as Grumble attempted to free herself from the cling wrap covering her entire body. How much of this was a stunt is anyone’s guess, but it made for a powerful performance. Closing with a triumphant, brilliantly choreographed ‘Winner’, Maclean proved yet again that his chameleon-like approach to music pays off in spades.

David James Young

castlecomer

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BRENDAN MACLEAN, JACK COLWELL, OKIN OSAN

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07:11:13 :: Brighton Up Bar :: Level 1/77 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9572 6322

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ASTLE LIZOTTE’S NEWC ents pres Callaghan College 20 LIVE @ LIZOTTES NOV ne EP Release 21 Jordie La NOV NOV Diesel 22 23 Matthews – NOV Wendy 24 The Welcome Fire Tour idge High School NOV Whitebr 26 Music Showcase esents Entertainment pr NOV Fairplay 27 Coopers LIVE & LOCAL – A Tribute NOV Rumours 28 To Fleetwood Mac f North NOV The Idea O 29 Christmas Show ar Daley – NOV Troy Cass 30 Solo & Acoustic Jim Keays & Lazy Lunch with nd DEC Ba s 01 Russell Morri

all the colours

PICS :: KC

NOV

10:11:13 :: Frankie's Pizza :: 50 Hunter St Sydney

S :: KATRINA CLARKE :: AMATH OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER

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D ROUSE MAGNAN :: ASHLEY MAR :: DAVI

Lizotte’s Sydney 629 Pittwater Rd Dee Why

Lizotte’s Central Coast Lot 3 Avoca Dr Kincumber

Lizotte’s Newcastle 31 Morehead St Lambton

WWW. LIZOT TES.COM.AU BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 29

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

Jill Scott

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Am 2 Pm The Juniors Club, Kingsford.

6pm. free.

Chris Stretton Stamford Grand, North Ryde.

5:45pm. free.

Hitseekers Three Wise Monkeys Pub, Sydney. 10pm. free.

Kings Of Leon + The Growl Enmore Theatre, Newtown.

7:30pm. $120.

Lunchbreak Presented By Alberts - feat: Jenny Broke The Window FBi Social, Kings Cross. 1pm. free.

Mark Travers Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9pm. free.

Taking Berlin + Whales + Cicada + Eddie Boyd & The Phattaphillars Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst.

7:30pm. $5.

Uni Bar100 Bar100, The Rocks. 9pm. free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Eros Ramazotti Sydney Entertainment Centre, Darling Harbour. 8pm. $99.90.

Joseph Tawadros Quartet Venue 505, Surry Hills.

8:30pm. $35.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23 Enmore Theatre

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 21

Jill Scott

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

+ Jones Jnr. 8pm. $89.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 18 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Helmut Uhlmann + Chris Brookes + Massimo Presti + Rick Taylor Kelly’s On King, Newtown.

7pm. free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Happy Monday!

Venue 505, Surry Hills.

8:30pm. free.

Motown Mondays - feat: Soulgroove The White Horse, Surry Hills.

8pm. free.

Reggae Monday Civic Underground, Sydney.

10pm. free.

30 :: BRAG :: 539 : 18:11:13

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Frankie’s World Famous House Band Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney. 9pm. free.

Kye Brown Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9pm. free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Champagne Jam - Open Mic Night Dundas Sports Club, Dundas.

7:30pm. free.

Nick Kingswell Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9pm. free.

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 19

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 20

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Eora Tafe End Of Semester Music Showcase The Vanguard, Newtown.

8pm. $13.80.

Old School Funk And Groove Night Venue 505, Surry Hills.

8:30pm. free.

Chris Raicevich + Guests Ruby L’otel, Rozelle. 7:30pm. free.

Live Music Thursdays Bar100, The Rocks. 5pm. free.

Peach Montgomery + Guests Forest Lodge Hotel, Forest Lodge. 7:30pm. free.

Catherine Britt + Chris And Charlie (Tigertown) The Vanguard, Newtown.

8pm. $23.80.

Dream Brother (A Tribute To Jeff & Tim Buckley) feat: Michael Azzopardi + Stephen Crocker + Chris

Alex Hopkins Open Mic Night Northies, Cronulla. 7:30pm. free.

Andy Mammers Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill.

7:30pm. free.

Cambo Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

8:30pm. free.

Chris Masuak And Klondike’s North 40 + Dr Bombay + The Stukas The Square, Haymarket. 7pm. $12.

Christie Lamb Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 6pm. free.

Dave White Duo Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney.

9:30pm. free.

Dee Donovan Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 12pm. free.

High-Tails + Fox And Owl Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst.

9pm. $10.

Hue Williams Crowne Plaza Hotel, Sydney.

6pm. free.

Joe Echo Orient Hotel, The Rocks.

9:30pm. free.

Machine Translations + Stolen Violin FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. $25.

Matt Price Australian Hotel And Brewery, Rouse Hill. 9:30pm. free.

Ngaiire + Julia & The Deep Sirens Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. free.

Nicky Kurta Dee Why Hotel, Dee Why. 7pm. free.

Peter Byrne Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 3pm. free.

Pop Friendzzzy - feat: Sonny & The Sunsets + Surf City + Songs + Adults Goodgod Small Club, Sydney.

8pm. $26.

Singing Comp Hosted By Michael McGlynn The Ranch Hotel, Eastwood.

7:30pm. free.

Smokie Enmore Theatre, Newtown.

7:30pm. $99.

Steve Tonge Duo O’Malleys Hotel, Kings Cross.

9:30pm. free.

Susan Jon Rose Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 12pm. free.

Victoria Avenue Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney. 7:30pm. free.

Wildcatz Three Wise Monkeys Pub, Sydney. 10pm. free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC A Night At The Carousel Club The Vanguard, Newtown.

8pm. $28.80.

A Night Of New Jewish Music - feat: Daniel Weltlinger + Eddie Bronson + The Asthmatix + Zohar’s Nugin Django Bar, Marrickville. 7pm. $20.

Cole Soul And Emotion feat: Lionel Cole The White Horse, Surry Hills.

8pm. free.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 22 JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Tom Trelawney Three Wise Monkeys Pub, Sydney. 6pm. free.

Uncle Jed Venue 505, Surry Hills.

8:30pm. $20.

ACOUSTIC/ COUNTRY/BLUES/ FOLK

Live Music Fridays Bar100, The Rocks. 5pm. free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS Abreact The Gladstone Feeling, Chippendale. 8pm. free.

Alex Cannings Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

6:30pm. free.

Alex Lloyd + The Young Lions Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8pm. $25.

Am 2 Pm North Sydney Leagues Club, Cammeray. 7:30pm. free.

Andy Mammers Harbord Beach Hotel, Freshwater. 8pm. free.

Armchair Travellers Duo Berowra Village Tavern,

Berowra Heights. 8:30pm. free.

Big Way Out Colonial Hotel, Werrington.

9:30pm. free.

Black Diamond Hearts Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest. 10:30pm. free.

Bounce Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney. 10pm. free.

Brad Johns Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

10:30pm. free.

Brendan Deehan O’Malleys Hotel, Kings Cross.

8pm. free.

Cath & Him St George Leagues Club, Kogarah. 9pm. free.

Club Hoy Camelot Lounge, Marrickville.

7:30pm. $22.70.

Dan Lawrence Duo Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale.

9pm. free.

Darren Middleton The Vanguard, Newtown.

8pm. $28.80.

Dave White Experience New Brighton Hotel, Manly.

11pm. free.

David Agius Parramatta RSL Club, Parramatta. 8pm. free.

Day Ravies + Sounds Like Sunset The Red Rattler Theatre, Marrickville, Sydney. 8pm. $10.

DJ Marty Wentworthville Leagues Club, Wentworthville. 9pm. free.

DJ Tom Annetts Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 9pm. free.

Evie Dean Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill.

4pm. free.

Franky Valentyn Trio Club Five Dock, Five Dock.

8pm. free.

Gerard Masters Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest. 7pm. free.

Heartbreaker + No Further Questions + Hivemind + Handball Deathmatch + Stacy Gacy Penshurst RSL, Penshurst.

7:30pm. $10.

Heath Burdell Northies, Cronulla. 9pm. free.

Hello Cleveland Horse And Jockey Hotel, Homebush. 7:30pm. free.

Jess Dunbar Novotel, Darling Harbour.

5:30pm. free.

JJ Duo Club Windang, Windang.

7:30pm. free.

John Vella Duo Cock N’ Bull, Bondi Junction.

7pm. free.

Jonny Gretsch’s Wasted Ones Ruby L’otel, Rozelle. 8pm. free.

Julian Casey Abbott’s Hotel, Waterloo. 7pm. free.

Kite Club + High-Tails World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. free.

Krishna Jones General Gordon Hotel, Sydenham. 7pm. free.

Leon Fallon The Grand Hotel, Rockdale.

5:30pm. free.

Live Music At The Royal The Royal, Leichhardt.

9:30pm. free.

LJ Chatswood RSL, Chatswood.

5:30pm. free.

Loco Engadine Tavern, Engadine.

9:30pm. free.

Luke Robinson Greystanes Inn, Greystanes.

8pm. free.

Machine Translations + Stolen Violin + Special Guests Tattersalls Hotel Penrith, 9pm. free.

Marty Simpson Customs House Bar, Sydney.

7:30pm. free.

Marty’s Place

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Xxx

pick of the week

Raicevich + Andy Brown + Dylan Wright + Zack Martin + Zachariah Sayed + Alan Watters Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 8pm. $15.

Peach Montgomery & Guests Sackville Hotel, Rozelle.

7:30pm. free.

Pulp Kitchen And Folk Club - feat: Live Rotating Folk Bands Soda Factory, Surry Hills.

5pm. free.

g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com The Overlander Hotel, Cambridge Park. 7pm. free.

Matt Jones Castle Hill RSL, Castle Hill.

9pm. free.

Matt Price Duo Cronulla RSL, Cronulla. 8pm. free.

Moonsorrow Manning Bar, Camperdown.

8pm. $65.30.

Nathan Cole Manly Leagues Club, Brookvale. 10pm. free.

Nicky Kurta Stacks Taverna, Sydney.

5pm. free.

Okenyo + Tkay Maidza + Timberwolf + DJ Kristy Lee Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 6pm. free.

Panorama Duo Parramatta Leagues - The Firehouse, Parramatta.

7:30pm. free.

Party Central Cronulla Bowling And Recreation Club, Cronulla.

8:30pm. free.

Pleasure Overload - feat: Cryptic Scorn + The Sacks + Jean-Pierre Antaki From Academy Of Spanish + Carbon Black Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 7pm. $10.

Powderfinger Show Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills. 10pm. free.

Q Sound Ramsgate RSL, Sans Souci.

8pm. free.

Rachel Eldon Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale.

5:30pm. free.

Reels On Fire PJ Gallagher’s, Leichhardt.

9pm. free.

Renae Stone The Eastern, Bondi Junction.

8pm. free.

Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

8:30pm. free.

Roger Vs. The Man + Sussurro Eastern Lounge Roseville, Roseville. 7:30pm. $20.

Ryan Thomas Ambarvale Tavern, Ambarvale. 8pm. free.

Sarah Paton Massey Park Golf Club, Concord. 7pm. free.

Soul Principle + Wild Catz Band Orient Hotel, The Rocks.

4:30pm. free.

The Drones + Harmony The Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle West. 10:30am. $30.

The Ex’s Vineyard Hotel, Vineyard.

9pm. free.

The Greg Agar Duo Kings Cross Hotel, Kings Cross. 12am. free.

The Jungle Giants + Twinsy + Muscles (DJ Set) Metro Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $31.20.

The Karnis Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8:30pm. free.

The Powderfinger Show &

Anthems Of Oz Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills. 10pm. free.

The Remixes Penrith Gaels, Kingswood.

8pm. free.

The Shrooms Kirribilli Hotel, Milsons Point.

8pm. free.

The Sleepwalkers Club Vol V (Fables) - feat: Burn Antares + The Naysayers FBi Social, Kings Cross.

8pm. $10.

Tim Conlon Australian Hotel And Brewery, Rouse Hill. 9pm. free.

Tin Man + Adi + Steel Bonus + Truba Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 9pm. $15.

Tori Darke The Ranch Hotel, Eastwood.

5:30pm. free.

Victoria Avenue Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill.

8pm. free.

White Bros Quakers Inn, Quakers Hill.

8:30pm. free.

Wildcatz Orient Hotel, The Rocks.

9:30pm. free.

Will Teague The Leichhardt Hotel, Leichhardt. 6pm. free.

Zoltan Ingleburn RSL, Ingleburn.

9pm. free.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK Live Music Saturdays Bar100, The Rocks. 4pm. free.

Paul Hayward & Friends Town & Country Hotel, St Peters. 4pm. free.

Peach Montgomery + Carl Stewart Band + Les Montgomery Hampshire Hotel, Camperdown. 7:30pm. free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Cumbiamuffin Camelot Lounge, Marrickville.

7pm. $25.

Jill Scott + Jones Jnr. Enmore Theatre, Newtown.

8pm. $89.

Marsala (Gypsy Dance) Venue 505, Surry Hills.

8:30pm. $20.

The Crooked Fiddle Band + Captain Kickarse & The Awesomes + Greta Mob The Standard, Surry Hills.

8pm. $15.

Yuki Kumagai + John Mackie Well Co. Cafe And Wine Bar, Leichhardt. 11am. free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS 3 Way Split Moorebank Sports Club, Hammondville. 9pm. free.

Abreact Cosmo’s Rock Lounge, Marrickville. 8pm. free.

Agent 69 Ramsgate RSL, Sans Souci.

8pm. free.

Andy Mammers + Crash Avenue Castle Hill RSL, Castle Hill.

10:30pm. free.

Angie Dean Castle Hill RSL, Castle Hill.

6:30pm. free.

Big Yard Band Penrith RSL Club, Penrith.

3pm. free.

Black Diamond Hearts North Bondi RSL, North Bondi. 8pm. free.

Cara Kavanagh + Mark Oats Duo PJ Gallagher’s, Leichhardt.

9pm. free.

Carl Fidler Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

4:20pm. free.

Cath & Him Club Engadine, Engadine.

8pm. free.

Cedron - feat: One Vital Word + Encounters + Winter Wolves + At The Gallows + Blind Oracle Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo.

12pm. $12.

Dan Lawrence Harbord Beach Hotel, Freshwater. 8pm. free.

Dave Phillips Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

3:30pm. free.

David Agius Greystanes Inn, Greystanes.

8pm. free.

David Agius Pritchards Hotel, Mount Pritchard. 1pm. free.

DJ Sloppy AKA Shayne Aslop Pritchards Hotel, Mount Pritchard. 8pm. free.

Dutch + Tales In Space + Camden + DJ Hobophonics Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 6pm. free.

Electric Anthems Trio Paragon Hotel, Sydney.

9:30pm. free.

Elevate Orient Hotel, The Rocks.

9:30pm. free.

Fallon Bros Jamison Hotel, Penrith. 4pm. free.

Generation Crash Carousel Inn Hotel, Rooty Hill. 8pm. free.

Glass Towers Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. free.

Gossling + Little Scout + Whitaker Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $18.40.

Greg Agar Castle Hill RSL, Castle Hill.

9pm. free.

Groovology

mon

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

18

tue

19

Nov

Nov

wed

thu

20 Nov

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

fri

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

(9:30PM - 12:30AM)

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

22 Nov (9:30PM - 1:30AM)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

sat

23 Nov

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

(9:30PM - 12:30AM)

SUNDAY AFTERNOON sun

24 Nov

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

(8:30PM - 12:00AM)

The Screaming Jets

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BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 31

gig picks

g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill. 9pm. free.

Heath Burdell Helensburgh Workers Club, Helensburgh. 8:30pm. free.

Ignition Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney. 10:20pm. free.

Isaac Entry Adria Rybar & Grill, Sydney.

4pm. free.

James Englund Australian Hotel And Brewery, Rouse Hill. 10pm. free.

Jamie Lindsay The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill. 6pm. free.

Jimmy Bear + Elevate Orient Hotel, The Rocks.

4:30pm. free.

Joe Echo PJ Gallagher’s, Moore Park.

7:30pm. free.

Keith Armitage Massey Park Golf Club, Concord. 7pm. free.

Luke Dolahenty Duo Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel, Woolloomooloo. 9pm. free.

Luke Robinson Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

8:30pm. free.

Mark Da Costa Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest. 10:30pm. free.

Marty Simpson Sir Joseph Bank Hotel, Banksmeadow. 7pm. free.

Michael McGlynn Kirribilli Hotel, Milsons Point. 8pm. free.

One Hit Wonders Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 9pm. free.

Outlier Penrith RSL Club, Penrith.

9pm. free.

Paul O’Brien Band Botany View Hotel, Newtown. 7pm. free.

Peachy Oatley Hotel, Oatley. 8pm. free.

Pinhead Bookings Presents Strip Noir Rock’N’Roll - feat: Divide & Conquer + Bonez + True Love Chaos + The London Keys + The Drain Baby’s + Burlesque By Heidy Bell Nova + DJs The Goon Brothers Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo.

8pm. $15.

Red Bee - feat: Age Of Menace + Carni Meat + Whisky Smile Tattersalls Hotel, Penrith.

9pm. free.

Renae Stone Time And Tide Hotel, Dee Why. 7pm. free.

Riley Beech Duo Engadine Tavern, Engadine.

9:30pm. free.

Rose Carleo Brewhouse Marayong, Kings Park. 8pm. free.

Sarah Paton Duo Northies, Cronulla. 9pm. free.

Saturday Night Divas Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8:30pm. free.

The Jones Rival + Whipped Cream Chargers Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. free.

The Predictors Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills. 9:30pm. free.

The Screaming Jets Metro Theatre, Sydney.

8pm. $45.

The Swinging Sixties Manly Leagues Club, Brookvale. 8pm. free.

Tim Conlon Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

10:30pm. free.

Uncovered PJ’s Parramatta, Parramatta. 9:10pm. free.

Uni Schmooney! - feat: Jenny Broke The Window + Naughty Rappers Collective + Super Magic Hats + Cull +Borneo FBi Social, Kings Cross.

32 :: BRAG :: 539 : 18:11:13

up all night out all week...

Ngaiire

The Jungle Giants

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 20 Catherine Britt + Chris And Charlie (Tigertown) The Vanguard, Newtown. 8pm. $23.80.

Kings Of Leon + The Growl Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:30pm. $120.

Eros Ramazotti Sydney Entertainment Centre, Darling Harbour. 8pm. $99.90.

8pm. $10.

Victoria Avenue Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest. 7pm. free.

Zoltan And Natasha Duo St Johns Park Bowling Club, 8pm. free.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 24 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK Intimate Sessions Paragon Hotel, Sydney.

6pm. free.

James Teague + Imogen Bel The Newsagency, Marrickville. 8pm. $15.

Live Music Sundays Bar100, The Rocks. 1pm. free.

Sunday Blues And Roots The White Horse, Surry Hills. 5pm. free.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Atma Blu Camelot Lounge, Marrickville. 7pm. $15.

Sydney Blues Society feat Ginhouse Blues Band Botany View Hotel, Newtown. 7pm. free.

Yuki Kumagai + John Mackie Illawarra Master Builders Club, Wollongong. 2:30pm. free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS Ace Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 6pm. free.

Andy Mammers Unwined Bar, Lane Cove.

4pm. free.

Ange Waverley Bowling Club, Waverley. 3pm. free.

Darren Johnstone Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill.

3pm. free.

Daybreak Showcase Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo.

12pm. $10.

Emille Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 1pm. free.

Fallon Bros

Pritchards Hotel, Mount Pritchard. 1pm. free.

Greg Agar Duo Northies, Cronulla. 6pm. free.

Heath Burdell Coogee Bay Hotel, Coogee.

8:30pm. free.

Helpful Kitchen Gods + Strange Horizon + No Illuminati + Dr Delites Gladstone Hotel, Chippendale. 5:30pm. free.

Iron Bark Rock Vineyard Hotel, Vineyard.

11am. free.

Jess Dunbar Manly Skiff Sailing Club, Manly. 3pm. free.

Joe Echo Horse And Jockey Hotel, Homebush. 3:30pm. free.

Klay Ambarvale Tavern, Ambarvale. 2pm. free.

Lonesome Train + Beatville Boys Orient Hotel, The Rocks.

4:30pm. free.

Mark Travers Ettamogah Hotel, Kellyville Ridge. 1pm. free.

Neck Deep + Forever Ends Here + Trophy Eyes + Perspectives + Soapbox Summer + Your Weight + In Gold + The Reprize The Annandale Hotel, Annandale. 12pm. $25.50.

Nicky Kurta Harbord Beach Hotel, Freshwater. 6pm. free.

Phil Simmons Ramsgate RSL, Sans Souci. 2pm. free.

Raoul Graf Western Suburbs Leagues Club, Leumeah. 11:30am. free.

Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

8pm. free.

Sam And The Bird The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill. 1pm. free.

Satellite V Denus Cafe, Camperdown.

5pm. free.

Tezza & The Twistops Penrith RSL Club, Penrith.

2pm. free.

The Regulators Three Wise Monkeys Pub, Sydney. 9pm. free.

Three Wise Men Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

3pm. free.

Tori Darke Mill Hill Hotel, Bondi Junction. 3pm. free.

Victoria Avenue Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel, Woolloomooloo. 3pm. free.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 21 High-Tails + Fox And Owl Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 9pm. $10.

Machine Translations + Stolen Violin FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. $25.

Ngaiire + Julia & The Deep Sirens Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm.

Free.

Pop Friendzzzy - Feat: Sonny & The Sunsets + Surf City + Songs + Adults Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 8pm. $26.

Smokie Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:30pm. $99.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 22 Alex Lloyd + The Young Lions Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8pm. $25.

Darren Middleton The Vanguard, Newtown. 8pm. $28.80.

Day Ravies + Sounds Like Sunset The Red Rattler Theatre, Marrickville.

8pm. $10.

Moonsorrow Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $65.30.

Roger Vs. The Man + Sussurro Eastern Lounge Roseville, Roseville.

7:30pm. $20.

The Drones + Harmony

The Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle West.

10:30am. $30.

The Jungle Giants + Twinsy + Muscles (DJ Set) Metro Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $31.20.

The Sleepwalkers Club Vol V (Fables) Feat: Burn Antares + The Naysayers FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. $10.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23 Jill Scott Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $89.

The Crooked Fiddle Band + Captain Kickarse & The Awesomes + Greta Mob The Standard, Surry Hills. 8pm. $15.

Glass Towers Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm.

Free.

Gossling + Little Scout + Whitaker Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $18.40.

The Jones Rival + Whipped Cream Chargers Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm.

Free.

The Screaming Jets Metro Theatre, Sydney. 8pm. $45.

Uni Schmooney! - Feat: Jenny Broke The Window + Naughty Rappers Collective + Super Magic Hats + Cull +Borneo FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. $10.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 24 Neck Deep + Forever Ends Here + Trophy Eyes + Perspectives + Soapbox Summer + Your Weight + In Gold + The Reprize The Annandale Hotel, Annandale. 12pm. $25.50.

Gossling

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

mix master mike

murat kilic the spice cellar turns two

xxx photo by JXxx

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

brag beats

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BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 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

EARS HAVE EARS

five things WITH

FBi Radio’s weekly experimental music program Ears Have Ears has announced the fifth event in its live music series, which will be held at The Square (corner of George and Hay Streets) at Haymarket on Saturday December 7 from 8pm through midnight. The party will focus on acts who are both subverting and progressing contemporary Australian rock, punk and electronic music, and doubles as the launch of Melbourne neo-folk veteran Lakes’ LP Blood Of The Grove.

Sydney’s exploratory noise-punk duo M.O.B will also be performing along with solo experimenter Lucy Cliche, Melbourne’s Justin Fuller on electronics and the Ears Have Ears DJs. Entry will set you back $10.

CHRISTIAN LUKE

Nadja Lind

Growing Up Growing up I was always recording 1. radio shows onto my tape player and I even

Your Crew Crew love! Apparently my grandfather 3. got me into music just after I was born – he

chords and vocals; it’s gonna be big and it’s gonna be emotional.

remember recording my voice over some tapes just to make commercials funnier. I never wanted to learn music in my school days, but I was the guy with 10,000 songs on his laptop that would play dance music nobody had heard during recess and lunch.

would play music to stop me from crying (it was a while back, so struggling to remember really!). In recent times I’ve released music with Laidback Luke’s imprint, Mixmash, and have some newer stuff brewing for Michael Woods’ label, Diffused. My shittiest day job was working at a car wash at 21 – It made me realise I needed to go back to uni and finish my degree.

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

I think the scene is becoming super-

Inspirations I’ve loved Timbaland for as long as I 2. can remember. I think he is a genius and has a really unique sound. In more recent times, Eric Prydz, Deadmau5 and Axwell are standouts for me. I am really impressed with production quality and always have been – a track can be really simple musically but if the instruments hit your ear the right way it just feels so good.

The Music You Make I am (slowly) finding a new sound with 4. my current releases – it’s becoming more aggressive with some electro-influenced basslines, and melodic lead lines. I’m big on fat, rhythmic drums too – it’s all about the groove for me. Marquee can expect some

Breton

segmented thanks to the commercialisation of house music AKA EDM. I think the underground scene is healthy and going to become more eminent. DJs these days need to overcome the influx of sub-quality music that is now available by making sure they seek, make and play only the best. I’ve recently been inspired by a new sound I can see coming through. It’s such a great time for music lovers all over the planet!

Where: Marquee At The Star When: Saturday November 23

KODE9, TOKIMONSTA AND MARK PRITCHARD

Niche’s Hold Tight! series returns to Oxford Art Factory on Saturday January 4 with a triple bill comprising Hyperdub label owner Kode9, TOKiMONSTA and Mark Pritchard. Hailing from Glasgow, Kode9 set up the Hyperdub label back in ’04, which subsequently launched the career of Burial and has also released material from the likes of Scuba and DJ Rashad. Kode9 is a formidable producer in his own right, having released albums such as Memories Of Future and Black Sun, remixed the Junior Boys and Battles and contributed a compilation to the DJ Kicks series. TOKiMONSTA will arrive in Australia in support of her recent album Half Shadows, while veteran Mark Pritchard will round off the bill.

Pritchard is renowned for his solo productions on Warp Records and Hyperdub along with his work as Harmonic 313 and as one half of Africa Hitech, though older listeners may well cite his output with Tom Middleton under the pair’s Global Communication banner as the highlight of Pritchard’s discography. Presale tickets go on sale this Tuesday November 19.

BUSHFIRE BENEFIT SHOW

BRETON

UK audiovisual architects Breton are coming our way with their stunning live show, featuring a fusion of jagged electronica, hip hop, pop and film. Roman Rappak and co. are truly special artists, but don’t expect them to be drawing too much attention to themselves onstage – live, the quintet clad themselves in black hoods and perform with their films playing in the backdrop. They’ve worked in sound and visuals with the likes of Alt-J, Lana Del Rey and The Temper Trap, and are hitting up Goodgod Small Club on Saturday November 23

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In response to the devastating bush fires in the region, the who’s who of the Blue Mountains beats alumni are representing for a one-off show at Katoomba RSL on Friday December 6 to raise money for their local community. Hermitude, Urthboy, Thundamentals, Dialectrix, Tuka, JONES Jnr and Joe New will all throw down, along with locals Tenth Dan & Grub and A Blank Canvas. Hermitude received the Australian Music Prize for their album HyperParadise, and Urthboy is one of the leading figures in Australia’s hip hop scene. But beyond the considerable pedigree of all the Blue Mountains acts involved, the benefit will focus on creating a positive and uplifting event for a community that’s been extremely affected over the past month. Tickets are available online for $30.

SUBSONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL ADDITIONS

As the much-anticipated Subsonic Music Festival draws ever nearer, acts continue to be added to the already bourgeoning lineup.

Englishman Damon Kirkham, AKA Jon Convex, tops the latest announcement, which also includes a host of local DJs and bands.

Further to his solo output as Jon Convex, Kirkham has also built his reputation through his work as one half of Instra:mental with Alex Green, AKA Boddika. The addition of Nocturnal and Tactical Aspect will please dancers with a penchant for DnB, while Nadja Lind will play a solo live set and London-based house producer Owen Howells has also been added to the bill. The local lineup comprises luminaries such as Paul Mac and Jonny Seymour (collectively Stereogamous), Peret Mako, Phil Smart, Robbie Lowe and Simon Caldwell. Highly touted Melbournian brothers Thankyou City, who recently took out the People’s Choice Award at the Australian Independent Music Awards will perform a live set, while Ant J Steep, a former resident DJ at the fabled Melbourne club HonkyTonks will also represent.

Eight-piece world music collective Keyim B, who meld reggae, funk and afro grooves, have also joined the panoply of live bands set to perform over the December 6-8 weekend. For further details and tickets, head to subsonicmusic. com.au.

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L R A C V O N 1 2 THU G I A CR INVITATIONE Y B M P 8 Y FROM M 10PM TILL LAT R T N E T S E U FREE G ERAL PUBLIC FRO ELLAR.COM.AU GEN SPICEC

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dance music news

free stuff

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

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

five things WITH

NYE ON THE HARBOUR FT. ART VS. SCIENCE

N’FA JONES inspired me, encouraging my creativity. I loved music from early on, and felt that I would always be involved in the creativity of it.

3.

Growing Up Born in London, I have 1. a few memories of Chelsea streets, markets, our flat, people, smoke, African food and both my parents. When I was four my Australian mother raised my brother and I in Perth as a single mother… Big change. My mother raised us to be barefoot, sporty and arty kids. I remember Count Basie, Bob Marley, Quincy Jones, Musical Youth records, and ABC classical radio always being on. I missed my dad, but my big bro was usually awesome – though often pissed off ’cause he felt estranged in Oz, while I

felt at home on red earth with the smell of eucalyptus. My mother got cancer when I was ten, which she fought her whole life… I think I used to bottle up emotions, and thankfully I later turned that into quietly writing thoughts which became lyrics and eventually songs. Songs to hopefully uplift others as well as myself.

Inspirations From about age five, I 2. remember Quincy Jones (who I recently met!), ’cause he produced so much good music.

We had The Dude album, which I grew up on. My brother really

Your Crew I’ve had a few crews… My bro got me into music, really – he had a crew at 16 (when I was ten) called Deadly Fresh. We made music and caused trouble. Well, they caused trouble and I tagged along. I later grew, and after high school moved to Melbourne and worked with Peril and Kem, forming 1200 Techniques.

Though [I’m] still cool with the 1200s bodies, I now have a crew called House Of Beige, being Sensible J and Dutch, who make most of the music for me and Remi. We’re all good friends. We all have shitty day jobs, but are grateful to have music!

The Music You Make We love a scope of sounds 4.

– hip hop, electronica, anything Detroit, dub, soul. We make electronic-infused hip hop that you can really listen to, gain from,

JOYRIDE

To celebrate the release of his three EPs, ‘Honourable’, ‘Chivalrous’ and ‘Valiant’, local lad Joyride will play a headline show at Goodgod Small Club on Thursday December 12. Joyride wrote and performed all the tracks on the trio of EPs, collectively dubbed ‘The Gentleman Trilogy’, with the final chapter ‘Valiant’ set to drop shortly.

Fresh from supporting Spit Syndicate throughout their national tour, it’s now Joyride’s turn to command center stage, with support from Left.

SPICE AFLOAT

Detroit producer Kyle Hall has cancelled his forthcoming Australia tour, which would have included a performance at the ninth Spice Afloat New Year’s Day morning sunrise boat party. The booking agent stated that Kyle Hall’s management had cancelled “due to issues out of our control”.

The good news is that even after Hall’s withdrawal, the Spice Afloat lineup still features UK duo Audiojack and Lovebirds, the solo project of Hamburg’s Sebastian Doering, who has chalked up EPs on Freerange, Buzzin Fly and OM records.

boogie hard to when we rock live, or just play our tunes in the background while rolling a fatty.

Music, Right Here, Right Now 5.

Well, what was once underground is now very mainstream, from its content to its sound in general…

Some of it is a bit too cute for me. Thankfully new types of underground are forming – really good, deep music. That’s what I always aim to stay connected with. Local crew Hiatus Kaiyote really inspire me from musical content to live show, along with Ta-ku, whose self-made online success shows what you can do when radio and labels aren’t listening, and you create your own trends, by making music for self not sales.

What: triple j Unearthed Showcase ft. Jackie Onassis, SAFIA, Remi Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Wednesday November 27

AFTERLIFE TURNS ONE

DnB party Afterlife celebrates its first birthday with a free party at the Gladstone Hotel in Chippendale on Saturday November 30. A lengthy DJ lineup has been assembled for the occasion, and will stretch across two arenas.

Rival, SFL Vs Future and Bionic Vs Linken will all play inside, while Double Robin, Insurgent, Commit and Boot will peddle beats out in the courtyard. The birthday party kicks off at 9pm.

Ah, New Year’s Eve. The night of high hopes, broken dreams, and just-as-quickly broken New Year’s resolutions. Come December 31 each year, there’s always pressure to celebrate with a night to end all nights. It doesn’t always work out, but Falcona’s On The Harbour party at Cargo Bar this NYE is a pretty safe bet.

Art vs. Science and Van She will be playing live sets, joined by Alison Wonderland, Bag Raiders, Gold Fields, Fishing and more.

And could it be in a better location? For your chance to win one of two double passes, head to thebrag.com/freeshit and tell us the quickest New Year’s resolution you ever broke.

Alison Wonderland

from Radiohead to Shed. Following a year that included collaborations with Odd Future’s Earl Sweatshirt, Kendrick Lamar and a curated soundtrack for the billion-selling Grand Theft Auto V, Flying Lotus will return Down Under to unveil his new live show.

Tiga

FLYING LOTUS

Vaunted LA producer Steven Ellison, best known for his exploits as Flying Lotus, will perform a live audiovisual show at the Sydney Opera House on Sunday March 9. Since the release of his 2006 debut 1983, Flying Lotus has established himself as one of the most celebrated artists of his generation, running the influential Brainfeeder label while releasing albums such as Cosmogramma and more recently Until The Quiet Comes on Warp Records and chalking up remixes of everyone

GARDEN PARTY Chez Damier

FACT WEEKENDER

Celebrated Chicago producer Anthony Pearson, AKA Chez Damier, is among the first round of artists announced to play the inaugural FACT Weekender festival, which will be held at Cockatoo Island on February 1-2. Jointly responsible with partner Ron Trent for Prescription Records, Damier crafted the blueprint for deep house with a string of releases on Prescription in the early ’90s.

Damier then took a lengthy break from production work and as a result might not be known to house neophytes, though his hiatus ended in recent years when he committed to a series of releases for the German label Mojuba as well as launching his own new project, Balance Alliance. German producer Butch, who has released on labels such as Cocoon and Rekids, is also among the first round of acts announced for the festival, alongside Radio Slave and reggae proponents King Tide. More acts are still to be announced, but if you’re already sold on going you can choose which day or weekend ‘glamping’ tickets to buy through by visiting factweekender. com.au

36 :: BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13

DJ Snake, Alex Metric, Marten Hørger, Midnight Juggernauts, Kilter and Lancelot will all take to the decks during a Garden Party at Ivy on Saturday December 21 for some pre-Christmas debauchery. DJ Snake is a Parisian Grammy-nominated producer who was responsible for the anthemic ‘Bird Machine’, which has been rinsed since its release earlier this year. Londoner Alex Metric hasn’t looked back since being signed to Adam Freeland’s Marine Parade label back in ’06, while Marten Hørger is known to spend time in the studio with The Prodigy’s Leeroy Thornhill. Meanwhile, the Juggers will be playing a DJ set as they look back on a year in which they released arguably their most accomplished album in Uncanny Valley. The party will run from midday ’til 8pm, with $40 tickets currently on sale

Midnight Juggernauts

TIGA

This Friday November 22, quirky Canadian pioneer Tiga will headline The Imperial, Erskineville in a coupe orchestrated by Motorik. The Turbo Recordings main man has remained a prominent figure in club and pop circles for over a decade, successfully trying his hand at both ‘songs’ and ‘tracks’. He’s also mixed arguably the best instalment in the DJ Kicks series covering everyone from Corey Hart to Felix Da Housecat and lest we forget to mention that Tiga’s been remixed by the creme de la crème – I’m talkin’ Carl Craig, Trevor Jackson, Mathew Jonson, Seth Troxler and Loco Dice.

Final release tickets are available online for $30, with the beats to commence at 10pm.

thebrag.com

BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 37

Murat Kilic The Spice Must Flow By Jody Macgregor

T

wo years ago Murat Kilic got sick of having to move his long-running Spice event from venue to venue and, with his wife Rebecca Alder as one business partner and fellow Spice founder Warren Faulkner as another, bought the former premises of the Wine Banq and re-opened it as the Spice Cellar. They put together their money, mortgaged everything they owned, and then spent all they could afford on sound systems, lighting and equipment.

“Our Friday night, when we started it took a long time for that to catch on,” says Kilic. “We lost money for six months on that, but we just kept doing the same thing – same music policy, same residents, kept hiring DJs from after 3am to 6am, even though there was no-one there for like three months. We kept paying the DJs and kept telling them, ‘Look, we know there’s no dancefloor but there will be! And lo and behold, now our Fridays are rocking.”

Diving headfirst into a venture like opening your own music venue is a sink-or-swim scenario, the kind of thing that consumes your whole life. “It’s been good to us, though,” Kilic assures me. “We’ve lasted two years, and paying the high rents in Sydney for two years and surviving, trust me, is no mean feat – especially when you’re playing underground music. We’ve been happy with our achievements, that we’ve been able to stay true to our principles of supporting independent music and supporting independent artists and being quite diverse in what we do. On Thursday nights we run a live jazz jam for jazz students and jazz musicians which really makes no money but I think puts a nice soul into the venue.” The venue was formerly a well-known jazz spot, and Kilic is happy to keep some of that spirit alive even in a space that’s all about electronic music. “People actually see that we’re not just about turning the lights down and turning the music up.”

For their first birthday last year the Spice Cellar celebrated with a party that had the theme of ‘Your Animal Instinct’. There were plenty of animal costumes, a gigantic python’s head and carbondioxide guns. They went all out. “It was quite a wild party, literally. There was a lot of face paint and a lot of confetti, a lot of cage dancers, there was a really good electric atmosphere. You know when you walk into a room and it’s just buzzing? It was like that. We go to a lot of effort, we spend a lot of time and money on making the venue look different to what it normally does. That instantly creates a vibe.”

The theme for their second birthday is ‘Harajuku Neon’, inspired by the region of Tokyo where the

city’s fashion-conscious cosplayers, gothic lolitas, schoolgirls, punks, and punk schoolgirls hang out. “Earlier this year [when] we did the Spice Black party with [Siberian DJ/producer] Nina Kraviz, we did a ‘sakura’ theme, which is the cherry blossom from Japan, because that party was in the first week of May. It was cherry blossom season, so we dressed up the venue with cherry blossoms and we had a Japanese barbecue and we had lanterns, and all of our staff were dressed as ninjas and in kimono outfits. We’ve already done the Japanese thing but we chose Harajuku because it gives everyone a lot of scope to have some fun. It’s gonna be really colourful.”

Last month, Kilic DJed at a Halloween party in Hong Kong that was similarly colourful, with entry based on the quality of costumes. He played to an audience of clowns and superheroes and two versions of Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction, both with adrenaline syringes sticking out of their hearts.

He knows what makes a good costume, and for Spice’s second birthday he’ll be dressing up as well, although he’s still in the ‘Google imagesearching’ phase of costume research. “We get into it. Me and my wife, who owns the venue with me, we’re known as Mr and Mrs Spice, so we have to lead by example.” Those who need help on the night putting the finishing touches on their get-up are in luck. “We’ve got a makeup artist that works behind the bar, Chloe, she’s been with us for almost a year and a half now – she’s always in the green room at the venue painting people’s faces on the night.”

When he’s not organising events for the Spice Cellar, Kilic holds down a morning DJ slot, going from 4am till 8am. He squeezes his own music around his busy schedule by making sure he finds an hour or two every day to work on it, and he has had recent releases through OFF Recordings and Stil vor Talent. “When I’m travelling I get all my own production ideas and jump onto Ableton and put together an idea, send it to a friend and get their feedback. I collaborate with people often. I do tinker a lot and that I think is a really important part of being productive and actually having output – I’m quite busy, I’m a father; as well as running a venue I have a record label, I have a radio show, so to make time for all that you need to keep doing everything in small amounts.”

What: The Spice Cellar Second Birthday with Carl Craig Where: The Spice Cellar When: Thursday November 21

“People actually see that we’re not just about turning the lights down and turning the music up.”

Mix Master Mike Twist And Shout By Daniel Prior

T

he world of electronic music has come a long way in the past two decades.

Since the ’90s, DJs have become so identifiable that most of them have stopped putting ‘DJ’ in front of their name. DJs come and go, but one who has never left is Mix Master Mike.

A legend in the DJ world, coming to prominence in 1992 after winning the DJ Battle for World Supremacy, Mike struck it big when he became the turntablist for the Beastie Boys. He’s spun tunes through the age of compact discs, the rise of mp3s and iTunes, and shows no signs of stopping as the technological revolution brings us to the world of the Cloud.

“Technologies have changed everything so much, especially in the last ten years,” says Mike. “It has its good and bad sides. I mean, I miss record shopping, but it has allowed us simplicity and access, so it’s hard to say one way or the other.”

But with ease and simplicity also comes apathy. An entire generation of listeners forgoing the rich history of music in exchange for the What’s Hot Now. “I feel listeners are getting a bit lazy – not as a whole, but there are a lot of people who only take a passive role with music. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I see a lot of people just downloading music without much interest or reason. Things aren’t as wide open as they used to be.”

38 :: BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13

“Growing up, music was about exploring,” Mike continues. “We were explorers. It was a challenge to find something worth listening to, to be the one who found it and shared it with everyone …

That’s the reason why I do what I do. I’m here for the education. I’m spinning all this music; bringing back the ’70s with the ’90s and new stuff; it’s a stew that mixes and ties all these sounds together so that people can experience it and learn from it and hopefully go out and explore. That’s education.”

Mike has maintained his passion and drive for over twenty years. In that time, he has become a three-time

consecutive winner of the DMC World Championships, worked with musical greats such as Fela Kuti, and is credited with inventing the ‘tweak scratch’ technique. Still, he believes his best lies ahead of him.

“My career is based on reinvention year after year and it gets tiring. There’s never an end to this music thing. It’s a heavy addiction for me. But I love finding new ways of bending and shaping music. I am always trying to create my own path, and sometimes it makes me wonder, ‘Is what I’m doing a bit too crazy?’ But crazy is good.

“I mean, I discovered dubstep in 2007 and brought it out to the States and made my own concoction of it. And that’s what I love doing; I wanna find the new stuff or create the new stuff and tell everyone, ‘Hey! Check this out!’ And hopefully I create something relevant, because that is the ultimate goal with music: it’s to make something relevant, that lasts.”

Ultimately, Mike still believes in his craft, and that the art of DJing is as strong as ever.

“Technology has made it easier to be a DJ, but DJing isn’t about the technology and knob-twisting. There’s enough knobtwisting going on already in the music industry. If you’re going to be a DJ, just be honest and make sure you’re about the music.”

“Technology has made it easier to be a DJ, but DJing isn’t about the technology and knob-twisting.

There’s enough knobtwisting going on already in the music industry.”

With: Samrai, Spenda C, DJ Just1 Where: Upstairs Beresford When: Wednesday November 20

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Deep Impressions Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery

Efdemin

M

atthew Herbert and Efdemin have both reworked tracks from DJ Koze’s acclaimed Amygdala album for a remix EP that’ll be released on Koze’s Pampa imprint in early December. Herbert has remixed Koze’s collaboration with Matthew Dear ‘Magical Boy’, returning the favour after Koze’s immensely popular rework of Herbert’s cut ‘It’s Only’ by delivering an epic ten-minute remix. As one would expect, Herbert’s rework is as much a reinterpretation as a remix, injecting the original track with the voice of singer Rahel to transform the song by giving it a whole new drive. Not to be overshadowed, Deep Impressions favourite Efdemin has also conjured up something close to his best form with his reworking of ‘La Duquesa’. Efdemin similarly owed Koze a favour following Koze’s memorable remix of his track ‘There Will Be Singing’, and ‘Effy’ has responded with a deep and enchanting rework that is laden with subtle layers of intricate melodies. While the EP sells itself given the pedigree of the individuals involved, I can happily report that the remixes are every bit as good as you’d imagine them to be.

Another remix package to look out for will arrive soon courtesy of Lawrence, the lauded Hamburg producer who runs the Dial imprint alongside Carsten Jost.

Lawrence released his sixth album Films & Windows a few months back, adding to an accomplished body of work that also comprises his mix compilation Until Then, Goodbye along with remixes of Superpitcher, Pantha du Prince and my personal favourite, the vinyl-only rework of Francesco Tristano’s ‘Tristano Introit’. The forthcoming Lawrence remix package features reworks from German producer XBD and Steven Tang, who’ve both reimagined the track ‘Angels At Night’, while Jost has teamed up with DJ Richard to remix ‘Marlen’. Films & Windows Remixed will be released on the same day as the Koze remixes, Monday December 2.

Russian producer Nina Kraviz – she of ‘bubblebathgate’ fame – will release a six-track EP of new material, Mr. Jones, next week on Radio Slave’s Rekids label.

Touted as a collection of tracks that are “melancholic yet danceable�, the EP includes a collaboration with Detroit producer Luke Hess, ‘Remember’, a riproaring number that evokes the Berghain dancefloor with its siren-like sounds and battering ram percussion. Other tracks such as ‘Black White’ offer more melodic and idiosyncratic sounds. Kraviz recently revealed that the title track is “one of my very, very first tracks from my very, very beginning� and was “produced in Moscow and based on my own vocal loops.� While I confess I was slightly disappointed with Kraviz’s debut LP, this EP is a return to the form and flavour of tracks such as ‘Pain In The Ass’ and ‘Tanya’, through which she made her name and established herself as one of the most engaging producers on the club circuit.

Speaking of Radio Slave, the veteran London producer will return to Sydney to play the inaugural FACT Weekender at Cockatoo Island on February 1-2. For anyone late to the party, the Rekids label boss is recognised for his output across a range of monikers, including The Machine and Quite Village alongside Joel Martin, and has contributed DJ mixes for the Balance and Fabric compilation series over the years. Edwards’ productions as Radio Slave are slowburning techno opuses, subtly channeling Detroit influences through tracks that are ostensibly crafted with the darkest crevasses of the dancefloor in mind.

The other standout among the Festival’s first release lineup is Chicago luminary Chez Damier, though there’s also the proverbial promise of a high profile headliner who is yet to be announced‌

NATIONAL DRUG AND ALCOHOL RESEARCH CENTRE

Have you been regularly using your own or someone else’s opioid (morphine-like) medicines?

UNSW researchers are conducting

Nina Kraviz

LOOKING DEEPER FRIDAY NOVEMBER 22 Tiga The Imperial

Tin Man The Agincourt Hotel

SATURDAY DECEMBER 21

Subsonic Pirates Of The Underground VII Harbour cruise departing Rose Bay Wharf

SUNDAY MARCH 9 Flying Lotus Sydney Opera House

Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand. Contact through deep.impressions@yahoo.com thebrag.com

The NOMAD study

They consist of 3 face-to-face interviews, which take

You will receive reimbursement for your time and out of pocket expenses.

Topics include use of medication, drug use & health.

So call 8936 1016

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BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 39

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

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 21

Carl Craig

The Spice Cellar

The Spice Cellar 2nd Birthday

Xxx

club pick of the week

8pm. $15.

Argyle Saturdays - feat: Resident DJs The Argyle, The Rocks. 5pm. free.

Awesome Tapes From Africa + Invisible City Soundsystem + Tako Goodgod Small Club, Sydney.

11pm. $15.

Christian Luke Marquee At The Star, Pyrmont. 8pm. $25.

Clash Touring Presents (Shindig) - feat: Guillotine + Leukas! + Nocturnal + Marsden Night Vs Vinnie Ward + DJ Baawss Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 9pm. $10.

FBi Hands Up! - feat: DJ Clockwerk + Special Friends With Benefits FBi Social, Kings Cross.

11:30pm. free.

Harbourlife - feat: Art Department + Carl Craig + David August + Finnebassen + Jacques Lu Cont + Moodymann + Touch Sensitive Fleet Steps, Mrs Macquarie’s Point. 2pm. $120.

Homemade Saturdays feat: Resident DJs Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour. 9pm. $25.

Jacksons Saturdays - feat: Resident DJs Jacksons On George, Sydney.

9pm. free.

Masif Saturdays Space, Sydney. 10pm. free.

Roland Tings + Gabby + Marc Jarvin + Le Brond The Spice Cellar, Sydney.

10pm. $20.

Skybar Saturdays - feat: Resident DJ

Christian Luke

The Watershed Hotel, Sydney.

9:30pm. $20.

Soda Saturdays - feat: Resident DJs Playing Disco And Funk Soda Factory, Surry Hills.

5pm. free.

The Suite - feat: Resident DJs Sapphire Lounge, Potts Point.

8pm. free.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 24 CLUB NIGHTS

Beresford Sundays - feat: Resident DJs Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 3pm. free.

Easy Sundays - feat: Resident DJs Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross.

10pm. free.

S.A.S.H Sundays - feat: Julietta + Tim Richards + Aboutjack + Thoreau + Matt Weir + Kerry Wallace + Garry Todd The Abercrombie, Broadway.

2pm. $10.

Soup Kitchen - feat: The Soup Kitchen DJs World Bar, Kings Cross. 7pm. free.

Spice After Hours - feat: Steven Sullivan + Murat Kilic And Guests The Spice Cellar, Sydney.

4am. $20.

Sunday @ Gay Bar - feat: Resident DJ The Gay Bar, Darlinghurst.

3pm. free.

Sunday Sessions - feat: DJ Tone Oatley Hotel, Oatley. 7pm. free.

p send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com

Feat:

Mix Master Mike

Carl Craig 10pm. $25.

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 20

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 21

HIP HOP & R&B

CLUB NIGHTS

The Wall - Feat: Resident DJs World Bar, Kings Cross. 8pm. $5.

COMEDY

The Laugh Stand With Tom Ballard FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. $10.

CLUB NIGHTS

Mikal Cronin + Chris Cohen + The Friendsters Goodgod Small Club, Sydney.

8pm. $20.

Mix Master Mike + Samrai + Spenda C + DJ Just1 Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills.

8pm. $45.

Sh!T Show With William + Detox + Vicky The Gay Bar, Darlinghurst.

7pm. $45.

The Supper Club - feat: Resident DJs Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross.

10pm. free.

Whip It Wednesdays - feat: DJs Camo + Snillum + Jaimie Lyn Whaat Club, Kings Cross.

9pm. free.

40 :: BRAG :: 539 : 18:11:13

DJ Tigerlily Australian Hotel And Brewery, Rouse Hill. 9pm. $10.

Loopy - feat: Drty Csh + Daschwood + Generous Greed + Guest DJs The Backroom, Sydney.

9pm. $10.

The Spice Cellar 2nd Birthday - feat: Carl Craig The Spice Cellar, Sydney.

10pm. $25.

HIP HOP & R&B

Brklyn Presents - feat: Broken Thought Theory Brklyn, Manly. 8pm. free.

Free The Beats Venue 505, Surry Hills.

8:30pm. free.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 22 HIP HOP & R&B

Five Coffees + Lha + Lakehouse DJs The Standard, Surry Hills.

8pm. $13.30.

CLUB NIGHTS

Argyle Fridays - feat: Resident DJs The Argyle, The Rocks. 6pm. free.

El’Circo - feat: Resident Circus Act Performers Slide Lounge, Darlinghurst.

7pm. $109.

Factory Fridays - feat: Resident DJs Soda Factory, Surry Hills.

5pm. free.

Mashed Fridays - feat: DJ Ric C Oatley Hotel, Oatley. 8pm. free.

Soft & Slow - feat: Niles Delta + Steven Sullivan + Pink Lloyd (Softwar) + Dreamcatcher (Slow Blow) The Spice Cellar, Sydney.

10pm. $20.

Timomatic Marquee At The Star, Pyrmont. 8pm. $15.

Tkay Maidza Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 8pm. free.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23 CLUB NIGHTS

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 20 Mix Master Mike + Samrai + Spenda C + DJ Just1 Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 8pm. $45.

Sh!T Show With William + Detox + Vicky The Gay Bar, Darlinghurst. 7pm. $45.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 22 Timomatic Marquee At The Star, Pyrmont. 8pm. $15.

Tkay Maidza Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 8pm. Free.

Marquee At The Star, Pyrmont. 8pm. $25.

Harbourlife - Feat: Art Department + Carl Craig + David August + Finnebassen + Jacques Lu Cont + Moodymann + Touch Sensitive Fleet Steps, Mrs Macquarie’s Point. 2pm. $120.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 24 S.A.S.H. Sundays - Feat: Julietta + Tim Richards + Aboutjack + Thoreau + Matt Weir + Kerry Wallace + Garry Todd The Abercrombie, Broadway. 2pm. $10.

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 23 Awesome Tapes From Africa + Invisible City Soundsystem + Tako Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 11pm. $15.

Christian Luke

Moodymann

After Dark - feat: Resident DJs Whaat Club, Kings Cross. thebrag.com

snap

basel royale finale

PICS :: KC

up all night out all week . . .

alba

PICS :: AM

07:11:13 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100

06:11:13 :: The Beach Road Hotel :: 71 Beach Rd Bondi Beach 91307247 D ROUSE MAGNAN :: ASHLEY MAR :: DAVI S :: KATRINA CLARKE :: AMATH OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER

thebrag.com

spl + optiv & btk

PICS :: AM

sosueme ft. peking duk

PICS :: DR

09:11:13 :: Civic Underground :: 388 Pitt St Sydney 8080 7000

08:11:13 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999

BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13 :: 41

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marquee: connor cruise

PICS :: AMT

up all night out all week . . .

s.a.s.h

PICS :: AM

08:11:13 :: Marquee @ The Star :: Pirrama Rd Pyrmont 9657 7737

elizabeth rose

PICS :: AM

08:11:13 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587

42 :: BRAG :: 539 :: 18:11:13

dave seaman

PICS :: AM

10:11:13 :: The Abercrombie Hotel :: 100 Broadway Ultimo 9280 2178

09:11:13 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999 S :: KATRINA CLARKE :: AMATH OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER

D ROUSE MAGNAN :: ASHLEY MAR :: DAVI

thebrag.com

kwp!CPR12197