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rock music news welcome to the frontline: the latest touring and music news...with Lauren Gill and Amie Mulhearn

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speed date WITH

Agnes Obel

STAN WALKER AND GINNY BLACKMORE rehearsing and touring and recording – a lot of work has gone into setting up this song to launch, the time has arrived and we are excited.

3.

Best Gig Ever GB: The best gig I’ve ever played was at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, where I opened for Ed Sheeran. I thought no-one would know me but the crowd knew all the words to my song ‘Bones’ – so stoked!

1.

Your Profile Ginny and Stan are two solo artists who have come together to perform a ballad about love – in all of its shapes and forms. They met on the set of X-Factor New Zealand last year when Stan was a judge in the show and

Ginny was a guest performer. After hearing Stan’s voice, Ginny approached Stan with the idea of co-writing and performing ‘Holding You’ together. The rest is history. Busy SW: I have been busy 2. Keeping

SW: The best gig I’ve ever played was in Roebourne in Karratha, WA. I played to the Aboriginal community there and my whole family performed with me. No-one really goes to perform there, the whole town came to watch, it truly was amazing!

Rick Astley

DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get the BRAG? Email distribution@ furstmedia.com.au or phone 03 9428 3600 PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: www.spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204

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What: ‘Holding You’ out Friday June 13 through Sony And: Stan Walker plays Rock Lily, The Star on Sunday June 8

MELODY AND MARLON

Indie folk darlings Melody Pool and Marlon Williams will team up for a national co-headline tour this winter. Pool’s debut album The Hurting Scene drew comparisons to early Joni Mitchell and was widely praised. Meanwhile, Williams

AWESOME INTERNS: Erin Rooney, Amie Mulhearn, Nic Liney

DEADLINES: Editorial: Thursday 12pm (no extensions) Artwork/ad bookings: Friday 5pm (no extensions) Ad cancellations: Tuesday 4pm Published by Furst Media P/L ACN 1112480045 All content copyrighted to Cartrage P/L / Furst Media P/L 2003-2014

GB: I would definitely have the best assortment of the world’s finest sashimi. And of course, the best New Zealand wine too.

Ben Lee is coming back to town. And you thought he’d fallen off the face of the earth. One of Australia’s most loved troubadours, Lee will perform an intimate headline show in Sydney later this month. Having penned a number of highly infectious pop gems over the length of his career, including ‘Catch My Disease’ and ‘Cigarettes Will Kill You’, Lee will also release a new studio album later this year. Oh, and remember that time he got turned onto South American healing medicine and wrote an album about spiritual awakening? Uh huh. Catch him at The Basement on Saturday June 28. Tickets go on sale on Friday June 6.

GIG & CLUB GUIDE COORDINATORS: Nic Liney, Emily Meller, Erin Rooney - gigguide@ thebrag.com (rock); clubguide@thebrag.com (dance, hip hop & parties)

ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Luke Forrester: accounts@furstmedia.com.au ph - (03) 9428 3600 fax - (03) 9428 3611 Furst Media, 3 Newton Street Richmond Victoria 3121

the whole deal.

BEN LEE ON TOUR

ADVERTISING: Georgina Pengelly - 0416 972 081 / (02) 9212 4322 georgina@thebrag.com ADVERTISING: Les White - 0405 581 125 / (02) 9212 4322 les@thebrag.com PUBLISHER: Furst Media MANAGING DIRECTOR, FURST MEDIA: Patrick Carr - patrick@furstmedia.com.au, (03) 9428 3600 / 0402 821 122 DIGITAL DIRECTOR/ADVERTISING: Kris Furst kris@furstmedia.com.au, (03) 9428 3600

EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, editors or staff of the BRAG.

Your Ultimate Rider SW: Burgerfuel – definitely 5. Burgerfuel – and a roast; full on,

AGNES OBEL

Danish singer-songwriter Agnes Obel has locked in a trio of shows for her first visit to Australia this November. Obel released Aventine, the follow-up to 2010’s hugely successful Philharmonics, last September. She has been praised for her masterful composing skills and work behind the piano. Earlier this year, Obel returned to SXSW to perform a showcase that drummed up plenty of buzz. She’ll play City Recital Hall Angel Place on Thursday November 27.

Rick Astley will return later this year to deliver shows across the country on his Together Forever tour. With hits including ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, ‘Whenever You Need Somebody’, ‘When I Fall In Love’, ‘Together Forever’, ‘She Wants To Dance With Me’ and ‘Cry For Help’, Astley has sold over 40 million records. We know what you’re thinking – that’s a lot of records for a meme, isn’t it? But when he initially teamed up with the production wonder team of Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Astley’s first eight singles made the UK top ten, while his smash hit, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, hit number one in 25 countries across the globe. Astley will play Revesby Workers’ Club on Wednesday November 19, Rooty Hill RSL Club on Monday November 24, and the Enmore Theatre on Tuesday November 25.

ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant COVER PHOTO: Alina Gozin’a PHOTOGRAPHERS: James Ambrose, Mark Boado, Daniel Boud, Katrina Clarke, Amath Magnan, Ashley Mar, Prudence Upton

Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this NEW address 100 Albion Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010 ph - (02) 9212 4322 fax - (02) 9319 2227

GB: I’m still stuck on the music that made me love music. That would be Lauryn Hill.

AUSTRALIA GETS RICKROLLED

MANAGING EDITOR: Chris Martin chris@thebrag.com 02 9212 4322 ONLINE EDITOR: Tyson Wray ONLINE COORDINATOR: Emily Meller SUB-EDITOR: Georgia Booth STAFF WRITERS: Alasdair Duncan, Jody Macgregor, Krissi Weiss, Augustus Welby NEWS: Lauren Gill, Chris Honnery, Nic Liney, Amie Mulhearn, Erin Rooney, Tyson Wray

REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Nat Amat, Ian Barr, Keiron Costello, Marissa Demetriou, Rachel Eddie, Christie Eliezer, Blake Gallagher, Chris Honnery, Cameron James, Tegan Jones, Lachlan Kanoniuk, Pamela Lee, Alicia Malone, Adam Norris, Daniel Prior, Kate Robertson, Amy Theodore, Leonardo Silvestrini, David Wild, Harry Windsor, Stephanie Yip, David James Young

are better than anything I’ve heard. She’s about to release her music again, people will love it. I also love ‘Chandelier’ by Sia.

rose onto the scene in New Zealand aged 17, fronting alt-country band The Unfaithful Ways. He recently released ‘Strange Things’, the first single from his forthcoming debut solo album set to hit stores in October. See the duo at Newtown Social Club on Saturday August 2 and Lizotte’s Newcastle on Sunday August 3.

IT’S JUST NO GOOD

The No Good crew are set to warm you up for winter. Fresh off a bunch of successful events, the Sydney-based label has announced a solid bunch of acts for its upcoming all-day party, No Good: Winter, held over the June long weekend. They’ve assembled some of Sydney’s most inventive bands, DJs, rappers and producers, fusing together a broad spectrum of genres and providing a platform for an eclectic display of talent and innovation. Lap up the enigmatic Rainbow Chan, along with Maatzi, Moon Holiday, Loose Change, Nakagin and a stack of others. No Good: Winter is going down at Petersham Bowling Club on Sunday June 8.

Highasakite Sarah Blasko

BLASKO’S BACK

Sydney-based singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko will play a special one-off gig on World Refugee Day to support the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA). Her announcement follows the Federal Government’s decision to cut all funding to the RCOA as part of this year’s budget. Blasko is currently locked away writing the follow-up to her most recent album, I Awake, but will play The Chaser boys’ Giant Dwarf venue in Redfern to raise money for the RCOA cause. See Blasko’s stripped-back set, with surprise guests, on Friday June 20.

PROTEST THE HERO

For the first time since Soundwave 2011, Protest The Hero have announced they will be returning to our shores this September. The Canadian five-piece will be making six stops on their journey, kicking things off in Brisbane before heading to Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide and Perth. The band will be touring off the back of a recently released fourth studio album, Volition. They’ll take over Manning Bar on Friday September 5.

LET’S GET HIGH

Norwegian indie rock outfit Highasakite will make their maiden voyage to our shores for a pair of shows this September. The band’s latest single, ‘Since Last Wednesday’, taken from their debut album, Silent Treatment, has been making the rounds on Australian airwaves. Already, their folk-inflected sound has earned them opening slots for the likes of Bon Iver and London Grammar. Highasakite will hit Oxford Art Factory on Thursday September 18.

thebrag.com

Stan Walker & Ginny Blackmore photo by Bas van Est

GB: I have been finishing my debut album and living it up in California… heeey!

Current Playlist SW: I’m obsessed with 4. JoJo. Her voice and her songs

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New Hampton

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UlTrAsOuNd ToUr

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

6 June Ruby L'Otel 13 June ROSEHILL Hotel 21 June Winter Magic Festival 27 June Ruby L'Otel

TUE 29 JUL ENMORE THEATRE ALL AGES Tickets on sale now from all usual outlets

FOSTERTHEPEOPLE.com proceeds to depressionisnotdestiny.com

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live & local

free stuff

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

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

speed date WITH

LUKE DOLAHENTY Your Profile 1960s folk, 1970s pop/rock. 1. I love the outdoors, exercise, food and travel. In a fan, I look for anyone who likes my music.

year, but I performed a cover of ‘Throw Your Arms Around Me’ at the Australia Day celebrations in Darling Harbour, on a giant floating stage in front of 250,000 people.

Keeping Busy Six months ago I returned 2. Current Playlist from Nashville, Tennessee James Taylor’s Sweet 4. after living there for three Baby James record; Paul Pena’s years. One month ago I was back over in Nashville for a couple of songwriting sessions, a few guitar lessons with world-renowned guitar teacher Rob Jackson and hanging out enjoying the awesome music scene. Now I’m back in Australia, releasing the Lead My Heart EP, playing shows to support it and getting together my next batch of songs for a much more substantial album scheduled to be recorded and released later in the year. Gig Ever I can’t remember what 3. Best

Your Ultimate Rider Books – biographies, history, 5. spiritual, environmental, poetry, novels, fiction, non-fiction… books! And water, no ice. What: Lead My Heart out now digitally Where: Campbelltown Catholic Club / Rock Lily, The Star / Oceans, Coogee When: Sunday June 15 / Thursday June 26 / Sunday June 29

ANTONAMASIA

Sydney metal fans will be stoked to welcome the return of Antonamasia. After a five-year hiatus, the Sydney five-piece is gearing up to release the second single, ‘Without You There’, from its forthcoming album. The band has spent the last few years writing tirelessly, and after taking considerable time in the studio with producer Darren ‘jENK’ Jenkins, is bringing its intense live performance back to town. With rave reviews for the single ‘Coming Apart Together’, Antonamasia’s re-emergence has been creating a lot of noise in metal circles. The quartet celebrate the release on Friday June 20 at The Bald Faced Stag and will be joined by friends The World In Cinematic, Maybe I’ll Live Forever and Pulse Mavens.

HUGO RACE

Founding member of The Bad Seeds, Hugo Race, will tour Australia across July-September. His latest EP with the Hugo Race Fatalists, Orphans, is the third release from his current project. Race has been running around Europe playing his experimental blues/folk material, and he’ll bring his solo show to Camelot Lounge on Friday September 5.

NO REST FOR THE WICKED

The Sabbath, a day of rest? Only if by ‘rest’ you mean ‘rocking out with the rest of my friends with a beer and a slice of pizza in each hand at Frankie’s Pizza’. The CBD bunker’s Sabbath Sessions for June have been announced, and this Sunday June 8 it’s Melbourne’s Palace Of The King leading the charge. They’ve just released a limited edition 12-inch vinyl LP, Palace Of The King, exploring their chunky, blues-infused rock’n’roll.

20 years of Peabody. How about that, eh? These dudes have been working solidly ever since their 1994 debut EP, Hi-Cycle, and inaugural gig at the Lewisham Hotel. Through the ’00s, the band released its finest material – albums Professional Againster (2002), The New Violence (2005), Prospero (2008) and Loose Manifesto (2010). The indie/postpunkers have supported the likes of You Am I, Youth Group and Hoodoo Gurus over the years, and even played what they call “one very modest overseas tour”. To celebrate two decades of activity, Peabody hit The Roller Den on Friday June 13 with support from Further and Spod. We’ve got a double pass to give away – for the chance to win it, head to thebrag.com/freeshit and tell us your own (loose) manifesto for life.

xxx

Hugo Race

New Train and Paul Pena; Ray Charles.

PEABODY

NEWTOWN SOCIAL CLUB

It’s a busy old week at Newtown Social Club, with Daniel Champagne kicking things off this Wednesday June 4. Champagne’s popping the cork (sorry) on his new album, The Gypsy Moon – Volume II, with support from Bec Sandridge and Drew Harris. Hiatus Kaiyote’s singular talent, Nai Palm, arrives with Clever Austin in tow on Thursday June 5. The UK songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, having just co-headlined bills around Australia with Steve Kilbey, brings his classic album I Often Dream Of Trains to town on Friday June 6 with Emma Swift supporting, while Wolf & Cub play Saturday June 7.

LAST CHANCE TO SPIN THE BOTTLE

Sydney’s one and only micro-music festival Spin The Bottle has announced its last soirée. Over the past 18 months Spin The Bottle has been responsible for introducing thousands of

Antonamasia

punters to nearly 100 up-and-coming bands, and with a mash of genres spread over two stages, the final shindig is set to please any music lover. It’ll feature Sydney folk rockers Shadows At Play launching their brand new EP, as well as Crossing Red Lines, The Rider, Ackers and many more. Head on down to Spectrum on Saturday June 7.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

The Oz Rock Roadshow is back again to relive the golden years in Australian rock. The show will bring together members of some of Australia’s most iconic rock bands in Mark Gable, Bob Spencer, John Prior, Steve Mulry, Peter Rich, Justin Bianchi and more. These guys have more than 70 classic albums and dozens of hits between them from their respective bands Choirboys, The Angels, Skyhooks, Matt Finish and The Ted Mulry Gang. The Roadshow rolls into the Bridge Hotel in Rozelle on Friday July 11.

CRUISIN’ FOR A BOOZIN’ One of the best possible vantage points this time of year for the Vivid lights, Circular Quay’s Cruise Bar, is offering food, drink and good times over three levels. Live music is on the menu, but so is fine dining and an illuminated bar, Belvedere Beat. The lights are on until Monday June 9.

The Babe Rainbow Cabins

CRAW DADDY

Keen music lovers will recognise the Craw Daddy name as the ’60s music venue in Surrey, England, where The Rolling Stones played their first ever shows. The next musical superstars might just be hitting stage at The Bank Hotel’s own Craw Daddy Club this week, upstairs at the Newtown venue on Friday June 6. Headlining proceedings are indie rockers Cabins, joined by the captivating Spirit Valley.

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THE BABE RAINBOW

The Babe Rainbow will be inflicting their unique brand of infectious sitar-clad psychedelia on the people of Sydney. Following the release of their latest single, ‘Secret Enchanted Broccoli Forest’, the band will be hitting the road this June for a string of east coast dates. If the video clip is anything to go by, the Secret Enchanted Broccoli Forest Tour is set to be an aural delight. Check out The Babe Rainbow at the Beach Road Hotel on Wednesday June 25, and on Thursday June 26 at Brighton Up Bar.

thebrag.com

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Industrial Strength Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer

includes Firsttix, Lasttix, and the upcoming Movietix and Fasttix. Tix.com.au and Showbiz are working on a new Showbiz site.

THINGS WE HEAR * In a Facebook post directed, “Hey AU/NZ pals... It’s been WAYYY too long,� Foo Fighters hinted at a tour of Australia and New Zealand. They asked fans to sign up to their newsletter, “Cause you never know where/when the Foo’s may show up. Just sayin...� * Aussie pro-audio/live site CX Media is speculating that Big Day Out’s US partner C3 Events will buy out Australian promoter AJ Maddah and stage the festival as its other brand, Lollapalooza. * Amazon will be launching a music streaming service as part of its Amazon Prime membership, launching in June or July. * News from Tamworth is that a ukulele festival is to be launched there this year. Meantime, 30-year-old community station 2YOU FM 88.9 has changed its name to 88.9FM and tweaked its program grid. * Curfews are curfews at the Fremantle Arts Centre. Lauryn Hill started her

show an hour late, and had her mic turned off at 10pm sharp. Fans missed some songs and an onstage cake cutting to celebrate Hill’s birthday was also muted. Some fans demanded their money back. * Beer and pizza are a perfect match. So when Macaulay Culkin’s pizza-themed Velvet Underground covers band The Pizza Underground played a UK festival, they were bombarded with pints of beer and abandoned the stage after 15 minutes. * ABC’s rebooted Spicks & Specks won’t return next year after ho-hum ratings. * Artist and writer Ben Shepard has begun a campaign to make Kanye West mayor of Chicago in 2015. See kanye4mayor.org. * Three months after the 1:30am lockouts and 3am last drinks came to Kings Cross, businesses told The Daily Telegraph that Saturday night trade has dropped from 20,000 to 5,000 and many are putting

IGGY AZALEA MAKES US CHART HISTORY Aussie-born rapper Iggy Azalea has made Billboard chart history in the USA with her number one single ‘Fancy’. She’s the first female Australian act to top the chart in 33 years, after Olivia Newton-John with ‘Physical’ in 1981. She’s also only the fourth female rapper to get to the top spot following Lauryn Hill, Lil’ Kim and Shawnna. Iggy also secured number two on the Billboard chart as guest rapper on Ariana Grande’s ‘Problem’.

out the ‘for lease’ signs. * Roxette’s Hunter Valley show at Bimbadgen Winery for 8,000 people has sold out. * The Australasian World Music Expo in Melbourne claimed a record number of artist applications from across Australia and around the world. * A PR stunt for video game Watch Dogs went horribly wrong. The PR company sent a black safe to Ninemsn’s Australia Square offices with a “suspiciousâ€? letter, which told a reporter to “check your voicemailâ€?. The safe started beeping, at which point the bomb squad was called. * After playing to 100,000 people opening for Alicia Keys and John Legend, Ngaiire is playing the Glastonbury festival ‌ The Delta Riggs wrap up their 25-date tour across Europe after they finish a recording session in Berlin ‌ Stonefield’s UK run includes the Great Escape and Dot To Dot festivals.

There have been comparisons of this feat to when The Beatles had the top two spots on the US Hot 100 in February 1964 with ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’. But of course this is hype: Azalea is a guest singer only and it’s not the same achievement.

SHOWBIZ SOLD Premier ticketing agency Showbiz, which went into voluntary administration on April 3, has been sold to Tix.com.au, the ticketing package deal business. With 700,000 members, it

AUSSIES PREFER RADIO TO STREAMING The Australian commercial radio industry’s first AudienceScope study on listeners’ behaviour claimed that radio captures more than 60% of all listening compared to the streaming industry’s 8%. Personal music collections are at 25%.

THE ROLLING STONES TOP 25-YEAR LIST OF LIVE ACTS The Rolling Stones, who last week went back on the road, are the biggest-selling live act in the past 25 years. Since 1990, they’ve grossed US$1.56 billion playing 538 shows since 1990 to 19.6 million fans, Billboard said. Second were U2, who grossed $1.51b from 526 shows to 20.5 million people. Bruce Springsteen is in third place with a $1.2b gross over 700-plus shows to 15 million fans; rounding out the top ten are Madonna, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Dave Matthews Band, Celine Dion, Kenny Chesney and Eagles.

POLLIES PRAISE BLUESFEST It’s true; music festivals do bring tribes together – even warring politicians. Labor MP for Richmond Justine Elliot, Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan, Deputy Speaker Natasha Griggs and former Labor Arts Minister Tony Burke hailed Bluesfest’s 25th anniversary in the House of Representatives. They spoke of its green achievements and support of indigenous culture and charities. Hogan, who’s attended a few times, said, “This is not only an Australian event; it has become an international event.� Elliot pointed out Bluesfest 2013 contributed $64.1 million for the Byron Shire and a total income – wages and salaries – of $10.8 million for the Byron Shire.

MOG TO STAY WITH TELSTRA‌ FOR NOW Apple has bought Beats, the owner of MOG, but for the time being Telstra will continue to operate MOG in Australia. A Telstra spokesperson told The Music Network that they are also speaking to Beats about its future under Apple.

METALLICA’S BLACK ALBUM HITS 16M IN US

E HIFI 1300 THO M.AU

THEHIFI.C

Coming Soon

Metallica’s mega self-titled 1991 album (also known as The Black Album) has sold 16 million copies in America – the first to do so since 1991, when SoundScan began tracking US music sales. It has been on the charts for 307 weeks. Metallica and Shania Twain’s Come On Over (15.5 million) are the only albums since 1991 to sell over 15 million. 22 albums in that time have reached ten million.

AJ MADDAH TO KEYNOTE AT FEEDBACK

Fri 20 Jun

Fri 27 Jun

Band of Skulls (USA)

The Crimson ProjeKCt

Sat 28 Jun

Sat 5 Jul

First Soundz feat. DJ Maveriq, Sequel, URKii + More

Bell X1

Big Day Out and Soundwave promoter AJ Maddah is the keynote speaker for all-ages project Indent’s Feedback music conference (Monday June 9, Museum of Contemporary Art). Subject: “Does anybody give a shit about young people?� Presumably he’ll be actually speaking, and not tweeting to his 40,000 followers. Other speakers are Winston McCall of Parkway Drive, Thelma Plum and her manager Leanne de Souza, Josh Pyke, Graham Nixon (Resist Records), Wayne Connolly, Stephen Goodhew (FBi), Katie Rynne (Select Music), Natalie Dodds (Create/Control), Cass Scully (Alberts), Greg Morrow (APRA), Kirsty Brown (MusicNSW), Dave Ruby Howe (triple J Unearthed) and Kerry Furlong (Sydney TAFE Music).

360 PARTNERS WITH SOL REPUBLIC HEADPHONES

Fri 11 Jul

Wed 23 Jul

Wed 13 Aug

Tankard (GER)

Kelis

Hanson

Multi-platinum rapper 360 has struck a partnership with Sol Republic Headphones. Fans can get their hands on limited edition, custom 360 ‘Utopia’ headphones to coincide with the premium Price of Fame and Utopia tour packages when Sixty goes on the road in September.

AND SIGNS JESSE DAVIDSON

Sat 23 Aug

Sat 27 Sep

Sat 22 Nov

Kid Ink

Rebel Souljahz (USA)

Toxic Holocaust & Iron Reagan

AND Publishing, the company set up by Gotye’s manager Danny Rogers and Mumford & Sons’ manager Adam Tudhope, has signed 18-year-old Adelaide singer-songwriter Jesse Davidson to a worldwide publishing deal. Tudhope was “staggered that a kid of just 18 could write songs of this quality.�

ADDITION TO GOLDEN STAVE Pseudo Echo joins Noiseworks and The Choirboys to play the music biz charity Golden Stave Foundation dinner on Friday June 20 at the Hordern Pavilion. The Foundation has raised $13 million for 50 NSW children’s charities over 35 years. Last year, 17 charities assisting handicapped, sick and underprivileged children received donations. For table bookings and auction prizes, go to goldenstave.com.au.

SAMSUNG MUSIC HUB CONTINUES IN AUSTRALIA Samsung Electronics is ending its Music Hub service on July 1 globally after low consumer traction, but not in Australia. “Samsung Music Hub in Australia has been developed for this country and for Australian customers. It is a separate platform from other music channels offered in other overseas markets. [Samsung] remains committed to Samsung Music Hub in Australia.�

COUNCIL PULLS FUNDING FOR ’GONG CULTURAL PLAN Wollongong’s much-lauded cultural plan – including supporting live music, the evening economy and an arts hub at the town hall – has hit a snag. A motion to adopt the plan and allocate $170,000 for it was voted down by the Council, six to five. Those who voted against said they had no problem with the plan, just that they were uncomfortable with “budgeting on the run�.

ARIA BRINGS BACK NUMBER ONE CHART AWARD ARIA has brought back the Number One Chart Award to recognise local acts who hit the top. Since January 2013, Aussies have spent 34 weeks at the toppermost of the poppermost. The singles were Dami Im’s ‘Alive’, Taylor Henderson’s ‘Borrow My Heart’, 5 Seconds Of Summer’s ‘She Looks So Perfect’, Sheppard’s ‘Geronimo’ and Justice Crew’s ‘Que Sera’. There were 17 Aussie number one albums, by Flume, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Hillsong United, Birds Of Tokyo, Bernard Fanning, Harrison Craig, Bliss N Eso, Karnivool, RĂœFĂœS, Boy & Bear, Keith Urban, triple j (Like A Version 9), Dami Im, Taylor Henderson, INXS, Kylie Minogue and Chet Faker.

SPEAKER TV ARRIVES After four years broadcasting on Melbourne’s C31 as a weekly half-hour new music show, Speaker TV has arrived in TVS Sydney (Saturday 10pm) as part of a roll-out through Australia and New Zealand. Executive producer Ivan Gomez said, “Since the community networks switched to digital, we’ve noticed a steep increase in accessibility.�

Lifelines Married: NZ R&B singer Dane Rumble and Australian model and TV personality Nikki Phillips, at a small ceremony in Bali. Hospitalised: Two members of Japanese girl band AKB48 after they were attacked with a 50cm saw at a meet-the-fans event. Rina Kawaei, 19, and Anna Iriyama, 18, both broke bones in their right hands and received cuts on their arms and heads. An unemployed 20-year-old was arrested. Arrested: rapper Wiz Khalifa for possession of 0.5 grams of pot after airport security screened him at the airport in El Paso, Texas. Suing: US aviation firm Cessna is taking action against Offspring frontman Dexter Holland for owing US$782,422.43 on a plane he bought (his third). In Court: four men accused of shooting Dragan Sekuljica outside Wollongong’s Splashes nightclub in 2007 have been found guilty. Jailed: Stefan Schmidt, 26, for nine years for killing NZ-born Perth drummer Andy Marshall by pushing him put of an upstairs window at the Ocean Beach Hotel in May 2011. Schmidt had been convicted of murder after an earlier trial, but appealed. His charge was downgraded to manslaughter.

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Parquet Courts Sunny Days By Augustus Welby

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hat is it that allows rock’n’roll to remain vitally stimulating after all these years? Well, just as attempts to calculate creative success hardly offer deliverance, if we knew exactly what justified the proud claim, “Rock will never die,” then the music would likely lose some of its power. Still, it’s no secret that successful rock music is generally modelled on what has worked in the past. But it doesn’t simply imitate the past.

“Rock music is very self-referential in its own history, and it’s very sentimental, and it’s very rooted in a sort of tradition,” says Parquet Courts vocalist and songwriter Andrew Savage. “But what makes rock music so exciting is that it makes you feel alive and in the now. Good rock bands do that balancing act well – they take from the past their favourite parts, then they apply that into a future mindset and they make them relevant.” Parquet Courts are certainly a band well acquainted with music history. The New York foursome’s 2013 breakthrough release, Light Up Gold, outed them as a group of music lovers. The arresting 15-song LP drew comparisons to rock greats such as The Modern Lovers and

The Feelies, as well as garnering the miscued ‘descendants of The Strokes’ tag. “It’s never a goal to sound like anybody that we’re listening to,” Savage says. “But when you listen to a lot of music, it comes out. Creating art is kind of that way – what goes in must come out. The goal of this band has never been to be a retro band or a band that is inspired by a certain era of music. The goal of the band is to be representative of the here and now.” Indeed, comparisons to the aforementioned groups aren’t warranted based on echoic similarity. Rather, no matter how evocative of the past they might be, Parquet Courts present distinct idiosyncrasies that belong to them alone. After Light Up Gold announced Savage, co-frontman Austin Brown, bassist Sean Yeaton and drummer Max Savage as one of 2013’s most interesting prospects, the EP Tally All The Things That You Broke showed up in the year’s latter half. And now, despite a seemingly non-stop global touring schedule, the band’s new full-length Sunbathing Animal is here. “Sunbathing Animal was recorded at three different recording sessions – one in May, one in October and one in January,” Savage says. “Each one of those was at least five days and each of those days was at least 12 hours. There was a lot of time spent on this record compared to the three [days] that it took to record and mix Light Up Gold.” A passing glance can feed an impression of Parquet Courts as brash, punk rock slackers. However, the depth and intellect showcased on the new record implies patient construction. “Each song has its own goal that we want to reach and we wouldn’t put it on a record if we didn’t feel like we reached that goal,” Savage says. “Sometimes the goal could be very explicit and sometimes it could be, ‘I want a song that gives the listener this sort of feeling.’” Stylistically, rather than just offering an addendum to Light Up Gold, Savage and his cohorts crisscross through diverse territory on Sunbathing Animal. For instance, the title track is four minutes of unforgiving garage rock beat poetry, while ‘Instant Disassembly’ is an elaborate philosophical unfurling, sitting atop a rudimentary blues chord progression. “I think it’s a record [where] its brightest moments are rooted in simplicity and rooted in a minimal approach to making music,” Savage says. “The instrumentation in there is very sparse. Most songs are recorded live and it’s just the four of us. We all realised the strengths the band has as far as songwriting goes and how we want to explore them more. There are a lot of themes and ideas on this record that will be explored more intensely in the future.” One thematic mainstay for Parquet Courts is their home city of New York. Three-quarters of the band are Texans by birth, but they’ve transferred into the lineage of artists energised by life in the curious and sometimes chaotic creative mecca of the East Coast. “[New York’s] an inspiring place for me,” Savage says. “It has all the right conditions for being a band like Parquet Courts. There’s things that you get to see, hear and do in New York that you can’t do anywhere else. “My relationship with New York is, I want to define it on terms that it hasn’t been defined on yet. I want to create imagery that people haven’t associated with it before.” When you consider the Big Apple’s rich artistic history and massive tourist appeal, this is no modest ambition. But Parquet Courts aren’t interested in reprising what’s already been done. “For example, the cover of our first record American Specialties is of a Chinese food plate from a menu,” Savage says. “One of the first things I noticed when I moved to New York was how those Chinese restaurants are just everywhere. It’s not really an image that people associate with New York, but it’s something that I definitely did upon moving here. “There’s a lot of imagery of New York that gets reused and reused [and] it kind of becomes tired at a certain point. You have to keep creating new stuff for people to associate with places and ideas and scenes.” What: Splendour In The Grass 2014 With: Outkast, Two Door Cinema Club, Lily Allen, Interpol, Foster The People, London Grammar, Metronomy, Violent Soho and more Where: North Byron Parklands, Byron Bay When: Friday July 25 – Sunday July 27 And: Sunbathing Animal out now through Rough Trade/Remote Control

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Wayne Connolly Seeking Feedback By Augustus Welby

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he Queen’s Birthday long weekend gives students an extra day’s respite from academic concerns. And what better way to take advantage of the free time than by getting expert insight into an industry that formal education doesn’t provide easy access to? Indent, the leading network for all-ages music events in New South Wales, has partnered with Vivid Ideas to put together Feedback – a music conference for 12-to-25year-olds that will feature guest speakers and interactive sessions. One source of wisdom appearing at the conference is legendary Australian producer and engineer Wayne Connolly. Connolly has sustained a career in the often volatile industry for two-and-a-half decades now, but getting into music wasn’t always a straightforward option.

Eels

“When I was young there was pretty active discouragement from people,” he recalls. “It was like, ‘You don’t want to waste your time doing that.’”

Proceed With Caution By Krissi Weiss

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he latest album from Eels is entitled The Cautionary Tales Of Mark Oliver Everett. For those who didn’t know, Mark Oliver Everett is Eels; it’s just his band of merry women and men who have morphed and changed over time. Which begs the next question – why should we heed the warnings of one Mr. Everett? Because the guy knows a lot, about a lot. Sounds like a throwaway line, granted, but it’s not. Interviewing E – his preferred moniker – is a terrifying experience, not because he is at all unwelcoming (he’s remarkably affable) but because he radiates a no-bullshit air of having seen (and probably done) it all. He’s at once a victim of genetics, commanding respect as presumably his father, the great American physicist Hugh Everett III, did – and yet he’s also a seminal and seasoned musician seemingly on a decade-long comedown from his youthful trajectory. Pay attention to his cautionary tales, folks. Inspired by loss, a concept Everett knows all too well (he found his father dead when he was 19, lost his mother to cancer and his sister to suicide), this time he’s exploring loss by choice and the subsequent – albeit delayed – regret that can bring. As always, this album is bleak and beautiful, gravelly and dainty, simple yet deeply orchestrated. It is an Eels album, and a fantastic one at that. For some artists, going into the studio is purely the time to get things down onto tape. For others, it’s an opportunity to create. This one, though, required a lot of preparation before entering the studio. “This record was written [entirely] before we went into the studio,” Everett says. “And because there were all the orchestral arrangements there was a lot of preparation that had to be done.” With a project that is so deeply personal, was it hard to open up to the contributions of others? “In this case, all the orchestrations were done by various members of the band,

and because I work with them so much it’s a pretty comfortable, in-house feeling,” says Everett. “It’s a long process of trial and error, like any collaboration.” Everett doesn’t hide behind metaphor to any great degree – he’s even written an autobiography called Things The Grandchildren Should Know – but still he’s pushed and prodded in interviews to talk at greater length about his personal life. You’ll be hard-pressed to fi nd him going into it in any great detail – as far as he’s concerned, that’s what the music is for. Nonetheless, after all these years, do those sorts of questions seem annoying or redundant? “[They do] because it’s laid out pretty nakedly in the songs already, so it is a little redundant. I gave them an inch and I’m only willing to give them, well, two inches … A lot of the times things I write aren’t actually autobiographical, it just appears that way. If I sing a song in a character’s voice, I do it in the first person – it’s an effective way to tell a story.”

The ratio of people with momentary music industry success to those tenacious enough to turn it into a career is drastically out of balance. Widespread approbation won’t guarantee a long-term income, but fierce determination goes a long way. “A lot of the great bands that I’ve worked with – Husky, Boy & Bear and Paper Kites – they tend to be just very focused on what they’re doing and they’re not really hedging their bets at all,” Connolly says. “The same with You Am I – Tim Rogers was always just like, ‘This is what I’m doing. I don’t have a day job. I had one in a record store once and I’m never going back to it.’” Connolly’s own unflagging motivation led him to adopt the studio as his place of business in the early ’90s. Since then, his accumulated credits and accolades are extensive enough to wear out anyone’s larynx, but ARIA Awards for producing and engineering records with You Am I, Youth Group, Josh Pyke and Paul Dempsey are among them. He actually

became interested in working behind the scenes at a very young age. “I was just as into recording music when I was really young. One of the first things I bought was a cassette deck and headphones, because I just really wanted to have a great hi-fi experience even when I was 13 or 14.” Through the years the Sydney-based producer has maintained a sideline writing and releasing his own music. He was a central member of respected ’90s alt-rock outfit The Welcome Mat and continues making quality records with the shady-pop group Knievel to this day. Despite his esteemed songwriting talent, Connolly had to make a firm decision about which pursuit to prioritise. “The production thing took over at a point in the mid-’90s where [The Welcome Mat] got signed to a record label and we were getting American producers to fly out and investing a lot of time and money into that. It was at exactly the same time I was asked to go to the US with You Am I and do their first album with Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth, which was something I just couldn’t turn down.” Ambitions to cultivate a career in the music industry are still commonly met with disapproval. But Connolly believes it’s no longer regarded as the deviant folly that it once was. “A lot of people who are doing well are the ones who had really encouraging parents. That’s a very common thread, I think, with a lot of artists. Plenty of parents still listen to triple j and go to gigs. I don’t think the generation gap is quite what people beat it up to be anymore.” What: Indent Presents Feedback: A Music Conference For Young People With: AJ Maddah, Josh Pyke, Winston McCall, Graham Nixon, Thelma Plum, Leanna de Souza and more Where: Vivid Ideas Exchange, Museum of Contemporary Art When: Monday June 9

He’s written this album, he’s chosen to release it, he’s standing by the notion of touring it, and yet even the prolifi c E admits to some trepidation about the whole process. “When it comes to this record, it’s very autobiographical, and that’s a very uncomfortable feeling; I’m not crazy about it,” he says. “I wouldn’t have called it ‘the cautionary tales of me’ if it wasn’t me, you know. The vinyl edition of this album is on clear vinyl because I wanted it to look as transparent as the music is. “The hardest thing is putting out a record like this, and then the next hardest thing is going out there and singing these songs in front of people, so I’m yet to fi nd out how uncomfortable that may be. Or may not be.” What: The Cautionary Tales Of Mark Oliver Everett out now through E Works/[PIAS]

Little Bastard The Magnificent Seven By David James Young piqued so much interest to begin with. In fact, plenty of the material they wrote didn’t end up making the album, leading Took to suggest a follow-up could come sooner than we think. “I feel like we could g o straight in and record another album right now!” he laughs. “There were a lot of older songs that we had to sacrifi ce, and of course there were a lot of disagreements among the lot of us as to what would make the fi nal cut. We’re really proud of what we got out of those eight days, though. It was a really different experience for us.”

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“The whole thing actually turned out a lot differently than I had anticipated,” says Johnny Took, who provides guitar and one of many voices to the band. “I think what we ended up doing for the album – at least part of it – was a bit more mature, a bit differently paced. I suppose that if it was all the crazy, fast stuff, it would have worn people out – and probably bored them, too. We got the balance right, I think.”

It’s worth mentioning that those eight days of recording took place all the way back in December. Given it’s now May, one might assume that there was a lot of red tape for the band to cut through in order to release the album. Not the case, says Took – it was more a case of fi nding the most opportune moment. “We just wanted to be absolutely sure of what we were putting out. We’re so used to t hese songs now, and we’re really certain about playing them.”

The band spent all of eight days recording the debut, relying on that sense of urgency in both productivity and musicianship that

This month will see Little Bastard undertake a national tour in support of the album, including a stop at the newly opened Newtown Social Club.

As for what the future holds, Took wants to take the album for a test drive in the land of the free to see the reaction it gets. “I genuinely think that there are some songs on this record that would go down a treat if we played them in Nashville,” he says. “It’s a total dream of ours to get over there and see what they make of our band and what we do.” What: Little Bastard out now through Four Four/Universal With: Burn Antares, Andy Golledge Where: Newtown Social Club / The Small Ballroom, Newcastle When: Friday June 13 / Saturday June 14

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Litte Bastard photo by Colin Lucas

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t’s all about the love of an old-fashioned good time when it comes to the swampy Sydney septet known as Little Bastard. As a matter of fact, the angriest it’ll ever get at one of their shows is an argument over whether it’s a hoedown or a hootenanny. The past 18 months have seen the band go from strength to strength, particularly on the live front, where they’ve riled up festival crowds and warmed up their largest stages yet for The Beards. Little Bastard’s debut self-titled album, however, may not be quite what people were anticipating – hell, it was even an unexpected turn for the band members.

Took is particularly enthusiastic about the venue, hoping it serves as a game-changer for the inner west. “We had a chance to check it out the other day before it officially opened and it looks so fucking cool in there, man. It’s so great to have a tiny venue like that in this area – it’s a place that is going to give a lot of chances to bands and has the potential to make a lot of difference. We’re really looking forward to playing there.”

Taking Back Sunday Sing It For The Kids By David James Young very member of Taking Back Sunday is now a father. Let that sink in for a minute: the band that soundtracked hundreds of thousands of teenage angst phases – silencing high-school stresses and the parents that just didn’t understand – is now all in their 30s, happily married and looking after their own little bundles of joy.

E

get older. Eddie [Reyes, guitarist] has the oldest kids out of all of us, and he knows that it’s hard when the kids can’t fly out to see you because they’re at school or they’ve got their own things to take care of. But we’re doing this for them – I’ve got to buy my kid diapers, I’ve got to send them to college. Hopefully, in the end, what we’re doing will be totally worth it.”

“I was actually the last cab off the rank,” admits bassist Shaun Cooper. “I had a baby boy about five months ago, so the whole thing is pretty new to me. It’s not easy – I miss the hell out of him and my wife when I’m on tour. At the same time, everyone understands that this is for the greater good. When I met my wife, I was a touring musician – it was always the hope that it would never have to change. I’m still amazed that I get to do this night after night.” When it comes to balancing their family life with the world of being in a band, Taking Back Sunday are managing better than they ever expected to. Although they’re not quite at the Foo Fighters point of having the kiddie pool backstage and taking the entire clan along for the ride, the band still gets to have its moments of bittersweet crossover.

Of course, paying the bills isn’t the only thing keeping Taking Back Sunday together. March saw the band release Happiness Is, its sixth album overall and the third featuring the band’s ‘classic’ lineup of Cooper, Reyes, vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist John Nolan and drummer Mark O’Connell. Nolan and Cooper returned to the band after a seven-year absence in 2010, bringing together the same personnel that recorded its seminal debut LP Tell All Your Friends, and reconciling the “irreconcilable differences” that pushed them to leave the band in the first place. It would be understandable for the press surrounding this reunion of sorts to be a double-edged sword – while fans may rejoice at their return, each batch of new material will immediately be compared in at least a few circles to that revered first album.

“Our wives have come out for a run of shows here and there,” says Cooper. “We played in Philadelphia recently – my wife brought my son out, and we drove home that night so I could spend some time with them before our next show in New York. You figure out how to find that balance, but we all know that it’s going to get harder as our kids

“I like people knowing that it’s the same band that wrote that record,” says Cooper when asked if there is any increased pressure on the group. “There’s been a lot of lineup changes, and people can understandably get confused. To me, in my mind, it’s not meant to be presented as a nostalgia sort of thing. It’s meant to show that it’s

“It’s not meant to be presented as a nostalgia sort of thing. It’s meant to show that it’s the same band and they’re on their third record together.”

the same band and they’re on their third record together. It does set a certain expectation, sure, and there’s a little bit of pressure that comes with that. At the end of the day, we’re just trying to make music that people respond to in the way they responded to [the debut]. We’re not out to make Tell All Your Friends, Part Two.” Taking Back Sunday are returning to Australia once again this August as part of a co-headlining tour with The Used. The two groups share very similar backgrounds: both releasing seminal debuts for their genre in the early 2000s, both tarred with the ‘emo’ brush, both peaking in popularity around the mid-2000s and both still releasing music to this day. The Used’s Imaginary Enemy came out within

weeks of the release of Happiness Is. Cooper can still recall his first encounter with his Utah compatriots, way back in the day. “We were playing a show with Box Car Racer in 2002,” he says. “We also did a small tour with them at the start of 2003 after we’d hit it off. We’ve known those guys for a very long time. It’s crazy how the time flies – we still love them. We’ve been having a blast with them. We had so much fun playing with them in the States, and we all think the new record is great. “We’re kind of the dinosaurs of the scene at this point,” he continues with a laugh. “Everyone else kind of died off, and we’re still around!

We’re so happy we get to take this internationally – specifically to Bert [McCracken, Used vocalist]’s adopted home of Australia. I’m really looking forward to getting this show down there. The plane ride sucks, but it’s worth it every time that you get off and catch up with the jetlag. I’ve had nothing but great times and great experiences. My brother-in-law is actually from Melbourne, so I have great ties to the country. It’s almost like a paid vacation to us.” What: Happiness Is out now through Hopeless/UNFD With: The Used Where: UNSW Roundhouse When: Saturday August 23

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THE BRAG'S GUIDE TO:

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL 2014 IIt’s It t a cinemagoer’s favourite time of year. Sydney Film Festival is here again, presenting 183 films from 47 countries, plus talks, Q&As, parties and more. The festival runs Wednesday June 4 until Sunday June 15, and we’ve picked out some highlights.

MY SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL By Festival Director Nashen Moodley Sydney Film Festival celebrates its 61st edition this year, but remains vibrant and dynamic, presenting the very latest in world cinema and tracking the trends, the new talents and new cinematic forms. At the centre of the festival are the filmmakers who create the incredible works we present, and this year we will host over 100 filmmaker guests who will participate in screenings and panel discussions including an ‘Inside The Rover’ special event with Vivid Ideas at the Town Hall. The popular Sydney Film Festival Hub returns to Town Hall and promises to be bigger and better than ever before with a Festival Bar and lounge, program gurus to help you choose your films, a discount ticket booth, a stunning photo exhibition, and many talks and live performances. Over at the beautiful State Theatre we will present some remarkable films including the 12 films in the Official Competition, and it promises to be a tightly fought competition this year. The Sounds On Screen program brings together a broad range of tremendous musicians – from Fela Kuti to Belle

And Sebastian to Pulp to Jimi Hendrix, and our Freak Me Out selection is sure to elicit some terrified screams, and a fair amount of laughs. While championing exciting new filmmakers and films, we also honour great works from the past, including a Robert Altman retrospective, a selection of restored classics, and a special tribute to the great Japanese animation company, Studio Ghibli. In this Salute to Studio Ghibli we present Isao Takahata’s latest film The Tale Of The Princess Kaguya, the classics My Neighbor Totoro and Grave Of The Firefl ies, and the splendid documentary The Kingdom Of Dreams And Madness. Overall, this program reflects what we view as the best of international and Australian cinema, and we invite you to explore this selection and hope that you love these films as much as we do.

Black Panther Woman

▼ COVER STORY put in a situation, I feel, due to the politics of the country, where I couldn’t speak at the time. It was difficult to speak out about your violation as a woman – for fighting for what are basic human rights – without the race card being called, without the expectation of having a stereotypical demonisation of Aboriginal men used against you.

“I’m sick and tired of women taking responsibility for the violence that is done to them. I want to see men from every background, every ethnicity, all band together and take a firmer stand on violence against women.” “That’s what I struggled with. That attitude, that behaviour certainly happened to me while I was a Black Panther. Some people have been saying to me, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see your doco, Aunty Marlene; that’s so cool you were in the Black Panthers.’ But it’s not all about being cool and deadly. At the start it had a cool look, you know? Standing up, taking a political stance with your black beret and your fists.”

BLACK PANTHER WOMAN Aunty Marlene’s Story By Adam Norris

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n person, Aunty Marlene Cummins does not come across like you’d expect for a woman whose documentary story is entitled Black Panther Woman. Given the violent history associated with the Black Panther movement and its Australian arm – fuelled in part by political propaganda that sought to discredit them, but also the actual crime and violence initiated by their members – I was expecting somebody intense, focused and cold. Instead, Aunty Marlene seems just that – your concerned aunt, somebody insightful and warm, instantly likeable. Throughout our conversation I am stuck again and again by her bravery and compassion, but also her great sadness. At times funny and endearing, there is still profound grief and frustration that sits just below the surface. Given the truths this documentary finally shares, it is little wonder.

After apologising for the smell of her recently flooded apartment – though I can’t smell a thing – we sit on wellworn chairs in a room fit to bursting with CDs, artwork, photographs and a framed tour poster; Marlene Cummins just so happens to also be Australia’s foremost indigenous blues musician.

“I never got into music for the sake of making money, though I get that it’s a business that a lot of people go in for,” she says. “I was never interested in the money, as such, but you know, if some happened to come along I’m not knocking it back!” Cummins laughs, and when she does the effect is sweetly disarming. She laughs often, but there is unmistakably a wealth of sadness behind her stories. Her recollections are viewed through a lens of abuse, depression and addiction, each forming a part of indigenous history

that to this day remains all too common and unacknowledged.

“Most people have a stereotype of what it is to be Aboriginal. But what distinguishes your identity is how you express your belief systems and value judgements, certain behaviour and protocols. To me, that’s how my music makes sense. I just do what is culturally my existing dynamic, my everyday life. I do what my ancestors do.” I notice that when Cummins is taken by a particular memory or observation her hands leap to her assistance, fists clenching and relaxing, soothing the empty air, and this is certainly the case as she recalls her first exposure to the sound that would play such a vital role in her life. “I didn’t know that I liked the blues until I heard Ray Charles sing ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’. It got me right in the gut.

Oh, the way it just poured out of him! Those singers who just had the edge, you know? “My father was an amazing guitarist, though he first had to work as a stockman, a ringbarker. Working for only flour, sugar and tea. In my own father’s time! Is that not slavery? Even when he did find places to perform guitar they told him to put on a Hawaiian shirt if he wanted to play. He could be anything he wanted, just not Aboriginal. Such beautiful, amazing musicians. Those poor old blackfellas,” she chuckles sadly. The Rachel Perkins-directed Black Panther Woman documentary itself serves as a fascinating, if confronting, story of indigenous life in Australia during the late ’60s and early ’70s – tales of oppression, poverty and police brutality were commonplace. Most damning of all, however, is the unforgivable extent to which domestic and sexual violence was able to flourish, and which has yet to be fully addressed to this day. “I have endured things that are shared by a lot of other women…” Cummins starts, and for a time falls silent. There are tears in her eyes, and although many of her wounds are years old their sting remains fresh. “It’s just that I was

Music is playing from somewhere down the hall, and the sound of passing traffic drifts through the window. The sound of the clock is very loud, and Cummins’ voice heavy with emotion. “I wanted to tell you about my experience with the Black Panthers, of course, but I also wanted to use it as a platform to bring to the attention of the world the violence against women and children, period. I’m sick and tired of women taking responsibility for the violence that is done to them. I want to see men from every background, every ethnicity, all band together and take a firmer stand on violence against women, to the point that anyone who is about to perpetrate that crime will find themselves suddenly with a conscience about it. Even if it’s just them worried that they might not get away with it. “And it’s just so common, so common. It’s such a disease. I want to open men’s eyes to realise just how oppressed we are. If you’re raping or abusing women and children, you can’t call yourself Aboriginal. You can’t assume an authority on Land Rights and be a misogynist. Misogyny is prevalent in every society. In India right now a woman is raped every 22 minutes. The issue of violence against women and children has to be recognised before anything else. For me, it’s the most important issue.”

P R O G R A M : D O C U M E N T A R Y A U S T R A L I A F O U N D A T I O N A W A R D W H E R E : E V E N T C I N E M A S , G E O R G E S T W H E N : T H U R S D AY J U N E 1 2 A N D : M A R L E N E C U M M I N S W I L L L A U N C H H E R D E B U T A L B U M , KO O R I W O M A N B L U E S , AT T H E M E T R O T H E AT R E F O L L O W I N G T H E B L A C K PA N T H E R W O M A N S C R E E N I N G 18 :: BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14

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BR AG ' S GUIDE TO

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL 2014

DOCUMENTARIES, OFFICIAL COMPETITION AND FEATURES ▼

ALTMAN ON ALTMAN

Nashville

A Father’s Hand By Ian Barr The late Robert Altman’s filmography is all over the place, in every sense of the term. He’s spanned multiple genres, diverse regions of America and beyond, and the films themselves often make chaos their defining narrative and aesthetic strategy – whether it be multi-character crisscrossing mosaics like M*A*S*H, Nashville and Short Cuts, or the improvisatory performances and dense, murky soundscapes full of overlapping dialogue that characterise the majority of his work. When M*A*S*H became a phenomenon in 1970, he wasn’t the only member of the Altman clan to penetrate the zeitgeist. His then 14-year-old son, Michael Altman – a guest of this year’s festival, and the curator of the Altman On Altman retrospective sidebar – had his

own breakthrough with ‘Suicide Is Painless’, the film’s famous theme song, which was written under his father’s instructions to be “the stupidest song ever written”. “I was initially glad to be able to help out on the production and was proud to be able to contribute something useful to my father’s project, but personally and creatively it was just another poem among the many I was writing at the time, and not one of my personal favorites,” says Michael. “I was also not aware of the potential success of the song or the film. I was, however, very happy about the $500 cheque I received for the licensing, which I immediately spent on a beautiful new Aria 12-string guitar.” If the fi lms following the golden age that started with M*A*S*H and continued throughout most

of the ’70s were also all over the place in terms of quality, it was only a by-product of Robert Altman’s willingness to take risks. “In my opinion, he treated each and every project the same, like it was the most important thing in the world; there were no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ projects,” explains Michael. “He was often quoted as saying that he only made one very long movie. He believed in the body of work and was not partial to any one film.” Altman junior, however, has certainly cherry-picked the best for Sydney Film Festival, including consensus classics (apart from the aforementioned, there’s also McCabe & Mrs. Miller) and lessheralded gems like A Wedding and That Cold Day In The Park. The program also offers a rare chance to see 3 Women, the enigmatic, unnerving 1977 psychodrama

masterpiece starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, which has never been released on Australian home video.

ad-libbing’. When I ask Michael what Hollywood can learn from his father’s work, his answer is justifiably brusque.

Many of the films from Robert Altman’s heyday were among the most radical and idiosyncratic to be produced in Hollywood, and his influence is more easily detected today in the work by studio subdivisions (for instance, the films by David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson) or independent cinema. When ‘Altmanesque’ is used in relation to a mega-blockbuster, it’s usually shorthand for ‘actors

“I believe big-budget, mainstream American filmmaking is incapable of learning anything from anyone, as they are only interested in the financial aspect of the business of filmmaking, and are criminally irresponsible and negligent of the potential for uplifting and expanding the consciousness, hearts and minds of the general public who support them. They see only wallets, not souls.”

W H AT : T H E F U L L P R O G R A M S C H E D U L E F O R A LT M A N O N A LT M A N I S AVA I L A B L E AT S F F. O R G . A U

RUIN Cambodian Challenge By Ian Barr “You’d spend three or four weeks finding an amazing elderly woman for a key scene, and then you’d be really happy with her performance in the auditions and rehearsals, and then you’d get to the shoot in a location that was really difficult because it was reliant on getting permits to shoot in a place that’s a little sketchy, and we needed machine-gun-clad police officers to film with us in certain neighbourhoods, and then an absolute stranger would arrive, another old woman, to shoot the scene, and we’d have to shoot the scene with this old woman we’d never met before…” If Amiel Courtin-Wilson sounds slightly delirious when recalling the shooting of Ruin – on which he shares a directing credit with longtime producer Michael Cody – it just reflects the quick gestation and freeform production of the film itself. Courtin-Wilson’s previous feature was the blistering Hail, an experimental/ experiential docudrama based on

the life and experiences of lead actor and subject Daniel P. Jones, which is indisputably one of the most audacious films made in this country in recent years. The dreamy, impressionistic Ruin continues Courtin-Wilson’s fascination with the way reality and documentary material can shape or be shaped into fiction; he tells me that the film was at one stage going to be a straight-up essayistic documentary in the vein of Chris Marker. “It was borne of Michael’s longstanding connection with Cambodia and Southeast Asia; he was a foreign correspondent there, covering the trials of the Khmer Rouge,” says Courtin-Wilson. “The genesis of the film was a combination of his fascination with that country’s history and his previous work as an academic, looking at ideas of sound and trauma and how they interrelate … My contribution was looking at how we could take that methodology we explored with Hail and push it to its

limits, in terms of working in a place of sheer naivety and momentum.” As such, he and Cody “literally landed in Cambodia on October 8, with no script, no sense of story other than a loose thematic interest in this idea of trauma, no cast, no money, no crew”, and eventually arrived at a skeletal story that would suit that thematic core, as well as accommodate the locals that stood out to them. Led by non-actors Rous Mony and Sang Malen, the film follows two young lovers who together escape a brutal and exploitative world of crime and violence. “A Badlands-style road-movie-slashlove-story enabled us to embrace the vagaries of the process, which was mainly to do with being able to expand or contract the narrative according to the characters we met along the way.” These included, says Courtin-Wilson, “High-ranking police officials, [a] wealthy real estate owner, ex-child-prostitutes… I would

Ruin say we met with probably 2,000 people in the space of three weeks,” adding that sometimes they would be shooting for 20 hours a day, for four or five days straight. Ruin premiered in the Orizzonti (Horizons) sidebar at the Venice Film Festival last year – where Hail also played in 2011 – winning the Special Jury Prize from Paul Schrader’s jury, and just last month it won the directing prize at Brazil’s Fantaspoa Film Festival. At the Sydney Film Festival this year, it

plays in the Official Competition section, competing against 11 other titles including Richard Linklater’s universally acclaimed Boyhood and this year’s Berlin Golden Bearwinning Black Coal, Thin Ice. In spite of these plaudits, when speaking to Courtin-Wilson one gets the impression that it’s the process that matters most to him, however accomplished the end results are. “I found [Ruin] a hugely exhilarating experience, as an experiment, to see what stories would come to the fore.”

P R O G R A M : O F F I C I A L C O M P E T I T I O N W H E R E : S T A T E T H E A T R E / E V E N T C I N E M A S , G E O R G E S T W H E N : T U E S D AY J U N E 1 0 / W E D N E S D AY J U N E 11

DOUBLE PLAY: JAMES BENNING AND RICHARD LINKLATER Outsider Cinema By Ian Barr

The documentary Double Play: James Benning And Richard Linklater is a snapshot of the friendship between these two filmmakers (Linklater was a former student of Benning’s), which looks at them with fresh eyes and doesn’t shoehorn them into a neat dichotomy. The film’s director, Gabe Klinger – a critic, programmer and scholar who has also curated a mini-retrospective of Benning’s films for this year’s festival – explains the rationale behind their pairing. Double Play

On a surface level, filmmakers Richard Linklater and James Benning seem worlds apart – Linklater is a narrative filmmaker who, following his landmark micro-budget film Slacker (1991), has juggled indie and studio productions alike, while Benning is associated with the world of non-narrative and avant-garde

filmmaking, and has a particular interest in landscape; his is a type of cinema that has a marginal presence even at film festivals. In Benning’s case, this year’s Sydney Film Festival tagline – “Together in the dark we share our stories” – accounts more for what we bring to his films rather than the other way around.

“Conceptually, it worked to have these two figures who superficially are different, but then when you start to look, have a lot of commonalities. I saw it as a way to open up a larger discussion about cinema and to break down some of the usual categories like ‘avant-garde’, ‘indie cinema’, et cetera. At the end of the day, it’s all cinema.” Indeed, the conversations between Linklater and Benning reveal each to be highly inquisitive and open-

minded, and it shows in their work. Linklater’s Boyhood (one of the hot tickets at this year’s festival) is ostensibly a fiction film, but also one that sees its main actor age ten or more years in the span of its nearly three-hour runtime. Much like his Before trilogy, it reveals a broad interest in temporality and a consciousness of the innate documentary qualities of the medium, which Benning shares; since moving to digital, the freedom it allows has led him to works such as Ruhr and Nightfall, both radical even within the context of his oeuvre. The latter film, appearing as part of Klinger’s retrospective (which also includes 1984’s American Dreams (Lost And Found) and 1995’s Deseret) is a single, 98-minute fixed-frame shot of night falling through trees in a forest. While Benning’s films can often seem severe from the outset, demanding both patience and faith from audiences, Klinger

offers a succinct description of the “hard work” (a term Benning himself frequently invokes) involved in Benning’s process. “A lot of research and thought go into his films. It’s not that easy to just point and shoot at something and make meaning of it. He arrives at his ideas very methodically and carefully. There’s nothing casual about it … When you’re on your own like that, it can be very lonely, which is psychologically taxing, and it can also be somewhat dangerous. My impression is that a lot of people prefer to stay in their comfort zones in all aspects of their lives because it’s easier.” In Double Play, Linklater makes a similar comment about the rare opportunity for reflection and meditation that Benning’s cinema offers receptive viewers in today’s age of information overload and distraction, which Klinger expands upon. “Benning’s films train us to be active observers and more acutely aware of our surroundings when we leave the confined space of the cinema. We’re not born knowing and understanding how to observe things – our bodies and brains respond differently when we’re conscious of ways of looking and listening. That’s the beauty of art.”

P R O G R A M : I N T E R N A T I O N A L D O C U M E N T A R I E S W H E R E : E V E N T C I N E M A S , G E O R G E S T / D E N D Y O P E R A Q U AY S W H E N : T H U R S D AY J U N E 1 2 / F R I D AY J U N E 1 3 A N D : S E E T H E F U L L P R O G R A M S C H E D U L E F O R J A M E S B E N N I N G : A N O U T S I D E R V I S I O N A R Y A T S F F . O R G . A U 20 :: BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14

UKRAINE IS NOT A BROTHEL Inside Job By Adam Norris

film, but that’s just the way we lived. These girls were always naked, so I was just shooting them in their natural habitat,” Green laughs. “Getting those moments, it offers a glimpse into their real lives, gives you that human impact of what they’re doing. Like that moment with Oksana bathing. She’s battered, covered in bruises; she’s washing away the slogans painted all over her skin. There’s a lot of metaphorical imagery that gets captured.”

It’s a titillating image, of course, but that’s the idea. Entice media with the promise of gorgeous, topless girls protesting in very public spaces. It works, too; by Ukraine Is Not A Brothel director Kitty Green’s reckoning, Ukrainian activist group Femen draws upwards of 150 cameras to their protests. And while the nudity is inherent to Femen’s ideology – encouraging women to reclaim control over their bodies and political rights in a country too often associated with little more than sex tourism – there is much more to the organisation. There is great fear and violence in the activists’ lives, perpetrated by aggressive police, confused members of the public, and, perhaps most troubling, within their own ranks.

By living so closely with the girls (the cinematographer slept on the floor of their crumbling two-bedroom apartment for over a year), Green was able to develop a level of trust and insight that many other documentarians have shied away from. “Every journalist I met – particularly with The New York Times or the BBC, everybody comes to cover these girls and their activities – would warn, ‘Oooh, don’t get too close to them,

“I spent 14 months living with these girls, so I was privy to a lot of intimate moments. Some people have said that there’s too much nudity in the

Ukraine Is Not A Brothel

you’ll lose all objectivity, you certainly can’t live with them.’ All of these warnings about what would happen. What I think is the beauty of the film is the honesty and the intimacy of it, and that could only really happen by gaining their trust. I could be so close to them that I could see what was going on and point out contradictions, to get them to honestly open up to the camera, which could only happen if I was their friend and colleague. I got arrested with them several times, and I think it’s that trust that got us the story.” The film is peppered with instances of the girls being dragged away from protests, and with stories of brutality and humiliation at the hands of authority. One of its most disquieting aspects, however, lies much closer to home. Victor Svyatski, the intense, menacing man who formerly organised Femen’s protests and shaped their message, is a truly disturbing figure whose influence over the girls is at times quite distressing.

“He’s terrifying,” Green agrees matterof-factly. “I spent all this time pretending not to shoot him – I was told I wasn’t allowed to – so I would always point the camera at the floor while he was around, try to secretly record him. “When I phoned him to say I had all of this secret footage, he just started screaming at me, and I was terrified; I really thought he was capable of anything. He eventually agreed to an

interview, but I wanted to make sure I had a friend nearby in case he got violent. I’d seen him be very aggressive with the girls. We got what we wanted, but at the end of the day, I kind of think I convinced him through his ego, you know? He really wanted to be in front of a camera, he was sick of being in the shadows. So I was able to take advantage of that, and the moment it was done, I knew I had to get out of Kiev straight away.”

P R O G R A M : D O C U M E N T A R Y A U S T R A L I A F O U N D A T I O N A W A R D W H E R E : E V E N T C I N E M A S , G E O R G E S T W H E N : F R I D AY J U N E 1 3

BEST OF THE FEST: THE BRAG’S SFF SHORTLIST ▼ What We Do In The Shadows Closing Night Film It’s funny, it’s strange, it’s got vampires. What else would you expect from Flight Of The Conchords’ Jemaine Clement and Kiwi compatriot actor/director Taika Waititi? They helm 2014’s closing night film, a mockumentary about a house of vampires living in suburban Wellington. When the trio of bloodsucking housemates welcomes a new recruit into their gang, they struggle through showing him the ins and outs of domestic life on the trail of claret. This one’s sure to be a bloody riot. State Theatre, Sunday June 15

Wish I Was Here

Next Goal Wins

Pulp

Special Presentation “You gotta hear this one song; it’ll change your life, I swear.” Ten years after Garden State captured melancholy young hearts everywhere, Zach Braff returns to star and direct in a new film about family and growing up. And yes, The Shins are on the soundtrack again. Joining Braff (who plays struggling actor Aidan) is Kate Hudson as his wife Sarah, plus Homeland’s Mandy Patinkin and Josh Gadd. Can Aidan bring together his family against the challenges of illness and low income? Either way, expect lots of meaningful looks and great music. State Theatre, Saturday June 14 / Event Cinemas, Saturday June 15

International Documentary The Socceroos still talk about their world record victory, 31-0 against American Samoa in 2001. Archie Thompson got on the scoresheet 13 times alone. But whatever happened to the losers? This documentary by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison follows the fate of a small Pacific island’s football team as it aims to pick itself up from the ashes of its most notorious match and work towards the next World Cup qualifiers. One goal at a time is the only way forward for sport’s classic underdogs. Event Cinemas, Saturday June 7 / Dendy Opera Quays, Wednesday June 11

Sounds On Screen You wanna live like common people? You wanna do whatever common people do? There’ll be no more charismatic guide than Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of Sheffield’s Britpop fl ag-bearers, Pulp. Subtitled A Film About Life, Death And Supermarkets, this is the story of Pulp’s fi nal concert on their 2012 reunion tour. It’s a homecoming for the prodigal son of pop, and downright the most articulate and witty Brit of his era – the masterful Cocker. Event Cinemas, Saturday June 7 / Dendy Opera Quays, Monday June 9

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Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? Special Presentation Two of the modern era’s most beautiful minds are together in conversation for 90 minutes. French cinematic visionary Michel Gondry sits down with philosopher, linguist and activist Noam Chomsky in this film, which doesn’t simply take a face-to-face talking head approach, but is illustrated in bright colour. Each of Chomsky’s thoughts is drawn out in animation – and if you’ve ever tried to follow his arguments on their own, you’re sure to be astounded here. State Theatre, Sunday June 8 / Event Cinemas, Thursday June 12

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BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 21

arts frontline

free stuff

arts news...what's goin' on around town...with Chris Martin, Amie Mulhearn and Nic Liney

head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

five minutes WITH

PAULA NOBLE, WRITER OF BRAD CHECKED IN

B

rad Checked In is the latest production showing at the Sydney Independent Theatre Company about a man who’s out of

marriage and into the world of social networking and dating. It’s a jungle out there, so we caught up with playwright Paula Noble to talk us through it.

Is the character inspired by anyone in particular? Brad is a fictitious character, however he is inspired by the many stories I have heard about married or single individuals who use social media to hook up with past relationships, or find new ones, or both!

Is it fair to say online dating has lost its stigma? Facebook has the unique quality of private messaging people that we have already established some sort of relationship with. So while it may have lost its stigma, this private message factor is still an attraction, especially for Generation X. What did you enjoy most about writing the play? I absolutely enjoyed creating the central character Brad, who could complicate his dating life by biting off more women than he could chew. I like bringing characters to life though dialogue, and the process of creating their own individual voices, gradually making them human. What: Brad Checked In Where: Old Fitzroy Theatre When: Until Saturday June 21

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

SUPANOVA EXPO 2014

It’s that time of year again – the Supanova pop culture expo will descend on Sydney Showground at Olympic Park on Friday June 13 – Sunday June 15, for the most colourful collage of cosplayers, comic book fans, sci-fi spectacle and superheroes you’ll ever see. The lineup of ‘Supa-Star’ guests this year features Stan Lee, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (AKA Game Of Thrones’ Jaime Lannister), Rose McGowan, MingNa Wen, Jon Heder and even one-time James Bond actor George Lazenby and Bond nemesis Richard Kiel, AKA Jaws. We’ve got five double weekend passes to give away to Supanova 2014. To be in the running, head to thebrag.com/freeshit and tell us which Supa-Star you’re most keen to see. And for your chance to win tickets to the special VIP event, just turn the page…

Gabriel Iglesias

HEY GABRIEL

Gabriel Iglesias will return to our shores, Hawaiian shirt and all, for a tour this September. The so-called ‘fluffy comic’, Iglesias is electrifying, witty and hailed for his ability to deliver sidesplitting performances from start to finish. In addition to an extensive list of television credits, the American comedian has appeared in A Haunted House 2 and Magic Mike. He is set to release his stand-up comedy film, aptly titled The Fluffy Movie, in July. Iglesias toured Australia back in 2011 and this time he will return to perform in some of the biggest venues in the country. Catch him at Qantas Credit Union Arena on Saturday September 27.

TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE

Ever worry that life on Instagram feels a bit more substantial than your real one? Blurring the line that separates the self from the technologies we use daily to express ourselves, the artists in Totally Looks Like explore the idea of self as a medium on its own. Humorous, selfdeprecating, witty and insightful, six Australian and international artists have produced a body of work through performance, objects, photo and video, considering the changing relationship between medium and maker in a world that constantly revolves around Tumblr and selfies. Lana Del Rey is combined with a lasagne, while awkward selfies printed on t-shirts abound. Six artists will explore the result of combining the created and creator: Jackson Eaton, Lucas Davidson, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Jacob Ogden Smith, Jaimie Warren and Jodie Whalen. Totally Looks Like is showing at Stills Gallery in Paddington from Wednesday June 11 to Saturday July 12.

Theatre Company and Malthouse Theatre. Set on the streets of Melbourne with inspiration from the severely under-reported stories of abuse and violence endured by sex workers, Ugly Mugs features a plethora of local talent including Peta Brady herself alongside Steve Le Marquand, Sara West and Harry Borland. The Ugly Mugs previews commence Friday July 18 and the season runs until Saturday August 23 at SBW Stables Theatre, Kings Cross

Ronny Chieng

COMEDY FESTIVAL ENCORE SEASON

Didn’t get enough lols at Sydney Comedy Festival this year? Star comics Matt Okine, Ronny Chieng and Rhys Nicholson have added encore shows due to popular demand. Triple j breakfast personality Okine, the frustrated-lawyer-turned-comedian Chieng and the ever-sharp Nicholson were among the best of the Comedy Fest this year, so fans will be thrilled at their new dates. Okine plays The Comedy Store on Friday June 13 and Saturday June 14; Chieng does two shows at the Enmore Theatre on Saturday June 28; and Nicholson plays The Comedy Store on Saturday July 19.

NAIDOC WEEK AT THE OPERA HOUSE

IT’S A WINTER WONDERLAND

Dendy Opera Quays will pay homage to the classics with its Winter Wonderland series, screening the very best in classic cinema. To keep your socks toasty this winter Dendy have enlisted the help of the one and only James Dean, screening all three of his major roles for the first time on cinema screens in 2K Digital. Other films this Winter Wonderland season include Mel Brooks’ Funny Girl, Flying High and ’40s screwball comedy His Girl Friday. The season will screen Mondays at 10am and 6:30pm from Monday June 2 – Monday August 25.

UGLY MUGS

Peta Brady’s arresting production Ugly Mugs is coming to Sydney with the help of Griffin 22 :: BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14

Untitled from Mob Rule (Family) by Tony Garifalakis

The Sydney Opera House will be once again celebrating the world’s oldest living culture as part of NAIDOC Week 2014. The annual NAIDOC Week reflects upon and honours the cultural richness and diversity of the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. This year, the Opera House will host a jam-packed program of cabaret, music, film and discussions examining modern indigenous culture and issues. Some special guests this year include Redfern Now director Adrian Wills, Canadian hip hop pioneer Kinnie Starr and Christopher Green’s alter ego Tina C. The program runs from Friday July 4 – Sunday July 6. For the full listings and to book, visit sydneyoperahouse. com.

MORAN ON THE MENU MOB RULE

The latest instalment of Tony Garifalakis’ Mob Rule series will be shown at the Art Gallery of NSW in June. Garifalakis takes to images of the famous and powerful, blacking out their faces with spray paint in a humorous and biting commentary on politics and society. Featured portraits include Prince Charles, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin and Robert Mugabe. Mob Rule makes the point that it’s not the ‘who’ that matters, but the ‘what’ they represent. The exhibition is on view from Thursday June 12 – Thursday August 21.

High-profile chef and restaurateur Matt Moran, alongside business partner Peter Sullivan and Solotel’s Bruce Solomon, will bring their talents to the Art Gallery of NSW. MasterChef Australia personality Moran will show off his passion for quality food to the more than one million visitors to the Art Gallery each year. The partnership takes over restaurant, cafe and event service at the Art Gallery from July. thebrag.com

Brad Checked In photo by Tim Glastonbury

What can you tell us about your title character and his story? What leads him to ‘check in’? Brad is recently separated after ten years of marriage to his wife Maggie. Despite it being his decision to leave her, Brad initially feels bewildered with navigating his newfound freedom. That is until his friend Grub introduces him to social networking through Facebook, where he begins searching for an old flame and loses his privacy when Grub begins to check him in wherever they go.

Yannick Lawry in Brad Checked In

FREE EVENTS DOWNSTAIRS AT THE SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL HUB FESTIVAL BAR FEST Meet up up, eat up, drink up and experience the Festival Fest as an insider.

FOXT FOXTEL MOVIES PHOT PHOTO AND VIDEO BOOTH Record a 30-second video review of a Festival film for your chance to win a Flexipass 30 to attend SFF 2015, or strike a pose and take home a strip vintage Hollywood glamour! of vintag

TITLE POP-UP STORE

5-15 JUNE 2014

A pop-up pop-u store for film lovers, featuring a collection of books books, music and movies inspired by this year’s program program, courtesy of TITLE Store, Australia’s largest independent retailer of music, books and film. independ

FILM CLUB 6-14 JUNE, 5-6PM

Everyone’s a critic! Want to chat about the films you’ve seen at SFF? Come to this informal and inclusive space hosted by the critics of Graffiti with Punctuation every afternoon.

FILM TRIVIA: FRANCIS FORD QUESTION MARK WED 11 JUNE 8:30PM-10PM

Do you know your Fassbender from your Fassbinder and your Nick Cave from your Nic Cage? Flexipasses and hot prizes are up for grabs at this trivia night hosted by Josh Wheatley and puppet critic Harvey Feltstein.

THE HUB LOUNGE Make yourself comfortable in exclusive designer furniture from Living Edge and Herman Miller, charge your phone, jump on our free wi-fi, and browse trailers on our SFF Video Jukebox. EXHIBITION: ROSEBUD All of us have meaningful objects we carry through our lives, objects that tell a story about who we are and who we aspire to be, objects that mean little to anyone else but signify the world to us. Inspired by the classic film Citizen Kane, Los Angeles-based Australian photographer Hugh Hamilton brings to SFF a series of striking portraits of such objects, along with their owners – a gallery of the brightest talents of the film world, including Steve Martin, Anthony LaPaglia, Bojana Novakovic, Joel Edgerton, Zoe Carides and David Michôd. Presented in association with Head On Photo Festival and Arthead

Josh Wheatley

Pop down to the Hub before or after your screening and try some scrumptious flavour combos from the Gelato Messina cart.

CINEMA BURLESQUE THU 12 JUNE 9:30-11PM

Making a popular return to the Hub, the talented artists of Bobbi’s Pole Studio perform sassy, outrageous burlesque and pole-dance performances inspired by cult movies.

THU 5, FRI 6, SAT 7, SUN 8, FRI 13 & SAT 14 JUNE, 5:30-9:30PM

PROGRAM GURUS DAILY UNTIL 8:30PM

Sit down for a free 10-minute consultation with one of our friendly film buffs, who will guide you through the 2014 line-up and recommend films or events that best suit your moviegoing profile.

Cinema Burlesque

TO STATE THEATRE GALERIES VICTORIA

DRUITT

Steve Martin, Rosebud by Hugh Hamilton

DISCOUNT TICKETS Purchase $10 tickets (with no booking fee!) to selected SFF screenings, only in person at the Hub Box Office (daily until 8:30pm).

STREET

HUB DOWNSTAIRS

GEORGE STREET

QVB

PARK STREET

TO EVENT CINEMAS

ENTRANCE TO HUB DOWNSTAIRS VIA DRUITT STREET

JUNKEE DO: FRIDAY THE 13TH FRI 13 JUNE 9PM-MIDNIGHT

Following the Junkee Death of Horror debate upstairs, do the monster mash in the Hub: there’ll be a special live interactive performance by VJ Michela Ledwige, and prizes for best dressed.

FREAK ME OUT DISCO: GIRL ROCK RIOT SAT 14 JUNE 9PM-MIDNIGHT

Get ready for a wild night dedicated exclusively to female rock ’n’ roll. Freak Me Out curator Richard Kuipers and filmmaker and grrl-music expert Daz Chandler are your DJs for this highly danceable tribute to the goddesses of guitar, bass and drums.

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The Fault In Our Stars [FILM] Love Against Adversity By Nadia Neophytou spending a lot of time on set. And crying because of it too – “Almost every day that I was on set,” he admits. “It was so overwhelming to me that all these talented people were giving a new life to this story that I had written. They really honoured my book, and that’s a rare feeling for an author to have.”

The Fault In Our Stars

Green has been credited with changing ideas about what a cancer novel – and subsequent movie – should be. “I wanted to tell a story about people living with a serious illness or a disability, and show how they’re not fundamentally ‘other’ from the healthy among us. They’re not less human – they still have the same love, anger, frustration, excitement as all of us.”

[LIGHT + SOUND] Artificial Synesthesia By Tegan Jones

V

isionary artist Robin Fox will be hitting the Seymour Centre as part of Vivid’s New Wave: Sound program. After almost a decade of performing his monochromatic green Laser Show across the globe, he is now presenting his triple threat RGB (red, green and blue) production, and it’s going to be spectacular.

His interest in this relationship was further enhanced during and after acquiring a PhD in composition and an MA in musicology. “I became interested in electronic music and the creation of tones. When you move from traditional music to electronic you tend to change the language into an almost scientific one. Instead of talking about pitch, you talk about frequency and amplitude. You talk about the physical properties. So when I started exploring electronic music, particularly

He continues, “[Sound] is a particular way that air pushes backwards and forwards in space and affects you as a biological organism. Your ears decode this vibration. When I started to look further into that, I realised that if you think that way about sound, you could think that way about almost everything. Everything has a frequency and everything is tied up in this idea of oscillation.” What is so fascinating about Fox is his true love for the science behind his work, which is evident as he explains the difference between imagery and sound. “Noise is an interesting thing, because your hearing is your fastest sensory response. It takes quite a while to process an image, roughly a quarter of a second, so by the time you’re understanding things visually they’ve already happened. What I like about noise is that you’re constantly in a physical state of panic when you’re listening to it, because it’s connected to our fight or flight response.” But Fox didn’t want to be limited by these differences – he wanted to combine sound and light. He arrived at the

plan after looking through an ordinary hospital oscilloscope 15 years ago. “I had heard that you could plug sound into them and look at it, which I found interesting and resonated with me because of my mother’s synesthesia. So I plugged my sound into this machine, and most of it was kind of rubbish, but then there was this fraction of a second where everything came together in this incredibly geometric way. The sound started making these shapes and I thought, ‘Holy shit, this is amazing.’ I had a revelation; this is what I wanted to look at and since then I’ve been pretty obsessed with it.”

The respect shown to teenagers and their love is also the aspect of the fi lm

What: Robin Fox RGB Laser Show at New Wave: Sound, as part of Vivid 2014 Where: Everest Theatre, Seymour Centre When: Saturday June 7

What: The Fault In Our Stars (dir. Josh Boone) When: In cinemas Thursday June 5

Giveaway What's been on our TV screens this week Head to: thebrag.com/freeshit

Fox continues to use these methods today. “The idea in this new show is that you see and hear the same electrical signal at the same time. It creates equivalence in your brain between what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing. It’s not about syncing audio with image. They are the same thing, and that’s the important thing about the way it’s experienced … My intention with the piece is to create a kind of artificial synesthesia.”

WIN!

PARTY WITH THE STARS OF SUPANOVA! Wanna get a slice of the rich and famous? We’re giving you the chance to party with the stars of Supanova, which is set to take over Sydney Showground at Olympic Park once again this Friday June 13 – Sunday June 15. The lineup of ‘Supa-Star’ guests is better than ever, with the likes of Stan Lee, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (AKA Game Of Thrones’ Jaime Lannister), Rose McGowan, Ming-Na Wen, Jon Heder and even one-time James Bond actor George Lazenby and Bond nemesis Richard Kiel, AKA Jaws, all set to appear.

On Saturday June 14, a secret location (at one of Sydney’s premier entertainment venues) will host a VIP meet-and-greet with Supanova’s Supa-Stars. Imagine that: sharing a drink with Wonder Woman, queuing for the bathrooms with Pikachu, bumping and grinding with Jaime Lannister on the dancefloor. Mmm, now that’s a night out. To be in the running for a double pass to the VIP party, plus two weekend passes to the expo itself, head to thebrag.com/freeshit and tell us which fantasy character you most resemble and why.

thebrag.com

Supanova photos by StevenYee

Robin Fox RGB Laser Show

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Green has been enthusiastically promoting the film based on his book, giving it his thumbs up early on and

Woodley knows what it’s like to hold onto something. She knew she was right for the part, but Boone wasn’t initially sure. “It wasn’t because she wasn’t good,” he says. “It’s just that she wasn’t 16 [the age of Hazel in the book].” But it was when Woodley read for one of the film’s most touching moments that Boone knew he had to call off the search and go with the actress who was the best suited for the role. The fans who’ll queue to see the movie upon its release will no doubt agree.

S AY W EA IV G

Despite the fact that Fox’s work is incredibly modern, his initial inspiration was fostered decades ago. “It goes all the way back to my childhood and my mother who had synesthesia, which meant that she had a relationship between sound, light and numbers. Every time I had a birthday it had some kind of significance with a sound and colour, so that was always in my life.”

psychoacoustics – the effect that electronic sounds can have on your brain – I started to get interested in the idea that sound is simply an organisation of air.”

Director Josh Boone says they met with a lot of kids living with cancer in preparation for the film, and found many similarities to the characters in Green’s books. “I was amazed at how much they were like Hazel and Augustus in the book – how funny and philosophical they are,” Boone says.

Green believes the director brought that parallel love story to the fore much better than he did in the book. “As a parent, that’s what really got me while watching the movie – what it’s like for parents who have this obstacle to their love with this sick kid but they still hold onto it.”

xxx

I

Robin Fox

t’s not often the author of a book has such a close relationship to the people who decide to turn it into a film. But when you’re John Green, creator of The New York Times’ best-selling The Fault In Our Stars, not only do you visit the set when you can, but you make little videos of your experience and share them on your YouTube channel as well.

Shailene Woodley, who plays the lead character of Hazel Grace Lancaster, says that’s one of the reasons she wanted to be in the film. “The cancer is a big part of their life but it’s not the only identifying thing about them,” she says. “I really like that about the story.”

that attracted Laura Dern to the role of Shailene’s mother. “John gives us an opportunity to share, as moviegoers and as readers, this experience of what it is to love. Each of us comes into it with our own experience. I’m so moved by their love story, but there’s also a parallel one happening at the same time – that of the love a parent has for a child and the love the child has, worried about whether the parent’s going to be OK when the child dies.”

Film Reviews Hits and misses on the silver screen around town

Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood

■ Film

BOYHOOD Showing at Sydney Film Festival on June 6 and 7 Desiree Akhavan in Appropriate Behavior ■ Film

■ Film

APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR

KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER

Showing at Sydney Film Festival on June 6 and 8 It’s easy to see why this first feature from director Desiree Akhavan has been compared to the groundbreaking HBO series Girls. It’s set in Brooklyn, focuses on a middle-class 20-something woman trying to find her footing, is full of wry wit and nuanced observations, and the female director is also the writer and the lead. The major difference, though, lies in Akhavan’s Iranian heritage, which adds another layer to an already winning formula and explores how modern freedoms often clash with ancient traditions. We meet Persian-American Shirin (Akhavan) after a devastating break-up with her girlfriend Maxine (Rebecca Henderson). She begins to dissect what went wrong using friend Crystal (Halley Feiffer) as a sounding board. Homeless because of the break-up and newly unemployed, she moves in with a pair of pompous artists and through Crystal’s friend Ken (30 Rock’s Scott Adsit) gets a job teaching an after-school filmmaking program to five-year-olds. As the film progresses, it addresses the back story of the relationship in non-linear fashion, painting a clear picture of the reasons for the break-up. Although her parents are sophisticated, cultured and otherwise modern, Shirin is yet to officially come out to them, despite the perceptible blatancy of her sexuality (for example, living in a one-bedroom apartment with Maxine). This leaves Maxine, now estranged from her family as a result of her sexuality, frustrated and doubting Shirin’s place in the gay community. Although criticised by some as covering much the same ground as Girls, the incorporation of a cultural narrative is a fresh and significant addition. And while character exploration may be a little on the shallow side, this a nonetheless funny, entertaining and unique film experience and makes writer/director/actor Akhavan a talent to watch.

Lee Hutchison

xxx

Rinko Kikuchi in Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter

Showing at Sydney Film Festival on June 9 and 10 Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter tells the story of Kumiko, played by Rinko Kikuchi, a lonely woman living in Japan who becomes obsessed with searching for buried treasure. After discovering a VHS tape of Fargo, Kumiko convinces herself she can fi nd the money buried by the characters in the 1996 fi lm. Written by David and Nathan Zellner, the fi lm’s plot is actually based on an urban legend that surrounded the Coen brothers’ Fargo, and it is intriguing to see another set of writer/director brothers building on this mythology. The plot sounds incredibly quirky with its VHS tapes and unconventional female protagonist, even more so when you learn that Kumiko’s only friend is her pet rabbit Bunzo and that she handsews her treasure maps. But while the fi lm follows a whimsical plot, it is constructed more like a horror movie. The soundtrack is creepy and distorted at times, and it’s all shot in a way that increases the tension and mystery. Kumiko herself isn’t a particularly likeable character, with her intense awkwardness and self-imposed isolation quite jarring. Her quirky adventure therefore seems only a few steps away from being her psychotic obsession, and the audience is drawn in with no real idea of how the plot can be resolved or if Kumiko’s journey will lead to the discovery of treasure, fi ctional or not. That being said, the fi lm is also quite funny, particularly in Kumiko’s interactions with other characters, all of whom want to discourage her from travelling to ice-cold Fargo.

Richard Linklater has been around for decades now, and his career is an object lesson in how a filmmaker can simultaneously mix it up and stay the same. After Slacker and Dazed And Confused, it was anyone’s guess where he might go next. Filmmakers with a knack for capturing something authentic about the teen experience, like Cameron Crowe and John Hughes before him, have routinely gravitated toward the studios, which are always on the hunt for somebody with a bead on youth culture. And Linklater dabbled with the majors, though The Newton Boys (1998) isn’t considered a high point in his career. Since then, he’s consolidated his position atop Texas’ burgeoning independent filmmaking scene and as one of the most formally experimental filmmakers in America. He’s made films unfolding in real time (Before Sunrise) and road-tested unorthodox technologies that at first glance seem gimmicky, as in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, which were shot with actors and animated over afterwards. But his interest in adolescence

has remained unchanged. And over time, the adolescents in his films have become less laconic and more unashamedly sincere. Boyhood, his latest, is perhaps the purest marriage of Linklater the director, increasingly comfortable with real emotion, and Linklater the technical innovator; a combination often on diverging tracks. Shot every summer over 12 years, it charts the childhood of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from five to 18. Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei, plays his sister, and Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette are the parents, already separated as the film opens. Mason moves across the country, gets a couple of step-dads who turn out to be drunks, and finally goes off to college as his mother, wonderfully played

by Arquette, cries in the kitchen. It’s a riff on Michael Apted’s 7 Up series, only scripted. It’s also one of the very few contemporary films that can justify its running time (almost three hours). Characters like Hawke’s Mason Sr., who at first is as insufferable as his character in Before Sunrise, have time to become more than just capsule versions of themselves. So many films that feel heavily improvisational also boast dialogue that’s hopelessly banal, but Linklater’s sense of humour means he can have his cake and eat it. It’s rare to experience something we know is contrived that also feels so powerfully unaffected and, in its own quiet, incremental way, so epic. Harry Windsor

The fi lm is beautifully shot, making great use of the icy landscape of Minnesota, and is, all in all, a very interesting cinema experience. Louisa Bulley

See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews

Arts Exposed What's in our diary...

An Evening With Dr Michio Kaku Sydney Town Hall, Saturday June 7 There’s not enough room in this 100-word blurb to explain string theory, which is probably for the best, as we couldn’t if we tried. It’s probably best left to an expert like Dr. Michio Kaku, the author and physicist who’s been working for decades to explain the origins and evolution of the universe to the masses. Think Inc. is bringing the American thinker to Sydney for an interview and Q&A session, where you’ll be able to ask him all you Dr Michio Kaku ever wanted to know about the science behind humankind, and his most recent book, The Future Of The Mind. Tickets start at $72, and are available from Ticketek. thebrag.com

BRAG :: 565 :: 04:05:14 :: 25

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

ALBUM OF THE WEEK Lazaretto Third Man/Columbia

five country-influenced songs on Lazaretto seriously at first. Songs like ‘Entitlement’ and ‘Just One Drink’ only sound out of place alongside the furious screeching of other tracks.

Jack White has long fl irted with the country music genre, but up until now that fl irtation had been limited to his production work and light-hearted album closers. On Lazaretto, his country infl uences have been given equal billing with his garage rock, and while White has always restlessly fl itted between genres, it’s a strange fi t.

Luckily, when White reverts to what he does best he’s in rare form. The title track and instrumental ‘High Ball Stepper’ are reminders of his virtuoso status, while the gloriously demented ‘That Black Bat Licorice’ is all the better for its baffling and nonsensical lyrics. The highlight of the album may just be ‘Would You Fight For My Love?’ which fi nds White at his most impassioned and personal, railing furiously against love lost.

JACK WHITE

Jack White has finally let his Xxxx country influences out to play.

Lazaretto is something of a bipolar album, and while its country touches take some getting

used to, White has rarely been better when he plugs the guitar back in. xxxx

Given White’s jokey treatment of his own country interludes on previous solo and White Stripes albums, it is a little difficult to take the four or

Keiron Costello

HAMILTON LEITHAUSER

OWEN PALLETT

NICK MULVEY

OWLS OF THE SWAMP

LITTLE MURDERS

Black Hours Domino/EMI

In Confl ict Domino/EMI

First Mind Fiction/Caroline

Atlas Labelship

Go Off The Hip

Hamilton Leithauser’s first release post-The Walkmen is his lightest foray. It’s not a collection of ballads; rather, there are plenty of tumbling rhythms and woodsy harmonies. Members of The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend and The Walkmen get involved in the fun and seem hand-selected to match the respective tracks.

One of indie music’s premier arrangers, Owen Pallett returns with an impressive album filled with heavy lyrical imagery; his signature violin now matched with synth lines indebted to Violator-era Depeche Mode.

Former Portico Quartet member Nick Mulvey has spent the past few years forging a role as a solo performer with a more modern approach than the somewhat staid territory of the jazz coming from his former outfit. Mulvey cut his musical teeth in Cuba at the age of 19 where he studied music and set while jamming with other students and finding a taste for rum. After a couple of EPs, First Mind is the debut album from the UK multiinstrumentalist.

Owls Of The Swamp is the nom de plume of Australian folk singer/ songwriter Pete Uhlenbruch. His new album, Atlas, skilfully combines haunting vocals and creative guitar work with electronic elements.

Paul Weller said recently that being a mod was in his blood: he might be older, wiser and his youthful temperament buffed by the maturity of experience, but he’s still carrying the mod flag. The same might be said for Rob Griffiths and Little Murders. It’s the best part of 35 years since Little Murders rode the wave of the antipodean mod revival, but Little Murders are as modern and fashionable as ever. Little Murders’ latest record Go – the title is an ironic follow-up to the band’s classic 1984 album Stop! – is every bit as fresh as the band’s original ’80s material.

Still, Leithauser is truly in his own league as a vocalist. His gritty multi-octave apparatus is apt for weary traveller crooning (‘5 AM’); bouncy melodic bliss (‘The Silent Orchestra’) and choral celebration (’11 O’Clock Friday Night’). Black Hours is more fun than The Walkmen’s 2012 LP Heaven, but what gave that record addictive appeal was the agitated energy lying beneath rather nice tunes. This one features some downcast moments (“Do you ever wonder why I sing these love songs / When I have no love at all,” he sings on ‘5 AM’), but it’s generally in an affable mood. Black Hours is consistently agreeable, but it doesn’t pull you completely under its spell. As such, the record’s strongest moments are the occasional tender touches, revealing Leithauser’s peerless vocal powers. Augustus Welby

The opening one-two punch of ‘I Am Not Afraid’ and ‘In Conflict’ gives an overview of his life manifesto, and through strings, piano, industrial samples and woozy synths, he shows the broad range of sounds that he’ll draw from. Towards the middle of the record, the songs become less memorable, relying too heavily on Pallett’s relatively weak voice, which makes connecting to these tracks initially difficult. Still, the arrangements continue to amaze. The final three tracks are all highlights. ‘The Riverbed’ pits drums and violin against each other for a dramatic combination that recalls his past triumphs. ‘Infernal Fantasy’ follows by showing what he can accomplish now, with a repetitive rising and falling synth line pushing the song until its climax. ‘Soldiers Rock’ closes proceedings with a sparse, ominous ode to fratricide. In Conflict is yet another Owen Pallett album that impresses at every turn, creating new career highs while hinting at ways he can push his sound even further – a giddying thought indeed.

The well-travelled performer is served well with guitar in hand, as a flurry of picked notes and irregular timings show the Eastern influence in Mulvey’s tunes. The title track plays like a modern folk song that borders on the territory of José González without the beguiling accent. Inspired by the DH Lawrence poem, Cucurucu, Mulvey begins in spoken word before instruments join in and the song becomes as much about creating a groove as it is telling a story. Mulvey has made an effortless transition from quirky jazz chap to the modern troubadour. His unique strumming and smooth voice are sure to get heads turning, with First Mind being a more than solid debut.

Each track on Atlas showcases smooth melodies and thoughtprovoking lyrics, which draw on the themes of comfort and belonging. ‘The Hypnotist’ is a captivating opener, instantly drawing you in and setting the tone for the remainder of the album. The combination of vocals, piano and guitar works a treat on this song. ‘Shapeshifter’ is a favourite too, with its soft, mesmerising tones. Otherwise, it’s hard to single out particular tracks on the record, as each one has its highpoints. Many of these come from the harmonic contributions of backing vocalists including Markéta Irglová, Myrra Rós and Phia. Likewise, the electronic elements add texture and balance to the folk underpinnings. Ultimately, Atlas represents significant artistic development from Uhlenbruch’s previous albums, Smoky Bay and Go With River. On his latest effort, Uhlenbruch and his collaborators have crafted a relaxing album, which makes for an enjoyable listen in the vein of Spark Alaska or Texture Like Sun.

Chris Havercroft

Take for instance the opening track, ‘Too Many Times’. Strip aside the self-deprecating middle-aged rocker discourse and you’re left with a track that’s hip and vibrant enough to warrant a $50K cash advance and an avalanche of Columbia’s finest illicit export product. ‘White Train’ slips down a gear and succumbs to the temptation of emotional attachment and melodic temperament. With its horn accompaniment, ‘Mean Season’ infuses mod sensibility with its original soul attitude; ‘Bicycle Wheel’ flashes with Barrett-esque whimsy; and if mainstream America was as impressive as ‘American Cool’ the world would be a better place. Little Murders are as young and fresh as ever.

Ali Birnie Leonardo Silvestrini

Patrick Emery

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK If you haven’t taken heed of Glass Animals by now, this is your official notice. ZABA follows through on the promise of their single ‘Gooey’, melding indie eccentricities with heavy R&B beats. As a signee to Paul Epworth’s label, they were never going to be ‘just another indie band’. But the proof is in the peanut butter.

GLASS ANIMALS ZABA Wolf Tone/Caroline

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This is an album for kids who grew up listening to Dr. Dre and Snoop and never quite moved on. Glass Animals are indie in the vein of Radiohead and Animal Collective, but their sound is so heavily immersed in soul it’s hard to confi ne it to either genre. Take ‘Black Mambo’, which quickly shifts from minimalist strings and bass drum to a lo-fi version of a

Latin slow dance. ‘Hazey’ moves further into R&B territory – its opening could have been pulled straight from a Snoop track circa 2000. But add Dave Bayley’s voice and some tinkling strings and you get an indie track to get down to. ‘Gooey’ remains the clear standout, its appeal largely the way the lyrics mirror the song’s texture and mood. “Tipsy topsy swerves” capture the woozy harmonies perfectly. ZABA elevates Glass Animals from ‘ones to watch’ to a seriously interesting band to dig into. Grab a spoon.

OFFICE MIXTAPE And here are the albums that have helped BRAG HQ get through the week... JOHNNY CASH - Out Among The Stars THE BEACH BOYS - Made In U.S.A. RICHARD CUTHBERT - Adventure Bay Rock

THE LIVING END - The Living End THE GAME - The Documentary

Emily Meller

thebrag.com

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

JAMES VINCENT MCMORROW, AIRLING

ST. VINCENT

Sydney Opera House Thursday May 29

Sydney Opera House Sunday May 26

James Vincent McMorrow’s sold-out show at the Opera House proved itself a more than worthy addition to the already impressive Vivid LIVE lineup this year. In true Vivid style, the stage was fitted with an artistic range of mood-enhancing light installations, and this along with the dynamic and emotional range in McMorrow’s setlist really set the performance on fire.

One of the thrills of being an obsessive music listener is challenging yourself to ‘pick the influence’. With some acts, the forebears can be obviously pinpointed. When it comes to artful American songwriter Annie Clark (AKA St. Vincent), it’s not so easy. She merges styles and shades from a broad span of both exoteric and esoteric art, meaning the influences her fans perceive are scattered, depending on subjective experience.

Brisbane’s Hannah Shepherd, AKA Airling, looked ghostly as she appeared onstage with light locks lit by a warm glow, adding to the otherworldly nature of her voice when she began to play, and punctuated by gentle beats from a rhythm pad. She took great care in how the sound reached the microphone and her guitarist added peaceful notes to fill the spaces. Unfortunately, it didn’t manage to completely capture the attention of the steadily growing audience, which chattered away in anticipation of the act to come.

Tonight’s Vivid LIVE performance showed signs of David Bowie’s commitment to visual presentation, Nine Inch Nails’ industrial guitar toggling, Annie Lennox’s perfectly alien pop and past collaborator David Byrne’s duality of art school know-how and daring unconventionality. Meanwhile, the highly choreographed performance took cues from surrealist mimicry and modern dance artist Pina Bausch. Of course, not everyone’s likely to agree, but just the fact these artists come to mind underlines that St. Vincent’s live show is something special.

James Vincent McMorrow and his band made their entrance to the sound of delicate mandolin picking for the introduction to ‘The Lakes’. Usually, the first few songs of a set are a good indicator of what to expect for the rest of the show, but tonight they barely broached on what was in store, with McMorrow’s unique voice sometimes drowned by the power of the band.

One of this evening’s unique distinctions was how Clark applied portions of staggering guitar wizardry, pre-meditated dance moves (in which her band members also partook) and spotlighted vocal brilliance without ever missing the mark. These spectacle-stealing elements aren’t statements in and of themselves. Rather, they were all in league to provide a relatively unpredictable and preeminently entertaining rock show. Much like the aforementioned icons, Clark mightn’t comply with prevailing formula, but she’s comfortably aware of pleasing the listener.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been talking to you guys – it’s only because I’m really nervous,” he admitted about halfway through the show. But immediately he made himself more at home on the stage, and some truly ethereal moments began to arise. Hearts stopped during ‘Look Out’ when McMorrow’s voice danced effortlessly in falsetto then whispered sensitively, and the audience was given its first real look at the true extent of his talent. Then it melted when he stood alone under the spotlight for his popular cover of ‘Higher Love’ and a breathtaking rendition of ‘And If My Heart Should Somehow Stop’.

The setlist was largely drawn from this year’s self-titled LP and its complementary predecessor, Strange Mercy. Acrobatic opener ‘Rattlesnake’ set a high standard, which Clark and her three efficient onstage companions didn’t struggle to uphold for the next hour and a half. A particular highlight was the encore’s solo rendition of ‘Strange Mercy’. Generally speaking, the amount of guile in Clark’s songs and her assuredly quirky onstage persona rendered the gig somewhat emotionally impenetrable. But ‘Strange Mercy’ conveyed a relatable intimacy that made you feel like a part of St. Vincent’s world.

For a show on such a large scale, McMorrow did well to make this one personal through his humble attitude and the emotion he communicated in each song. It was special for each and every person involved, including McMorrow, who softly declared it “one of the best experiences of [his] life”. Erin Rooney

The performance’s unblinking lack of flab was almost frightening. And altogether bedazzling. E UPTON PHOTOGRAPHER :: PRUDENC

Augustus Welby

I MAG I N E BE I NG MAD E TO

F E E L L I KE C RAP J U ST FOR

BEING

LEFT

H A N D E D.

Okay, that’s hard to imagine? But being gay, lesbian, bi, trans or intersex is no different to being born left handed, it’s just who you are. So stop and think because the things we say are likely to cause depression and anxiety. And that really is pretty crap. GO TO LEFTHAND.ORG.AU TO WATCH THE VIDEO

thebrag.com

STOP t THINK t RESPECT

BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 27

snap sn ap

live review

up all night out all week . . .

What we've been out to see...

THE WAIFS, HEATH CULLEN Metro Theatre Wednesday May 28 The night started with perhaps the most polite queue in the history of the Metro. A throng of people snaked down from the foyer and onto the street, bubbling with excitement at the prospect of seeing The Waifs appear live again after a hiatus of three years, and oddly considerate of their neighbours and other pedestrians trying to walk around them. Suffice to say, not the usual crowd of bored and surly patrons waiting to catch a midweek gig.

anna calvi

27:05:14 :: Giant Dwarf :: 199 Cleveland St Redfern

Oh, and Vicki Thorn on harmonica has to be seen to be believed. Smitten. Adam Norris

EY MAR :: PRUDENCE UPTON

S :: KATRINA CLARKE :: ASHL OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER

we are scientists

PICS :: KC

30:05:14 :: Newtown Social Club :: 387 King St Newtown 1300 724 876

PICS :: KC

28:05:14 :: Sydney Opera House :: Bennelong Point, Sydney 9250 7111

kim churchill + steve smyth

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Morphine notwithstanding, the band has some truly outstanding songs in its catalogue, and harmonies that strike home like a bell. ‘Bridal Train’ was a clear crowd favourite and saw most of the venue sing sweetly along, as did ‘London Still’. A new song was revealed, sung by Josh Cunningham and called, at a guess, ‘Born To Love’, which went down rather well. In all, this was one of the most quality performances I’ve seen in quite a while; ideally it won’t take another three years until we see The Waifs breaking bones on Sydney sidewalks once again.

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angus & julia stone

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Proceedings began with the unexpected announcement that Waifs-mate Donna Simpson had broken her ankle while walking to the gig – distracted by Facebook, as it turned out – and might not make it back to the venue in time. Unfortunate news, but the night was swiftly under way with support act Heath Cullen taking the stage, his songs plucked from albums old and imminent. Cullen is a tremendous frontman, with the kind of arresting presence you usually associate with more established entertainers. His voice and style is difficult to pin down, a kind of Paul-Kelly-meets-Leonard-Cohen blend. Though the audience (respectful as everyone was on the footpath) was unusually loud during his set, he nevertheless delivered some great numbers, of which ‘Silver Wings’ was possibly the standout.

When The Waifs did emerge, to the surprised delight of the crowd, Donna was indeed present, albeit doped to the eyeballs on morphine and ferried onstage in a wheelchair she’d liberated from St. Vincent’s. Though it’s probably not great advice to sustain a debilitating injury prior to performing, it certainly made for an entertaining set as Donna surged bravely on, confessing to the cheering crowd that she hadn’t played so shit in years and poking slurred fun at her sibling Vikki Thorn’s ministrations.

30:05:14 :: Factory Theatre :: 105 Victoria Rd, Marrickville 9550 3666 thebrag.com

snap sn ap

king of the north

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up all night out all week . . .

cherryrock014

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01:06:14 :: Frankie's Pizza :: 50 Hunter St Sydney

30:05:14 :: Enmore Theatre :: 118-132 Enmore Rd Newtown 9550 3666 CLA RKE :: ASH LEY MAR :: S :: DAN IEL BOU D :: KATR INA OUR LOV ELY PHO TOG RAP HER :: PRU DEN CE UPTON

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kingswood

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the paper kites

PICS :: KC

31:05:14 :: Factory Theatre :: 105 Victoria Rd, Marrickville 9550 3666

30:05:14 :: The Hi-Fi :: 122 Lang Rd Moore Park 1300THEHIFI BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 29

BRAG’S ROYAL GUIDE TO THE:

We’r gonna party like it’s her birthday. God Save the We’re Queen and all that, because we’re getting a day off next Q M Monday June 9, and it wouldn’t be doing her justice if we didn’t make the most of it. Where to start? Well, we’ve picked out a few Sydney venues where you can raise a glass to Her Majesty and, more importantly, to all-weekend fun times.

LONG WEEKEND 1.

2.

BUNGALOW 8 all-day event will feature some of Australia’s most respected artists taking part in live art events, workshops, and kids’ tattooing. Live acoustic artists will be playing during the day until our resident DJs takeover the night scene for a big night for the adults. For our ears: Duan & Only, Meklit and Cavan featuring DJ Micky D playing acoustics during the day with resident DJs mixing it up well into the night. Bevvy of choice: Kraken cocktails and Aguila buckets

THE ARTHOUSE It’s called: KINK Ten Year Anniversary What to see and do: Get set this June long weekend when KINK returns to The ArtHouse to celebrate its triumphant ten-year anniversary, boasting a lineup of all your favourite residents who kept you dancing ’til close over the years. For our ears: You can expect to hear a lot of the KINK classics that defined a generation. Lineup: Ben Morris, Shamus, John Glover, Brendan Fing, Trix & Goodfella, Illya, Reno & Foundation, Gabby, Tom Piper, Telefunken, James Taylor, Frenzie, The Jackal & D-Tech and Defcon1.

Bevvy of choice: Patron Silver either straight up or special KINK Margarita cocktails. A right royal time – what’s the highlight: KINK was the club that brought you the likes of Deadmau5, Boys Noize, David Guetta, Cassius, DJ Falcon all first and this ten-year anniversary cements its place in Sydney clubbing history. You don’t want to miss it!

It’s called: Ambush Gallery Take Over Bungalow 8 What to see and do: To celebrate the Queen’s Birthday Long Weekend in June, Bungalow 8 in conjunction with Ambush Gallery will host an Urban Art Workshop for kids and adults alike. The

A right royal time – what’s the highlight: Witnessing the live art by artists Shida, Sprinkles, DEB, Mulga, Houl and Mandy Schöne-Salter. Cost: Free Where: 3 Lime Street, Sydney When: Sunday June 8, from 12pm

4.

Cost: $25+bf through Moshtix Where: 275 Pitt Street, Sydney When: Sunday June 8, 8pm ’til late

3.

PACHA SYDNEY It’s called: Defected 15 at Pacha Sydney featuring Kenny Dope and Sam Divine

CARGO BAR & LOUNGE It’s called: Cargo Bar and Falcona presents Jessie Andrews Australian Tour What to see and do: Get amongst all the good vibes and music to celebrate the beauty of the Queen’s Birthday that is the long weekend. For our ears: Jessie Andrews (US) headlining Cargo Bar with support acts Danny Clayton (Channel [V]), Stoney Roads DJs and Falcona DJs. Upstairs in the Lounge, catch Lancelot, Set Mo, Softwar and Parkside DJs mixing it on the decks.

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Bevvy of choice: Carlton Dry and Smirnoff A right royal time – what’s the highlight: Guest DJ/producer/award-winning adult fi lm actress Jessie Andrews. Cost: Free entry before 10pm and $10 afterwards. Where: Cargo Bar & Lounge, 52-60 The Promenade, King Street Wharf When: Sunday June 8 from 6pm

What to see and do: Defected dives further into its rich pool of talent to announce a national Defected In The House tour to celebrate 15 years strong in house music, featuring the legendary Kenny Dope (Masters At Work) and Defected resident Sam Divine. For the first time, Defected will be taking over the main room at Pacha, with three other rooms also pumping throughout the whole night. This is going to be a big one! For our ears: Headlining is one of the most prolific artists of the modern music age, Kenny Dope. The four-time Grammy-nominated musical genius has been entertaining and astounding the masses alike with his fusions of house, hip hop, Latin, jazz, funk and soul, reggae, alternative pop and broken beats for 20 years. Long associated with the legendary Defected Records, Sam Divine’s DJing success has seen her tour around the world. Rounding out the bill for the main room

are legendary locals Acaddamy, Set Mo and Mo’Funk, with our rotating cast of residents keeping the party going across Pool Club, Changeroom and The Den. Bevvy of choice: Make sure you make it down for our Pacha Party Starter – $5 Heineken, Chandon, vodka and wines from 7:30-9:30pm! A right royal time – what’s the highlight: Everything! The red carpet, cocktails by the pool, amazing new cast of dancers and performances, unparalleled production and pyrotechnics, and one of the best house parties of the year! Cost: Tickets start at $25+bf from pachasydney.com. Or give us a call on 9240 3000 to find out about our booth and cabana bookings and VIP packages. Where: Ivy, 330 George St, Sydney When: Saturday June 7, 8:30pm

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5.

THE STANDARD BOWL It’s called: The Standard Bowl, open all long weekend from 6pm ’til late What to see and do: Bowls, booze and bands. For our ears: Live Bands and DJs. Thursday June 5 – The Morrison; Friday June 6 – Lulu Raes + Morning Harvey; Saturday June 7 – Hockey Dad + Pinheads; Sunday June 8 – Acid Stag Presents: Deep In The Alley ft. Midnight Pool Party + CLN + Sun Comes Out Twice As Bright Bevvy of choice: Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer Cost: Free entry, free bands, free bowling Where: Level 3, 383 Bourke St, Surry Hills When: Wednesday June 4 – Sunday June 8 from 6pm

6.

RETRO HOTEL It’s called: Studio 54 Party featuring DJ Nicky Siano What to see and do: Dust off those dancing shoes and polish your disco balls because we will be honouring the man who created disco for one night only! For our ears: Nicky Siano, a pioneer of the dance music scene in the early ’70s. He was the owner/designer/DJ of the legendary ’70s dance palace The Gallery, a club that inspired The Garage and Studio 54, for which he was one of the original DJs. He inspired and launched the careers of Grace Jones, D.C. La Rue, Loleatta

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Holloway, Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles. Bevvy of choice: Flashing Midori Illusion Shakers A right royal time – what’s the highlight: Our super-slick disco dancing moves and get up. Cost: $30 from Moshtix Where: Retro Hotel, 81 Sussex St, Sydney When: Sunday June 8, from 8pm until 3am.

BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 31

g g guide gig g

send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com

pick of the week TLC

FRIDAY JUNE 6 MONDAY JUNE 9 Enmore Theatre

FRIDAY JUNE 6

TLC + DJ Def Rok 7:30pm. $82.60. WEDNESDAY JUNE 4 JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Gang Of Brothers Jam Gallery, Bondi Junction. 9pm. free. Lionel Cole Imperial Hotel, Paddington. 8pm. free. Mike Nock Trio + Matt McMahon Trio Venue 505, Surry Hills. 8pm. $16. Supafly Jam Night (Open Mic) Vintage Night Club, Sydney. 8pm. free.

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Daniel Champagne + Bec Sandridge + Drew Harris Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 7pm. $18. Mitch Anderson & His Organic Orchestra Coopers Hotel, Newtown. 8:45pm. free. Pulp Kitchen And Folk Club - feat: Live Rotating Folk Bands Soda Factory, Surry Hills. 5pm. free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS Boyeur The Vanguard, Newtown. 6:30pm. $11.80. Broods

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Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 8pm. $15.30. Concert On The Park - feat: Lisa Budin Campsie RSL, Campsie. 1pm. free. Fat Bubba’s Chicken Wednesdays Soda Factory, Surry Hills. 5pm. free. Greg Agar Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 7:30pm. free. Joe Echo Duo Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney. 9pm. free. Mark Travers Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9:30pm. free. Matt Jones Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill. 7:30pm. free. Royal Blood Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $42.50. Sarah Paton Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 8:30pm. free. Ted Nash Fortune Of War, The Rocks. 7pm. free. The Happy Hippies Ettamogah Hotel, Kelly Ridge. 6:30pm. free. Sosueme - feat: Thief Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. free.

THURSDAY JUNE 5 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

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

Darlinghurst. 8pm. $8.20. Luxembourg + Fingertips + Little Dash FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. $5. Mandi Jarry Dee Why Hotel, Dee Why. 7pm. free. Matt Jones Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill. 7:30pm. free. Matt Jones Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney. 9:30pm. free. Nai Palm + Clever Austin Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 7:30pm. $20. Paul Greene Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 7pm. $20. Quarry Mountain Dead Rats + Gypsies And Gentlemen Moonshine Cider & Rum Bar, Manly. 9pm. free. Strangerous + KarlChristoph Jam Gallery, Bondi Junction. 6:30pm. free. The Beards Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale. 8pm. $15. The Late Night Soda Social Soda Factory, Surry Hills. 5pm. free. The White Brothers New Brighton Hotel, Manly. 10pm. free. Wats Up Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9:30pm. free. White Lung + Upset Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $45.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Cole Soul And Emotion feat: Lionel Cole The White Horse, Surry Hills. 8pm. free. Live Latin Sessions Jam Gallery, Bondi Junction. 6:30pm. $5. Livio Minafra Foundry616, Ultimo. 8:30pm. $25. The Tango Saloon + Mr Bamboo Venue 505, Surry Hills. 8pm. $16.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS 10 O’Clock Rock Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney. 10pm. free. Balmain Blitz Band Semi Finals Bridge Hotel, Rozelle. 7pm. $15. Carl Fidler Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 7:30pm. free. Glab Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 8pm. $10. Glenn Esmond Fortune Of War, The Rocks. 7pm. free. Greg Agar Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney. 7:30pm. free. Jess Dunbar Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 7:30pm. free. Jo Mears The Vanguard, Newtown. 6:30pm. $23.80. Lunatics On Pogosticks Oxford Art Factory,

ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Live Music Fridays Bar100, The Rocks. 5pm. free. Robyn Hitchcock + Emma Swift Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 8:30pm. $29.90.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Gary Johns Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 4:30pm. free. Jazz Hip-Hop Freestyle Sessions Foundry616, Ultimo. 11:30pm. free. Jingle Jangle Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 11pm. $10. Just Jammin Ramsgate RSL, Sans Souci. 8pm. free. King Tide + Fraudsters Jam Gallery, Bondi Junction. 7:30pm. $12. The Beans Jam Gallery, Bondi Junction. 7:30pm. $12. Virna Sanzone Foundry616, Ultimo. 8:30pm. $16.50.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

After Party Band Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 7pm. free. Alex Gibson + Kim Girdlestone Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 7pm. $20. Brad Johns Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 5pm. free. Cath & Him Dee Why RSL, Dee Why. 9pm. free. David Agius The Grand Hotel, Rockdale. 7:30pm. free. East Coast Band Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest. 10:30pm. free. Glenn Esmond Crows Nest Hotel, Crows

Hard-Ons

Nest. 7pm. free. Greg Agar Parramatta RSL, Parramatta. 5pm. free. Greg Agar Duo Kings Cross Hotel, Kings Cross. 10:30pm. free. Guess Who Duo Quakers Inn, Quakers Hill. 8pm. free. Hard-Ons + Flying Fists Of Fury + Speedball + All For Jesse + Daggerz Tattersalls Hotel Penrith, Penrith. 8:30pm. free. Heath Burdell Harbord Beach Hotel, Harbord. 7pm. free. James Fox Higgins Duo Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill. 8pm. free. Jamie Lindsay Stacks Taverna, Sydney. 5pm. free. Jess Dunbar Novotel, Darling Harbour. 5:30pm. free. Joe Echo And Mark Oats Duo PJ Gallagher’s, Leichhardt. 9pm. free. John Vella Chatswood RSL, Chatswood. 5pm. free. Keith Armitage Massey Park Golf Club, Concord. 7pm. free. Kristin Hersh Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7pm. $35. Leon Fallon Ingleburn RSL, Ingleburn. 9pm. free. Live Music At The Royal The Royal, Leichhardt. 9:30pm. free. Loose Units - feat: Amodus + Exist Within + Amber Trace + Metlad + Noah’s Fuarkk + Scarred Remains Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 9pm. $10. Mad Season - Matchbox 20 Show Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 9:15pm. free. Marty Simpson Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 9pm. free. Matt Jones Trio Coogee Bay Hotel, Coogee. 10:30pm. free. Matt Price Castle Hill RSL, Castle Hill. 9:30pm. free. Melody Rhymes Duo Time & Tide Hotel, Dee Why. 7:30pm. free. Nicky Kurta Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 5:30pm. free. Perry Keyes The Vanguard, Newtown. 8pm. $25. Pet Shop Boys + The Presets (DJ Set) Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 8pm. $135.60. Propagandhi + Crisis Alert + Death Mountain Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $46.95. Rachel Eldon Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale. 5:30pm. free. Reckless Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9:30pm. $5. Renegades Of Munk The Roller Den, Sydney. 8pm. $13.80. Steve Tonge Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale.

9pm. free. The Ashes Tour - feat: Gutter Tactic + Foundry Road + Before Ciada + Til Rapture + Undermine The Supremacy + Amicable Treason Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 7pm. $15. The Jimi Hendrix Tribute feat: Steve Edmonds Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills. 10pm. free. TLC + DJ Def Rok Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:30pm. $82.60. Victoria Avenue Adria, Sydney. 5pm. free. Zoltan And Paul Duo Kirribilli Hotel, Milsons Point. 8pm. free.

SATURDAY JUNE 7 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Post To Wire Presents Eighteen Strings (An Afternoon Of Americana) feat: Mark Moldre + James Thomson + Darren Cross Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham. 2pm. $10.

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Dawn Of The Midi - feat: Alister Spence Trio Venue 505, Surry Hills. 8pm. $31. Junk Foundry616, Ultimo. 8:30pm. $16.50. Omega Ensemble City Recital Hall, Sydney. 7:30pm. $65.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Lurch & Chief + Kid Zeus + Wish Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. free. After Party Band Castle Hill RSL, Castle Hill. 10:30pm. free. Antoine Riverwood Inn, Riverwood. 8pm. free. Audient + Twin Caverns + Jaws + Glass Transition + Mulgatheartist FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. free. Ben Finn Trio The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill. 9pm. free. Big Radio Dynamite Ramsgate RSL, Sans Souci. 8pm. free. Blake Tailor Time & Tide Hotel, Dee Why. 7:30pm. free. Bob Gillespie Penrith RSL, Penrith. 2pm. free. Boston Blue Carousel Inn Hotel, Rooty Hill. 8pm. free. Cara Kavanagh And Mark Oats Duo PJ Gallagher’s, Leichhardt. 9pm. free. Carl Fidler

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g g guide gig g

Xxx

send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 4pm. free. Cavan Te & The Fuss Penrith RSL, Penrith. 9pm. free. Corrosion Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 9pm. $10. Darren Johnstone Castle Hill RSL, Castle Hill. 9pm. free. Dave Phillips Harbord Beach Hotel, Harbord. 7pm. free. David Agius Duo The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill. 6pm. free. Dear Prudence - The Amazing Adventures Of Doug Parkinson Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 7pm. $40. Death Fucking Metal 4 feat: New Blood + Tortured + Aeon Hours + Autolysis + Infested Entrails + Burial Chamber + Dionysus + To Engineer An Exorcist + Hadal Mow Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 5pm. $10. Deep Sea Arcade + Sons Of The East Newtown Hotel, Newtown. 7pm. free. Eagle And The Worm Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $15.30. Geoff Rana Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany. 7pm. free. Greg Agar New Brighton Hotel, Manly. 10pm. free. Greg Byrne Australian Hotel And Brewery, Rouse Hill. 10pm. free. Groovology Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8:30pm. free. Hard-Ons Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $17. Harry Nilsson - The Man And His Songs In Concert As Imagined By Tim Freedman Lizotte’s, Dee Why. 8pm. $50. Heath Burdell Clovelly Hotel, Clovelly. 8pm. free. I Know Leopard Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 8pm. $10. James Englund Coogee Bay Hotel, Coogee. 9pm. free. Jimmy Bear Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 4:30pm. free. Joe Echo PJ Gallagher’s, Moore Park. 7:30pm. free. John Field Duo Greystanes Inn, Greystanes. 8pm. free. Mandi Jarry Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest. 7pm. free. Matt Jones Duo Town Hall Hotel, Balmain. 10pm. free. Miracle + Castlecomer + Billy Fox + DJ Bobby Gray Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 6pm. free. Nicky Kurta Duo Ettamogah Hotel, Kelly Ridge. 7pm. free. Paco Wolfe Record Crate, Glebe. 7:30pm. free. Paradise City Hermann’s Bar, Sydney. 9pm. $10. Party Central Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9:30pm. $5. Paul Hayward Town & Country Hotel, St Peters. 4pm. free. Pet Shop Boys + The Presets (DJ Set) Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 8pm. $135.60. Pop Fiction Panthers, Penrith. 10pm. free. Redlight Ruby Trio Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 9pm. free. Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks.

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5:30pm. free. Rock Of Ages Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills. 9:30pm. free. Ron Pope Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $47. Ruby Keys Trio Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 9pm. free. Sango + Pomo Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 9pm. $28.70. Sharron Bowman Brewhouse Marayong, Kings Park. 8pm. free. Sons Of Mercury Crows Nest Hotel, Crows Nest. 10:30pm. free. Spank Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 9:30pm. free. Spin The Bottle - feat: Shadows At Play + Crossing Red Lines + The Rider + Ackers + Ska’d 4 Life + J-L Rathbone Spectrum, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $16.89. The Bootleg Beatles Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7pm. $62.10. The Life And Music Of Steve Wright And The Easybeats Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8pm. $35. The Punk Rock Hillbilly Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7pm. $10. The Vanns + Wasters + Birds With Thumbs Jam Gallery, Bondi Junction. 7:30pm. free. Tony Williams Kirribilli Hotel, Milsons Point. 8pm. free. Tori Darke Adria, Sydney. 5pm. free. Video DJ Shayne Alsop AKA Sloppy Mounties, Mount Pritchard. 8pm. free. Wolf & Cub Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 8pm. $10.

SUNDAY JUNE 8 ACOUSTIC, COUNTRY, BLUES & FOLK

Chill Out Sundays Scubar, Sydney. 7:30pm. free. Country At The Bowlo Marrickville Bowling Club, Marrickville. 4:30pm. free. Elizabeth Hughes + Maxine Kauter Band + Mama Shultz The Welcome Hotel, Rozelle. 4pm. free. Intimate Sessions Paragon Hotel, Sydney. 6pm. free. Live Music Sundays Bar100, The Rocks. 1pm. free. Melody Pool + Marlon Williams Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills. 3:30pm. free. The Audreys

The Unexpected Collingwood Hotel, Liverpool. 3pm. free.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Brad Johns Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 4pm. free. Chris Connelly Ramsgate RSL, Sans Souci. 2pm. free. Coroner Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $65. David Agius Harbord Beach Hotel, Harbord. 6pm. free. East Coast Trio Time & Tide Hotel, Dee Why. 1pm. free. Fuckfest - feat: Rainbow Vomit And Cum Bubbles + Rancid Meatflaps + Abortifacient + 10k Free Men And Their Families + Niko! Let’s Go Bowling + Iamdanielgreen + Godinpants + DFO: Bad + Bengalonglostedbrother Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 6pm. $10. Glenn Esmond Oatley Hotel, Oatley. 1pm. free. Heath Burdell Duo Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 6pm. free. Ian Blakeney Campsie RSL, Campsie. 2pm. free. Irish Hooley The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill. 1:30pm. free. Joe Echo Trio Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 9:30pm. free. Leadfinger Botany View Hotel, Newtown. 7pm. free. Luke Dixon Mill Hill Hotel, Bondi Junction. 3pm. free. Max Power Duo Overlander Hotel, Cambridge Park. 3pm. free. Palace Of The King Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney. 4pm. free. Pop Fiction Australian Hotel And Brewery, Rouse Hill. 8:30pm. free. Queens Birthday Weekend Party - feat: Damage Control + The Low Tees + The Thieves + Stacy Gacy + Talkback Avenue Valve Bar, Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo. 3pm. $10. Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 5:30pm. free. Rockin Eddie Penrith RSL, Penrith. 2pm. free. Ruby Keys Trio Northies Cronulla Hotel, Cronulla. 4pm. free. Sarah Paton Pritchards Hotel, Mount Pritchard. 1pm. free. Steve Poltz

Brass Monkey, Cronulla. 7pm. $20. Ted Nash Bella Vista, Pyrmont. 3:30pm. free. The Audreys Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $30. The Bennies + Fait Accompli Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington. 8pm. free. The Bootleg Beatles Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8pm. $55. The Coldplay Show St George Leagues Club, Kogarah. 8:30pm. free. The Kamis Revesby Workers Club, Revesby. 8:30pm. free. Tori Darke Duo Ettamogah Hotel, Kelly Ridge. 1pm. free. White Bros + Reckless Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 4:30pm. free.

Chick Corea + Gary Burton

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

MONDAY JUNE 9 JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC Latin & Jazz Jam Open Mic Night World Bar, Kings Cross. 7pm. free. Mambo Mondays Bar100, The Rocks. 5:30pm. free. Motown Mondays - feat: Soulgroove The White Horse, Surry Hills. 8pm. free. Reggae Monday Civic Underground, Sydney. 10pm. free.

Carl Fidler Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 7:30pm. free. Jess Dunbar Campbelltown Catholic Club, Campbelltown. 6pm. free. Modulations Presents Wild Porteno - feat: Gizzelle + Luis & The Wildfires + The Delta Bombers Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 3pm. $49.80. Outlier Trio Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 7pm. free. Slim Jim Phantom Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 3pm. $50. Steve Tonge Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 4pm. free. The Mondays The Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill. 1pm. free. TLC + DJ Def Rok Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 7:30pm. $82.60. Wats Up Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 2pm. free.

wed

fri

06

JAZZ, SOUL, FUNK, LATIN & WORLD MUSIC

Chick Corea + Gary Burton Sydney Opera House, Sydney. 9pm. $59.90. Old School Funk And Groove Night Venue 505, Surry Hills. 7pm. free. Swingtime Tuesdays The Basement, Circular Quay. 7pm. $9.

INDIE, ROCK, POP, METAL, PUNK & COVERS

Anton Orient Hotel, The Rocks. 9:30pm. free. Rob Henry Observer Hotel, The Rocks. 8:30pm. free.

thu

04 June

TUESDAY JUNE 10

05 (9:30PM - 12:30AM)

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

June

June

sat

(9:30PM - 12:30AM)

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

07 June

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

(9:30PM - 1:30AM)

(9:30PM - 1:15PM)

QUEENS’S BIRTHDAY LONG WEEK-END sun

08

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

June

mon

09

(2:00PM - 5:30PM)

June

(9:30PM - 1:30AM)

(7:00PM - 10:30PM)

tue

10 June

(9:30PM - 12:30AM)

BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 33

gig picks

up all night out all week...

Broods

Broods photo by Stephen Tilley

WEDNESDAY JUNE 4 Broods Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 8pm. $15.30. Daniel Champagne + Bec Sandridge + Drew Harris Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 7pm. $18. Royal Blood Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $42.50.

THURSDAY JUNE 5 Lunatics On Pogosticks Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $8.20. Nai Palm + Clever Austin Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 7:30pm. $20. The Beards Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale. 8pm. $15. White Lung + Upset Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $45.

FRIDAY JUNE 6 Kristin Hersh Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 7pm. $35. Pet Shop Boys + The Presets (DJ Set) Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 8pm. $135.60. Propagandhi + Crisis Alert + Death Mountain Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $46.95.

Ron Pope Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $47. Spin The Bottle - feat: Shadows At Play + Crossing Red Lines + The Rider + Ackers + Ska’d 4 Life + J-L Rathbone Spectrum, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $16.89. The Vanns + Wasters + Birds With Thumbs Jam Gallery, Bondi Junction. 7:30pm. Free. Wolf & Cub Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 8pm. $10.

SUNDAY JUNE 8 Coroner Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $65. Palace Of The King Frankie’s Pizza, Sydney. 4pm. Free. The Audreys Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 8pm. $30. The Bennies + Fait Accompli Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington. 8pm. Free.

MONDAY JUNE 9 Modulations Presents Wild Porteno feat: Gizzelle + Luis & The Wildfires + The Delta Bombers Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 3pm. $49.80. Slim Jim Phantom Factory Theatre, Marrickville. 3pm. $50. Slim Jim Phantom

Robyn Hitchcock + Emma Swift Newtown Social Club, Newtown. 8:30pm. $29.90.

SATURDAY JUNE 7 Deep Sea Arcade + Sons Of The East Newtown Hotel, Newtown. 7pm. Free. Eagle And The Worm Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst. 8pm. $15.30. Hard-Ons Manning Bar, Camperdown. 8pm. $17. I Know Leopard Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 8pm. $10. I Know Leopard

34 :: BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14

thebrag.com

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

brag beats

inside:

kevin mark trail

matthew dear

a man of many faces

thebrag.com

also: + club guide + club snaps + weekly column

BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 35

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

WITH

Sleep D

EJECA

Sleep D photo by Stanwix

five things

SPICE SPEKTRUM FT SLEEP D

As part of The Spice Cellar’s Vivid-inspired spectacular, Melbourne duo Sleep D will play at the venue for Spice Spektrum this Friday June 6. Sleep D have been releasing on local labels like Death Strobe since 2006. They’re the minds behind label Butter Sessions Records and have recently unveiled their live performance, which they’ll be showcasing at Spice ahead of supports Andy Webb and Pink Lloyd.

JENSEN INTERCEPTOR Growing Up I wish I could say I grew up in a 1. technically musical household but I didn’t, although my dad had a big record and CD collection. I remember he used to have things like Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon on in his study when I used to sit on the computer playing The Sims. I guess I got into dance music through my brothers; one liked house and the other techno so I got a good mix of beats travelling through the walls.

2.

Inspirations Albums that inspire me are things like the Crydamoure Waves albums, and The Avalanches’ Since I Left You. I actually got into a lot of music from that Avalanches Gimix – The Smiths are now my favourite band because ‘The Boy With The Thorn In His Side’ was in it. When will them Avalanches boys get their act together and release another masterpiece?

3.

Your Crew I’ve done music full-time for around 14 months now. It’s great, quite a privileged position. I recently moved to London from Belfast as travelling is a lot easier and a lot of friends moved over. Although I’m in London, which is a bit of a music hub, I try to still stay

level-headed and don’t get too attached to the party scene. I still prefer a pint in the pub than an all-night rave! The Music You Make And Play I’ve recently started my own label, 4. Exploris, so I’m trying to control my sound and direction more. I’ve also a lot of friends making great music that I want to help get out there. This is really going to be my focus for the next year; I guess the sound will be techier and more groove-driven than stuff I’ve done before. Music, Right Here, Right Now Dance music is a real driving force 5. at the moment commercially but the sustainability will come from the underground and genres evolving. I just feel very happy to travel to places like Australia – I’ve never been before – and play the music I love to fun people. What: Queen’s Birthday Tea Party ft. Ejeca With: Hannah Gibbs, Empress Yoy, Dirty Uncool Where: Chinese Laundry When: Saturday June 7

FBI CLICK LAUNCH

Jensen Interceptor will headline a warehouse party on Friday June 20 in celebration of his latest single ‘System Addict’. Jensen Interceptor released his debut EP, Interception, in 2012 on Motorik Records before going on to release collaborative EPs with label cohorts CSMNT61 and Light Year. ‘System Addict’ is a collaboration with Frank Xavier that will be released on Motorik Records in a fortnight as an EP replete with remixes by Jon Convex and Boys Noize Records’ SCNTST.

S.A.S.H QUEEN’S BIRTHDAY BASH

S.A.S.H is hosting a Queen’s Birthday long weekend party headlined by a ‘secret international’ on Sunday June 8, so prospective revellers should research who is touring Australia this weekend as there’s no more we can say about that for now. Aside from the mystery headliner, there’s plenty of other DJ drawcards including Germany’s Benny Grauer, the head honcho of the Deep Circus label, alongside residents Kerry Wallace, Matt Weir and Gabby. Doors open at 2pm and the party will run past midnight.

MARQUEE JUNE LINEUP

Marquee has unveiled its lineup for the month of June and it’s a corker. The long weekend will feature sets from G-Wizard (Friday June 6) and Arno Cost (Saturday June 7) before Zero Cool, K-Note, I Am Sam and Zannon throw

Seekae

FBi Radio is launching a new digital station dedicated to electronic music on Wednesday June 25. FBi Click will be broadcasting 24 hours a day on digital radio (replacing the current simulcast of FBi 94.5 on DAB+) and online at fbiradio.com/click, with the aim of showcasing dance and electronic music via an array of local luminaries who will be involved on the channel. To celebrate this next phase in their evolution, FBi is hosting a fundraiser bash at Goodgod Small Club on Friday June 27 featuring some of Sydney’s foremost party crews who will be involved with the station: Astral People, Sweat It Out, Purple Sneakers, Motorik, Halfway Crooks, Picnic, Body Promise, Bare Necessities and Stuart Buchanan.

Following its launch in March, Astral & Friends returns to Goodgod Small Club on Friday June 20. Following his Boiler Room performance, Sydney archetype Basenji will represent along with Plastic World’s Retiree who will follow the release of their debut EP with a live performance. Cassius Select will also hit the stage, while prospective attendees can look forward to DJ sets from Ben Fester and McInnes. Doors open 9pm with entry $10.

down on Sunday night. The following weekend features Dutch DJ MaRLo (Saturday June 14) accompanied by Emma Hewitt, before a man who has remixed the likes of The Presets and Hook N Sling, Goodwill, plays on Saturday June 21. The month rounds off with DJ Flash and Maurizio Collella, AKA EDX.

Strictly Vinyl returns on Sunday June 8 for the long weekend with Touch Sensitive, Fuzzy founder John Wall and Ariane all set to indulge in some crate-digging for your listening pleasure. Touch Sensitive is the moniker of Michael Di Francesco, a man renowned for his Italo leanings, while Wall’s record collection numbers over 20,000 vinyls. He is apparently looking forward to playing some “rare ’80s disco, Balearic and UK soul from ’89-’92.” The free event kicks off at 9pm at The Cliff Dive at Oxford Square.

SPEAKEASY 02 SEEKAE

Sydney three-piece Seekae will release their third album, The Worry, in September on Future Classic. Seekae have a sound that ranges from post-dubstep to experimental ambiance, and have received rave reviews from outlets like UK website Inverted Audio, which described their sophomore release +Dome as depicting “a far more ambitious vision of the future than any other Australian act has ever attempted”. Percussionist Alex Cameron has taken over vocals on The Worry and features heavily on Seekae’s new single, ‘Taste And Recognise’, which is out now. Ahead of the album’s release, Seekae will perform at the Metro Theatre on Saturday August 23.

House music proponent Inkswell and Mad Racket resident Ken Cloud will both play at the next SpeakEasy bash at The Imperial in Erskineville on Saturday June 14. Inkswell is a highly regarded producer who has released on Rush Hour Records, Wolf Music and his own label, Hot Shot. Not to be outdone, Cloud’s lofty reputation among Sydney dancers is well deserved: he has always delivered when sharing the bill alongside dance music deities such as Theo Parrish, Daedalus, Chris Duckenfield and Steve Bug. Support will be provided by BoomBoom DJs, Jeremiah, Nikolai, Pharley and U-Khan. thebrag.com

Basenji photo by Daniel Boud

36 :: BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14

ASTRAL & FRIENDS

STRICTLY VINYL

DJ SPEN

Baltimore producer DJ Spen will headline Goldfish on Saturday June 28. Hailing from a hip hop background, Spen launched his career through his partnership with Teddy Douglas and Jay Stienhour as The Basement Boys in the ’90s, with the trio fusing gospel, jazz, disco and house influences. Spen subsequently formed Jasper Street Company and launched his own Code Red record label, which is closing in on its 50th release. Through Code Red, Spen has worked with the likes of Ultra Nate, Marc Evans and Knee Deep, while he has also released club anthems such as ‘Gabryelle’ and the collaboration with Karizma, ‘4 The Love’. $10 advance tickets are available online.

Basenji

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99 Mount Street North Sydney, NSW, 2060 (02) 9922 4278 BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 37

Kevin Mark Trail Life Off The Streets By Augustus Welby The Streets’ debut record Original Pirate Material. In addition to global touring with The Streets, Trail has worked with innovative UK acts such as Massive Attack, Nitin Sawhney and Blak Twang. “When I heard The Streets, what I loved about it was that it was British,” Trail says. “At the time there was nothing mainstream that was talking about our stories and our culture. That’s what I admired about The Streets and MCs like Rodney P, Blak Twang.” Inspired by the work of these collaborators, Trail soon began to explore his own creative potential. His solo debut Just Living came out in 2005, but after finding only limited success he quickly jumped back on the road with The Streets. Mike Skinner brought the alternative hip hop outfit to an end in 2011, which prompted Trail to return to his solo pursuit. Looking to make a fresh start, he decided to get out of London and, oddly enough, spends half of his time these days in New Zealand. “I left and came here and it’s just been busy,” he says. “I fell in love with the country and the people and met a bunch of musicians. A saxophonist called Nathan Haines, I did a track with him, and now I’ve started doing stuff with Sola Rosa. And my friend Sharlene Hector, who sings with Basement Jaxx, she loves New Zealand as well so she came over and we’re writing an album together. “I just feel free when I’m here,” he adds. “In the UK people aren’t as open and [music is] in some ways a pretentious business there. People that I’ve met here, they do what they say and they’re actually just nice.”

K

evin Mark Trail may be a name that’s largely unknown to Australian audiences, but the soulful British

singer isn’t a stranger to our shores, nor our airwaves. Trail first tasted popular success back in 2002 for his vocal contributions to

headline tour, he’s just dropped his third album, The Knight. “It’s totally different from anything I’ve ever done,” he says of the self-produced record. “It’s about waking up. The way that we live is kind of madness – this ego-driven shit and destroying our planet. We’re not sustaining ourselves and we’re living out of balance with life. I feel like there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve forgotten. The Knight touches on waking up to see the madness and that we’re all the same, deep inside.” The electronic flavour of The Knight distinguishes it from Trail’s 2012 LP, Hope Star, which was dominated by live instrumentation. However, electronics aren’t all he’s interested in at present. Trail’s next record, The Traveller, is already completed and focuses on a reggae/ soul sound. “I work fast, I work instinctively and I work with the truth,” he explains. “Some people write fast, some people take photos well. Everyone’s got different gifts. This is mine.” On top of letting him harness his multi-tiered prolificacy, getting away from London has let Trail relax about his music’s commercial fortunes. “I do music wherever I go,” he says. “[Whether] it’s playing to one person or playing to thousands of people. The reality of it is, ‘Are you happy? Who are the people around you?’ and ‘Do you enjoy the music that you’re involved in?’ You could be onstage and perform to thousands of people, but how many people are you going to get to talk to? How many people are you going to inspire on some level?”

As well as these promising collaborative ventures, Trail’s adopted surroundings have allowed him to get productive with his solo work. Coinciding with his current Australian

What: The Knight out now independently Where: Coogee Diggers When: Saturday June 14

Waits at a dinner table or at an airport and I want to be scared out of my mind. I want to be impressed by the persona in my head. I think it’s fun to have those types of relationships with some of your favourite artists. You don’t always want them to be sharing all of their thoughts socially. I’m not going to follow Tom Waits on Twitter. I think there’s a healthy distance that we should keep.”

focus on all things Audion. Then, my free time I spend just kind of doodling with stuff for my own weird albums.”

Matthew Dear Listen And Learn By Augustus Welby

T

hroughout his 15-year career, Matthew Dear has never been content with just one stylistic undertaking. Dear is perhaps best known for a series of avant-pop solo records that pair minimal techno with Brian Eno-like pop substance. But he’s also regularly released and toured using the dark dancefloor pseudonym Audion, made occasional glitchy experiments under the Jabberjaw alias and has a stripped-back electro outlet, False. “I love playing different personas, multiple different times,” he says. “I love being the guy that wears leather pants onstage one night and I love being just a guy who loves to play groovy dance music the next night when I’m DJing.” It’s the latter pursuit that brings the Detroitbred musician (currently residing in upstate New York) to Australia next month. Dear joins Hot Chip DJs, Henry Saiz and plenty more for the inaugural Holeandcorner indoor dance event, taking place at Home Nightclub on the June long weekend. Of course, a Matthew Dear DJ set isn’t going to be an exercise in inert playlist activation. No, with Dear manning the decks, it promises to be a shrewdly curated experience. “I’m still playing stuff that’s totally inspired by my upbringing in Detroit, going to Detroit electronic parties,” he explains. “It’s all about the groove, it’s all about building moods and energies. That’s what I do when I DJ. I don’t play quick transitions, I’m not about crazy party records. It’s just a slow, building groove, it’s just house and techno and I just try to make people dance.”

“I definitely play some classics and try to go back, but I like to play a lot of new stuff. It’s dance music so I like to keep up with what’s going on.” Dear’s varied career output strongly intimates a seasoned music fan. And it looks like he takes the practice of listening just as seriously as creating. “I usually pick an artist and just latch onto them for a good six months to a 38 :: BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14

“[There’s] people I can’t kick; Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan I keep coming back to, just trying to dig deeper into the rarities and the bootlegs. Then I love my Can and I love my Brian Eno. Those are the foundations, people I can’t get away from. You dig on those guys and you start to hear their influences and people they were crediting as inspirations and you can go further and deeper.” Diehard music fanatics like Dear don’t simply cherish the records alone. An artist’s transcendent nature also becomes infinitely fascinating. Any ordinary details surrounding, for instance, David Bowie’s Hunky Dory or Nas’ Illmatic take a back seat to the mythology around such totemic pop music and its context. Dear’s been a respected professional musician for more than a decade, but he still looks at his idols with awestruck reverence. “I love feeling that way about certain people,” he says. “Like Tom Waits – what’s going on in his head? I could sit down across from Tom

Dear’s constant maneuvering of monikers helps construct his own enigmatic portrait. Despite averaging at least one release per year for the last decade, he faces no dilemma conjuring new ideas. “I’m about to make the new Audion album and I’ve got too much material,” he reveals. “Right now it’s just a matter of shortening everything and picking which stuff really works and which stuff doesn’t.” Having had several outlets concurrently active for a number of years, determining where certain ideas belong could become blurry. “I usually turn on the machines and go, and whatever comes out comes out,” Dear says. “But when it is album time I really have to

Dear’s habitual costume-changing has been slightly less frequent in recent years. He seems like an intrinsically amorphous character, but his manifold departments of exploration mightn’t coexist forever. “When I was younger, I had so many different aliases because I just had so much output and different styles of music that I wanted to do. Now that I’ve slowed down a bit I do question whether or not I should maybe pull the plug on all these other monikers and just do one thing and focus on that for the rest of my life. I’m happy; I have a studio, I have a house. I feel like now I could relax and do one thing and be that for the rest of my life.” What: Holeandcorner 2014 With: Hot Chip DJs, Henry Saiz, Guy J, Cosmin TRG, Xosar and more Where: Home Nightclub When: Sunday June 8

thebrag.com

Matthew Dear photo by Will Calcutt

Dear was born in Texas but moved to Detroit as a teenager, and after discovering the city’s buzzing electronic underground he quickly developed a flair for DJing. Although Detroit’s late-’90s scene remains a chief influence, he’s not stuck in that era.

year,” he says. “Play as much as I possibly can and dig through the archives and really try to ingest as much as possible.

Deep Impressions Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery

Margaret Dygas

V

aunted techno stable Perlon Records will notch up its 100th release in a few weeks’ time with a new EP from Polish techno DJ/producer, Margaret Dygas, entitled In Wood, That. Perlon was co-founded by Markus Nikolai and Thomas Franzmann – better known for his work under the Zip moniker – in 1997, and has released material from many of the foremost figures in the underground club realm over the years, including Ricardo Villalobos, Matt John, Dandy Jack, Thomas Melchior, Baby Ford, Cassy, Maayan Nidam, Tobias Freund, STL, Sammy Dee, Bruno Pronsato and of course Dygas. While many think of Dygas as a DJ first due to her long-running residency at Berlin institution Panorama Bar and her acclaimed podcasts for various online outlets, her production pedigree should not be overlooked by those with a penchant for minimal and ‘intellectual’ electronic sounds. The early word is that In Wood, That is a hypnotic, understated affair, hardly the grandiose celebration of the label bringing up a century of releases but befitting Perlon’s aversion to anything remotely self-aggrandising. One of Sydney’s most respected electronic producers, Jamie Lloyd, will headline Soft & Slow at The Spice Cellar on Friday June 13. Lloyd established himself with his LP Trouble Within on the Future Classic label way back in ’06, which soon spawned a remix album, More Trouble, comprising reworks from the likes of Quarion, Brennan Green, Trickski, Soultourist and Sydney’s own Jimi Polar. These remixes boosted Lloyd’s stature on the international circuit, with the Quarion remix of ‘May I?’ featuring on Parisian selector Jennifer Cardini’s 2008 mix for Cologne imprint Kompakt Records. Lloyd released another album, Beware Of The Light, in ’09, which again attracted remixes from A-listers like

Mark E, Jazzanova’s Alex Barck and Matthew Herbert. Joining Lloyd will be local selectors Cripps and Pink Lloyd, with entry $15 on the door. Dutch producer Liron van Daalen, best known for his output as Kabale und Liebe, has fi nally released his debut artist album, Realitivity. Drawing his moniker from German dramaturge Schiller’s play, Daalen established himself as a producer of note with the internationally lauded single ‘Mumbling Yeah’ six years ago with Daniel Sanchez, a track that was memorably remixed by heavyweights Marco Carola and Loco Dice. Daalen followed that EP up with releases on Rush Hour, Souvenir, Rejected and Strictly Rhythm, though he never recaptured the brilliance of ‘Mumbling Yeah’. However, given his potential, Daalen’s tracks are always worth a listen from anyone with a penchant for house and techno. Multi-faceted producer Lee Douglas will play Goodgod Small Club on Saturday June 7. In recent times, Douglas has been dabbling with analogue techno sounds through his An-i project, which he launched in February with his Kino-i EP. Rising alongside the cluster of DJs out of the ashes of the punk-infused disco movement in NYC over the past decade, Douglas has released on labels such as ESP Institute and DFA under various monikers; as Bad News with L.I.E.S. founder Ron Morelli, as The Stallions alongside Lovefi ngers and as TBD with Justin Vandervolgen, in addition to remixing the likes of Lauer and Massimiliano Pagliara. On the subject of long weekend antics, there are plenty of alluring clubbing options, particularly on Sunday night, where you can either opt to see veteran A Guy Called Gerald in a warehouse or Audion, Hot Chip, Cosmin TRG, Henry Saiz and Guy J at Home Nightclub. Whichever way you choose, it’s unlikely you’ll be disappointed.

LOOKING DEEPER SUNDAY JUNE 8 Audion, Cosmin TRG et al. Home Nightclub A Guy Called Gerald Warehouse Party

FRIDAY JUNE 13 Jamie Lloyd The Spice Cellar

SATURDAY JUNE 21 Jamie Lloyd

Pfirter Warehouse party

Direct all Deep Impressions-related feedback, praise, vitriol and other proposals to deep.impressions@yahoo.com. thebrag.com

BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 39

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

club pick of the week

SUNDAY JUNE 8

Hot Chip

Home Nightclub Ho

Holeandcorner Hot Chip DJs + Matthew Dear + Henry Saiz + Guy J + Cosmin TRG + Xosar

9pm. free. Arno Cost Marquee, Pyrmont. 10pm. $28.60. Cakes - feat: 4 Rooms Of Live Music + DJs And International Guests World Bar, Kings Cross. 8pm. $10. Defected In The House Ivy Bar/Lounge, Sydney. 9:30pm. $37.90. El’ Circo - feat: Resident Circus Act Performers Slide Lounge, Darlinghurst. 7pm. $109. El Loco Later - feat: DJs On Rotation Excelsior Hotel, Surry Hills. 10pm. Free. FBi Hands Up! - feat: DJ Clockwerk + Special Friends With Benefits FBi Social, Kings Cross. 11:30pm. free. Infamous Saturdays - feat: Live DJs Scubar, Sydney. 7pm. free. Lee Douglas + Pelvis Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 11pm. $10. Masif Saturdays Space, Sydney. 10pm. $25. My Place Saturdays Bar100, The Rocks. 8pm. free. Pacha (Sydney) Ivy Bar/Lounge, Sydney. 7:30pm. $32.80. Queens Birthday Tea Party feat: Ejeca + Hannah Gibbs + Empress Yoy + Dirty Uncool Chinese Laundry, Sydney. 3pm. $22.60. Sienna Saturdays - feat: Resident DJs The Establishment, Sydney. 9pm. free. Soda Saturdays - feat: Resident DJs Playing Disco And Funk

Soda Factory, Surry Hills. 5pm. free. Vivid Music & Spice Spektrum Present Soft&Slow - feat: Benny Grauer + Sam Francisco + Marc Jarvin + Robbie Lowe The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 10pm. $25.

SUNDAY JUNE 8 HIP HOP & R&B

ScHoolboy Q Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $65.

CLUB NIGHTS

Holeandcorner - feat: Hot Chip DJs + Matthew Dear + Henry Saiz + Guy J + Cosmin Trg + Xosar Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour. 7pm. $70. La Fiesta - feat: Samantha Fox + Agee Ortiz + Av El Cubano + Resident DJ Willie Sabor The Establishment, Sydney. 8pm. free. Nicky Siano Retro Hotel, Sydney. 7pm. $33.80. Royal Rumble - Queen’s Birthday Eve Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 10pm. $10. S.A.S.H Queen’s Birthday Weekend - feat: Benny Grauer + Matt Weir + Kerry Wallace + Gabby Flyover Bar, Sydney. 2pm. $10. Soda Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills. 6pm. free.

Strictly Vinyl 002 - feat: Touch Sensitive + John Wall + Ariane Cliff Dive, Darlinghurst. 11pm. free. Sunday Sessions - feat: Cadell + Tom Kelly + Ocky Goldfish, Kings Cross. 4pm. free. Sundays In The City - feat: Various DJs The Slip Inn, Sydney. 12pm. free. Vivid Sydney & Spice Spektrum Closing Party - feat: Jay Shepheard + Tornado Wallace + Murat Kilic + Robbie Lowe + Space Junk + U-Khan + Sam Francisco The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 10pm. $25.

MONDAY JUNE 9 CLUB NIGHTS

Crab Racing Scubar, Sydney. 7pm. free. S.A.S.H On Sea Morning Glory - Feat: Walker Barnard + Katie Drover + Mesan + Matt Weir + Jake Hough + Kerry Wallace The Lady Rose, King Street Wharf. 2:30am. $45.

TUESDAY JUNE 10 CLUB NIGHTS

Chu World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. free.

p

7pm. $70.

send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com

WEDNESDAY JUNE 4 CLUB NIGHTS

Big Village Presents: Big Visions The Basement, Circular Quay. 7:30pm. $19. DJ Tom Kelly Goldfish, Kings Cross. 9pm. free. Miss Freshwater Comp Semi Final 1 Harbord Beach Hotel, Harbord. 7:30pm. free. The Wall - feat: Various Local And International Acts World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. $5. Vivid After Party: Justwax feat: Dave Stuart The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 10pm. free. Vivid Music & Spice Spektrum Present La Boheme Femme - Illuminate The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 7pm. $25. Whip It Wednesdays - feat: Various DJs Whaat Club, Kings Cross. 9pm. free. xxx

THURSDAY JUNE 5

CLUB NIGHTS

$5 Everything Scubar, Sydney. 5pm. free. Fear Of Dawn Goldfish, Kings Cross. 8pm. free. Fishing The Basement, Circular Quay. 7:30pm. $15.90. Hot Damn Spectrum, Darlinghurst. 9pm. $10. 40 :: BRAG :: 565 : 04:06:14

Kicks World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. free. Lights Out Ivy Bar/Lounge, Sydney. 8pm. free. Loopy - feat: Drty Csh + Daschwood + Generous Greed + Guest DJs The Backroom, Kings Cross. 10pm. $12. Pool Club Thursdays - feat: Resident DJs Ivy Bar/Lounge, Sydney. 5pm. free. The World Bar Thursdays World Bar, Kings Cross. 9pm. free. Vivid Music & Spice Spektrum Present Love Is The Message - feat: Nicky Siano + Alex Dimitriades The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 7pm. $25.

FRIDAY JUNE 6 HIP HOP & R&B

Mr Clean + Sleeping Monk + Overproof + Sinks + Lee Monro & Ello C FBi Social, Kings Cross. 8pm. $12. N’Fa Jones Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. free.

Factory Fridays - feat: Resident DJs Soda Factory, Surry Hills. 5pm. free. Fridays - feat: DJ Morphingaz + Grant Lewers + Pistolshrimp + Bernie Dingo + Stacie Todo + Kit Lennon + Toby Neal + Sam Wall + Benny B Manly Wharf Hotel, Manly. 8pm. free. Frisky Fridays Scubar, Sydney. 5pm. free. G-Wizard Marquee, Pyrmont. 10pm. $18.40. Ken Davis Goodgod Small Club, Sydney. 8pm. $10. Loco Friday - feat: Various Live Bands And DJs The Slip Inn, Sydney. 5pm. free. Modulations - feat: Liars Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 8pm. $49.80. Moonshine Fridays Ivy Bar/Lounge, Sydney. 7pm. free. Sinjin Hawke + Nemo + De’Kcuf + Fivehead & Vindinci + James Taylor + Reekay Garcia Chinese Laundry, Sydney. 9pm. $12.30. Vivid Music & Spice Spektrum Present Soft&Slow - feat: Sleep D The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 10pm. $20.

CLUB NIGHTS

Argyle Fridays - feat: Resident DJs The Argyle, The Rocks. 6pm. free. Danny Byrd + Hamilton Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 9pm. $33.80. El Loco Later - feat: DJs On Rotation Excelsior Hotel, Surry Hills. 10pm. free.

SATURDAY JUNE 7 CLUB NIGHTS

Andhim + Chris Fraser + Adam Zae + DJ Sabio + Whitecat + Fingers + King Lee + Deckhead Chinese Laundry, Sydney.

THURSDAY JUNE 5

Fishing

Fishing The Basement, Circular Quay. 7:30pm. $15.90. Vivid Music & Spice Spektrum Present Love Is The Message - feat: Nicky Siano + Alex Dimitriades The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 7pm. $25.

FRIDAY JUNE 6 N’Fa Jones Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach. 8pm. Free. Danny Byrd + Hamilton Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst. 9pm. $33.80. Modulations - feat: Liars Carriageworks, Eveleigh. 8pm. $49.80. Sinjin Hawke + Nemo + De’Kcuf + Fivehead & Vindinci + James Taylor + Reekay Garcia Chinese Laundry, Sydney. 9pm. $12.30.

SATURDAY JUNE 7 Arno Cost Marquee, Pyrmont. 10pm. $28.60. Queens Birthday Tea Party - feat: Ejeca + Hannah Gibbs + Empress Yoy + Dirty Uncool Chinese Laundry, Sydney. 3pm. $22.60. Vivid Music & Spice Spektrum Present Soft&Slow - feat: Benny Grauer + Sam Francisco + Marc Jarvin + Robbie Lowe The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 10pm. $25.

SUNDAY JUNE 8 ScHoolboy Q Enmore Theatre, Newtown. 8pm. $65. S.A.S.H Queen’s Birthday Weekend feat: Benny Grauer + Matt Weir + Kerry Wallace + Gabby Flyover Bar, Sydney. 2pm. $10. Vivid Sydney & Spice Spektrum Closing Party - feat: Jay Shepheard + Tornado Wallace + Murat Kilic + Robbie Lowe + Space Junk + U-Khan + Sam Francisco The Spice Cellar, Sydney. 10pm. $25.

MONDAY JUNE 9 S.A.S.H On Sea Morning Glory - feat: Walker Barnard + Katie Drover + Mesan + Matt Weir + Jake Hough + Kerry Wallace The Lady Rose, King Street Wharf. 2:30am. $45.

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What we've been out to see...

31:05:14 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999

we were left in no doubt as to who was the boss.

MS. LAURYN HILL Sydney Opera House Tuesday May 27 “It’s funny how money change a situation,” raps Lauryn Hill on ‘Lost Ones’. Only a few years ago there seemed no chance of the reclusive star ever performing in Australia. What a difference a hefty tax bill makes. After waiting a full 16 years since her classic LP The Miseducation Of…, no-one seemed to mind the extra hour she kept us waiting. In fact, it was fun. DJ Rampage spun crowdpleasing dancehall versions of Lorde and reggae crossovers from Althea & Donna and UB40. By the time the lights cut and we heard that familiar voice from offstage singing her late father-in-law Bob Marley’s ‘Soul Rebel’, the audience was more than ready. Things change, things stay the same. The voice was perhaps a touch huskier than before, but the striking tone was still unmistakably Ms. Hill’s. Wearing an all-black ensemble of jumpsuit, ludicrous cape and wide-brimmed hat, the image of a beautiful street-smart kid from The Refugee Crew seemed an age ago. This diva had matured into hip-hop’s Nina Simone – who was later name-checked in a highlight version of ‘Ready Or Not’. Conducting her band throughout the show,

While it was great to hear ‘Ex-Factor’ and ‘Killing Me Softly’, anyone expecting faithful reproductions and recognisable arrangements had a right to be disappointed. Most were given a reggae or rocksteady makeover; ‘Everything Is Everything’ quickened from its ELO organ intro to a headacheinducing tempo. Some were overworked – too fast, too fussy – and a mid-show acoustic interlude of ‘Oh Jerusalem’ and ‘Mr. Intentional’ was welcome. It seemed to focus the artist for a more cohesive second half of the show. Hill proved that time hasn’t withered her ability to spit – the exquisite sample of The Flamingos’ ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ ushered in ‘Zealots’ (the three backing singers harmonising, “Another MC lose his life tonight”) and a medley of hits from Hill’s time with The Fugees. Closer ‘Doo Wop (That Thing)’ was played straighter – joyously – and demonstrated that genuine classics are probably best left untouched. David Wild

Xxx

el loco later

D :: PRUDENCE UPTON

PICS :: AM

PHOTOGRAPHERS :: DANIEL BOU

30:05:14 :: Excelsior Hotel :: 64 Foveaux St, Surry Hills 9211 4945 DO S :: DANIEL BOUD :: MARK BOA OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER N :: ASHLEY MAR :: PRUDENCE UPTO

thebrag.com

:: KATRINA CLARKE ::

BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14 :: 41

snap

future classic party

PICS :: PU

up all night out all week . . .

31:05:14 :: Sydney Opera House :: Bennelong Point, Sydney 9250 7111

It’s called: Vivid Sydney and Spice Spektrum Closing Party presents Jay Shepheard (UK) and Tornado Wallace (Melb ourne) It sounds like: A star exploding with colours shooting everywhere! Acts: Jay Shepheard, Tornado Wallace, Murat Kilic, Robbie Lowe, Space Junk, U-Khan and Sam Francisco Three songs you’ll hear on the night: Jay Shepheard – ‘Cut A Hole’; Tornado Wallace – ‘Twirl & The Beanstalk’; Blond:ish ft. Thomas Gandey – ‘Voyeur’ (Jay Shepheard & Martin Dawson Remix) And one you definitely won’t: Anything by Pitbull. Sell it to us: With the jaw-dropping lineup of Spice Spektrum’s closing party as part of Vivid Sydney, see The Spice Cellar like never before with spectacular lights and amazing decorations as Jay Sheph eard and Tornado Wallace take you on a musical odyssey.

zannon

PICS :: MB

30:05:14 :: Marquee :: The Star Pyrmont 9657 7737

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Not much (we hope)… Crowd specs: Music enthusiasts and solid groovers. Wallet damage: $25 Where: The Spice Cellar, Basement Level, 58 Elizabeth St, Sydney When: 10pm ’til freakin’ late

s.a.s.h sundays

PICS :: AM

slowblow ft. prosumer

01:06:14 :: Flyover Bar :: 275 Kent St Sydney 9262 1988 42 :: BRAG :: 565 :: 04:06:14

PICS :: AM

party profile

vivid sydney + spice spektrum closing party

31:05:14 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney 9223 5585 DO S :: DANIEL BOUD :: MARK BOA OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER N :: ASHLEY MAR :: PRUDENCE UPTO

:: KATRINA CLARKE ::

thebrag.com

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