August Issue
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T A S H S U LT A N A A DIY attitude that is conquering the world
Why Australia is taking notice of Mojo Juju
Can Twin Peaks’ own stars explain the iconic TV show?
We help prepare you for this year’s BIGSOUND
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A new album of re-envisioned songs inspired by their love of the live show.
WOMAN WORLDWIDE 24.08.18
out now
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Perfect sound, always.
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Credits Publisher Street Press Australia Pty Ltd Group Managing Editor Andrew Mast National Editor – Magazines Mark Neilsen Group Senior Editor/National Arts Editor Maxim Boon Editors Daniel Cribb, Neil Griffiths
whatever happened to…
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Assistant Editor/Social Media Co-Ordinator Jessica Dale
few weeks back I got to wondering, “Whatever happened to Hunx & His Punx?” It was a fleeting thought and I was quickly distracted before I even had a chance for a snap google of the US punker. Hunx first appeared on my radar as a part of Gravy Train!!! (along with fellow members Chunx, Funx, Junx, Drunx… you get the drift) - it was the noughties, it was electroclash. Things were different back then. Anyway… the noughts became whatever this decade is and Hunx formulated a dirtier, rock’n’rollier sound and, along with His Punx, became one of the most engaging live acts in the world. Hunx wore his queerdom on his (leather) sleeve and often wielded it like a biker swinging a chain in a b-grade Roger Corman film. It resulted in the classic 2011 album Too Young To Be In Love. An album that was easy to obsess over. Yet somehow just half a decade later I was left wondering ‘whatever happened to.’ Eep. Am I a bad fan? I remember there was a follow up album in 2013 - a more standard punk affair - and then maybe some solo stuff after that. But I really hadn’t checked in for a long time. Am I not using the internet properly? So there I was, doing my Sunday morning news feed perusal when I spotted an article waxing lyrical about a new web series Feelin’ Fruity, that Vulture claims is bringing a “punk aesthetic” to variety television. It’s created and hosted by Seth Bogart. A familiar name… oh yeah, that’d be Hunx real name. Minutes later I’m watching a show that can only be described as a John Waters-style reimagining of the lowest budget kids TV show you’ve ever seen. There’s wig-eating puppets, ‘fruity’ dance offs and veeeeery tasteless jokes. If a re-animated Divine suddenly appeared to eat dog poop off Bogart’s bedroom floor in the middle of a Feelin’ Fruity episode it would not be out of place. I’ve also since learnt that Bogart’s solo career included a collab with Kathleen Hanna, that he has a clothing line (Wacky Wacko) and that his show is produced by World Of Wonder who also make RuPaul’s Drag Race. I also now realise that I under-rated his 2013 Street Punk album and it’s now back on rotation. So that’s my rainy day listening and viewing sorted for the rest of winter. Now to sort the rainy day reading… (it’s segue time)… This month in The Music we celebrate the rise and rise of Australia’s latest global star Tash Sultana. We also prepare you for the annual BIGSOUND conference (it happens in September in Brisbane) where the industry and punters alike will be looking for the next Tash Sultana. There’s a chat with Mojo Juju who has already supplied us with one on the year’s most important tracks, Native Tongue. Plus, we feature one of the most buzzed-about rappers in the world at the moment, Denzel Curry. We’ve also have been lucky enough to get some time with cast members of Twin Peaks - although we are still no closer to understanding episode eight of the most recent series. There’s a truckload more as well. Please enjoy.
Editorial Assistants Sam Wall, Lauren Baxter Gig Guide Henry Gibson gigs@themusic.com.au Senior Contributors Steve Bell, Bryget Chrisfield, Cyclone, Jeff Jenkins Contributors Nic Addenbrooke, Annelise Ball, Emily Blackburn, Melissa Borg, Anthony Carew, Uppy Chatterjee, Roshan Clerke, Shaun Colnan, Brendan Crabb, Guy Davis, Joe Dolan, Chris Familton, Guido Farnell, Donald Finlayson, Liz Giuffre, Carley Hall, Tobias Handke, Mark Hebblewhite, Kate Kingsmill, Samuel Leighton Dore, Joel Lohman, Matt MacMaster, Taylor Marshall, MJ O’Neill, Carly Packer, Anne Marie Peard, Michael Prebeg, Mick Radojkovic, Stephen A Russell, Jake Sun, Cassie Tongue, Rod Whitfield Senior Photographers Cole Bennetts, Kane Hibberd Photographers Rohan Anderson, Andrew Briscoe, Stephen Booth, Pete Dovgan, Simone Fisher, Lucinda Goodwin, Josh Groom, Clare Hawley, Bianca Holderness, Jay Hynes, Dave Kan, Yaseera Moosa, Hayden Nixon, Angela Padovan, Markus Ravik, Bobby Rein, Peter Sharp, Barry Shipplock, Terry Soo, John Stubbs, Bec Taylor
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Andrew Mast Group Managing Editor
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Our contributors
This month Editor’s Letter
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This month’s best binge watching
15
Shit we did: Cryotherapy
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Guest editorial: Queer commentator and artist Samuel Leighton-Dore
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Tash Sultana
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BIGSOUND Executive Programmer Maggie Collins, Q Music CEO Joel Edmondson
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Your state-by-state guide to BIGSOUND’s buzz acts
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What happened last year
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Where to stay and what’s new in 2018
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Twin Peaks
Mojo Juju
shares her song and story
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Andrew WK, Loose Tooth
44
Movements
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Album reviews
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Gear review
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25
The Arts The best arts of the month
52
Film & TV reviews
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26
Where to get your local laughs online
54
Trippy kids TV
28
Horror
55
UK drill music
30
Odette, Regurgitator
32
Phantastic Ferniture
33
The Big Picture: Joshua Braybrook
34
It’s time to face packs
Has Denzel Curry released the hip hop album of 2018?
Rose is a writer and editor from Melbourne, now based in London. She is the former Editorial Director of Time Out Australia and a proud theatre nerd and culture vulture. She writes about arts, entertainment, lifestyle and travel.
Carissa Lee
The ethics of outrage journalism
Face masks
Rose Johnstone
Your Town
38
Samuel Leighton-Dore
24-hour cities
Make the most of the city once the sun goes down.
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58
Sydney Guitar Festival
60
Your gigs
62
This month’s local highlights
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The end
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Carissa is a Wemba-Wemba and Noongar actor and writer based in Melbourne. Since graduating with her acting degree from Flinders University Drama Centre, Carissa is currently undertaking her PhD in Indigenous theatre through the University of Melbourne.
T h e s ta r t
A queer writer, director and visual artist living on the Gold Coast, Sam’s achievements include releasing his children’s book, I Think I’m A Poof, and his short film, Showboy, winning Best Short at Melbourne Queer Film Festival. In his spare time he enjoys playing with clay and painting orgies on walls.
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Extra-vaganza
10s Across The Board
10s Across The Board brings the four RuPaul’s Drag Race’s season 10 finalists - Aquaria, Kameron Michaels, Asia O’Hara and Eureka - to Australia to flip, kick, twirl and deathdrop across the country from 2 Aug.
Pam Ann The Meg
Shirty dancing Playing a slew of dates starting 9 Aug in Darlinghurst, Poloshirt, made up of Polographia and Winston Surfshirt, are bringing their mix of funk, hip hop and electronica to the masses all the way through to September.
Jet star Australia’s most iconic air hostess Pam Ann is coming home this month for the Australian debut of her new show, Flight Attendant Star. Do you have what it takes to join the mile high service club? Pam Ann’s giving you the chance to prove it. Poloshirt
Witching hour Devilish rock’n’rollers Pagan are smashing out five Australian shows this month, starting 11 Aug. They’re supporting their debut album, Black Wash, released earlier in the year, with the blistering lead single, Death Before Disco.
Pagan
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Ray of light Supporting her EP, Here & Now, Gretta Ray is heading round Australia for her first ever headlining tour. Starting with a show at Melbourne’s Corner Hotel on 16 Aug, she’s bringing her dreamy indie-pop to most major cities.
Real big fish Making Jaws look like a self-serious guppy, The Meg comes crashing out of the Pliocene era and into cinemas nationwide this 30 Aug. Not sure how Jason Statham’s going to punch out a shark the size of a city block but we’re very excited to find out.
Stream dreams
This month’s best binge watching
Disenchantment
Matt Groening’s new animated series finally lands on Netflix this month. The show follows the misadventures of core trio, Abbi Jacobson (Broad City), Eric Andre (Man Seeking Woman, The Eric Andre Show) and Nat Faxon (Ben & Kate, Married), portraying harddrinking princess Bean, her personal demon Luci and elf companion Elfo respectively. It’s even got a writing credit from our very own Briggs.
Streams from 17 Aug on Netflix
Gretta Ray
Here’s Johnny US comedian and YouTuber Anjelah Johnson heads Down Under this month to share her live stand-up show with the nation. Johnson will kick off in Brisbane on 16 August before moving on to Sydney, Melbourne and finishing up with Perth.
Ozark, Season 2
The Byrds are back on Stan this month for the second season of gritty crime drama, Ozark. Jason Bateman snagged an Emmy nomination for his initial portrayal of Marty Byrd, a financial planner who relocates his wife Wendy and their two kids from Chicago to the Ozarks when a money-laundering scheme goes wrong, putting him in hock to a Mexican drug cartel.
Streams from 31 Aug on Netflix
Better Call Saul
Anjelah Johnson
App of the month: Death Coming
You’re dead and it’s a real shame. Thankfully, in this slightly morbid non-linear puzzler, Death still has plans for you. Become a Reaper and harvest innocent souls for your new master.
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Small-time lawyer James “Jimmy” McGill’s enthralling transformation into crooked, mercenary attorney Saul Goodman continues in the fourth season of Better Call Saul, the hit prequel to Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan, the creator of both, has revealed this is the season the shows start to overlap as the timeline closes in on Saul’s meeting with budding meth king pin Walter White.
Streams from 7 Aug on Stan
Podcast of the month: ABC’s
Unraveled, Blood On The Tracks Australian journalists tug at the loose ends of unsolved crimes. The first season follows awardwinning investigative journalist and Muruwari man Allan Clarke’s five-year investigation into the highly suspicious death of Gomeroi teenager Mark Haines in Tamworth, 1988.
Harmony
Third harmony
Kirke out Lola Kirke is dropping her debut album Heart Head West on Mirror Records this month. You might recognise Kirke from Gone Girl and Mistress America but from 10 Aug she’ll probably be better known for breathy Americana heartbreak and jangly guitars.
Straight off the release of their third album, Double Negative, and an appearance at Dark Mofo, Melbourne outfit Harmony are hitting the road for a nationwide tour beginning in Canberra on 3 Aug. Expect soulful harmonies with surprising punk riffs.
Drapht
We are your friends Life Drapht Perth hip hop artist Drapht is touring the country this month with five intimate showcase dates, starting 3 Aug. The ARIA Awardwinning songwriter will be joined at the gigs by Complete, Bitter Belief and K21.
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For the first time ever, Washington-based Rachel Tyler is bringing her indie-pop band He Is We to Australia. On the end of a huge US tour, they’re playing three shows along the east coast from 24 Aug.
Thelma Plum
Reef
Sh*t we did
Reefer madness
With Maxim Boon
‘90s Britrock icons Reef, The Wildhearts and Terrorvision are joining forces for an Australian tour this August and September. Starting their tour on 21 Aug, they’re hitting up five locations around the country for an English extravaganza.
Courtney Barnett. Pic: Kane Hibberd
Cryotherapy As any mortician worth their salt will tell you, you need keep a dead body on ice. Turns out, you can do the same to the living, and what’s more, it just might keep them alive that little bit longer. Getting an ice pack on a sprain or strain is first-aid 101, but the same anti-inflammatory response can also be triggered on a more holistic scale thanks to Full Body Cryotherapy.
Lola Kirke
Stripped down to your jocks, with ears, nose, mouth and extremities covered, the procedure involves exposing yourself to deep cold, and going Full Monty at the Bottle-O cool room just ain’t gonna cut it. Cryotherapy involves temperatures well below 100 degrees celsius, climate controlled to be as arid as possible. While there’s not a whole lot of scientific data available about the cosmetic benefits
He Is We
promised by Cryotherapy, anecdotal evidence suggests it offers improvements to muscle tone, skin conditioning and general wellbeing, and some advocates even claim it has the
The real feels In the wake of her latest album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, Courtney Barnett is headlining a huge tour this month, from 17 Aug. The songwriter/guitar shredder will be supported by the East Brunswick All Girls Choir (excluding Sydney).
power to slow the aging process and keep the body’s vital functions in tip-top shape well into old age.
The verdict Three minutes isn’t all that long, right? Wrong: when you’re standing in a room twice as cold as the chilliest winter’s day at the poles, it’s a fucking lifetime! In fact, it’s so cold that I’m pretty certain my grip on reality is beginning to unravel; there’s a glitch in my matrix that simply can’t compute this level of super sub-zero. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise – no lifeform on Earth has ever had to cope with temperatures this low. In fact, I’d have to take a trip into orbit to see the mercury dip to these levels. So why, oh why, would anyone choose, and indeed pay for, the chance to be essentially frozen alive? For the only force stronger than every survival instinct locked into my nervous system through mil-
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Plum clumsy
lions of years of evolution: vanity. If beauty is
Award-winning Gamilaraay songwriter Thelma Plum is hitting the road starting this month and running through September to launch her latest single, Clumsy Love. The tour starts this 31 Aug in Brisbane.
surprisingly chipper. As soon as I step out of
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pain, I better be a fucking super model by the time I escape this miniature arctic tundra. But alas, Cryotherepy does not gift me a catwalk ready mug. It does, however, leave me feeling the cold room, I’m given a robe to warm up in and popped on an exercise bike to get muscles moving and the blood flowing, and for the rest of the day I feel sharp as a steel trap. I’m not sure I’d go to the deep freeze on the reg, but once in a while, Cryotherepy is a pretty cool way to chill out.
With the rise of the Women’s March Movement and #MeToo, the world has called time on toxic masculinity. But what is the new paradigm defining what it means to be a man? How does a man act? It’s a question that queer commentator and artist Samuel Leighton-Dore is taking to task. For his latest project, #HowToBeABigStrongMan, Leighton-Dore is challenging the conservative concept of manhood, with an irreverent wit and sharp eye for social satire. He shares his strategy for being a bloke in a post-toxic masculinity world.
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Just do it Tash Sultana doesn’t need to be handheld by a management team or a record label executive and told, “I’m gonna make you a star.” Sultana’s ethos is, “No. I’m gonna make me a star,” writes Uppy Chatterjee. Cover pic by Dara Munnis.
F
ive years in the making, the sun has finally set on the writing and recording of Tash Sultana’s debut record, Flow State. “It’s fucken’ done, Jesus Christ. It was an ordeal,” she sighs. “I just kind of assumed that I was gonna get in there and record songs that I’d wanted to for ages and it was gonna be easy but it was testing. Like, I can’t believe that I’ve done it all. It’s done. It’s seriously just sitting in front of my face on vinyl.” Imagine this: the stage lights are swinging purple and blue. Flying through the air is the multi-instrumentalist’s backwards cap, revealing a head of brown tousled curls, as well as a couple of dreadlocks. Her feet are bare, her eyes are shut with concentration and she — and the sea of people in the crowd — appear to be in a trance, thanks to the multi-layered wall of reverb-laden loops Sultana has created. In fact, she creates everything on Flow State. From playing an assortment of instruments (around 15 at last count) like trumpet, saxophone, pan flute, piano and guitar, to writing all her lyrics, arranging her loops and producing the album, Sultana has the sort of can-do attitude that most of us wish we had, but find difficult to tap into. We let self-doubt, negativity and our own insecurities stop us from achieving our best. We find excuses for why we can’t — or shouldn’t. Sultana emits a rare laugh. “Eeeevery time I give an interview, someone comes at me with a different number of instruments that I play. It’s about 15, but sometimes people say, ‘She plays 32 instruments!’ I don’t even think I could fucking list 32 instruments. “Yeah, I play a bunch of stuff, because I saw people doing that and thought, ‘Well, if somebody else can play five or six or ten different instruments and they’re good at all of them, I can. Like, I can.’ “Everything you’re doing in life you learn, so... why don’t you learn the shit that you really wanna achieve? That’s my thought process behind trying to learn as many instruments as possible. And you know, you can produce your albums and shit, you don’t have session musicians to come in because you can play all of that stuff yourself and you’re only self-limited.” It’s a real ‘fuck yeah, I can do it’ ethos. “I can do it. I don’t really complain about how I wish I could do things — I’d rather
just do it. My whole career, for instance, was based upon the fact that I thought that I could do it. I thought that I could tour around the world, do all of the things that I’m now doing, because I said I could do it. People would say, ‘You can’t do it, that’s not realistic,’ and all of that shit, but it was realistic.” Sultana’s got a relaxed, confident air about her — albeit with a strong personality — like she doesn’t say stuff just to please you. She’s got nothing to prove because the truth is — at 23 years old — Sultana’s already toured 20 countries, pooled millions of streams and YouTube views, sold over 55,000 tickets in Europe and made history by selling out three shows at London’s Brixton Academy without even an album released. Her show at Margaret Court Arena last December made history as the venue’s largest-ever gig, selling 7,400 tickets, and she’s performed on the stages of Seth Meyers, NPR, Coachella, Bonnaroo and Governors Ball. And at every single show, she gets lost in her lush, complex, psychedelic music the same way — she’s in her flow state. “That’s why I called the album Flow State, because it’s about accessing your point of flow, in your state of mind where everything just becomes one continuous flowing cycle of passion. If I’m having a bad gig, then I feel like I can’t really tap into being completely centred with the performance. Then I beat myself up about that, when I can’t fully get into it. You have good gigs and bad gigs and GREAT gigs as well. But that’s what makes the good ones so good,” she admits. And the bad gigs? Well, she’s got words for the meatheads that start fights at a Tash Sultana show. “If people wanna start fights in my crowd, shit, I’m gonna start permanently banning people from my gigs. Because you don’t come out to gigs to experience the night to be in a fight in a crowd, and it’s happened a couple of times and it’s like... Maaaan, why? Like, WHY? “That’s not what I’m about, whatsoever. It happens and you can’t control people, but it’s like adults acting like children. I’m like, ‘Bro, you don’t need to fucking punch someone else in the face.’ “I don’t tolerate that stuff and I’m gonna start putting [a ban] in place. If you’re gonna be in a fight, I’m just gonna ban you. Every
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Clockwise from left: pic: Lucinda Goodwin, pic: Josh Groom, pic: Jaz Meadows, pic: Dara Munnis
“Everything you’re doing in life you learn, so... why don’t you learn the shit that you really wanna achieve?”
single fucking show. Like, you will NOT be able to buy a ticket. It’s not people tripping, it’s people that drink alcohol. You get the trippers and stuff like that but they’re spacing out in their own worlds and not being aggressive. It’s the people that are sooo drunk.” These meatheads will only have Sultana’s stripped-back social media feeds to get their fix. She’s a pretty private person, though — you won’t see “candid” photos from the world’s coolest cities on her Instagram feed, though she’s been to them all. So how does she deal with the Instagram frenzy at festivals like Coachella? “I don’t. I don’t deal with it,” she says bluntly. “I just... I don’t do many interviews, I don’t do photos for people, I don’t do meet and greets, I don’t do like, YouTube things or Instagram stuff because I don’t actually have to. Because I’m not actually obsessed with myself. “There’s just this thing going on at the moment with people that are like, I wanna say 18 to 30, just being incredibly insecure but also self-obsessed to kind of balance it out? Social media has just got everything to do with that because you compare your life to a hundred different people in the day. It’s like, why? You don’t have to put it online, but other people like that shit! That is fine, but that is not me.” Now, she’s got a fair bit of international touring ahead of her, but one has to wonder if she’s already thinking about music beyond her debut. “I’m kind of at the point now where I’m ready to do some collabs. I wanted to be a bit selfish with my album and not have any features or anything like that, but I kind of have a little list of people that I’d wanna work with. I’d love to do something with Flume, Matt Corby, Angus Stone and Bonobo. I’d love to do something with Erykah Badu and... yeah. I like funk and hip hop and reggae, it’d be cool to put two fusions together. We’ll see.”
Tash stats It’s not just her musical skills that are mindbending. Sultana also boasts some jawdropping statistics, racking up astronomical numbers (in one instance, quite literally) in just the past 18 months. Check out these figures, and feel the awe.
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countries visited, including the US and across South America, Europe and the United Kingdom.
245
shows played in the past 18 months.
414,187
kilometres travelled in the past 18 months.
972
days on the road (and given the number of countries she’s passed, a fair few of those in the air).
1
the number of trips to the Moon (yes, the actual Moon) Sultana could have taken with the kilometres she’s clocked.
8
the number of times Sultana could have circled the earth.
7,400
tickets sold to her iconic Margaret Court Area show last December, the venue’s biggest ever crowd.
55,000
tickets sold for her upcoming European gigs in September.
10
crew accompany Sultana on the road to roadie and maintain her audacious technical set-up.
Flow State (Lonely Lands/Sony) is out this month.
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200,000,000
streams on Spotify of her Notion EP (to date).
BIGSOUND
Australia’s biggest global gathering of musicians, industry, brands, media and music lovers is rolling through once again and you need to be on top of it when it does. Here’s the word on what’s new, where to go and who to see during four of the most important days on the nation’s cultural calendar.
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BIG things
t’s not a stretch to call Brisbane-based music conference BIGSOUND more of a community than an event. Now in its 17th year, it’s become the go-to on Australia’s music calendar, largely due to the fact that organisers are on point with both the conference and live
music programming.
Attending BIGSOUND 2018 might change the way you view the music industry, as QMusic CEO Joel Edmondson and Executive Programmer Maggie Collins tell Daniel Cribb.
In 2018, the conference welcomes more changes that will see it push the boundaries and
stay ahead of the game. Instead of analysing the symptoms of certain issues within the industry, BIGSOUND will increasingly address the causes, with a focus placed on cultural issues, gender diversity, mental health discussions and more. “Philosophical-based discussions is something that I’m more personally interested in,” Executive Programmer Maggie Collins tells. “That and professional development workshops and ways of working smarter and increasing the personal and work health of everyone in our industry. That’s the kind of stuff I think that separates BIGSOUND apart from other discussion events.” As QMusic CEO Joel Edmondson says, there are sometimes people in the audience with more expertise than those on the stage, which is why they feel it’s important to open up the discussion more. “We’re trying to evolve the conference into something that’s much more about the sharing of skills and reminding everyone that the expertise is within the group,” he tells. “If people buy a pass to [BIGSOUND], we want them to leave feeling like their skills and mindset have been enhanced in some way by coming to the event.” To help facilitate that, BIGSOUND have four different forums as the “centrepiece” of this year’s program that they’ve labelled “must-attend” events. One of the forums will blow apart the myths and rules of the industry and look at new and innovative ways certain individuals are working, while others focus on Indigenous cultural terms of reference, the psychology of change and trying to get people to look outwards. In looking at the big picture, BIGSOUND is focusing on longterm goals for a vibrant industry, moving further away from the basics of how to get a label or agent — although that information will still be on offer via workshops. “It’s almost like internal reflection; a lot of those questions in the past have been about ‘how’, and now we’re moving more towards ‘why’,” Collins explains. “Why do you want to be in the industry?’ Why do you want to be doing what you’re doing?’ “Because once you get a really confident idea of who you are, what you do [in the] industry and what your identity is, then it doesn’t really matter how things happen for you, because you’re going to find a way.” The questions posed by BIGSOUND continue to change as the industry rapidly evolves, and the scene is almost unrecognisable from the one the conference was first established in. “I first started going to BIGSOUND because there wasn’t much information readily available online to teach myself, so it was really imperative,” Collins explains. “Now its role within our industry — considering there’s so much out there to consume anyway — is really to be a place where we share ideas and make connections with each other and try and inspire each other to do better.” One of the aforementioned forums will touch on how many within the industry use the internet to try and initiate change, sometimes in an unproductive way. “It concerns me at the moment that a lot of that change plays out in a fairly combative way on social media,” Edmondson says. “I think we’re all often inclined to just become outraged about things and think that’s actually going to change something but it’s a lot more complicated than that.” With so much noise on the internet, it’s refreshing to have one time of year when the industry comes together and interacts face to face. It’s also surprising how much of an impact word of mouth has on the ground, with certain bands developing a cult-like industry following if one of their first showcases goes well. Every year, without fail, BIGSOUND produces a music line-up with a handful of buzz bands on the cusp of great things, and a lot of them end up signing deals, travelling the world and more from their showcases. In recent years, Stella Donnelly, Middle Kids, Flume and more all left lasting impressions and went on to epic things. “Sometimes there’s just magic that happens,” Collins laughs. “It sounds kind of corny but you can’t really describe it any other way. “Perhaps there’s no other platform other than BIGSOUND for word of mouth to spread
“If people buy a pass to [BIGSOUND], we want them to leave feeling like their skills and mindset have been enhanced in some way by coming to the event.”
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so quickly. “It’s Fortitude Valley, it’s a physical place and maybe it’s the last remnants of an old time that can still exist, whereby people are physically seeing each other, talking to each other in person and talking about what acts they love, rather than everything being online. BIGSOUND is that physical space where the old school word of mouth can still get around.” Those types of interactions are how BIGSOUND plans on separating itself from others. “With the saturation of music industry conferences in Australia now, we’re wanting to position this opportunity for people as an experience they can share with others,” Edmondson explains. “It’s really about trying to find the things we all need to learn about together, rather than breaking us up into groups. That’s important in the culture that we’re in, because we’re kind of in a climate where everyone is increasingly breaking themselves into tribes and BIGSOUND is about bringing people together.”
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Stevie Jean
State of the BIGSOUND nation
At the tender age of 18,
Stevie Jean’s Hell In Every
Religion is wise beyond her years – as is that incred-
Want to start your BIGSOUND planning early? Here’s a look at just some of the acts repping each state and territory this year.
ible voice! She’s already an accomplished frontwoman with her band GAIA, who have shared the stage with Grinspoon and The Angels. Technically Bell City
Square are now Melbourne locals after relocating from Darwin, but no matter TOTTY
where they’re from, their single Make Me Feel Nothing promises to “make you feel something while dancing triumphantly”. Get your dancin’ shoes ready!
Genesis Owusu
NSW Repping their very own brand of ‘shed rock’,
TOTTY have already scored themselves festiKwame is fresh off opening this year’s
ACT the top five of triple j’s Unearthed High competition. Just three years later, at age 19, he’s
1.6 million Spotify plays on just one track.
WA
Ewah
In 2015 Genesis Owusu landed himself in
Splendour In The Grass and has gained over
Arno Faraji
val and support slots around the country.
already performed at Groovin The Moo, Spilt
At just 18 Arno Faraji is already making quite the name for
Milk and Laneway festivals.
himself. He’s the first ever hip hop artist to take out triple j’s
Moaning Lisa are self-described “music
Unearthed High comp. His new track Bless (What It’s Like)
grads/drop-outs” that take inspiration from
sees Faraji work with Remi and Sensible J.
the likes of Wolf Alice and The Breeders.
We can’t get enough Carla Geneve. Her songwriting is
They’re promising to drop a brand new EP
honest and endearing, and she’s been honing her craft with
by the end of the year so you’re sure to hear
appearances Falls Festival and WAMFest.
new tracks as well as their excellent Carrie (I
Kaiit
Want A Girl).
TAS As well as an awesome name, A Swayze & The Ghosts have EWAH & The Vision Of Paradise say their sound is “tough-
noir-rock-meets-shimmering-new-wave” and if that’s not intriguing enough for you, we don’t know what will be.
Sleep Talk
one of the most impressive live sets we’ve ever seen.
QLD
SA
Firstly, if you haven’t already heard Kaiit’s
We’re sure the name will hook you
It seems that MANE delivers the goods on
Natural Woman, stop everything and go
right now. Her appearance at BIGSOUND should considered be mandatory viewing.
Look, DIET had us at the description for
their track Clothes Off: “an ode to the classic Aussie tradition of streaking.” Take Me will
Eliza & The Delusionals
VIC
but once you get beyond that, you’ll get to the sweet, sweet tunes of Eliza & The Delusionals.
VOIID described their getting
whatever she does. Chasing Butterflies gives us actual butterflies in our tummies and we’re sure it’ll be the same for you.
Sleep Talk are already working with Five
together as a way to “annoy the
Four Entertainment and Harbour Agency
fuck out of the neighbours”. While
and spent a stack of time touring the country
get your foot tapping while the accompany-
that may be the case, they’re cer-
for their debut EP, Growing Pains. Their
ing video clip with get you giggling.
tainly not annoying us.
debut album is set to drop this year.
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One year in...
Baker Boy
Dear Seattle
Didirri
Confidence Man
Stella Donnelly
Hatchie
Manu Crook$
2017 was surely one of the biggest BIGSOUND’s to date. Nearly 12 months on, the influence of last year’s event is now in full effect, with a whole slew of acts rapidly rising from BIGSOUND to stages and radio stations all across the globe. Jessica Dale looks at what a difference a year has made for these BIGSOUND alumni.
I
f there was a single word on everyone’s
probably more than enough. They’ve gotten
Wade saying Baker “delivered the best debut
lips at BIGSOUND 2017, it was surely ‘Stella’.
themselves signed to Heavenly Recordings in
performance I’ve seen in as long as I can
No, not as in the Belgium beer or Blanche
the UK, played some pretty impressive sets at
remember.” 2018 has seen Baker Boy perform
Falls Festival and Primavera Sound, and have
to sold-out shows on his headlining regional
WA artist blew crowds away with her brutally
dropped their debut album, Confident Music
tour, feature on the contemporary update of
honest songs, including the commanding
For Confident People.
Yothu Yindi’s iconic Treaty, and be named
Dubois’ sister, but rather Stella Donnelly. The
Boys Will Be Boys. Donnelly walked away
Didirri’s 2017 BIGSOUND run went so
the Breakthrough Independent Artist of the Year at the AIR Awards.
from the week having packed out showcas-
well that he’s heading back for another round
es, picking up the Levi’s Music Prize and gain-
in 2018, where crowds will once again heed
ing worldwide attention. She’s since played
the call of his sweet, sweet voice. This year,
Pilbeam, has just picked up the fourth-round
Splendour In The Grass and Sydney City Lim-
the Warrnambool-raised singer will already
award for the Levi’s Music Prize, which sees
its festivals, as well as touring with fellow BIG-
be walking in with a recording deal, an agent
her score a cool $25,000, which she’ll put
SOUND 2017 alum Alex The Astronaut and
and a whole lot of performance experience
towards touring to the US, UK and France.
picking up an international recording deal.
under his belt.
She’s also got herself a deal with Ivy League
Confidence Man certainly earnt the
right to feel confident after their BIGSOUND
appearance. If you weren’t already sold by their synchronised dance moves (to be honest, we were...) their very catchy tracks are
Brisbane’s Hatchie, real name Harriette
There’s no way we could talk about BIG-
Records and a stack of festival appearances.
SOUND 2017 successes without mentioning
“When I look back on this period of time, I
Baker Boy aka Danzel Baker. Just a month
think I’ll see Hatchie as a huge evolutionary
after his appearance he was signed to the
force in my life,” said Pilbeam back in Novem-
Select Music roster with Select’s Stephen
ber. Sounds about right.
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It was announced back in April this year that Manu Crook$ had picked up a deal with Primary Talent in the UK and Europe and if his new track Fuego is anything to go off, things are going well in Camp Crook$. He got Zane Lowe’s sign-off with Assumptions premiered on the Beats 1 program, and he continues to win over crowds at home and around the world, like at the very recent Splendour In The Grass. Sydney four-piece Dear Seattle certainly got crowds moving at the Crowbar. Since then, they’ve started working on their debut album, following the success of their self-titled EP. Violent Soho’s James Tidswell has taken a shine to the group too, signing them as one of his maiden acts on the newly established Domestic La La label.
Where to stay Even at BIGSOUND, everybody’s gotta sleep sometime. Lauren Baxter looks at the A to Zs of getting some zeds in Brisbane.
T
here is something comforting about a pithy turn of phrase, especially when it concerns the concept of ‘home’. Like curled-up-in-front-of-thefire-in-your-family-home-with-a-full-belly level comforting. So as you prepare to go forth and make the annual pilgrimage up the east coast to lil’ ol’ Brisbane for BIGSOUND this year, we thought we would bring you our favourite places to stay in the city. The places that will make you want to duck into the nearest Kmart and buy a placard declaring, “Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.” We should probably start in the star of the show itself, Fortitude Valley — the grungy, throbbing heartbeat of Brisbane’s nightlife. And really, if home is where the [he]art is, there is no better place to stay than street art hotel TRYP. Nestled smack bang in the centre of the Valley with all the venues just a hop, skip and a jump away, TRYP is where you want to be for BIGSOUND. Apparently the original building was once the clubhouse of the Brisbane
chapter of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes. It’s a thing, I promise. The order’s motto is, “No Man Is At All Times Wise,” so do the smart thing and check yourself in. For those who like their coffee overpriced and avocado smashed in the morning, the alluring swank of James Street is also a short walk away, with a plethora of sojourning options from Emporium to Limes Hotel & Rooftop Bar. If you venture a little further out to New Farm and can bear the dishonour of being a New South Welshman (or Victorian — do you care though?) staying in an iconic 110-year-old Queenslander, Spicers Balfour Boutique Hotel is Brisbane relaxed luxury at its finest. Classin’ up the joint and with what was voted Queensland’s best breakfast last year and a rooftop bar that boasts one of the best views in town, you know you want to put it on the company card. Go on, we won’t tell. Treat. Yo. Self. Airbnb more your style? Don’t go past the chance of staying in the classic Teneriffe Woolstores for a splash of New York cool. With exposed brickwork and more French bulldogs than you can count, Teneriffe is a minimum fare Uber or a short drunken stumble away from the heart of the Valley with enough beards to make it feel like you never left Surry Hills. On the other end of the spectrum, if you don’t plan on sleeping at all during your quest to discover the future of music and want to save a quick buck, climb into a bunk bed at BUNK, winner of Best Hostel in Australia a couple of years back. Right off Chinatown mall, forget the pre-conceived notion of bed bugs and gap years and go find yourself, man, maybe with that guy playing the acoustic Wonderwall cover.
What’s new It wouldn’t be BIGSOUND if it didn’t set the standard and break new ground. Donald Finlayson looks at the fresh developments at this year’s conference.
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industry. Festival organisers are clearly busy gathering a crew of thought leaders together to really make things interesting for this year’s attendees. Forums include a chance for punters to float their new ideas past industry professionals and much more. changing tuneBIGSOUND will be flipping things up this year and focusing on celebrating First Nations’ culture in the music industry. With a forum entitled “What would the current music industry look like if it was invented by our First Nations people?” the conference will bring in the community to take mature steps down a complex road, to allow for real, about-time, innovation across the sector. Tech-ing HeadsThe music tech com-
s a magazine that recently switched
ponent of the BIGSOUND festival is also
from a weekly to a monthly format,
set to be greatly expanded upon this year.
we know that change can be excep-
Soundgear enthusiasts and those who are
tionally scary. But when it comes to this year’s
just eager to reach out and touch the future
BIGSOUND music festival and industry con-
of music technology, will definitely want to
ference, we can assure you that these chang-
get around this section of the festival. Fri-
es are all things to be very excited about. It’s
day’s program is also set to feature a much
clear that the BIGSOUND organisers are quite
larger focus on experimental events and live
committed to expanding the cultural reach
music. As long as someone there can tell us
and scope of their event by making some
how to untangle the Spaghetti Junction of
pretty drastic changes. Luckily for you, we’re
wires behind the telly, we’ll be stoked.
here to guide you through what to expect
Starving Artists & Cheap StudentsTo
from this wonderfully new, yet comfortably
better accommodate the latest genera-
familiar experience.
tion of upcoming artists and music industry
Fresh Formats If you’re sick of just yell-
professionals who may be a little strapped
ing at the stage from a sweaty crowd and
for cash, BIGSOUND will be introducing
hoping the artist or speaker will hear you
a brand new student ticket rate. In other
then worry no longer! BIGSOUND 2018 will
words, this means that the next big thing
offer attendees the chance to contribute
won’t have to go without two-minute noo-
and sit in on panels, forum sessions and
dles for a week in order to afford BIGSOUND
keynotes regarding topics in the music
tickets. Nice!
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Bigsound
The ethics of outrage: how should the media engage with ‘Click-Hate’ in the age of infamy?
Content warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault and rape. If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au
I
n the early hours of 18 June, police discovered offensive graffiti scrawled across the ground near the public memorial for Eurydice Dixon, the 22-year-old comedian raped and murdered near the same location in Melbourne’s Princes Park just days earlier. This initially appeared to be a straightforward case of senseless vandalism, but ten days later, when the perpetrator was arrested, the bizarre motivations supposedly behind the defacement quickly made headlines. By the vandal’s own admission, the offensive graffiti on Dixon’s memorial was a way to gain a public platform for his private, rambling beliefs, which ranged from anti-vaxxing to anti-feminist conspiracies. And in the days following his arrest, the media attention was obligingly fever-pitched. This transaction, between an infamy-seeking antagonist and the media, is a well-known phenomenon; a similar manipulation can be found in instances of mass violence and social disruption, such as acts of terrorism or public shootings. But this particular case, at Eurydice Dixon’s memorial - arguably more benign in its action but no less appalling in its intent - seemed to also draw inspiration from the tried and tested toolbox of right-wing commentary. In particular, the deliberate incitement of outrage. As global politics has become increasingly extreme in its rhetoric, polarised public opinion at both ends of the political spectrum has repeatedly proven what an effective tool such outrage can be, especially when harnessed by those in search of notoriety. The same tactic has become the bedrock of the Trump administration’s press strategy, shored-up the political bases of the likes of Pauline Hanson and David Leyonhjelm, and provided a lucrative living for far-right polemicists like Milo Yiannopoulos and Katie Hopkins, or closer to home, Andrew Bolt and Miranda Devine. Proudly and publicly the scourge of lefty snowflakes and the darling of conservative hardliners, not only is it possible to be both pariah and champion simultaneously, this seems to be the preferable status quo. And this poses a question that continues to resist any convenient solution: how should the media engage with the actions of individuals whose motivation is to attract as much public scorn (and with it publicity) as possible? “You have two conflicting tenets in play, and it’s really hard to know which side to come down on. But I think you
always have to remember the importance of free speech, free ideas, reporting the truth at all times and acknowledging that the reader has the right to make up their own mind,” says Cassidy Knowlton, the former Managing Editor of current affairs and political news site crikey.com.au. “It’s risky to assume that if you introduce people to these types of situations, they will immediately become that horrific thing themselves. That’s an extremely dim view of humanity and I kind of think you need to have more faith in people than that.” But beyond the ethical pros and cons of reporting on individuals who attempt to highjack the media for exposure, there is another quid pro quo at work, and it’s an increasingly dominant force shaping current media trends. In a culture of churn-and-burn journalism, where driving online traffic is the highest priority, so-called “click-hate” can be an easy means of attracting readers. With a 24/7 news cycle that consistently leads with articles about volatile geopolitics, tired clickbait and listicle for-
- a whopping 126,000 stories, tweeted by more than 3 million users over more than a decade - the findings showed that reports based on hard facts and demonstrable truths had nowhere near the same viral potential as those citing rumour and hoax as news. This conclusion was concerning enough for a think-tank of 16 political scientists, publishing their conclusions in the journal Science, to call for a “redesign of our information ecosystem for the 21st-century... to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying pathologies it has revealed.” But other than totally dismantling the internet - and pretty much the very fabric of our digitally dependent society with it - what other strategies can be employed to protect the fidelity of news media and the public’s access to reliable facts? One option, as was employed by Fairfax Media during the Same Sex Marriage debate in 2017, is to offer both sides of politically charged arguments equal exposure. However, this is innately problematic as it suggests moral equivalency, which in the case of the SSM Survey was at best impossible to quantify and at worst borderline offensive. Another potential solution is to declare political allegiances openly, as 500 major titles did with their endorsements of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 US Presidential election - in stark contrast to the mere 28 that barracked for Donald Trump. Unfortunately, as two chaotic years of Trump’s brouhaha presidency (so far) reminds us, partisan clarity does not necessarily equate meaningful influence. The answer to the conundrum could very well be described as the holy grail of modern journalism, and much like that fabled beverage holder, it’s unlikely to be easily found. For now, the current paradigm of outrage culture and click-hate sensationalism may be here to stay, but as Knowlton observes, it may be the lesser of several evils. “A good analogy is terrorism. It only exists if there’s a medium, because the point of terrorism is to frighten people into a certain set of behaviours, and that only works if those people know about it. If you set off a bomb in a shopping mall and nobody knows that you did it, then no one knows your ideology either. The only way that terrorism works is in a culture of mass media, and figures like Milo [Yiannopoulos] operate in a similar way - if he’s talking to his friends, to the people who already share his values, then what he says makes no difference, it won’t change anyone’s behaviour. This is why mass media is a perfect vehicle for him. Where I really struggle is when you try and imagine the antithesis of that, which essentially is mass censorship. And to be honest, that’s probably not a world I want to live in.”
“It’s risky to assume that if you introduce people to these types of situations, they will immediately become that horrific thing themselves.” mats no longer have the same magnetism they once promised. As such, an invitation to engage has become replaced by a promise to enrage, with stories that play to the anxieties, suspicions, and oftentimes, the prejudices of the readership. Telling the reader what they want to hear is not necessarily a controversial editorial policy, and certainly this doesn’t give the majority of reputable news outlets carte blanche to indiscriminately publish #FakeNews. But the low barrier to entry for setting up news sites online has seen an influx of new outlets unhindered by traditional editorial best practice. Created with the sole purpose of driving ad revenue through traffic, this economic model has sparked an explosion of misinformation online, disseminated by websites seeking barnstorming analytics at the cost of ethical reporting. It’s perhaps this that media consumers should be most concerned about. A massive new study, released earlier this year, investigated the way misinformation spreads over social media. Analysing every major contested news story in English across the entire duration of Twitter’s existence
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t r i p l e j , s a n d e ve n t s , PR E T T Y R A D S TO R E , TH E MU S I C , H H H H A PP Y,
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Tickets On Sale from 10am on the 9th of August www.fotsun.com INCLUDING FREE CAMPING START AT $239 inc fees BEACH ACCESS / HOT SHOWERS / CABINS / TENT CITY / CAMP With CAR
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Parental guidance recommended
P
eople have used some weird ingredients in the quest for pretty colours; charred animal bones, cow piss, even ground-up Egyptian mummies. Scheele’s Green was made of cupric hydrogen arsenite, a glorious “emerald-green crystalline powder” so toxic people have used it to kill rats. Some authorities even think it did for Napoleon. The point is that if you scratch at the surface of John Everett Millais’ Ophelia you might dig up something less than appealing. Turns out the same rules apply to some of your favourite childhood television shows.
Kids’ television usually finishes with a nice, simplified moral lesson wrapped in a neat bow. Sam Wall discovers that’s not always the case behind the scenes.
Ren & Stimpy
F
ull disclosure, the idea for this article started with a vague, dimly recalled rumour about the creator of Ren & Stimpy. The story that made its way around the playground some time in the mid to late ‘90s was that John Kricfalusi had suffered a nervous breakdown and written the second season of Nickelodeon’s most physically illustrative cartoon in a psychiatric hospital. Totally unfounded, as it happens. If the rumour ever escaped the boundaries of Bandiana Primary School then it doesn’t seem to have stumbled all the way to the internet. The truth was much worse. As reported by Ariane Lange for BuzzFeed News, Kricfalusi was not institutionalised but was in fact
using his position as an iconic animator to groom and sexually harass underage girls. Katie Rice and Robyn Byrd both spoke to Lange for an article posted in March that revealed that Kricfalusi began preying on the two aspiring animators when Rice was 14 and Byrd 13, before moving Byrd to LA to be his live-in girlfriend and intern at 16. Rice has also stated that Kricfalusi threatened to rape her when she rebuffed his advances, which he claims was a joke, and that she found child pornography on his computer, which his attorney denies. So behind the scenes of Ren & Stimpy there wasn’t some tortured artist or some mad genius, just a pig wallowing in other people’s misery.
Power Rangers
T
he original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was a karate-fulled soap opera with robots, and kids love that noise. Since the first series in ‘93 there’s been 24 seasons in all, with Nickelodeon recently green-lighting the show until at least 2021. Over that long a run you would expect there to be a little tragedy behind the scenes, but Power Rangers has had a ridiculous share of grief. There’s actually not enough space to cover it all here - several publications have the count at 14 people involved with the show who have either died from unnatural causes or committed murder. We first became aware of ‘The Power Rangers Curse’ from Cracked’s Luis Prada and John Cheese,
who covered the phenomenon not long after Ricardo Medina Jr, the Red Ranger in Power Rangers Samurai, was arrested for stabbing his roommate to death with a broadsword (Medina would later plead guilty for voluntary manslaughter). Stories started to circulate again when the big screen reboot dropped last year, such as how original Yellow Ranger Thuy Trang was killed at 27 in a tragic car accident in 2001 that also rendered her friend Angela Rockwood a quadriplegic. The first Green Ranger, Jason David Frank, was unable to attend Trang’s funeral as he was at his brother Erik’s, who also played Jason’s brother in-show and had died of an “unspecified illness” at 29.
Pee-Wee’s Playhouse
A
s far as mugshots go, Paul Reubens’ are on the grim end of the scale. Some people seem to pull off the ol’ front and side look. Bill Gates’ is having a blast in his. Same for Bruno Mars. Bowie’s and Sinatra’s cop shots are so dapper they could’ve used them for album covers. When Rueben was pulled in by the long arm of the law to have his picture taken - with his long, lank hair pushed back over his ears and a Star Trek villain’s goatee on his sullen face - The Pee-wee Herman creator didn’t quite reach dapper. He was brought on charges of violating Florida State Statute 800.03, which states, “A person who exposes his or her sexual organs in public or on the private premises of another in
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Florida can be charged with the crime of indecent exposure.” The law also says that once you cross state lines and enter Godfearing Florida you may not expose your genitals in “a vulgar or indecent manner, or... be naked in public except in any place provided or set apart for that purpose.” Herman was arrested for masturbating in a pornographic cinema, which we would have thought constituted a place “set apart for that purpose”. Call it a grey area. Reubens revived the character with 2016 film, Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, gaining a reasonable amount of acclaim, but at the time CBS dropped Pee-wee’s Playhouse from programming and Reubens wasn’t seen in a major project for close to a decade.
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Inside the moral panic and racial profiling of UK drill rap Clockwise from left: 67, Lisa Maffia, Abra Cadabra, Giggs, Chief Keef, Harlem Spartans
Cyclone investigates the controversial world of one of the UK’s hottest underground genres.
I
s UK drill today’s most vilified genre? In June, the Ladbroke Grove, West London drill crew 1011 were banned by court order from making music without police supervision — and, with additional restrictions on subject matter, effectively prohibited from recording drill at all. Indeed, ‘blue light drill’ doesn’t exactly have cachet. Regardless, this extraordinary legal action has alarmed defenders of free speech. Drill (a colloquialism for ‘gun’) originated in Chicago as a brutal, bleak and braggadocios subgenre of trap with hyper-masculine street codes. Yet the music is controversial largely because of its identification with gang culture — and the very word ‘gang’ is always racially loaded, being arbitrarily applied to groups of disadvantaged young black males. The previously obscure 1011 were arrested for planning a revenge attack on a rival outfit, 12 World, in November. The five members possessed weapons (baseball bats, machetes and knives) and disguises (masks, balaclavas and gloves), which they claimed were music video props. Urban youth subcultures have been cyclically policed in modern Britain. John Major’s Conservative government introduced the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, deeming outdoor rave parties as anti-social with their “repetitive beats”. However, this surveillance became increasingly racialised with the rise of UK garage (UKG) — a music popularised by pirate radio. So Solid Crew was the first UKG super-group to crossover. In 2001, the collective — numbering 30 members from multiracial backgrounds — topped the UK single charts with 21 Seconds, subsequently winning a Brit Award for British Video
of the Year. But authorities accused So Solid Crew of extolling street violence — and the tabloids demonised them. The ensemble struggled to shake off the stigma of their housing estate origins. In 2005, So Solid Crew’s producer Carl Morgan received a minimum 30-year sentence for murdering his ex-girlfriend’s partner (frontman Megaman was cleared of involvement). Emerging from the grime movement, the Peckham gangsta rapper Giggs has long spoken of discriminatory profiling. In the early 2000s, he was jailed on a firearms offence. Giggs alleged that, when in 2009 XL Recordings sought to sign him, officials tried to warn them off. His UK performances were consistently cancelled after police advised promoters of security risks. Giggs lamented in interviews that his attempts to pursue a legitimate music career were undermined. Drill initially acquired currency on the South Side of Chicago — contentiously dubbed ‘Chiraq’ because of its pernicious gang warfare. In 2012, a teenage Chief Keef blew up with I Don’t Like, which Kanye West remixed. In turn, Keef guested on West’s drill-inspired Yeezus. But, as drill’s biggest (and most notorious) act, Keef was condemned by officials in Chicago — and beyond — for inflaming urban conflict. Even when he appeared as a hologram at a benefit in nearby Indiana, police shut it down. As grime was afforded a new mainstream acceptance in the UK, culminating in Skepta’s securing the 2016 Mercury Prize, underground British rappers unexpectedly embraced drill. They developed a murky, minimalist take on the music, with lyrics both figurative and explicit. The London drill scene would be dominated by all-male crews, their territorial rivalries spurred on by social media followers demanding proof of credibility and baying for drama. Many of the players were teenagers. Named for their Brixton Hill telephone area code, the influential 67 busted out in 2014. They drew an audience by uploading hood videos onto YouTube (and feuding with the crew 150). 67’s image is as striking as their music — front-
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man LD menacingly incognito with his metallic mask. The sextet symbolically collaborated with Giggs on 2016’s banger, Let’s Lurk. LD pointedly told Complex, “The police label us a gang, but we label ourselves a family and a brand.” The likes of 67 have since opened the way for a fresh wave of drillers such as Harlem Spartans, from South London’s Kennington, and the versatile Tottenham MC Abra Cadabra (who scored a MOBO for “Best Song” with a remix of Robbery, featuring Krept & Konan).
edly watch the TV drama Midsomer Murders with its quaintly stylised murder plots in the white, middle-class surrounds of fictional Causton. Ironically, drill will eventually be co-opted and, to an extent, contained — like gangsta rap, UKG and grime before it. In 2018, the UK media view So Solid Crew with fond nostalgia. Lisa Maffia, the fold’s “First Lady”, has turned up in reality TV shows. Rapper Asher D (aka Ashley Walters) is a respected actor, having starred in Doctor Who and actually portrayed a constable
“Inevitably, the UK establishment has denounced drill artists for inciting gang violence — even blaming them for escalating knifings and shootings” Inevitably, the UK establishment has denounced drill artists for inciting gang violence — even blaming them for escalating knifings and shootings. London’s Metropolitan Police Service has pressured YouTube to remove their music videos. In May, Commissioner Cressida Dick told LBC radio, “Drill music is associated with lyrics which are about glamourising serious violence; murder, stabbings. They describe the stabbings in great detail, joy and excitement. Extreme violence against women is often talked about.” Nonetheless, ultimately drill exists as a form of social realism created by disaffected youth battling institutional racism. Austerity has exacerbated Britain’s racial and class inequality, with savage cuts to community services. Authorities are clamping down on one of few viable alternatives to unemployment and crime: music. Still, those morally outraged by UK drill will content-
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in the gritty police procedural Cuffs. So Solid Crew still gig. Giggs has settled into the role of elder statesman in UK hip hop. His most recent album, 2016’s self-released Landlord, reached #2 in the UK charts. Last year ol’ Hollow Man cameo-ed on Drake’s More Life and teamed with Lily Allen, a passionate defender, on her single Trigger Bang. In fact, UK drill’s stars are courting the mainstream. 67, who joined Desiigner on a remix of Mura Masa’s All Around The World, lately performed at Wireless. And, according to British GQ, Harlem Spartans have inked a deal with Warner and are now repositioning themselves as “hip hop artists”. Kennington’s finest may already be commercialising their sound, too, with June’s Calling My Line (featuring Ay Em) flaunting AutoTuned singing (a rarity in UK drill) and, in the video, women dancing.
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Wake up, ‘Gurge! Hiatus is too strong a word for Regurgitator’s Quan Yeomans. Instead he tells Carley Hall the band has simply awoken from a ‘nap’.
“I
’m outside Skinners Adventure Playground. It’s a co-op run playground full of rusty swings and bits of splintered wood, so clearly it’s great. If you’re a paranoid parent it’s definitely a hospital visit afterwards. My children are in there with their mother, but it probably looks like Lord Of The Flies in there.” This is just one example of why Regurgitator’s latest album, their ninth, has been late in the making, according to frontman Quan Yeomans. Since 2013’s Dirty Pop Fantasy, the ‘Gurge have had their hands full with children, relocations to far-flung cities, other creative pursuits and the general hum of life. Back in the early/mid-’90s life looked very different for the band. Breakout Blubber Boy paired their dry wit with grunge chugs then thrust them into the limelight alongside the many bands putting Australian music on the map. Tu-Plang and Unit ultimately cemented their place in the scene, even though it was hard to see for Yeomans. “I always have trouble feeling like I was a part of anything because I always feel like an outsider,” he admits. “I enjoyed being able to play shows with new bands and at new venues. There was definitely a competitive edge to things back then, and I think it’s important to have a bit of competition from time to time when you’re creating, it lubricates things a little more and makes you want to achieve things a bit better. “When Regurgitator first signed to Warner they gave us a ridiculous deal that you just don’t see anymore. We learned a lot from our first drummer [Martin Lee], he was all about creating the studio you wanted
to work in rather than be under the thumb of someone else’s gear and time and money. So we did all that from an early stage.” With the band scattered around the country and each buried in their respective family lives and side projects, the five-year wait for Headroxx does seem like a bit of a long one given their steady output. But is calling it a ‘return from hiatus’ too strong? “I don’t think we ever felt like we were on hiatus, I think we were just distracted. Or tired. It’s more like a nap really,” Yeomans laughs. “Hiatus is too serious, and it’s a bit of a technical term and we’re not a technical band. “And I often take a ‘nap’ from actually listening to music as well, so when I come back and actually write, I end up listening to a lot of music. There’s so much incredible stuff out there, and I’m like, ‘Well where do we slot in here, how can I take pieces and work out what we want to do?’ So that’s the value of it, giving our ears a break.” Coming back from their ‘nap’ for their latest was not inspired by a particular creative urge as such; Yeomans reckons their manager said, “We’re going on tour in August so get an album done.” And with that, the recording of Headroxx began from each band members’ home studios over the space of just a few weeks. In true Regurgitator form, the hallmark offbeat musical tastes and absurd lyrics are ever present. For Yeomans, it’s a comfort to relish in the things he has some creative control over in today’s music scene. “We used to love playing the intimate little festivals but you find when things get to a certain grand level they die a little bit. A bit like bands,” he laughs. “One sometimes wonders whether it’s worth it. You’re constantly second-guessing yourself. If you’re in the game for this long and you’ve had a peak in your career you kind of start cruising, and there’s a lot of new music out there. It feels like music is exponentially growing because of technology and access. So you do feel a little bit lost from time to time. But it is still incredibly enjoyable and we love playing live, it’s always a hoot. That’s definitely the reason we’re still here.”
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
Ode to Odette After the release of To A Stranger, Liz Giuffre sat down with Odette to discuss success at a young age, unusual production combinations and ‘what’s in a name’.
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eorgia “Odette” Sallybanks is one of those new musicians that both excites and infuriates. A bloody tal-
ented young woman at a time when the Australian scene in particular seems to be producing a cluster of new voices - adding to the noise with an unusual blend of raw vocal and piano-based music, supported by strong contemporary production. Her spoken word is captivating - delivered with a cool urgency that reminds of artists like Ani DiFranco and other genre-defying greats. While she’s happy not to be categorised, there is one label she rejects for her style. “Um, R&B,” she says without hesitation. “I think it’s quite easy to be pigeonholed into that category, and people are like, ‘Oh, [you] rap,’ and I’ll be like, ‘No no no, I can’t rap.’ Rap is freestyle, I don’t do that.” Lead single Watch Me Read You draws
attention with its genre exploration that moves from spoken word to a chilled dance vibe, sampling Maya Angelou for good measure and more than a little depth. Then throughout the album, To A Stranger, this
Headroxx (Valve) is out this month. Regurgitator tour from 2 Aug.
love of a good lyric (musical and poetic) drives, but is delivered with a clarity and nuance that doesn’t get nearly enough space in mainstream music these days. “I got signed to my manager when I was 14, I was very much a young’un, and then I guess I got signed to EMI when I was 17,” Sallybanks explains of her rise from triple j Unearthed hopeful to major label contractor. “I was like, ‘Let’s take it slow, I’m still in high school, I want to finish high school, ideally,’ and so yeah. It was kind of, to be honest, because I met my manager when I was quite young, I was ready. I was like, ‘Ok, I’ve learned my stuff, let’s do it. Let’s be business-y.’ Once the business came into it Sallybanks didn’t muck around. Writing reams of lyrics and strings of songs, through what she calls “a process of elimination”, she developed the album. Writing or co-writing every track, she’s been clear to keep a handle on the
Pic: Stephen Booth
direction of each. “I don’t really think about it to be honest, I just write,” she says of the coherence of the end result. “And I guess the thing about my writing is there’s different songs with different styles, but they’re all still
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kind of me because they’re all kind of about the same thing. And I’ve asked people and they’re not sure what to put me in, indie-pop or pop-alternative, and I’ll just go with it.” A big part of the story so far is Sallybanks’ ability to collaborate, particularly with unusual production combinations. For example, working with Paul Mac she’s developed cracker tracks Pastel Walls and Lotus Eaters, while programmer/ mod synth player Damian Taylor has helped elevate what was
“I don’t really think about it to be honest, I just write.”
already
solid
vocals
and piano into something new. “Yeah, Paul Mac I actually worked with a couple of years ago, three years ago actually. When I took songs into the studio to Damian we kind of did it all in one take to make it as live as possible, so the actual take
on the record is me singing and playing at the same time. And they just added production over the top of it, and that was really exciting for me because we could bring in that raw performance element as well as the product element, which was cool.” Dear reader, if you’re thinking it’s a special kind of perform-
t’s a very human tenAfter the release of their debut album, and dency to make comahead of a short tour around the country, Rod parisons when listening to an unfamiliar artist and, Whitfield caught up with Julia Jacklin and ultimately, it is up to the listener to decide what they Elizabeth Hughes from Phantastic Ferntiture get out of an artist’s music. to talk about their namesake, thriving without However, this sometimes leaves the artists themselves pressure and how they “sound nothing a little bewildered by what like Nadia Reid”. people think they hear in their sound. Julia Jacklin and Elizabeth Hughes, from quirky Sydney four-piece Phantastic Fer“It was just one of those things where niture, have had some real doozies during we suddenly woke up a couple of months ago their four years together. and said, ‘Oh wow, we’ve got a record done “I’ve seen some really strange ones,” now, how did that happen?’” Jacklin laughs. Jacklin admits. “I just think people get conEven the generation of the band name fused because they see some girls in a band had a highly idiosyncratic evolution. “We and they go, ‘What other band with girls in originally saw a sign on Paramatta Road it can we relate this band to?’ I saw someone for Fantastic Furniture, the store,” Hughes the other day say we sound like Nadia Reid, states. “And then we were having that claswho’s a New Zealand folk singer-songwritsic conversation about band names, and we er. We sound nothing like Nadia Reid! were like, ‘That’d be a fantastic band name, “I just think we write good pop songs, we should make it into a pun and make it that’s what we do.” into ferns.’ And then the topic of merch Hughes adds: “I’m just waiting for us came up and that’s when things got realto get a kid’s review in some kids’ magaly exciting.” zine or something that’s all confused about “We have no regrets about the name,” us and says we’re the next Wiggles band,” Jacklin emphasises. “We love the name.” she laughs. Even the furniture company themselves From humble and very non-serious were more than happy about their choice of beginnings, the band has now made the band name, and have made no attempts to huge journey that is the writing, recording chase the band for royalties or make them and releasing of their debut album. It sounds cease and desist. “We were a bit worried as if though it is a minor miracle that they about that, and that’s why we spelt the name have come this far. differently,” Hughes says. “We ended up get“When we first started out, it was a ting an email of support from them, they joke band,” Hughes recalls. “We booked said they liked our music and at that stage a gig before we had any songs. I think on we thought, ‘Yeah, it’s going to be fine.’” our first gig we’d written two songs, so we The band head off on a tour of the eastplayed those and I think we played one of ern seaboard and Adelaide as of mid-Authem again. We did a recording, it was just gust, and after that they plan to maintain this demo that was just the bass and drums, that same relaxed approach to running the then it disappeared for ages. We listened to band that they always have. “I think we just it months later, and we were like, ‘This is want to keep it pretty low-key because that’s actually cool let’s get it back on the road.’” kind of the ethos of the band,” Hughes states. So it took them quite some time to “That’s when we thrive, when we don’t have become the serious and settled outfit that any pressure to do anything. And that also has produced their debut record. “We startmeans we all have time for our solo projects, ed gigging a lot, and the line-up changed,” which are important to us.” Hughes remembers. “And then finally once we started gigging a lot, that’s when it really became a band. We just saw that the crowd was really responsive and we just started having a lot of fun playing live. It was such a joy getting up on stage in Sydney and havPhantastic Ferniture (Makeout/Caroline) ing this big raucous crowd falling all over is out now. Phantastic Ferniture tour each other.” from 17 Aug.
er who can commit to record on one take these days, you’d be right. But there is something about the superhero here, anyway. Sallybanks does have a bit of a Clark Kent/Superman thing going on with the stage name and ‘real name’ divide. Although she enjoys the relative privacy this divide gives (and no doubt will continue to as her star rises), the story behind it is also pretty super. “It was just that I literally liked Rihanna. I went up to my mum at ten years old and said, ‘Mum, Rihanna goes by her middle name, what’s mine?’ And she said, ‘Odette,’ and I was like, ‘Bam, done.’ And it’s stuck with me,” she laughs.
To A Stranger (EMI) is out now. Odette tours from 10 Aug.
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Joshua Braybrook If you’re a gig pig around Melbourne, you’re more than likely to have caught a glimpse or two of this intrepid snapper getting in the thick of things to catch the perfect shot. And if you live further afield, there’s a damn good chance you’ve admired his dynamic images in The Music’s review section. This is the ol’ chicken or the egg question: which came first, a love of Melbourne’s live scene or photography? I have always enjoyed music and been a visual person. A love of music in general came first, after growing up in the early 2000s listening to local legends including Paul Kelly, Hunters & Collectors and Divinyls. Photography is more of a recent passion, which I rediscovered a spark for while studying Film & TV. From there I attached myself to film and edited videos of bands performing for Tram Sessions and my love for live music grew rapidly from there. Video of live music events seemed like a new thing at the time and I wanted to see as much as I could, so that’s when I decided to start taking photos instead. I am yet to turn back. How did you get into shooting Melbourne’s live music, and what’s the best part about being on the front line of such a varied scene? When I was getting into gig photography, I started at free local events, including St Kilda Festival as well as Record Store Day and various promo shows. These festivals have showcased a lot of great acts and shaped my taste in the Melbourne and wider Australian music scene. I also contacted a few small bands to shoot some of their headlines, earliest one from memory was Saskwatch at The Hi-Fi before it changed to Max Watt’s. Once I built my portfolio around that, the first publication I heard back from was The Music. Melbourne has always been known for its live music scene, and I really enjoy finding new acts to cross off my bucket list. I feel very lucky living in a city with such talented musicians and friends, established or up-and-coming. And it is great to have so many venues to host them.
Shame @ The Tote
Melbourne’s gig calendar has shows of every scale, from intimate acoustic sets in bars to massive stadiums. Which end of the scale do you prefer to shoot? I prefer seeing well-known local musicians in an intimate setting. I find them very pleasant and easy going in comparison to seeing some international acts at a small venue. As a recent example Milk! Records had a residency at Coburg RSL, and I loved how each of the three weeks was organised; not knowing 100% who was going to show up when. Courtney Barnett and Jen Cloher playing sets side by side in the final week was nothing less than flawless to me. The raw passion that lights up the room when they perform is something I wish I could see every day.
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What’s been the highlight of your live music photography career to date, and do you have any bucket list shots you’d like to snap in the future? Highlights of my music photography, include Shame at The Tote (pictured). They were really fun to shoot earlier this year, especially when the lead vocalist came into the crowd. I am also very grateful for the occasional opportunity to hang out with City Calm Down, whom I have been regularly shooting whenever they have a show.
Let’s face it Christina Aguilera was absolutely right: you are beautiful. But every once in a while there’s no shame getting a helping hand to look in tiptop condition. And it just so happens that there are a range of DIY masks and masques (yep, they’re different) to get you looking your finest. Now treat yo’ self! 1: Sukin AntiPollution Facial Masque + Charcoal 100ml rrp $16.95 2. Skin Republic Youthfoil Foil Face Mask rrp $12.99 3. Skin Republic Gold Hydrogel Mask rrp $12.99 4. Antipodes Halo Skin-Brightening Facial Mud Masque 75ml rrp $45.00
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F
lorida’s Denzel Curry has never courted hype. But the cult MC, singer and producer may just have 2018’s hip hop album of the year. Indeed, Curry’s third outing proper, TA13OO (Taboo), is the kind of conceptual art-piece that others talk about. Crucially, he’s not hurried TA13OO. “I’ve been tryna come out with this for a long time,” Curry says from Los Angeles. These days artists of Curry’s stature in hip hop rarely schedule interviews to promote albums. Instead they let Twitter generate the narrative. But ‘Zel hopes to accentuate the divergent facets of what is both his most personal and adventurous work in TA13OO. “I want people to focus on my versatility, the message and just the overall theme of the album,” he states. “I just want people to understand where my mind was going, or what I was, and where I was at the time, when I was creating this piece and everything.” Curry developed an unusual roll-out for TA13OO, with each of its three parts (Light, Gray and Dark) dropping over a weekend. “I don’t want anyone getting confused on where the Light part ends and where the Gray part ends and where the Dark part starts,” he explains. “I just wanted to separate it in a theatrical way; in a way where people could be like, ‘Damn,’ like, ‘Yo, this is actually mad different.’” The Carol City native launched his rap career with mixtapes while in high school. Local legend SpaceGhostPurrp recruited Curry for his ill-fated group Raider Klan. In 2013, Curry — a seminal cloud rapper — self-released his solo debut, Nostalgic 64. Between albums, he crossed over with the post-dancehall banger Ultimate. In 2016 Curry was named as one of XXL’s Freshman Class on the back of his sophomore, Imperial. Resolutely indie, he’s now signed to Loma Vista Records, home of Iggy Pop. Curry hit Australia in 2017 to much buzz. He even programmed rage, proving a charismatic host. The year before, Curry revealed to XXL that he’d been offered acting roles. There was talk of his auditioning for a Sean Penn film, but Curry passed. “I felt I wasn’t ready.” He is interested in movie projects, but means to first hone his dramatic skills. And Curry applied this same methodical approach to TA13OO. The album’s latest single, CLOUT COBAIN | CLOUT CO13A1N, has startled listeners with its grungily nihilistic opening line: “I just wanna feel myself, you want me to kill myself.” (Curry portrays a circus clown in the accompanying monochrome video.) In fact, the song is about the artist’s precarious bond with fans continuously clamouring for fresh quality output in the digital age. Industry machinations stress Curry. “I wish artists didn’t have to be in such shitty situations and they just get thrown money at [them],” he sighs. “I just wish they had a different way of coping with their lives and there were kinda new ways of remaining happy.” Certainly, TA13OO lives up to its declaratory title as Curry delves into topics such as molestation, depression and existentialism. “I just felt like I wanted to give something that was so tangible; that held a lot of substance — that’s why I kept it as raw and kept it as real,” he notes. Curry is often described as a political act. However, the Floridian has admitted that he didn’t vote in 2016’s presidential election. In SIRENS | Z1RENZ, he regretfully shares his take on
Trump’s America (alongside guests JID, J Cole’s Atlantan protege, and Billie Eilish). “My main thing is I’m just very observant. I wouldn’t consider myself a conscious person or anything like that. I just see a lot of shit.” Today Curry is identified with South Florida’s rap explosion. Yet, with his dynamic delivery, he also invented punk-trap. Last year, Curry toured North America with the hardcore bands Show Me The Body and Trash Talk — the latter Odd Future associates. But, on TA13OO, Curry unexpectedly veers off into other directions — soul, R&B and synth-funk. Still, the finale is entitled BLACK METAL TERRORIST | 13 M T. “All these elements that you hear on the album were always a part of me, I just never expressed them,” Curry says. “It was just that moment where I realised there’s no rules to making anything. So it was like, ‘Shit, since there ain’t no rules to making anything, I’m gonna make everything.’” Recently on Twitter, Kanye West vented his frustration at being categorised reductively as a singer, rapper or pop star — he prefers to be called a “recording artist”. Curry feels similarly. “I see myself as an artist! Yeah, no offence, but everybody wanna be putting me in a ‘rapper’ category — but a rapper only raps. They don’t know how to do anything else. I can do everything. I’m an artist first.” Alas, TA13OO is airing at an emotional time for Curry. He’s still grieving over XXXTentacion (aka Jahseh Onfroy), the polarising emo-rapper murdered in a robbery in June. Curry mentored Onfroy prefame — and at one stage they resided together. “Me and him had real ups and downs in our relationship, but all those ups and downs ended with just me and him talking to each other. It reminded me of the first time we met, where we were just talking to each other.” Surprisingly, Curry holds that Onfroy’s biography shouldn’t be expurgated. “I would just have everyone remember XXXTentacion like who he was, all together
— like, from his flaws and all to everything, because they lowkey made the person who he is. That’s who he was at that time. Everything from the controversy to him changing; transcending — I want everybody to remember all those things...” Curry is super-ambitious. “My plan is to do every style of music — and in art — ever and just dominate every genre, dominate the charts, and dominate everything in life... and become the best performer of all time.” Curry once tweeted that the sole rapper better than him is Kendrick Lamar, although he retracted that in another interview (“Nobody’s better than me”). And perhaps K-Dot might need to step up after scoping out TA13OO. “That’s all I want,” Curry flosses. “I want everybody to step up, ‘cause I ain’t hear nothin’ that caught my ear this year — minus J Cole and KIDS SEE GHOSTS.”
Denzel domination After the release of TA13OO, Cyclone had a chat with Denzel Curry about world domination and keeping things raw and real.
TA13OO (Loma Vista/Caroline) is out now.
“My plan is to do every style of music — and in art — ever and just dominate every genre, dominate the charts, and dominate everything in life... and become the best performer of all time.”
Pic: Renata Raksha
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The Music • August
“I’ll see you again in 25 years” Twin Peaks stars Sheryl Lee and Dana Ashbrook, and showrunner Sabrina Sutherland tell Rose Johnstone about the return of a cult classic
I
n the penultimate episode of the second season of Twin Peaks (1990-1991), Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) appears before FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in the Red Room – a place that exists in a liminal point between good and evil, life and death. Speaking backwards, she tells Cooper, “I’ll see you again in 25 years”. To many viewers, Laura’s final words felt more like one of the series’ many non-sequiturs than a promise, which
made the announcement that Twin Peaks would return to screens just over a quarter-century later a genuine surprise. Last year’s revival of David Lynch’s magnum opus bewitched audiences and struck a lightning bolt into pop culture all over again To say that expectations were high is an understatement. And yet, almost unfathomably, Twin Peaks: The Return reestablished itself as one of television’s most boundary-breaking, complex and captivating offerings.
Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer)
“I almost had no sense of 30 years having gone by”
For many fans, the real joy of Twin Peaks: The Return was surrendering to Lynch’s world, in all its uncanniness, camp, humour and horror. The majority of the original cast members (and many crew members) eagerly made the journey back – and this month, five of the show’s biggest stars will embark on a nationwide tour, reavling what it was really like to return to Twin Peaks.
It’s fitting that the final moment of Twin Peaks: The Return is Laura Palmer’s bloodcurdling scream, echoing out above the Douglas firs in the woods beyond. Laura’s tragic story is the heart of the entire series. So it’s ironic, that Sheryl Lee – now 51 – had not even watched Twin Peaks since its premier when David Lynch asked her to reprise her role in 2015. “[The Return] came completely out of the blue,” says Lee. “I never expected it or thought about it at all. It was a different part of my life.” Appearing in The Return as Laura – but also as the wide-eyed Carrie Page – Lee reveals that there is one common thread in encounters with fans that she will never quite get used to. “Often, people share with me their story of incest, or being molested, or being in unhealthy relationships. I’m deeply touched when someone shares that with me.”
“It is happening again”: the path to
1990-1991: Twin Peaks airs on ABC
34 million viewers tune in to the pilot of the eight-episode debut season, captivated by the question of “Who killed Laura Palmer?”. Ratings flag once the mystery is revealed, and ABC does not renew the series after the second season. 1992: Twin Peaks:
Fire Walk With Me is released
The film, which traces the last weeks
Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Briggs)
“I trust David so much that if he tells me to do something crazy, I’ ll do it”
There’s a scene in Twin Peaks: The Return when former bad boy Bobby – now a warm-hearted deputy in the sheriff’s department – walks into a room, comes face to face with a photograph of Laura Palmer, and bursts into tears. There’s a real sense in The Return that the community is still recovering from Laura’s tragic death and the events that followed – and nowhere is this more poignant than in this moment. “I loved doing that scene,” says Ashbrook. “As an actor, you have to have this imagination about how important Laura was to Bobby... so it’s going to have a real impact on you.” Having complete trust in Lynch’s vision meant that Ashbrook had no problem jumping into some of Bobby’s more surreal scenes. “David doesn’t explain what scenes like that. It had to be a natural reaction. It was kind of left there for people to figure it out.”
of the life of Laura Palmer, receives an overwhelmingly negative reception at Cannes, then later becomes a cult favourite. 2014: Rumours are sparked In October, David Lynch tantalises fans by tweeting “Dear Twitter Friends: That gum you like is going to come back in style! #damngoodcoffee”. 2015: Complications arise In April, Lynch tweets that he is dropping out “because not enough money was offered to do the script the way I felt it needed to be done”. Mädchen Amick (who plays Shelly Johnson) shares a video from fellow cast members urging Showtime
Sabrina Sutherland (Executive Producer)
“I wasn’t worried about the hype”
Sabrina Sutherland and David Lynch have been working together for decades, and it all began when Sutherland worked as a production coordinator on the second season of Twin Peaks in 1991. Despite the immense hype around the show, Sutherland never worried about whether The Return would satisfy expectations. “Neither did David,” she says. “But I’m super happy that nobody listened to anybody saying that they just wanted basically the same thing again. I’m glad it was written in such a way that it wasn’t so nostalgic that it was a repeat of itself.” Sutherland often meets fans, and one question remains the same: “Everybody asks if there’s going to be a fourth season,” she says. “I will say that we spent about two and a half years of working non stop, and it’s very taxing on me, on him, on everybody. It was very difficult to do this show.”
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to #SaveTwinPeaks. In May, Lynch announces that the project is back on. 2015: Filming begins Filming for Twin Peaks: The Return begins, and in December, Showtime drops the first teaser. 2017: Twin Peaks:
The Return premieres
“I have no idea where this will lead us, but I have a definite feeling it will be a place both wonderful and strange.” – Dale Cooper.v
Twin Peaks: Conversation With The Stars tours from 25 Aug
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In song and story Singer-songwriter Mojo Juju’s latest single, Native Tongue, may well be the most important track of the year, and not just because of its powerful vocals and bluesy, anthemic energy. Carissa Lee finds out more.
M
ojo Juju is a force to be reckoned with. In her latest single Native Tongue she tells you straight out: “I will not apologise for taking up this space.” And nor should she, a queer immigrant and Wiradjuri artist, she constantly fights for her space in this world through her work as a performer, cultural presence, and custodian of her family stories. We will have the privilege to hear these stories at her upcoming performances at the Sydney Opera House and the Arts Centre Melbourne. The epic spaces which she will be performing in are an apt choice for the enormity of a voice and story bigger than all of us, as stories always are. As a lot of us blackfellas know, and I imagine some multicultural mob feel the same as well, it can be a tricky balance trying to find our place in a world where we have more than one culture that we identify with, or when we are displaced in a predominantly white culture. Mojo articulates this in Native Tongue with honesty and vulnerability, while keeping a firm hold on the listener, to remind us that vulnerability is not weakness. “When I was writing it [Native Tongue], it’s deeply personal. I was hoping it would resonate with other people who have a mixed-race background. Living in two worlds, not knowing where you fit. I never felt like I fit in the Australian identity, but going to the Philippines, I realised I had no idea what it was like growing up in a Third World country, either... There is so much I’m learning culturally about all of my heritage. There are similarities in
terms of their respective histories of colonisation, and the resilience of both cultures out of adversity.” Shot in one long take, the music video for Native Tongue is swathed in powerful imagery, with Mojo striding towards the camera, and three First Nations men accompanying her in what looks like a
know where I belong”, this single is painted with the light and shade that comes with being a diverse presence trying to make her way in the world. The audiences lucky enough to be attending Mojo’s upcoming shows will be given a rich insight into this artist’s personal journey, as well as being some of the first listeners to hear her new
“These stories are my family history. Experiences that I’ve had first-hand.” prison march, but turns into a dance with little synchronicity, but all freedom. Mojo revealed that the video was shot at sunset by Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore who Mojo had previously worked with on the documentary Her Sound, Her Story, a videography and photographic collection of interviews and portraits celebrating women musos in Australian. With lines like “Every time you cut me down, I’m gonna come back fierce” and “I don’t
songs before the album’s official launch. “These venues have allowed me to develop the work, to be intimate with [the] audience, telling the stories behind the songs. These shows will be giving context to the songs. Family history and personal anecdotes,” she shares. Although Mojo has an unapologetic strength about her, taking the time to ensure that the wider community has a chance to hear her story and take something from it;
whether they are learning of a narrative previously unheard to them, or if they are a community member who can relate and feel less alone, is of great importance. “This album, I wanted to address a lot of conversation that’s happening, about identity and culture, and I want to look at it from a really personal perspective. These stories are my family history. Experiences that I’ve had first-hand. Through telling those stories, there’s a commonality of people of similar backgrounds, who can relate. More personal than didactic in a way that doesn’t alienate people. “I’m just telling my story, there’s many stories like it. This story isn’t more special than anyone else. It’s a longing for connection to culture and parts of a family history that’s missing. This is not a unique story, it’s way too common, and that’s the thing about it that’s tragic.” With her family’s unwavering support behind her, Mojo has curated a piece of her family’s history interwoven with her own personal stories, through her medium of music, as our mob do for our old people and ourselves. “I wanted to write this while my grandparents are still alive, and I can talk to them about it. It’s important to preserve that. It’s part of who you are.”
Native Tongue (ABC Music) is out this month. Mojo Juju tours from 8 Aug
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
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The Music â&#x20AC;¢ August
The party representative Be it a shindig, box social, gathering, get-together or soiree, “The President of Partying”, rocker Andrew WK has you covered. Brendan Crabb grabs a beer to find out more.
T
o be greeted with anything else from Andrew WK (real name Andrew Fetterly Wilkes-Krier) other than the man in fully-fledged, earnest zen party philosophy-spouting mode during our scheduled interview would be a letdown. Thankfully, he doesn’t disappoint. The multi-instrumentalist hard rocker, television personality, advice columnist, motivational speaker and all-’round party authority is a walking sound bite. He rarely misses a beat in conversation and is enthusiastically quick off the mark in responding. It’s off-kilter but instantly endearing. “I’m partying very hard. I’m very thankful that life is partying with me, and I will continue to try and be worthy of it,” he explains by way of introductions. Case in point — he’s pseudo-flirted with politics via an anti-political organisation, The Party Party. Actor Alec Baldwin recently claimed he would win the Presidency if he ran against Donald Trump, does Wilkes-Krier believe he could defeat both of them? “I would never want to be President; I’m only the president of partying,” he says instantly. “And even that, I’m still sort of an amateur. As much partying as I’ve done, I still have a long way to go. So I’ve had this lifetime, and
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
maybe two or three more lifetimes to just perfect this quest before I would move on to something as daunting as that.” Although even he pauses to reflect when quizzed about the media darling status he enjoyed early on. Upon the release of 2001 debut, I Get Wet he was championed by plenty of high-profile, trendy publications as the future of rock and other such fawning descriptors. More than 15 years later, The Music inquires as to what he learned from that experience. “I don’t know if I’ve taken away any sort of overview observation from any of it. To me, it’s all something that’s still going on. I didn’t expect any of that and didn’t necessarily ask for it. I was very happy to have any assistance in promoting the power of partying, and that’s what I continue to do.” This year’s You’re Not Alone, Wilkes-Krier’s first proper album in nine years, reinforced that his mission statement of self-confidence and positive mental attitude remains as potent as ever. “All I can think now is when you’re partying very hard, time goes into a vortex, and I just feel very lucky that I got an album out at all. I extremely hope that the next album doesn’t take that long, but I’m at the mercy of the party gods, and at the mercy of I suppose reality. And as much as I try to assert my will, I still have to follow this party
Keep on keeping on Loose Tooth have set themselves a new pace on debut album Keep Up. Drummer Etta Curry, guitarist Nellie Jackson and bassist Luc Dawson get settled with Sam Wall down the pub.
W
hen The Music catches up with Loose Tooth at The Vic Hotel they’re running a little late — their flight’s been delayed. The trio have just been filming a clip
for the lead single from their debut album, Keep Up, which involved getting airborne over Lilydale. “We could only afford half an hour,” says guitarist Nellie Jackson. “It was $500 for the two planes for half an hour, which
a little wistful, a lot uplifting, maddeningly catchy, and raised
continuing to make it more palatable and listenable every
is pretty good. I think a bit of a deal happened.”
above the crowd by the trio’s versatile harmonies. Each voice
time, and kind of exciting but to still keep it honest.”
“It was very fun,” adds drummer Etta Curry. “Beautiful sunset.” While we process that Jackson mentions that bassist Luc Dawson also spent the previous day “driving a tank”. “That was an unreal experience, yeah,” says Dawson. “I believe it was from the Korean War as well.” Since our chat the single, Keep On, has been released. The finished clip sees the trio travelling in escalating modes
is idiosyncratic but wonderfully balanced, and the constant shifts in their vocal interplay — whether providing echoes and colour to each other’s leads or joined together in one unified force — make every song novel.
As the opener, Keep On sets the standard early for Keep Up, both lyrically and in the way it was conceived. “[Keep On] kind of embodies, I guess, what the record’s about,” says Dawson. “Keeping on, getting on, progression. It
“Especially since we’re not like King Gizzard, with all our
was an example of one of the first songs we sort of collabor-
instruments,” says Jackson. “We have got the basics to write a
atively wrote, and it just turned out really well. So the whole
pop song but sometimes the challenge in that is making that
album is, you know, we all wrote it together.”
diverse and interesting.”
“That song, Luc had the verse idea and then Etta came up
of transportation from roller skates and rowboats to, yes, tanks
“You’re not always reinventing the wheel with pop music,”
and small aircraft. Like the rest of the album, the track itself is
says Dawson, “but I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s just about
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with the chorus,” explains Jackson. “And it just worked out, so it was lucky. Not lucky, good.”
path where it wants.” The latest LP also incorporates his motivational speech interludes; the life-affirming mantras perhaps making Wilkes-Krier the Tony Robbins of the happy hedonist outlook, if you like. “People have had questions about this party phenomenon, and I’ve felt compelled to try and answer them,” he explains. During his travels, some addresses have taken place at prestigious universities; surely college students wouldn’t need advice on partying, though, it’s suggested in jest. “That’s a very good point, absolutely, that’s correct. I think, as someone who never attended college, I was always really excited to have the chance to go and participate in the college experience, I suppose as a representative of partying. I’m very lucky that of all the things that I would get to do in the college atmosphere. Being a promoter of partying has been a really unexpected [role], but fun one. “My dad, he was a college professor, he recently retired. And I think no one was more surprised than he was that not only did his son not go to college, but then he was invited to speak at colleges about partying. [My parents have] always been very supportive, so I think in one way they can’t complain because if anyone set me on this party path, it was them. They’re the ones who started me off with piano lessons, they’re the ones who encouraged my interest in the arts, the creative pursuits of life... Out of all the blessings that I’ve somehow found myself lucky enough to receive, my parents are probably the biggest blessing.”
Andrew WK tours from 25 Aug.
It’s been two years since their eight-track EP, Saturn Returns, and some of the tracks on Keep Up were written around that 2016 period. “There’s a couple of those,” says Curry. “There’s one [In The Morning] we recorded for the last one but it just sounded really bad. We were like, ‘Fuck it,’ and ended up redoing it and it sounds heaps better.” The album’s extended gestation, as well as having three writers bringing in different ideas to then iron out together, meant that any deep-rooted motifs were realised more after the fact than planted. “I think,” says Curry, “because we all wrote about it separately — we wrote different songs separately or together or however it went along — and it was over such a long period of time, probably the themes in the end, like with Keep On, have more to do with moving forward to the next thing, always moving forward. Not looking back.” Jackson agrees; “Saturn Returns was really based on heartbreak in different forms and this album, to me, has this overarching feeling of being settled as a band, feeling like we’re a bit more settled in our band and we’re a bit more settled in our lives.” Word’s like ‘progression’ and ‘settled’ come up a lot, and the band’s confidence and experience show in the record — sonically and in tone. Will You Evolve (“past the point of a joke”) is less the emotional, scattershot response to being fucked around in your early 20s and more a measured dose of disdain for people who don’t recognise the consequences of their own actions. “The actions of others,” says Dawson, “but also a little of our own experience and things we’ve done that we’re not so happy about.” “Oh yeah,” laughs Jackson. “One of the songs is definitely
Movin’ and shakin’
I
n the greater scheme of things, Californian quartet Movements are virtually a brand new band. Forming just three years ago, they have released one EP and one long player, and they are really just at the very start of their journey. Affable frontman Patrick Miranda and his band’s first steps into the weird, wild, wonderful and often harsh music industry walk a very well-balanced line between youthful exuberance and real pragmatism. “We are really just at the beginning of the bigger picture,” he says. “Obviously all of us want to take this as far Patrick Miranda of as we can possibly take it. I don’t actually know if any of us know what that means yet or where we’re going to end up Movements chats to Rod going with it, but I think all of us want to end up making a and do this full time. To be career musicians, that’s Whitfield about Aussie living really our main goal. tours, Spotify streams and “Not that it’s about money or fame or anything like that, we genuinely don’t care about any of that, but we want to be turning your passion into able to do what we love and support ourselves doing that.” In a practical sense, he believes that to do this, and susa living. tain it in the long-term, no band can be an island. It has to be more than four guys playing their instruments and writing songs. “To be honest, at first all of us got thrown into this, and none of us really knew what we were doing,” he admits, “and to a certain degree we’re learning every single day how to make the band profitable and then how to continue to grow and make it a legitimate career. “So a lot of the long-term stuff is really just making sure that our team is really strong, making sure that our management and our agents, the promoters, the label and anyone who’s working with us, everybody needs to be on the same page. Morale needs to be high, we all just need to be stoked about what we’re doing, the whole team.” So far, all indicators point to the fact that the band and the team around them are getting things very right. The band are in heavy demand right across the world and their online statistics are quite astonishing for a new rock band. “The reception we’ve seen, just from releasing this record, has been unbelievable,” he enthuses. “Our streaming numbers are crazy. Some of our songs are at one million streams, one of them is at two million streams, another one is getting pretty close to two million. It’s off the charts!” “On top of that, the shows have been incredible, we’ve just got back from Europe and the UK, and the reactions we got there were just as good as they are at home. Seeing that on the other side of the world is just unreal. It’s just something we never imagined would be the case for us.” So how do you feel about the fact that if the band had formed 30 years ago, those one or two million streams, which net the band considerably less than one cent per stream, may actually have been one million sales? “Honestly, I’d never thought about it like that, but you’re damn right,” Miranda says with conviction. “We would be literal millionaires if we’d started 30 years ago! “It’s all good though, we’re realistic about that and we don’t get too caught up in that stuff.” The band are making their first-ever trip to Australia in mid-late August. It’s fantastic to see an American band at the beginning of their career already making an extensive run Down Under, and what’s just as good is that they are bringing an excellent local band along with them, Newcastle’s Eat Your Heart Out. “I love that band, I believe in that band so hard,” he states passionately. “We collaborated on a song last year and for us to be coming all the way to Australia on our first album, and do it with those guys, we’re stoked.”
about that — my experience being a naughty girl.”
Movements tour from 23 Aug.
Keep Up (Milk! Records/Remote Control Records) is out this month.
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Album Reviews
A
t only 20 years of age, Perth born Troye Sivan went from making videos in his bedroom to releasing award-winning material within first album Blue Neighbourhood. Coming out to the world via YouTube in his teens, Sivan, now 23, has become an icon for LGBTQ communities through his passionate advocacy and musical expression, and his third release Bloom is a declaration of comfort in and love for his current life. Beginning with the openly raw Seventeen, the track illustrates the naivety of his youth in a slowly paced melody, “Boy becomes a man now/Can’t tell a man to slow down/ He’ll just do whatever, do whatever he wants” written about his underage experiences with older men. Sivan navigates the waters of sexual freedom with bass-driven ‘80s synth-pop track My My My!, sung about loving wholeheartedly and with all of oneself. It’s deep pulsing synth and cheeky lyrics - “I got my tongue between your teeth” - make it a sensual and fun dance track. Taking time to catch our breath, the light pluck of guitar in The Good Side brings a retrospective outlook on Sivan’s innocence from a past relationship, around which previous album Blue Neighbourhood was moulded (“The people danced to the sound of your heart/The world sang along to it falling apart”). Its layered vocals and simplicity provide considerable warmth and intimacy. The cheekiness prevails during Bloom, with lines like “take a trip into my garden/I’ve got so much to show ya” exploring freedom and liberation in love, life and sexuality. His light and sweet vocals layered on top of the pulsing dance beats
Troye Sivan Bloom EMI
HHHH
provide an explosive anthem of self-love that would easily light up any dancefloor. Utilising the flower’s sex symbolism throughout, Bloom takes Sivan’s confidence and maturity to new heights, representing his own growth across his musical and personal journeys and creating a space for fans alike to feel empowered. The love continues as Aussie indie-pop singer Gordi brings her uniquely deep vocal style to Postcard, a slow piano ballad drenched in haunting reverb. Simplicity is a commonly explored theme, as most tracks maintain a simple running beat with soft, melodic synth. Dance To This encapsulates this effortlessly, caressed in a slow-dancing backbeat as the angelic vocals of Ariana Grande transport it high above the clouds. Lucky Strike is a passionate and raw love letter of lust and longing, a sensual groove-based track with an echoing chorus. Ending with the heavenly soulful Animal, there is no denying Troye Sivan’s unapologetic release comes from somewhere honest and meaningful - each lyric rings out confidently with passion and poise. It’s a certainty that these soulful and cheeky pop tunes will have many dancing around their bedrooms with all the power in their bones. Emily Blackburn
Rabbit Island
Mitski
Neil & Liam Finn
Plain White T’s
Bedroom Suck/Remote Control
Dead Oceans/Inertia
Inertia
Fearless/Caroline
HHHH
HH
Father and son, musical collaborators and fans of a damn good tune - Neil and Liam Finn have a lot in common. However, it’s their differences that make this album interesting, too. Single Back To Life gives a preview of the familiar family brand (and lovely it is), but dig a bit deeper for gems like Hiding Place - a combination of ornate sonic soundscapes and unusual lyrical metaphors. Listen while trying to pick where one artist influences the other and who is taking which lead, or just enjoy how their talents and vocals merge to create something brand new.
Parallel Universe hears Plain White T’s taking on a far more electronic and dance sound. While the album has potential, it’s been washed away due to being too overproduced; the musical talent we know they’re capable of just hasn’t been showcased. Sick Of Love is one of many songs on the album that is so almost there. The strings are incredible, the story intriguing, but by the minute mark it’s filled with too many synthesised beats and repetitive lines. For a band that have been together for 20 years, sure, change is inevitable, but Parallel Universe shows that perhaps the band haven’t quite taken the right path with album number six.
Deep In The Big
Be The Cowboy
Lightsleeper
HHHH
HHH½
Perthling Amber Fresh finally follows up 2011’s O God, Come Quick with another group effort - Nicholas Allbrook (Pond) in particular plays a large part in adding guitar and vocals. Fresh has a pure approach to writing music, shunning verse-chorus, verse-chorus conventions and instead embracing free flowing forms that capture fleeting moods. Boxing Day opens the album like a statement of intent as rippling piano lines that cut straight through to the heart of the song. Deep In The Big has a much fuller, richer sound compared to her debut, and the effect is calming, healing and inspirational.
Mitski certainly isn’t afraid of changes. It might have been tempting to repeat the formula that made Puberty 2 a breakout success, but here her previous guitar-driven approach has been ditched as she concocts a new lush but somewhat saccharine sound. Despite the disco bass and perky synths, Be The Cowboy is in Mitski’s own words “her saddest album to date”, as the upbeat backing makes a jarring contrast to her themes of struggle and not belonging. It’s not all despair though, and Mitski’s storytelling is in top form as she squeezes everything you need to know into two and a bit minute, bittersweet vignettes.
Christopher H James
Christopher H James
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Parallel Universe
Keira Leonard
For more album reviews, go to www.theMusic.com.au
Tash Sultana
Regurgitator
Alice In Chains
Bloods
Flow State
Headroxx
Rainier Fog
Feelings
Lonely Lands/Sony
Valve
BMG
Share It Music
HHHH
HHH½
HHHH
HHH½
Electric guitar rings out with delay, opening Seed (Intro), an overture to Tash Sultana’s debut album Flow State. From these opening moments it’s apparent that, like on her EP Notion, her vocals, for the most part, seem to accompany her guitar playing instead of the other way around. Sweet, jazzy Mellow Marmalade and Blackbird, which features fingerstyle acoustic steel-string guitar playing with a Spanish flare and a thumping beat, are definite album highlights. Flow State is a showcase of Sultana’s effortlessly cool, rich music with its signature washy reverb sound and dense, lavish textures.
Let’s be honest, we know this is going to get at least a little bit silly. But as Quan Yeomans and Ben Ely drop their comparatively conventional ninth album, genres get characteristically spliced and diced while the lads seem to be having a shitload of fun. There’s more going on under the surface though. Grafitti Is Coming Alive may well be a reaction to artist Ben Adams (aka Freak Street), whose cover image was inspired by the ‘Gurge’s initial album concept of constantly being under mental and social pressure, which in turn fuelled the band to go even harder with its execution.
One of the heavyweights of the ‘90s metal/ grunge scene, theirs is a tale of tragedy, but also one of resurrection. Recruiting vocalist William DuVall 12 years ago, Alice In Chains churned out three accomplished albums that have built on the band’s legacy. The latest, Rainier Fog takes the revitalised feel of their comeback album and improves on the middling follow-up with rewarding results. Alice In Chains are still bound to their past but they’ve found a way to maintain relevance, grace and swagger with each new release, and remain a benchmark in the world of hard rock.
What’s more likeable than dipping back into the ‘90s with some delightful garage/shoegaze-pop-rock? That’s what second album from quartet Bloods is riddled with. Where there’s always a risk of sounding slightly derivative in doing so, it’s hard not to be pretty instantly smitten by lead vocalist MC’s razor-sharp sass, buzzing guitars and a good dose of reverb. While the hits far outweigh the misses, the odd track does slip through the nets without struggling for attention. But they’re minor quibbles in an otherwise charming and neatly produced album.
Madelyn Tait
Mac McNaughton
Chris Familton
Carley Hall
The Gametes
Mojo Juju
Trophy Eyes
Halfway
The Astronomical Calamities Of Comet Jones
Native Tongue
The American Dream
Rain Lover
ABC/Universal
Hopeless/Unified
ABC/Universal
Coolin’ By Sound
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Beginning with the title track, Mojo Juju’s distinct voice is displayed both literally and metaphorically. Pasefika Vitoria Choir providing a steady platform that builds to a crescendo, as she repeats “I don’t speak my father’s native tongue” as both a lament and statement of her own independent presence. Followed by the spoken Papa (Tagalog Interlude), the opener’s point is immediately demonstrated - telling intimate stories of arrival left to ruminate in the listener’s headphones. Fans of Juju’s trademark powerhouse vocals are well rewarded, with slower, bluesy tunes that showcase her bloody great vocal tone and talent. Album number three is a corker.
“Don’t let those sad songs rot your brain”; an accurate disclaimer from Newcastle rockers Trophy Eyes on their third album. Anthemic choruses, pounding drum lines and raw lyrics soak through the LP, coupled with vocalist John Floreani’s impeccable vocal range. The album takes a few breathers in songs A Cotton Candy Sky, and Tip Toe, where the soft pluck of a guitar, light touch of a piano and an undertone of strings amounts to a soul-crushing depiction of the pain in long-distance relationships and the stark reality of touring. Trophy Eyes have packed everything into this album; an honest, relatable and authentic view of life.
Halfway have always seemed to operate in their own space within the Australian music industry. They tick both the Americana/alt-country box as accurately as they slot into the world of indie-rock. On Rain Lover they’ve combined those sonic qualities and more, blending them seamlessly into their own brand of heartwarming and heartbreaking melancholic rock. Halfway are a modern treasure on the Australian musical landscape, always cutting to the heart and soul of their music with each record they produce. On Rain Lover they’ve topped even their own lofty standards.
Liz Giuffre
Emily Blackburn
Chris Familton
HHHH After displaying a penchant for narrative songwriting on their debut, The Gametes dive directly into the concept for their follow up. The underlying problem with the LP is that the narrative isn’t overly interesting or conceptually original, but the execution is definitely both. Outrageous and eclectic, each track does an excellent job of showcasing their eccentric ideologies. Like your favourite director’s worst movie, the album loses gravitas even as its narrative seeks to build mass, and yet, it is utterly, indefinably loveable. Nic Addenbrooke
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Gear Review
For more reviews, go to www.theMusic.com.au
Full-Fidelity Personalised Headphones Brand: Audeara Model: A-01
T
he tagline for Audeara’s potentially game-changing new full-fidelity customisable headphones is “designed by doctors and engineers to deliver you perfect sound, always”. So is the world ready for headphones designed by doctors? And is there such a thing as perfect sound? Despite these new headphones being Audeara’s first entry into the market, their name and brand have been floating around for a couple of years now. Invented initially by two Brisbane doctors who were building a medical device for hearing tests, they launched with a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign back in early-2017 where funding was reached in 15 hours and stretch goals quickly exceeded. Then six months later Audeara introduced themselves formally to the industry as a showcasing start-up at BIGSOUND’s inaugural Music Tech Showcase last year, and people started to pay attention. The premise that ostensibly sets the Audeara headphones apart from the pack is that they can be customised to suit your own individual hearing needs. Just by dint of the human condition we’re all subject to some form of hearing loss as we age, with us music lovers who subject our ears to all manner of punishment both at concerts and in our daily lives no doubt hardest hit. These headphones purport to scientifically measure your hearing and then tailor the music delivery to your personal profile, boosting areas where your hearing is weak and vice versa, to give a more complete and rounded listening experience. If we all have different hearing it makes complete sense that we all have our own personalised headphones, but until now making that a reality had been easier said than done. Now I’m pretty much the definition of a Luddite, but even I found it pretty basic to customise the headphones. It uses a software interface from a smartphone app to send Bluetooth signals to the headphones themselves, and the EQ app takes you through a perfunctory hearing test process using high, mid and low frequencies for each ear. You can have three levels of testing depending on how much time you want to spend — I just bit the bullet and went for the longest, most comprehensive test, which took about 15 minutes and was
a fairly painless process (much akin to having an eye test at the optometrist). You end up with your own personalised profile that you can apply to the headphones and voila, the Audeara experience is yours. Before taking this jump I listened to a test group of songs just in “normal headphone” mode to try and make comparison easier, just a random grab bag of tracks I know pretty well: Imagining My Man by Aldous Harding, The Weekend by Dave Rawlings Machine, Center Of The Universe by Built To Spill, Star Witness by Neko Case and Calendar Days by Dick Diver. The headphones in default mode sound pretty good, they’re clear but just a little dead-sounding, everything’s a bit flat. Not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, just slightly lacklustre. Before we get to the key selling point it should be noted that the headphones are comfortable enough, I have a big head and some brands feel a bit snug but these expand easily to offer plenty of room with quality padding, which feels nice on the ears. The buttons are on the small side but it’s ultimately all very user-friendly, the functions both easily discernable and accessible. I’m not personally much into aesthetics when it comes to such things but these are quite nondescript and sleek, coloured black with no obvious branding of any kind. The headphones come in a great hard carry case that suits my messy travelling habits perfectly: I’ve ruined a lot of good headphones in my carry-on luggage over the years so this protection should guarantee a modicum of longevity. There’s an active noise-cancelling function that works well and there’s a headphone jack for tethered connection (the personalised function can’t be used in this mode though), so basically all of the functions that you’d expect from good high-end headphones. But down to brass tacks: when you apply your own Audeara profile and listen for the first time, the difference is staggering. There’s a clarity and detail and separation that’s quite remarkable, especially on tracks with more space such as Imagining My Man and The Weekend where audio detail is more pronounced. In striving to focus on audio clar-
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ity there’s a sacrifice in volume — it’s not super-loud even on top settings — but you can hear instruments and things in the margins that hadn’t been discernible before, a whole new experience. None of my guide songs were particularly heavy but when Built To Spill hit their straps and the guitars interweave it sounds spectacular, so the experience works across all genres (albeit best suited to the quieter end of the spectrum). It seems to really pronounce the mid-frequencies, which gives a nice depth, but on some songs the bass and treble could be pushed higher, but that’s most likely subjective. You’re also given the choice of applying your profile at different customised percentiles, and interestingly after playing around with all of the various settings I find I enjoy the Audeara experience best at 75% customisation (they all have a noticeably different feel and this is just my preference). By its very nature the Audeara experience is going to be different for everyone, but it’s definitely a fascinating premise and a genuinely absorbing aural experience. It’s also one that has the potential to protect your hearing over time as you create new profiles (protecting us music freaks from ourselves as much as anything), hardly a bad thing. They’re kinda highmaintenance compared to off-the-shelf contemporaries just in terms of the whole hearing test aspect but it’s actually quite an interesting process and the payoff is more than worth the slight inconvenience. So is it perfect sound? I doubt that’s a thing, but Audeara’s first generation of full-fidelity customisable headphones without a doubt offer a wonderfully immersive soundscape that redefines the potential listening experience. If you’re heading to Splendour In The Grass this year you can catch Audeara at the Very Small Suburb, where they’re installing a soundproof booth so that punters can test their hearing on the headphones’ smartphone app, otherwise head to audeara. com.au or check all stockists of quality headphones. Steve Bell
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF THE 2018 AIR AWARDS RECIPIENTS
BEST INDEPENDENT DANCE/ELECTRONICA ALBUM
BEST INDEPENDENT LABEL
Changa – PNAU (Etc Etc)
Thanks to moshtix; Australia’s most trusted independent ticketing company and supporting partner of the 2018 AIR Awards, the recipient of this year’s Best Independent label award will receive a digital marketing package valued at $20,000 to help showcase their talent to the music public. Milk! Records
BEST INDEPENDENT HIP HOP ALBUM
Train of Thought– BIRDZ (Bad Apples Music)
BREAKTHROUGH INDEPENDENT ARTIST OF THE YEAR PRESENTED BY PPCA
Baker Boy (Independent)
BEST INDEPENDENT BLUES AND ROOTS ALBUM
When We Fall– All Our Exes Live in Texas (ABC Music)
BEST INDEPENDENT ARTIST
Jen Cloher (Milk! Records)
BEST INDEPENDENT COUNTRY ALBUM
Real Class Act – Fanny Lumsden (Red Dirt Road Records)
BEST INDEPENDENT SINGLE
Every Day’s the Weekend – Alex Lahey (Nicky Boy Records)
BEST INDEPENDENT JAZZ ALBUM
The Great American Songbook – James Morrison/BBC Concert Orchestra (ABC Classics)
BEST INDEPENDENT ALBUM OR EP
Everything is Forgotten – Methyl Ethel (Dot Dash Recordings) AND Quiet Ferocity -The Jungle Giants
%QTPMƤVI 1YWMG
BEST INDEPENDENT CLASSICAL ALBUM
Jonny Greenwood – Australian Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti (ABC Classics)
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
BEST INDEPENDENT HARD ROCK, HEAVY OR PUNK ALBUM
8LMW E[EVH VIGSKRMWIW ER MRHMZMHYEP SV KVSYT [LS LEW QEHI E WMKRMƤGERX ERH PEWXMRK contribution to the Australian Independent Music Community
Murder of the Universe - King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard (Flightless Records)
7OMRR]ƤWL 1YWMG Thanks to the global independent rights agency Merlin, this year’s winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize to be used for business/professional development.
BEST INDEPENDENT DANCE, ELECTRONICA OR CLUB SINGLE
Go Bang– PNAU (Etc Etc)
AIR IS PROUDLY SUPPORTED BY
MAJOR SPONSOR
The State Government through the South Australian Tourism Commission and Events South Australia and Arts South Australia XLVSYKL XLI 1YWMG (IZIPSTQIRX 3JƤGI MW XLI QENSV WTSRWSV SJ XLI %-6 %[EVHW ERH %-6 -RHYWXV] 'SRJIVIRGI
SUPPORTING PARTNERS
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SYDNEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA FAMILY FAVOURITES WITH THE SYDNEY SYMPHONY THIS SEPTEMBER
DISNEY IN CONCERT: MARY POPPINS A magical event for the whole family – the beloved Disney film accompanied by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra playing A Spoonful of Sugar, Chim Chim Cher-ee, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and every note in between!
Friday 14 September 7pm Saturday 15 September 2pm Sydney Opera House Tickets $59 – $119*
PRESENTATION LICENSED BY DISNEY CONCERTS. © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
THUM PRINTS
A SYDNEY SYMPHONY FAMILY CONCERT Armed with just a microphone, this magnificently talented dude produces an inexhaustible vocal inventory of glorious and weird noises, not to mention some favourite classical tunes. Now, teaming up with composer Gordon Hamilton, he’s taken it to the next level, smooshing together the sounds of a real-life orchestra with all the surprising possibilities of beatboxing. Suitable for ages 5+ and their families.
ONE SHOW ONLY! Sunday 16 September 2pm Sydney Opera House Tickets $39*
sydneysymphony.com (02) 8215 4600 Tickets also at: sydneyoperahouse.com 9250 7777 *Booking fees of $8.95 may apply.
Sydney Theatre Company The Harp In The South
This may only be his first full season as STC Artistic Director, but Kip Williams has hit the ground running in 2018. Already this year, he’s delivered some of the most ambitious theatre of his career, including a jaw-dropping, cinematically infused production of Brecht’s The Resistible Rise Of Arturo Ui, starring Hugo Weaving. But even that audacious show can’t compete with the scope of STC’s new staging of The Harp In The South. This two part epic will see Williams direct a new adaptation of Ruth Park’s literary trilogy, adapted for the stage by acclaimed playwright Kate Mulvany. As new plays go, this is by far one of the most monumental works penned in recent decades, and given William’s near-spotless track record delivering breathtaking blockbusters, The Harp In The South has the potential to be a major watershed moment in Australian theatre history.
From 16 Aug at Roslyn Packer Theatre
The best of The Arts in August
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1.
Sydney Science Festival Human Non Human What does it mean to be human? This fusion of art, philosophy and science explores the essence of the human experience and asks what might our species become in a future dominated by technology? From 7 Aug at Powerhouse Museum
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Celia Pacquola All Talk It’s been a spectacular year this virtuoso comic. She’s been nominated for the MICF’s Barry Award and taken out Best Comedy Performance at the Helpmanns, and has even found time to star in hit comedy movie The Breaker Upperers.
3.
From 10 Aug at Sydney Opera House
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Lucy Guerin Inc Split From the company of one of Australia’s most revered dance-makers, this dynamic duet interrogates the idea of identity, individuality, and personal agency. It’s a work that pairs intellectual rigour with visual power to spectacular effect.
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From 8 Aug at Sydney Opera House
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Belvoir Theatre Calamity Jane After barnstorming seasons in Sydney and Melbourne, this bucking bronco of a show is back in town, starring the extraordinary Virginia Gay. This hilarious staging is at once an homage to a classic musical and a satire on by-gone gender stereotypes.
5.
From 23 Aug at Belvoir St Theatre
5.
Darlinghurst Theatre Company Torch Song Trilogy This hilarious and heartbreaking trio of plays by the king of camp, Harvey Fiersetin, chronicles the life of a Jewish New York drag queen on a quest for love, acceptance and, of course, fabulousness.
6.
From 5 Aug at Eternity Playhouse 6.
POST Ich Nibber Dibber Zoe Coombs Marr, Natalie Rose and Mish Grigor have spent a long time talking, and they have the tapes to prove it. Charting everything from pivotal life lessons to meaningless brain farts, this show celebrates a decade of friendship. From 15 Aug at Sydney Opera House
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Film & TV True Story With Hamish & Andy Season 2
Airs from 7 Aug on Channel 9
Reviewed by Guy Davis
A
ustralian television hits its rough patches now and again, and any time a network offers Kyle Sandilands even the possibility of a prime-time gig or touts some ratbag nicknamed ‘The Honey Badger’ as the heartthrob de jour, the wary viewer braces themselves for a bumpy ride ahead. But there is hope on the horizon, and it comes in the thoroughly affable and totally reliable Hamish & Andy. Given the duo’s charm and likeability, it’s sometimes easy to forget that they and their regular collaborators have a real knack for mainstream comedy, conceived and executed with energy, enthusiasm and, best of all, terrific timing. And this is all evident in the second season of True Story With Hamish & Andy, returning to Channel Nine Tuesday, 7 Aug. The central idea of True Story has that forehead-slapping feel of “Why didn’t I think of that?” - that yarn with which you cracked up the dinner party or the drinks session is given a story and dialogue polish
HHHH
by the True Story team and then re-enacted with professional performers. It’s a pretty nifty tactic on the show’s part, combining a knockabout, homespun wit with the talents of some capable and game actors. And the first few episodes of True Story available for preview demonstrate that the format, which has been sold to a few other countries around the world, still has legs. The core group of talent continues to display a comedic style that’s distinctly Aussie - wry, laconic and sharp - and the success of the show’s first season means that it’s been able to attract a wide variety of stars (where else are going to find both Essie Davis - Miss Fisher herself - and ‘80s bogan-rock legend Brian Mannix?). And while Hamish and Andy are both laid-back and quick-witted as the hosts, the stars of True Story are the storytellers themselves, everyday people with an engaging tale to share. They make the show stranger than fiction and just as enjoyable.
BlacKkKlansman
HHH½ In cinemas from 16 Aug
Reviewed by Anthony Carew
B
lacKkKlansman is, as its title tips, about an African-American detective infiltrating his local Ku Klux Klan chapter. “Based on some fo’ real, fo’ real shit”, Spike Lee’s latest joint is set in the ‘70s, but has clearly been made for its contemporaneous resonance, the similarities between past and present forever hammered home. Its KKK members chant “America first!”, its David Duke (Topher Grace!) is out to help “America achieve greatness again”, and an uncannily prescient cop prophesies that, in the future, a politician will smuggle racist rhetoric into a presidential campaign under the guise of immigration policy. To really rub this in, Lee finishes his otherwise-feelgood film with unvarnished video from the frontlines of the Charlottesville white power marches and counter-protests; BlacKkKlansman’s release coinciding with the one-year anniversary of such televised horrors (and Trump’s playing-to-his-supporters “both sides” commentary). It’s a bookend to an opening that finds Alec Baldwin (best
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known, these days, for his Trump impression) orating a pro-KKK propaganda film; connecting a thread of outright all-American racism from post-war to present. Propaganda, and cinema, becomes a subtext: Gone With The Wind and DW Griffith’s Klan-heroising Birth Of A Nation rolled for their racism; ‘70s blaxploitation pictures parsed for their politics of representation. Lee is also in cinema history conversation with himself: when he wheels out his trademark ‘floating doubledolly shot’, late, it’s like playing an old hit for the fans. In the middle of all this meta-text, there’s a rock-solid undercover movie; in which a pair of dicks both black (John David Washington, channelling his pops, Denzel) and white (Adam Driver) worm their way into the KKK. As always, the tension/ drama hinges on their cover being blown. It’s a moment of literal explosion to match the figurative explosiveness; Lee, as ever, at his best when detonating the powderkeg of American race relations.
Aussie LOLs
Sheilas Meet Eliza and Hanna Reilly, two sisters championing the
Doco
o n l i n e
often overlooked stories of important women in Aussie history. Premiering 21 Aug, the series celebrates legendary ladies like Nancy Wake, Merle Thornton, and more.
Like You
Next time you need a rib tickling, the internet has got your back, with more than a few homegrown talents peddling their LOL-worthy wares online.
Helmed by Perth writer and comedian Verity Softly, Like
Sitcom
You focuses on the many comedic misadventures of her character, Elliot. From awful tinder dates to dead pets, you’re sure to find this series to be painfully relatable.
Aunty Donna To describe the trio’s sense of humour as “absurdist” would be a criminal understatement. A hilarious (and musi-
Sure, I guess TV’s sorta caught on to the digi-
cally talented) group, the Aunty Donna YouTube channel
tal revolution with streaming services, but the
should be loved by any fan of off-the-wall entertainment.
web series and podcast mediums are the real brainchildren of the information superhighway. So, if you’re looking for your next
Ding Dong I’m Gay
Australian-made binge watching (or listening), but are having trouble choosing, let this handy flow chart give you a helping hand.
Created by critically acclaimed writer Tim Spencer and
Queer
directed Skit Box’s Sarah Bishop, Ding Dong I’m Gay is a queer-positive show focusing on the ups, downs, highs, lows and the whole damn rainbow of queer experience.
Stepmates TV
Satire
Following in the footsteps of other crazy Aussie animators
Bogan
like Michael Cusack and Jarrad Wright, Sebastian Peart’s Stepmates TV is bound to be a big hit with tradies everywhere. Check out their five-part saga, Fighting Isis.
Web Series
Boners Of The Heart Hosted by Kiwi comedians Alice Snedden and Rose
In The Flesh
Kinda Both
Matafeo, this podcast primarily focuses on the exploration of the girls’ many unlikely celebrity crushes with personal anecdotes galore.
Troll Play The comment section of any section of the internet is
Online
more or less a toilet wall for people’s worst thoughts. In
Sketch
this podcast, Alice Fraser, Cal Wilson and Sami Shah take apart the best/worst trolls the internet has to offer.
The Lashes Ok, we may be a tiny, teeny, microscopically bit biased
Current Affairs
here, but this podcast is unquestionably the greatest this side of the equator. After a mid-season break, Maxim
Human Nature Podcasts
Boon and Sam Wall return with a new co-host in tow.
Do Go On Fact-based comedy? Now we’ve heard of everything. Matt
Useless Knowledge
Stewart, Jess Perkins and Dave Warneke take turns to research a new topic each week and report back, with a surprising amount of education mixed with the LOLs.
Info Driven
Wilosophy Writer, comedian and Gruen presenter Wil Anderson isn’t
Meaning Of Life
asking for much, just the meaning of life. With a host of smart pundits, guests from the entertainment industry and beyond popping by, we’re sure he’ll find the answer.
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wedish born, Netherlandsbased theatre maker Jakop Ahlbom — who’s bringing his spectacular and ghoulish stage show Horror to Australia in Asoltatiougust/September — isn’t sure exactly why the genre continues to fascinate and thrill audiences around the world. “Why would you pay money to go into a dark room and scare the shit out of yourself? It’s such a stupid idea.” But he believes it has to do with the vicarious nature of the fear. “You know nothing’s going to happen to you, but you experience the thing as if it could.” The latest advances in neuroscience completely back this up. Horror’s been a staple of entertainment since Beowulf, but in the last hundred years or so it’s really taken off, especially in the world of cinema. “It started as far back as the ‘20s with Nosferatu and has really never stopped,” Ahlbom explains. “There was a real explosion from the US in the ‘80s and then all those creepy ghost stories from Japan in the ‘90s, and now it’s as popular as ever.” Ahlbom is as versed in the world of horror as any plucky teenager and lists several as inspiration for his show. Some come from the classier end of the spectrum, like Kubrick’s The Shining, but then some are more surprising. “I loved Evil Dead II, which was actually the starting point for this production. Also Peter Jackson’s Braindead and Bad Taste.” The idea that these horror/comedies, with their gross-out body dismemberments and overthe-top make-up effects, would inspire a work of theatre seems preposterous, but that’s precisely why it appeals to Ahlbom. It’s the degree of difficulty that excites him. “In film, it’s quite easy to build suspense. I can use jump cuts, I can zoom in. I can show what’s hiding in the basement and then cut to the woman walking down the stairs. It’s almost too easy. In the theatre, I have to find other ways.” He won’t be drawn on the details of the tricks — how he gets a severed hand to walk across the stage while wailing will just have to remain a mystery — but he does admit to an incredibly tight control over process, including his actors. “You can’t build a show like this up from the floor [of the rehearsal
Stage fright Tim Byrne catches up with Jakop Ahlbom to discuss the art of scaring audiences from the stage. room]. You have to design everything before the actors come in.” Thankfully, Ahlbom’s actors are all a part of his company, so even before they start rehearsal he knows “who they are, in what order they’ll die, and when they’ll come back”. The design work is highly collaborative, a necessity for a production this technical; Ahlbom has a team of professionals who work on the sets and the props, to help him realise the jaw-dropping effects. In a show like this, the visuals are vital in the creation of atmosphere (and in horror, the atmosphere is all) though, it’s arguably
the music that makes the greatest contribution. It’s impossible to recall Hitchcock’s Psycho without Bernard Herrmann’s crazily erratic violins, or Spielberg’s Jaws without those terrifying cellos welling up from the depths. On stage, where terror requires a greater suspension of disbelief, music is even more important. “I work with the perfect guy [Wim Conradi], who designs soundscapes for theatre. He’s a musician but also collects sounds and creates them on computer. He came in quite late in the process, and lay the score on top of the action, exactly like a composer
“I’m interested in the questions that horror raises, like isolation or trauma or dream reality.”
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would a film score.” It meant that the score could respond directly to the actions on stage, could emphasise and accent certain movements, which in turn helped the actors. “They found they didn’t have to pump so much themselves. They could use the sound, play with it, get carried with it.” Even with all the technical and artistic wizardry, the notion of horror on stage feels like a tough ask. But Ahlbom believes that the familiarity of the form, and the audience’s literacy in the symbology and tropes of the genre, actually help create something genuinely surprising when transposed to the theatre. “You can’t avoid cliches in horror. Certain things are there to tell the audience what they can expect. When the creature’s dead that first time, we know the creature isn’t dead. It’s not actually about what will happen; it’s about when it will happen.” Ahlbom is so perfectly fluent with the conventions of horror that he happily trades in great swathes of them for Horror. These include, at a glance, houses and children, clocks and mirrors, axes and closets and windows and, of course, the colour red. There’s a past trauma and family secrets. And the idea that what we suppress will rise up to wreak havoc on our lives. “The only horror I’m not interested in is the slasher flick. Or torture films. They seem to rely solely on cruelty. I’m interested in the questions that horror raises, like isolation or trauma or dream reality.” It’s clear that Ahlbom is attracted to the intellectual side of horror, rather than the merely visceral. But he’s sanguine about the directions the form can take. “Film horror is increasingly fracturing. You are seeing a lot of subgenres or cross-genres in horror, and I kind of like that. You can’t invent new forms, but new things can emerge by playing with the things we already have.” An unholy merging of film and theatre sounds like the kind of monstrosity for which horror was made.
Horror plays at the Sydney Opera House from 29 Aug.
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The City of Sydney is a Principal Sponsor of City Recital Hall
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body
The Music • August
Education Partner
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Media Partner
Expo Liaison If you’re feeling burnt out on the traditional festival antics of getting mortal on some hill in the middle of nowhere while listening to the same ol’ thing, then the new festival from the boys in Client Liaison will be right up your alley. It’s been described as “not just a music festival” but rather a “stock market spike for the senses”. Spanning several forms of media and multiple cities, Expo Liaison will be coming to Sydney on 25 Aug at Big Top Luna Park. We’re not quite sure what to expect, but we also can’t wait to find out.
Sleep when you’re dead To quote Rick Sanchez, “Night time makes up half of all time.” With so much going on once the sun goes down, you would be mad to choose a solid eight hours sleep over the odd nocturnal misson. Here’s where to get a night-life in a 24-hour city.
Ride or cry If you’re out at all hours you need a secure exit strategy. Sam Wall chats to an Uber driver about how to avoid tanking in the ratings.
T
here is straight up nothing worse than rolling out a bar knock-kneed and cross-eyed, with your brain swimming in barley juice and your bed gently singing from across the city, only to realise your DD’s ditched and PT tanked hours ago. At that point, you’re looking down the ugly barrel of a long, sad walk home if you’ve fucked your Uber rating. We’ve asked a driver, who we’ll call ‘Bill’, how to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Ready or not
Definitely number one is making sure you’re ready when the driver turns up. Recently Uber’s started charging waiting time after two minutes, but that’s still a minimum charge compared to what you’d earn if you were on the road. You don’t make money sitting around, really.
for him because he’s a total weirdo and he’d probably lost his Uber privileges already. He was a little bit manic, but on top of that, he was still really cooked from the night before on acid. So we’ve got a guy on acid who’s got some emotional issues underneath, and he was sitting right next to me on the front seat. The initial ride was to go to Glen Iris to Thornbury but he’s like, “We need to change the address. Let’s change it to Southern Cross.” So we’re going to Southern Cross, then he tells me to change the music. “I hate this station, I hate this music.” I’m listening to [Triple R’s] Breakfasters, pretty chill. He’s like, “Gimme your phone, let’s change the station.” This guy has long hair, fisherman pants, no shoes. I assumed it was some kind of Jack Johnson, Xavier Rudd chill out music. He gave me the impression he was a bit of a hippy. It wasn’t anything like that. It was violent gangster rap. I’m pretty open, I don’t mind listening to different music, but I didn’t really feel very safe with this guy right next to me who’s manic, high on acid, listening to gangster rap and spitting rhymes at me with these two dish plate-sized eyes. Right on. This is pretty uncomfortable. Then he starts telling me that he’s been looking for me. “All the other Uber drivers, man. They’re all straight. I’ve been looking for you, you’re my guy.” I realise that he hasn’t actually been looking for me, he’s been looking for an Uber driver like me. He wants my phone number so I can be his personal Uber driver.
Tuned in
Jumping into a car and immediately fiddling around with radio settings without asking is a no. I’ve had a few incidences of that. I don’t mind changing the radio for you, just ask me, you know. Just use some manners. I’m not a ___, but...
Think about your conversation. I’ve had a few people in my car that’ve rubbed me the wrong way. Not talking to me, but talking amongst themselves and being quite bigoted or misogynistic. I’m not into that. I’ve given people fewer stars for that. Tidy some
Just - don’t mess the car up. Don’t spew or anything like that, if you can help it. Try not to drag mud and shit into the car, or do your best to keep your feet on the mats, I guess. Don’t stick them on the seats. Rush hour
Don’t rush me either. If you’ve ordered a car at a certain time and you need to be somewhere, don’t pressure the driver into going at an unsafe speed. Don’t huff and make them feel like it’s their fault you’re running late. It’s your responsibility to order an Uber on time. Don’t be this guy, or: Bill’s strange ride in the wee hours of the morning
It was pitch black outside and this guy jumps in, and as it turns out his girlfriend had actually ordered it for him. And I can only assume she ordered it
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He says, “Whenever shit gets weird, like if a cop pulls us over, I’ll just jump and run. Like, I don’t know you, man, it’s all good. You’re my professional Uber driver, whatever Uber pays you I’ll pay you ten bucks more per trip. And if the cops show up, I’ll just jump and run.” Then he starts asking me what kind of drugs I like. I’m like, “I smoke a bit of weed,” trying to appease him. He says, “Nah man, what do you really do?” I think, “What can I say that he might not have on him?” I’m like, “K,” which was a really stupid choice. He reaches into his bag, pulls out a box, then he pulls down his sock and produces a boxcutter. So there’s a manic guy, high on acid, sitting next to me with a blade in his hand. And then he pulls out a rock and starts to shave something off into a receipt that he fished out of my glove compartment. He rolls it up, he hands it to me. He actually asks me if I wanted to take it there and then. So he gives me a little bit of K, we get to Southern Cross, he jumps out, then he remembers that he wanted my phone number. He finds a Sharpie in his bag, gets me to write it on his arm. I write my number but I change one digit. Then he goes, “Oh shit, that’ll rub off. Here, write it down on this piece of paper.” I’m like, “Fuck, what number did I change?” I give it to him, he takes off, then I’m like, if he checks his girlfriend’s phone he’ll find my number anyway. So I block her phone number, and then I give her five stars. She’s got enough going on.
Fight for your right to party
I
f inspirational movies have taught us anything, it’s that sometimes you’ve got no choice but to fight city hall, and that’s just what Keep Sydney Open intends to do. Officially registering as a political party earlier this year, the group, led by ABC producer Tyson Koh, intends to tackle Sydney’s economically disastrous lockout laws, which have plagued the city for far too long. As a fully functioning political entity, the party intends to secure some seats in the NSW upper house during the 2019 state election. These all sound like some very ambitious plans, but considering the fact that Keep Sydney Open have regularly held public rallies with over 15,000 protestors in attendance, it’s clear that they, and the people of Sydney, mean business. Originally introduced by the NSW state government in early 2014, the lockout laws were introduced as a ham-fisted attempt to curb the rates of alcohol-fuelled violence. With legislation that requires 1:30am lockouts and the inability for venues to serve alcohol beyond 3am, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why these laws have been terrible for Sydney’s night economy, which includes bars, clubs, music venues and much more. Koh, who is also the current mind behind rage, has been fighting against these harmful and ludicrous restrictions for
Donald Finlayson investigates Sydney’s lockout laws and the rising political party that’s determined to tackle them.
Late night hot spots
years now, telling news.com that “NSW is a nanny state, full stop. The regulations to have a drink or even have dinner are incredibly constricting.” Despite the lockout laws primarily affecting those in Sydney’s CBD, Koh warns that the consequences of this legislation are already spreading far beyond the city area. “The flow-on effect of the dead city centre flows far further than inner-city Sydney,” says Koh. “Parramatta’s night-time economy is at a turning point and while it is becoming more cosmopolitan, the development in the area is going through the roof; so potentially the night-time economy could be stifled before it takes flight.” “People used to come from far and wide, from as far as Canberra, to enjoy what Sydney had to offer - they’re not doing that anymore.” While NSW state laws require parties to be registered for 12 months until they can take part in an election, the Keep Sydney Open party will be primed and ready for the 2019 election. As fans of the once beautiful Sydney nightlife, keen supporters of music venues, occasional party animals and clear observers of the data being against this law’s favour, we reckon Koh is doing some very important work here. If Sydney’s reputation as a hub for entertainment and arts were to suddenly crumble, who knows which city could be next?
When no one can hear you scream Karaoke is for two kinds of people: those who can sing, and those who are drunk. Echo Point on Pitt Street lets you hire out individual rooms for your ses-
Describing yourself as a “night owl” is almost as disgusting as being a “foodie”. But for many of us, that’s just the way we are. And like that episode of Seinfeld where Kramer starts a four-hour, daytime sleep regimen, you start to realise that things get kind of boring when everyone’s busy snoozing. So whether you’re a “night owl”, a shift worker with weird hours or you’re just a hardcore insomniac, we’d like to show you the best spots in town that are open well into the wee hours.
sion so you can scream your heart out in the private company of your loved ones. There’s also a bar in case you need some liquid courage to attempt that B-flat in Bohemian Rhapsody.
Noodlehawks Not all foods are suited for late night consumption. When was the last time a friend hit you up for steak and two veg at 2am? It would just be wrong. Now noodles on the other hand, there’s a late-night dish. Wander over to Old Town Hong Kong Cuisine on Dixon Street to experience a traditional late-night noodle joint that also serves some killer dumplings.
Never too cool for pool Grab a cue stick, pretend you know what you’re doing with that little chalk thing and relax with a nice, social game of pool. You don’t have to be Efren Reyes (look him up) to enjoy this classic game in the wee hours. If you’re ready to sink the wrong ball and make an ass of yourself, CityHeroes on George Street has got you covered until 4am.
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Sydney Guitar Festival Ahead of her appearance at the Sydney Guitar Festival, Rod Whitfield caught up with Kaki King to talk about projection mapping, the evolution of her live show and taking audiences on a journey through light.
A
merican guitar goddess Kaki King is on her way to Australia again for the Sydney Guitar Festival in early to mid-August, as well as a whole bunch of her own dates across this wide brown land of ours. She has toured our nation many times before, but Australian audiences will never have seen a show quite like this before. Her The Neck Is A Bridge To The Body show is something unique, and she joins us from her home in Brooklyn to let Aussie punters know what audiovisual delights she has in store for them on this upcoming tour. “I’ve come to Australia as a solo guitarist, I’ve come with a band, but this show is very interesting,” she explains. “It’s a musical and visual show, and to an extent it’s a theatrical show because I have developed a character for myself over the years. I don’t do very much, but I’m certainly not exactly myself as I appear on stage. “So it’s guitar as projection maps, so the light from the projector hits the guitar and only the guitar, so there’s no bleed. It looks incredible, it turns the guitar into this creature, this portal, an eye into all these different beautiful scenes. And in addition, I’m able to control, in large part throughout the show, depending on where we are, what you’re seeing with what I’m playing. I play a note, that note runs through a computer and through different softwares, and suddenly you’ll see a green spiral. It happens in a flash.” It is far from some canned, contrived thing, it is all generated live and in the moment. Each show is slightly different from every other show, and it all adds up to one hell of an eye and ear popping audiovisual spectacle. “There’s a very live performance element to all of it,” she reveals, “because I am performing it with a live video engineer. But there’s so
There are obviously a heap of cool events to check out at the Sydney Guitar Festival, but we pick out a few ones we reckon you should be especially sure to check out to see some amazing six (…or four… or more) string action.
much in it, there’s animation and there’s video and there’s audio-reactive art. There’s an arc of a storyline, it’s pretty abstract, but it kind of carries the music and the audience through this journey, and when the show is done it feels like it’s taken you somewhere.” Ultimately, it is very much a one of a kind show, and it is something she is very proud of having created. “As far as I know, I have the only game in town,” she says, “and at the same time it fulfils my role, maybe even more so than ever, as a guitarist. I do as I’m directed on the instrument, I’m finally able to give it the personality that I witness when I play guitar, but do that visually as well as musically.” King can trace the inspiration for creating such a distinctive show back to a spontaneous conversation she had with a friend several years ago when she was actually going through a minimalist phase with her onstage performance. “It’s funny, it’s one of these things where a friend of mine said something to me,” she recalls. “Prior to creating the show I had gone right back to a very simple show, about as stark lighting as you can on stage. Just me and the guitar, and no more than three lights, pulling off this show for an audience. “I think the friend said, ‘For the people that aren’t totally obsessed with your hands, why don’t you bring in some more lighting design? Why don’t you have different colours and different effects and just set the tone a little bit.’ And I was like, ‘That’s not the worst idea!’” So that random conversation led all manner of investigations into the feasibility and logistics of making a visual spectacular, which led her to where she is today, touring the world with a show that is blowing people’s minds. “I started to look around, and I discovered projection mapping,” she says. “From this simple discovery, I asked, ‘Can I do this on a guitar?’, and so many other questions had to be answered. But once they were, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is completely feasible, this is something you can pack up and travel the world with.’ “So from asking the, ‘Can it be done?’ question, I said, ‘Ok, let’s make a show.’”
Z-Star Trinity
Kaki King tours from 10 Aug.
With a mix of modern blues, psych
Check The Guide on theMusic.com.au for more details.
rock, folk and funk, plus a great talent for improvising on stage, you know this will be an action-packed performance from the UK’s Z-Star Trinity, aka Zee Gachette. Look out for the “oceanic blues” of Karen Lee Andrews in support too.
10 Aug, Factory Floor
Pic: Simone Cecchetti
Trip the light fantastic
Best of the fest
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/&8 803-% "35*454 13&4&/54
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The Choirboys
$0..6/*5:
World Record Attempt Attempting to host 500 guitarists to play the same song in the same place, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s game on to break the Guinness World Record for the largest electric guitar ensemble. And what classic rock act could do the attempt justice? Of course itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s AC/DC, with Highway To Hell. Helping guide everyone along will be The Choirboys, making for a double shot of classic Oz rock. Your ticket price not only offers you a shot at a world record, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a fundraiser for the Australian Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Music Foundation and you get a Marshall battery powered amp to keep as well.
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12 Aug, The Concourse Chatswood
Beijing Duo
/&8 4*/(-& A$0..6/*5: 065 /08 5*$,&54 */'0 888 .".."-#"/% $0.
Beijing Guitar Duo & Grigoryan Brothers After performing together in China back in 2016, both actsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; busy touring schedules have finally aligned so that they can both show off their guitar virtuosity, delving into each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cultures, focusing on Australian, Chinese and classical European music.
17 Aug, The Concourse Chatswood
Tommy Emmanuel Already known as one of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best guitarists, Tommy Emmanuelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s show will take on extra significance as due to the recent passing of his brother Phil â&#x20AC;&#x201C; who was going to join him at these shows as a special guest â&#x20AC;&#x201C; he will incorporate a special tribute to honour what was another of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great guitarists.
11 Aug, Enmore Theatre; 12 Aug, The Concourse Chatswood
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For the latest live reviews go to themusic.com.au
Splendour returned with a vengeance again this year
Splendour In The Grass @ North
with three action-packed days full of pleasant weather,
Byron Parklands. Pics by Clare
great tunes and more action than you could poke a
Hawley and Markus Ravik.
Marmozets. Pic: Clare Hawley
Crowd. Pic: Markus Ravik
– Lauren Baxter
Yungblud Pic: Clare Hawley
“Superorganism were literally the most fun… choreographed dance moves, a host of weird and cool shit on the screen behind them and a packed out Mix Up Tent all grooving along with them.”
Superorganism. Pic: Markus Ravik
Alice Ivy. Pic: Markus Ravik
Antony And Cleopatra. Pic: Markus Ravik
giant inflatable Snoop Dogg Hot Dog at.
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This month’s highlights The extendables
Flyying Colours
Extended Play
This 25 Aug, City Recital Hall is going to be filled with extraordinary sights and sounds for Extended Play- a 12-hour festival of sonic exploration. There are 20 local and international artists in all, including New York ensemble Bang On A Can All-Stars.
Mercury Martel Flyyte plan Flyying Coloursare helping brighten up the last, drab leg of winter by rounding up some mates like four shoegaze shepherds and heading to Bank Hotel. They’ll be joined by Moody Beach and Denise Le Meniceon 11 Aug. Marc Martel
Fire warning Furnace & Fundamentals are back from the UK and raring for for their biggest Australian headline tour to date. Catch all the big screen, lightup suits, inflatables and dancefloor bangers at Enmore Theatre this 3 Aug
Star power
AFTRS
If you missed Starley during her just completed run with pop megastar Katy Perry you’ve got one last chance this month. The local singer is playing a one-off Sydney show at The Lansdowne on 8 Aug.
Here AFTRS Furnace & Fundamentals
Handpicked by Roger Taylor and Brian May to front Queen Extravaganza, astonishing Freddie Mercury sound-alike Marc Martel is heading to Australia to star in his new project, The Ultimate Queen Celebration. Catch the big show at State Theatre, 31 Aug
The Australian Film Television and Radio School is searching for the next generation of great Australian screen storytellers. If you think this might be you, don’t miss AFTRS Open Day, 11 Aug. Check online at aftrs.edu.au for more details.
Starley
Moaning Lisa
C’Moan down
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Backing up January’s cracking single Carrie (I Want a Girl), Moaning Lisa hit Bank Hotel this 10 Aug with their latest track Good before heading to BIGSOUND, and they’re bringing Cry Club and Sports Bra with them.
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the best and the worst of the month’s zeitgeist
The lashes Front
Back
Fame drain
Winter is here
Free the beast
Fare-Lee well, Miss Chin
KEVIN!
Would he? Wouldn’t he?
The Prez everyone loves
Game Of Thrones showrun-
The final trailer for the
Long-time SBS News
Ryan Reynolds has a
Apparently, if you’re the
to hate, ol’ mate Donald
ners have finally revealed
Fantastic Beasts sequel,
presenter Lee Lin Chin has
knack of either nailing a
leader of the free world,
Trump, has had his Hol-
when the final season of the
The Crimes Of Grindelwald,
resigned from the company
film or turning it into a
words just don’t matter.
lywood Walk Of Fame star
mega hit will air – sort of.
has dropped and by Merlin’s
for “many small to medium
total dumpster fire, so it’s
Trump claimed that he
smashed to bits with a pick-
Speaking at a Television Crit-
beard we’re here for it. Even
sized reasons” after an
anyone’s guess if his Home
meant to say “wouldn’t”
axe. To lift a headline from
ics Association event, HBO’s
Johnny Depp’s wonky con-
almost 40 year run. Chen
Alone reboot with a whacky
instead of “would” in a
Newsthump.com, “Destruc-
President of Programming
tact lens and intense over
was just as important to SBS
tobaccy twist will go up
crucial press conference
tion Of Walk Of Fame Star
Casey Bloys said the race for
acting can’t break this spell.
as yellow subtitles in foreign
in smoke. Stoned Alone –
with Russian autocrat Vladi-
Leaves Donald Trump Down
the Iron Throne would begin
Plus Jude Law as Dumb-
films. We’ll miss her fantastic
which we know legit sounds
mir Putin. Let’s hope Don
To Last Six Horcruxes.”
in the first half of 2019.
ledore has totes got our
hair and icy cold elocution.
like a hoax – is due to be
doesn’t say “do nuke” when
made by Fox Studios.
he meant to say “don’t,” eh?
cauldron’s bubbling!
The final thought
Smartphones have made us dumb, but that’s not stopping an awesome few from taking action.
I Words by Maxim Boon
f you were born in the early ‘80s like yours truly, there will likely have been a time, probably up until around your mid-teens or early 20s, when you didn’t have a mobile phone. At least not one as we’d recognise it today. I got my first when I was probably around 17, and it was the size of
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small family car, twice as heavy, and could do little more than make calls and send SMS messages of up to a whopping 20 characters. I thought I was George fuckin’ Jetson when I got it, although looking back, the weight of it in my pocket during those tender growthspirt years is probably the reason why I have such shitty posture today. But I digress. Before I got my brick phone, my brain must have been wired in a totally different way. There was no coordinating my day via text or looking up directions on google maps; this was the Wild West of social life coordination! I had to store my mates’ phone numbers in my head; I had to remember my plans and stick them; I had to troubleshoot those everyday cock-ups without having access to all the world’s information in the palm of my hand. I even had to poop without playing several rounds of Angry Birds. Frankly, I was a hop, skip and a jump from being Rain Man. But then the information age got its hooks into me, and everyone else. Year after year, upgrade after upgrade, our reliance on devices slowly climbed ever skyward, grinding that pre-smartphone savvy into dust. Now, just like the vast majority of people, my day to day life is so thoroughly dominated by screen-time, my entire worldview is moulded by that oh so innocent palmful of electronics and the information it connects me to.
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I like to think of myself as informed I’m a culture journalist, and while I’m not reporting from the frontlines of a war zone or exposing government corruption I still need to keep my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. But having real-time access to all the opinions and outrage and trolling and memes of an entire planet of opinionated, outraged, troll-y people has made me, as I’m sure it has made you, too damn complacent. Sure, we might have more information at our fingertips than ever before, but the way we use and action that information in the real world is less and less hands-on, and more and more about how we appear to be politicised and energised in our online persona. But every now and then, one brave warrior among us steps up their game, and offers a glimpse at what the world could be like if we could only revive those pre-smartphone get-shit-done instincts. For example, Swedish student Elin Ersson, who rather than retweeting a hashtag, bought a plane ticket for a flight that included a refugee deportee amongst its passengers. Refusing to take her seat, Ersson managed to peacefully (and crucially, legally) prevent what she saw as a violation of a fellow human’s civil liberties. So, to ironically coop a recent meme fad, this is Elin. Elin sees bad shit in the world. Elin doesn’t ignore it. Elin takes action. Elin is the way we should all be. Be more like Elin.
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