ALWAYS
FREE + THE GRISWALDS GRISWA WALDS + FAIRCHILD REPUBLIC
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 3
4 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
WULSOH M )($785( $/%80
1(: $/%80 /(; +,9(6 287 12:
§+LJK HQHUJ\ KXJHO\ HQWHUWDLQLQJ JDUDJH URFN ¨ 7+( ,1'(3(1'(17 §/HW LW EH VDLG WKDW /H[ +LYHV LV DPD]LQJ ¨ 10( §)L]]HV ZLWK WKH HQHUJ\ RI D GHEXW DOEXP WKH TXLQWHW DUH EDFN WR ZKDW WKH\ GR EHVW ¨ 4 0$*
)($785(6 7+( 6,1*/(6
©*2 5,*+7 $+($'ª ©:$,7 $ 0,187(ª 7+(+,9(6%52$'&$67,1*6(59,&( &20 _ '(: 352&(66 &20
$77(17,21 +,9(6 )$16
72 &(/(%5$7( 7+( 5(/($6( 2) ©/(; +,9(6ª :( $5( 7+52:,1* 63(&,$/ ©%/$&. :+,7(ª 3$57,(6 $5281' 7+( &28175< %( 7+(5( 21 7+( 1,*+7 '5(66(' ,1 <285 ),1(67 %/$&. :+,7( $77,5( 72 :,1 63(&,$/ +,9(6 3$&.6 ,1&/8',1* 6,*1(' $/%806 0(5&+ $1' 9,1</
6<'1(< 080 # :25/' %$5 %$<6:$7(5 5' .,1*6 &5266 )5, -81( 7+ IDFHERRN FRP PXPWKHZRUOGEDU
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 5
DUST AND DIRT RELEASE TOUR
US S BYRON BAY NSW
7 JUNE NORTHERN HOTEL TIX FROM VENUE/WWW.THENORTHERN.OZTIX.COM.AU
SYDNEY
16 JUNE THE METRO TIX FROM VENUE/WWW.TICKETEK.COM.AU
NEWCASTLE
17 JUNE GREAT NORTHERN HOTEL TIX FROM WWW.OZTIX.COM.AU
THE NEW ALBUM DUST AND DIRT OUT NOW FACEBOOK.COM/THEBLACKSEEDS FACEBOOK.COM/THEBLACKSEEDS
6 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
COMING UP &
friday 15tH JUNE
SATURDAY 16tH JUNE
VICTIMS / EMPRESS YOY ZWELLI / KEMIKÖLL / BIG DEAL GILLESPIE
TThe he Immigrant Immigraannt / VVengeance eengea ngeance / BBlaze laze TTripp ripp / SSamrai amrai AA-Tonez -Tonez / TTones oonnes / RRodskeez odskeeeez / M ike HHyper yper / EElla lla LLoca oca Mike
FRIDAY 22ND JUNE
SATURDAY 23RD JUNE
HYDRAULIX / POP THE HATCH / KOMBAT / AUTOCLAWS RRUXISM / MASAKI / PHASEONE
Kraymer / A-Tonez / Murray Lake / Morgan / Whitecat Cassette / Cheap lettus / Brothers grimm / DJ Eko / Joe Barrs
FEATURING
UK
FRIDAY 29th JUNE
SATURDAY 30th JUNE
SPENDA C / A-TONEZ / HYDRAULIX / J-MAC / DISKORIOT
Nukewood / Tigerlily / LA TECH / KING LEE & FOX THE FOX / MURRAY LAKE MR BELVEDERE / RAULLL / TOM YUM / DEVOLA / GEORGIA / JOE BARRS
CNR KING & SUSSEX STREET ( UNDER SLIP INN )
JAM PRESENTS
chineselaundryclub.com.au
DOORS OPEN 6PM. FREE ENTRY ALL NIGHT.
PANAMA
RAPIDS
FRI 15 JUNE
SAT 16 JUNE
DEMONS TO DIAMONDS, OLLIE BROWN
I KNOW LEOPARD, FEEDING EDGAR
PANAMA
DJ: KRISTY LEE
UPSTAIRS BERESFORD.COM.AU
RAPIDS
DJ: BERT & BERNIE
LEVEL 1, 354 BOURKE ST. SURRY HILLS BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 7
8 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 9
rock music news
welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly
he said she said WITH
JACKSON FROM MOSMAN ALDER
influence on me; he has a massive library of great music – jazz, blue, classical, rock, folk etc – so I would often just sit at home sifting through his records and listening. When I was 13 I picked up the guitar and began teaching myself Black Flag and Stooges songs. My late uncle was an artist and musician, and he taught me stuff like Dylan, Seger, Guthrie, and Irish folk medleys. All of that and much more has had a profound influence on me. You are where you come from, as they say.
O
ne of my earliest musical memories is driving around the Northern Territory with my dad, listening to
Beatles records on the car stereo. I love The Beatles to this day. My father isn’t a musician, but he is a big collector and fan, and had a big
We all met through interwoven friendship circles, and there are plenty of lovely like-minded people who have helped and supported us along the way. We practice at a place called Contortionist Studios in Brisbane; basically it’s a big warehouse where all kinds of artists, filmmakers, musicians and
Rapids
PUBLISHERS: Adam Zammit & Rob Furst EDITOR IN CHIEF: Adam Zammit 9552 6333 adam@peergroupmedia.com EDITOR: Steph Harmon steph@thebrag.com 02 9698 9645 ARTS & ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Dee Jefferson dee@thebrag.com 02 9690 2731 STAFF WRITER: Caitlin Welsh NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Chris Honnery, Andrew Yorke ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER: Tim Levy SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Daniel Boud,Katrina Clarke, Rasa Juskeviciute, Ashley Mar, Daniel Munns, Thomas Peachy, Prudence Upton, Sam Whiteside ADVERTISING: Ross Eldridge - 0422 659 425 / (02) 9690 0806 ross@thebrag.com ADVERTISING: Les White - 0405 581 125 / (02) 8394 9027 les@thebrag.com ADVERTISING: Meaghan Meredith - 0423 655 091 / (02) 8394 9168 meaghan@thebrag.com GIG & CLUB GUIDE CO-ORDINATOR: Conrad Richters - gigguide@thebrag.com (rock) clubguide@thebrag.com (dance, hip hop & parties) INTERNS: Verity Cox, Kendra Fox, Andrew Geeves REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Benjamin Cooper, Alasdair Duncan, Max Easton, Christie Eliezer, Murray Engleheart, Andrew Geeves, Chris Honnery, Nathan Jolly, Anna Kennedy, Sheridan Morley, Jenny Noyes, Hugh Robertson, Romi Scodellaro, Jonno Seidler, Rach Seneviratne, Roland K. Smith, Luke Telford, Rick Warner Please send mail NOT ACCOUNTS direct to this address 8a Marlborough Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010 ph - (02) 9552 6333 fax - (02) 9319 2227 EDITORIAL POLICY: The views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the publisher, editors or staff of The BRAG. ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE: Stephen Forde : accounts@furstmedia.com.au ph - (03) 9428 3600 fax - (03) 9428 3611 Furst Media, 3 Newton Street Richmond Victoria 3121 DEADLINES: Editorial: Wednesday 12pm (no extensions) Artwork, ad bookings: Thursday 12pm (no extensions). Ad cancellations: Tuesday 4pm Published by Cartrage P/L ACN 104026388 All content copyrighted to Cartrage 2003 DISTRIBUTION: Wanna get The Brag? Email distribution@ furstmedia.com.au or phone 03 9428 3600. PRINTED BY SPOTPRESS: www.spotpress.com.au 24 – 26 Lilian Fowler Place, Marrickville NSW 2204 Win a giveaway? Mail us a stamped and addressed envelope, and we’ll send your prize on over...
10 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
We are kind of a post-rock/folk band with pop sensibilities. The band is made of six members: Robyn, Damian, Kat, Liam, Valdis and myself. We have just released our debut EP Burn Bright, which we recorded at Airlock Studios in Brisbane with Yanto Browning and Sean Cook. We are pretty proud of it, and are happy to finally share it. I think we have a strong live show, too; it’s always fun, and people seem to be enjoying it. It’s all been pretty positive so far. We have such a small population in Australia – I can’t believe how many fricken bands there are. As a band, we don’t pay too much attention to what is going on in the ‘scene’ or whatever; we just do our thing and hope people like it. We’ve only been to Sydney a handful of times but each time have loved it. We’re looking forward to getting back there. What: Burn Bright EP is out on Dew Process With: Fabergettes, Valar Where: FBi Social @ King’s Cross Hotel When: Saturday June 23
Where Were You At Lunch, who see music as chaos, and life as chaos, and chaos as beauty. Just come with us to the Wormwoodcurated show at Red Rattler on Saturday June 16 to see what we mean – if music had edges, you’d cut yourself at this show. Support comes from Making, Nyguist and Broadcasting Transmitter (‘Hey, look, it’s Luke from The Laurels doing awesome pedal whooshes!’)
JONZING FOR PLUTO
ANNANDALE BIRTHDAY + AULD LANG SYNE
The Annandale’s 12th Birthday is coming up, and although the pub is hurtling towards renovations and paintjobs and probably transforming into some kind of super-futuristic uber mega pub, they are still the motherfucking Annandale – which is why they’re hosting a massive birthday celebration over two weekends in July. Bands announced so far are The Medics, Sticky Fingers, Underlights and Rapids (Friday July 6), The Daily Meds and The Last Kinection (July 7), The Mess Hall (July 13) and the massive ‘Auld Lang Syne’ festival, which is being held on Saturday July 14 – a venue-wide party that’ll kick off at the very-good-drinking-time of 3pm, with a first lineup announcement pulled straight from ‘90s pole-posters: Tumbleweed, Front End Loader, 78 Saab, Smudge and Raise The Crazy. First release tickets are $30 (+ bf) and go on sale Wednesday June 13.
MISSING COLLARBONES
When you dabble in hollow drum sounds, soulless synth and heartbroken vocals about missing someone and wanting to be close to said someone, you really have to make sure you hit the mark or you’ll be torn apart by the horrible machine that is the internet. Luckily for Collarbones, their new single ‘Missing’ avoids all that mess by being really, really good. Watch them play it and other tunes at FBi Social on July 5. Bon Chat, Bon Rat and Mr Maps are supporting too.
CHILDREN COLLIDE + DUNE RATS + BAD DREEMS
When you see Children Collide live it will remind you of Nirvana a lot (this is a good thing), but instead of getting all elitist and Kurtwoulda-hated-this-maaan about it, just enjoy the fact that they do this kinda pop/grunge/ rock thing better than a million American bands, plus they are young and good looking. They are playing at The Standard on August 17 as part of their Monument tour, and have just announced their supports: Brisbane’s Dune Rats (who are more punk than you) and Bad Dreems from Adelaide, who sound like all the best Flying Nun bits mashed into a better bit.
TEHACHAPI
“Would you like to know what the closest thing to a musical orgasm is?” asks the press release for Tehachapi and Planet Love Sound’s joint show, and before we can email back the correct
answer (the key change in Roxette’s ‘Fading Like A Flower’), we’re caught up reading about how both prog/psych-rock bands will be onstage at the same time, making epic post-rock (and stepping on each other leads) at FBi Social on Friday June 22 – and suddenly my answer doesn’t seem so correct anymore.
AND WHERE WERE YOU AT LUNCH?
If you are looking to get all experimental in your decisions, you can spare yourself a world of messy phonecalls and bad hairstyles and pirate-collars and morning-after pills and watch
The Black Keys
Pluto Jonze’s new single ‘See What The Sun Sees’ comes out in early July, but because we know which folder he saves his music into, we had a sneaky listen and holy balls – it’s a beautiful, waltzy psychedelic pop song which sounds like Sean Lennon and MGMT, and also what would have happened if Mercury Rev or The Flaming Lips had produced side two of Abbey Road. He launches it at GoodGod Small Club on July 21. Make sure you are there.
CARUS THOMPSON
Nine years ago, when tumblers were for drinking Fanta out of instead of re-posting photos of Kristen Stewart frowning, the WA-based but consistently-touring roots/folk troubadour Carus Thompson launched a live album – Acoustic At The Norfolk. It was so well-received that the songwriter/story-teller decided to unleash a sequel, Acoustic At The Norfolk Volume 2, and it’s a disc set which really should replace that old scratched triple j one that you still keep in the car. Buy a copy when he launches it on Saturday June 24 at Lizottes in Dee Why.
GEORGIA FAIR
Georgia Fair are touring with the cutefaced Lisa Mitchell as I type this, and after a run of shows in stuffy old churches, they will be yearning for something a bit more spiritual – which is why they are launching new single ‘Blind’ (which features Band Of Horses’ Tyler Ramsey on piano) at the Standard on July 6. Dirt Farmer and Jack Carty are the very appropriate support acts, on a night that’s gonna seem so Deep Southy and back porchy that you’ll have to keep checking you’re not standing outside and chewing tobacco.
BLACK KEYS II
The first Sydney show for The Black Keys has completely sold out, which would seem like a monumental achievement for all those people out there who think they formed this year after meeting on a Blues Traveller forum. The second Sydney show is on sale from Friday June 15, and it happens October 23 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre. It’s a while off yet, but we are quite sure there’s nothing better happening that night. Also, Royal Headache are supporting. Play ‘Down The Lane’. Play ‘Honeyjoy.’ That’s you, at this show, in a spring dress.
Mosman Alder by Lisa Businovski
I love lots of different music and there’s always something new that I’m excited about. Lately I have been listening to a lot of Talk Talk’s later work, Chet Baker and A Winged Victory For The Sullen. I have begun to really respect artists like that, who understand space and texture and are modest with their playing. Subtlety is a hard thing to understand, but it’s something I really appreciate now. But I still like to indulge in bands like The Mars Volta and Pink Floyd, who are loud and proud.
creative people live and have work spaces. Everyone there has helped us so much.
Enrolling now for July
A Diploma of Events from Sydney College of Event Management is your backstage pass to becoming part of the exciting events industry. From festivals to fashion to ďŹ reworks, you will obtain the relevant skills and connections to access all areas. w. collegeofeventmanagement.com.au
t . twitter.com/#!/studyeventmgt
f . facebook.com/SCOEM
8 0 P Y R M O N T S T, P Y R M O N T N S W 2 0 0 9 ;OL :[HY 7[` 3PTP[LK ()5 ;OPUR (IV\[ `V\Y JOVPJLZ *HSS .HTISPUN /LSW ^^^ NHTISPUNOLSW UZ^ NV] H\ ;OL :[HY WYHJ[PZLZ [OL YLZWVUZPISL ZLY]PJL VM HSJVOVS .\LZ[Z T\Z[ IL HNLK `LHYZ VY V]LY [V LU[LY [OL JHZPUV
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 11
rock music news
free stuff
welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly and Andrew Yorke
five things WITH
Bubsy Marou
PAT FROM ROYSTON VASIE forward to teaming up with her at GoodGod this weekend, after a night at MUM.
4.
The Music You Make Our style of music is always evolving. If you compare our earlier releases to our newer material you’ll notice some changes, but I think our true influences have started to shine through on our forthcoming debut album (especially those lesbian speed tones). The record has taken two years to create, but is now on the brink of release. All releases to date have been recorded with Finn Keene at Hothouse in Melbourne.
Music, Right Here, Right Now 5. I think the Aussie music scene is
Growing Up We all grew up listening to a mixture 1. of records, from rock’n’roll to ‘90s lesbian
Dandy Warhols and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Any band who writes songs that have a huge wall of sound are definitely cool.
speed garage. Leigh and Brad’s old man played in some cool bands, and my dad plays piano accordion (such a mad Italian!). I think Cam’s aunt played recorder, which is why he decided to pick up the guitar.
Your Crew Supporting and touring with bands like 3. Money For Rope, Vasco Era, Immigrant
Inspirations The Stones, Nirvana, The Vines, The 2. Velvet Underground, The Strokes, The
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
Union, Manchester Orchestra and Ben Kweller have led to many-an-awesome evening all over the country. After having Courtney Barnett help us out in the studio on our debut album recently, we’re looking
in a really good place. There are so many good bands to play with, like Courtney Barnett, Thieves, Deep Sea Arcade, Vasco Era and British India – all very inspiring, and lifting the bar for Aussie music. With: Monsieur Moon, Janita & The Jaguars, The Canyoneersmen, Cuervo and more Where: MUM @ The World Bar When: Friday June 15 More: Saturday June 16 @ GoodGod Small Club with Courtney Barnett
BUSBY MAROU
Like Simon & Garfunkel, Starsky & Hutch and Dolce & Gabbana, Rockhampton outfit Busby Marou prove some surnames were fated to be paired together. Their debut album Biding My Time recently took out an APRA for Blues and Roots Work of the Year, and they just unleashed their next killer single ‘I Still Don’t Believe’ – and to celebrate, Tom Busby and Jeremy Marou are taking their unique blend of folk, rock, country and blues on the road. To be in the running to win one of two double passes to their show at Oxford Art Factory on Friday June 22, tell us where in the world another city named Rockhampton can be found.
THE AFGHAN WHIGS
Couldn’t get Splendour in the Grass tickets this year? Cried into your shiraz about all the incredible acts you’ll be missing? Well fret no more, people; thanks to Secret Sounds you’ll have the chance to experience the crème de la crème of Splendour at your doorstep. One of them is the The Afghan Whigs, who’s debut Australian tour brings a sideshow to The Factory Theatre on July 26. It’s a hugely anticipated performance from the Cincinnati band – in fact, their first in 25 years – but albums like Congregation and Gentlemen left a longstanding mark. Wanna score a double pass? Tell us the name of the lead singer.
Melbourne-based record label that you should know about if supporting quality Australian music is your thing. Which it clearly is. Sunday July 1 will see Rice Is Nice partner with Pedestrian TV to present their roster, which also doubles as a list of the best bands ever: The Laurels, Spod, Donny Benét, Seekae DJs, Shady Lane, Richard In Your Mind, Straight Arrows and a surprise mystery new signing that, if the rest of the roster is anything to go by, will be worth hanging out for. Pre-sale $10 tickets are available now through riceisnice.net Van She
VAN SHE ARE BACK!
Van She wrote a pretty perfect pop single in ‘Kelly’ a few years back, which we can only imagine made the last few years a nervous mess of howdo-we-top-it-ness. But they’d needn’t have fretted and freaked out and built sandpits in their living rooms so they can feel the beach, because their new single (and title track from the sophomore record) ‘Idea Of Happiness’ sees them step up in every way. The album comes out through Modular on July 6, they launch it on July 14 at The Metro, and tickets are on sale now. Set Sail Yunyu
GATHERER AT BLINK
The Getaway Plan demanded that Gatherer tour with them late last year, then demanded they come back and tour with them again in March. Well, now this proggish punkish rock troupe are busting out alone and playing Club Blink this Friday June 15 to launch their awesome twoyears-in-the-making debut album, So Be It – buy the boys a beer.
LOON LAKE
RICE IS REALLY NICE
As well as being both a truism and a Mclusky song, Rice Is Nice is the name of a Sydney/
As The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show made clear, fracturing fairy tales can be a lot of fun – the only thing better than a familiar story is a familiar story with a twist. Ready yourself for surprise, then, because when former triple j Unearthed winner Yunyu brings her show Twisted Tales to Carriageworks on Saturday June 30, the Pied Piper will be a cult leader, the Little Matchgirl will have a drug habit and Dorothy will be lost in space rather than Kansas. Collaborating with artist and New York Times best-seller listed writer Queenie Chan, designer Imogen Ross, a sixpiece band and a live VJ, Yunyu will present a media-rich show that fuses music with cutting edge technology – and sounds pretty damn awesome.
SET SAIL
The ever-energetic Set Sail have a new album, and in order to facilitate endlessly confusing conversations, they have named it Hey! Hey!. The band will be partying about it on Saturday June 30 at Oxford Art Factory, and considering these guys are known for various public stunts – they played on a Virgin flight, and got arrested in Madrid for busking – anything could happen. Which is the exact environment we like when a band launches a record.
THE CAIROS
As the biggest city in the Arab world, Egyptian capital Cairo is renowned for the magnificence of its ancient architecture, its location near the Nile Delta, and its palm trees being as plentiful as its traffic. As one of the hottest indie-pop bands to recently rise to prominence, Brisbane boys The Cairos are renowned for the volume of their hair, the fullness of their sound, and for supporting acts like Bluejuice, Mutemath and Deep Sea Arcade. With the recent release of their Colours Like Features EP, The Cairos will be touring the East Coast of Australia in July with The Preachers, and stopping in at GoodGod Small Club on Saturday July 7.
CANCER BATS
Hardcore punk boys Cancer Bats give Vienna’s Pungent Stench, Massachusetts’ Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Melbourne’s Blood Duster and (perennial favourite) Newcastle’s Grannyfist a real run for their money in the ‘darkly humourous band name, criminal offence or hideous cause of death?’ game. The Ontarian four-piece will be rocking and shocking the pants off Sydneysiders at The Metro Theatre on Sunday July 15 as part of a tour that coincides with their new album Dead Set On Living. “Australia is one of our favourite continents to RAGE! We can’t wait to come back and go fuckin’ nuts,” says frontman Liam Cormier – so best purchase a ticket today.
“I may not always love you. But long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it. I’ll make you so sure about it” - THE BEACH BOYS 12 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
Yunyu photo by Marcus Walters
Loon Lake’s Unearthed bio shows how far the Melbourne indie pop band have come over the past year. Here it is, in glorious lowercase: “we are loon lake. the band consists of 3 brothers and two mates. we play music because we find it fun. we have just recorded our demo.” Perfect. Come to their August 24 show at GoodGod Small Club – it’s a while off, yet, but tickets will sell fast so grab one at oztix.com.au. Their new single ‘Cherry Lips’ is ace.
YUNYU’S TWISTED TALES
NIQUE
SYDNEY
OPENING
JUNE
2012
|
483
CROWN
ST
SURRY
HILLS
|
WWW.NIQUE.COM.AU
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 13
The Music Network
themusicnetwork.com
Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer
THINGS WE HEAR
* Splendour In The Grass is offering VIP gold passes this year. For $700 you get express entry, and access over the three days to the Gold Bar, side-of-stage viewing and VIP toilets, with the chance to mingle with artists. Meantime, Tweed Heads’ police say they will oppose Splendour’s application to serve full-strength alcohol and shots, and are pushing for only midstrength booze. We expect US band Howler and Gold Coast's Bleeding Knees Club to bond over the fact they both have songs out titled ‘Beach Sluts’. Howler
Bleeding Knees Club
SHOCK LAUNCHES HEAVY LABEL
Shock Records has set up Halfcut Records, for punk, hardcore and heavy acts. It already has three signings: UK’s Gallows have a new album on the way; Sydney’s Heroes For Hire, currently playing Japan and China before their Aussie tour this month, have their third album (produced by Steve Klein of New Found Glory) due in September; and metal band While She Sleeps from Sheffield, UK, will have This Is The Six out on August 3, and will tour here for the first time with House vs. Hurricane. Halfcut Records is the brainchild of Stu Harvey (senior international label manager), who Shock’s GM of Music Leigh Gruppetta says “is the best in his field, bar none, so we couldn’t be more excited about the long-term future of Halfcut for the business.” He adds, “The punk and heavy music genres are certainly an area we have excelled [in] of late, so we believe the time is right to give these bands their own home.”
UMPG SIGNS ASTON SHUFFLE
Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) signed Canberra/Sydney electro duo The The Aston Shuffle
* Fat As Butter in Newcastle will announce its full lineup on Thursday June 19. Meanwhile, Parklife announces its lineup on Tuesday June 19 on triple j’s breakfast show from 8am (speculation has Modestep, Labrinth and Passion Pit on the bill). *Johnny Depp joined The Black Keys at the MTV Movie Awards to play guitar on ‘Gold On The Ceiling’. Host Russell Brand thanked Kim Kardashian and her 72-day marriage for making his one-year nuptials to Katy Perry look “long-lived”. * Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins will play Iggy Pop in the movie CBGB, about the famous New York punk club. Meantime Wu-Tang Clan will play themselves in the Ol’ Dirty Bastard biopic Dirty White Boy – but GZA will not be appearing in it. * Guns N’Roses banned fans from wearing Slash T-shirts at their UK gigs. * One Direction will next year film a 3D movie that could make them £10 million each. It’s not decided if it will be a Monkees-type sitcom or a doco with concert footage. (Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never made £60 million at the box office). The band’s Louis Tomlinson has forked out £2.5 million on a house in North London, with four living areas and a spa area for buddies when he throws parties, and with five bathrooms so they have plenty of places to puke in. * Fresh from Metallica planning to stage their own Orion Music Festival, Slipknot have their own festival, Knotfest, set for August. Aside from Deftones, Lamb of God, Dethklok, Serj Tankian, The Urge and Cannibal Corpse, it’ll have circus tops, pillars of fire, burlesque performers and firebreathers. * Gotye has stayed at #1 on the US charts for the eighth week, while Rihanna just landed her 22nd Top 10 hit in America. * Melbourne’s Oh Mercy signed a US deal with new indie label Bad Cop Bad Cop, while Sydney-based Stop Start/EMI have signed Brisbane’s Millions. * LA’s The Melvins are attempting to break a Guinness World Record for the fastest tour of the USA. Starting in Alaska on September 5, they will attempt to perform in all 50 states in 51 days, finishing on October 25 in Honolulu.
Aston Shuffle to a worldwide publishing agreement. “Mikah and Vance are clever, adventurous and intuitive songwriters, and we look forward to opening up a world of opportunity for their tunes,” said Heath Johns, Sydney-based director of A&R at UMPG Australia. The Astons put out their breakthrough single ‘Won’t Get Lost’ last year, while their debut album Seventeen Past Midnight peaked at #1 on the iTunes Electronic Chart. They signed a record deal with EMI this March.
HIGH RATINGS FOR QUEEN’S JUBILEE
The five-and-a-half hour telecast of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Concert scored high ratings in Australia and Britain. An average of 1.12 million Australian metro viewers tuned in to the Nine Network to see Paul McCartney, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Kylie Minogue, Grace Jones, Gurrumul and will. i. am, among others. It was the sixth highest-rating program of the night, according to OzTam. In Britain, the BBC1 telecast drew an average of 14.7 million viewers and 17 million at its peak, making it the highest rating program of the year in Britain.
MINAJ DENIES DANCER INVOLVED IN TOKYO DEATH
Nicki Minaj angrily denied reports that one of her dancers was involved in the May 24 death of a fan in Tokyo. Nicola Furlong, a 21-year-old exchange student from Ireland, attended Minaj’s show with a friend. Afterwards, they palled up with two American men, aged 23 and 19, and returned to their hotel room. In the early hours, an ambulance was called to attend to Furlong, who was unconscious. An autopsy found she may have been strangled. Both men were detained, not over her death, but over allegations that her companion was groped in a taxi on the way to the hotel. US media identified one man as Minaj dancer James Blackston. She tweeted, “We do not know the man in custody. My dancers had nothing to do w/ this tragedy. No one in my entourage was questioned or arrested.”
ART OF MUSIC RAISES $270K FOR CHARITY
The Jenny Morris-organised Art Of Music charity dinner and auction (June 2 at the Art Gallery of NSW) raised $270,000 for NordoffRobbins Music Therapy. There was a set from Megan Washington, Mental As Anything were joined on drums by Neil Finn, and Finn then joined Mark Callaghan, Pete O’Doherty and Rai Thistlethwayte for a run-through of GANGgajang’s ‘This Is Australia’. Attendees included Iva Davies, Amanda Brown (The Go Betweens), Jonathan Zwartz, Bryan Brown, George Gregan, Josh Pyke and Les Gock, as well as Lucy Culliton, Nicholas Harding, Euan Macleod, Guy Maestri, James Powditch, Ben Quilty, Luke Sciberras, Alexander Seton, Peter Sharp and Amanda Marburg. The highest selling artwork on the night, Ben Quilty’s painting of The Largs Pier Hotel, sold for $40,000.
URTHBOY, PYKE, JOIN ALBERTS
Hip hopper Urthboy (aka Tim Levinson) and Josh Pyke have assigned their publishing to Alberts. Urthboy’s deal also covers his three solo albums and the five released by The Herd, whom he co-founded. Urthboy just released a new single ‘Naïve Bravado’ featuring Daniel Merriweather, with an album out in October through Elefant Traks – which he co-founded in 1998. Alberts’ global deal with Pyke is for all future work; he recently attended the Alberts Writing Camp, collaborating with Megan Washington and other Australian songwriters.
NOMINATIONS OPEN FOR THE DEADLYS
Nominations are open for the indigenous Deadly Awards, held September 25 at the Sydney Opera House. Now in their 18th year, the Deadlys cover music, sport, entertainment and community achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people through 26 categories. Nominations close on June 30, with finalists announced on July 23. A new category will be added this year: the Marcia Langton Award for Lifetime Achievement in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Leadership. Online nominations can be found at www.vibe.com.au
MICROSOFT: ZUNE BURIED, HERE COMES XBOX MUSIC
Mirosoft has buried Zune in favour of a new music service, Xbox Music. Xbox Music has 30 million tracks and is compatible across a range of devices including PCs, Windows 8 smartphones, and tablets. Most likely a streaming service, it has discovery and sharing features, as well as Smart DJ from Zune. Last week, Microsoft announced that Xbox 360 is now the world’s top selling gaming console, beating out the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii. This year Australia will be one of 12 additional countries to get Xbox’s voice search, which was launched last year.
REDBACK MUSIC FEELS THE BYTE
Wollongong’s Redback Music is the latest indie store to be hit by competition from downloads. After 20 years, it will close on July 13. Set up by John Jenkins in 1988, it became a daily mecca for fans seeking new music not played on radio. Robyn and Graham Letham bought the shop in 2001.
2DAY FIGHTS SANDILANDS LICENCE CONDITION
2Day FM is fighting a second licence condition imposed on Kyle Sandilands by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) on May 16. It has filed an application for review with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. In the public backlash that followed Sandilands calling a journalist 14 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
a “fat slag” and a “piece of shit” on-air last November, ACMA prohibited the entire station from broadcasting content that “offends generally accepted standards of decency … having regard to the demographic characteristics of the relevant program.” This of course could mean anything, and 2DAY could lose its licence if it crosses the line. ACMA will contest the radio station’s appeal. Meantime Kyle topped Encore magazine’s list of most disliked celebs.
AVOCA DRIVE
Avoca Drive is a new label partnership from Andrew Jackson (Milton Archer management) and Claire Collins (Bossy Music). First release The Face EP, by new UK production duo Disclosure, is at #4 on iTunes’ electronic chart.
DOWN THE HIGHWAY
Down The Highway (downthehighway.com.au) is a logistics and touring services company set up to help artist managers, promoters and booking agents. They’ll do everything from booking flights and accommodation to renting vans to organising catering, crew and equipment. It has been set up by Sophie Kirov, who worked for festival companies and more recently with The Cat Empire team. She’s at sophie@downthehighway.com.au
BEATLES: BIGGEST SELLING SINGLES ACT IN UK
The Beatles are the biggest selling singles act in the UK since charts began in 1952, reports The Official Charts Company. They’ve had 17 #1 singles. At #2 is Elvis Presley, followed by Cliff Richard, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Queen, Abba, David Bowie, Rihanna, Paul McCartney, Kylie Minogue, Rolling Stones and Rod Stewart – with Take That at #15.
Lifelines Ill: Melbourne singer-songwriter Darryl Cotton (Zoot in the ‘60s, currently playing with Cotton, Keays and Morris), 62, has liver cancer. Ill: Sheryl Crow, who battled cancer years back, has a benign brain tumour. Ill: Foreigner keyboardist Michael Bluestein has bowed out of their upcoming US tour, after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Recovered: Jon Stevens of Noiseworks is out of hospital. He checked himself in when he lost feeling in one arm, and discovered it was pneumonia. In Court: U2 bassist Adam Clayton’s ex-personal assistant Carol Hawkins pleaded not guilty to nicking £300,000 from his bank accounts over four years. Arrested: A French model, over the theft of $200,000 worth of jewellery from Axl Rose during an after-party following the Gunners’ Paris show. Died: Melbourne bluegrass fiddle player Justin Price-Rees, 37. A three time National Fiddle Champion in Tamworth, he won his first title as a 15-year-old. He went on to play with Hard Drive, Murphy’s Law, Sundowner, Southern Exposure, Rough Cut and RCB. From 2002–2008, he moved to America and played in the band Dread Clampitt before returning home for treatment for mental illness. Died: Three-time Grammy winner and US engineer George Marino, lung cancer. He mastered classics such as Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, John & Yoko’s Double Fantasy and Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction. Died: Herb Reed, 83, founder of 1950s US vocal group The Platters (‘The Great Pretender’, ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes’, ‘My Prayer’, ‘Only You’).
Register at THEHIFI.COM.AU OR Follow Us on Facebook or Twitter to
Win VIP Tickets to
TIX + INFO 1300 THE HIFI
THEHIFI.COM.AU
Every Gig for aYear
*
Get VIP access to every show – even sold out ones – for FREE!
JUST ANNOUNCED
Passenger Fri 17 August
Comp closes: 15 June, 2012
COMING UP
Buried In Verona School Of Seven Hardcore 2012 Sun 17 June Sat 7 July 18 + Bells
Hardcore 2012
Karnivool
Metric
Fri 22 June
Thu 12 July
SOLD OUT!
Karnivool
Fri 13 July 2ND SHOW ADDED!
House Vs Hurricane
Nasum
Wheatus
Russian Circles
Sat 28 July
Fri 21 Sep
Sat 18 August
Say Anything Sat 14 July
Thu 26 July
w/ The Getaway Plan
Earth
Thu 13 Sep
w/ Psycroptic
Sat 6 Oct
Sun 8 July All AGES
Everclear Fri 12 Oct
Hanson
Sat 15 Sep
SOLD OUT!
Leb I Sol Sat 3 Nov
ENTERTAINMENT QUARTER, BUILDING 220, 122 LANG RD, MOORE PARK, SYDNEY
Love Police welcome
with special guests Royal Headache
Mon 22 OCT - SYD ENT CENT UT!
O SOLD
NEW SHOW ADDED! ON SALE FRIDAY!
www.lovepolice.com.au | Tickets: www.ticketmaster.com.au | www.theblackkeys.com.au
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 15
JONATHAN BOULET J
onathan Boulet is not an overbearing fellow. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine chatting with a humbler, less demonstrative chap, seeming at once completely grounded in the present while appearing uncomfortable with his rising notoriety as the Australian Gen-Y popwizard par excellence. Maybe the Sydneysider has simply managed to channel all of his angst into his music: his superb second album, the wonderfully inelegantly titled We Keep The Beat, Found The Sound, See The Need, Start The Heart, is a darkly ecstatic, relentlessly danceable headtrip – two parts pop-rocks, to one part pneumatic drill. Enjoying a break in the storm that his life has become, Boulet speaks with the quiet confidence of a man who has achieved exactly the success he’s striven for, and earned satisfaction through good work done well – or, as he puts it, “making a record that you’re completely proud of.” While his 2009 self-titled debut generated widespread popular and critical adulation, Boulet is quick to downplay its many merits: “It wasn’t THAT successful,” he chuckles. “It kind of did what it had to do.” But pride unavoidably creeps back into his voice when talking of We Keep The Beat...: “The first one ... was just a collection of songs. This time around it’s more intentionally an album from start to finish, so I’m very happy with it.” And with good reason. Anyone who heard first single (and opener) ‘You’re A Animal’ when it was released early last year will have an inkling of what to expect: blistering guitar-blasts punctuate the overwhelming concordance of massed vocal chanting, layered over unrelentingly frenetic
drums. ‘I will sing this song’ comes the cry, with the clear-eyed determination of its creator to make something soaring, purposeful and true hanging over the eleven tracks that follow. Second single ‘This Is A Song Called Ragged’ follows suit, its manic marimba riff quickly subsumed within a dense, gleefully euphoric sound that, like the stacked clauses of the album’s title, seems to amount to much more than the sum of its parts. In fact, anything might be hidden amidst the pounding, feverish textures explored on We Keep The Beat..., as Boulet explains: “There’s a part on ‘You’re A Animal’ where I got my mum to do a subliminal message. I recorded her saying something, and we just stuck it in the track. It pokes its head out a little bit – if you know it’s there, you can tell, but if you don’t it just sounds like noise.” And are we allowed to know what she says? “No way.” Such flourishes emerge readily, with uplifting buoyancy giving way as quickly to menacing undertones. Indeed, part of the appeal is the ambiguity that Boulet has injected into the project, whether it be through something as innocuous as the nigglingly incorrect grammar of the aforementioned single, or naming one of the record’s most musically uplifting tracks ‘Keep Away You Feral Son Of A Bitch’ – not to mention the downright eerieness of the cover art, its subject wearing the expression of blank fatalism most often seen on B-movie actors immediately prior to their dismemberment. But perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised; this all comes from a man whose video for the ‘summer anthem’ ‘A Community Service Announcement’ depicted a group of faceless youths turning on one of their own.
“Everyone was in the garage, there’s only one set of headphones, the lyrics scrawled on the whiteboard and they could hardly read it... It was just really fun.”
Xxxx
Keep The Beat By Oliver Downes For Boulet, though, the project remains about the music. “I write a lot, I record a lot – it all kind of comes from the recording side. A lot of the time I’m just trying to experiment with recording and get better at that. I have to write something to record it, and vice versa... I feel like it’s all just the same thing. Whether I’m better or worse at one or the other, it all just fits together and forms this ugly little baby. It’ll always start different, with a drum beat [one day], and maybe the next day it’ll start with a loop on a pedal or a guitar, or sometimes you’re in the shower and think of a melody and go downstairs and start writing around that. It’s always changing. I think it’s a lot better to do it that way, ‘cause if you just do it the same way it’ll end up all sounding exactly the same.” Though comparisons with artists as diverse as Sleigh Bells (Boulet shares an abiding interest in hardcore with guitarist Derek Miller) or Merril Garbus’ Tune-Yards aren’t unreasonable, with all three placing percussive complexity and distinctive vocals in the foreground, Boulet is hesitant to point towards any particular influences. “I listen to a lot of heavy music,” he says, “[but] I just enjoy bands that are trying to sound different. Whether that’s atmospheric or poppy or whatever genre, as long as it’s someone trying to be different then I’m into it... There’s a band in Indonesia called Zoo, they’re just really drummy and weird as hell. I’d really like to play with them.” Playing with the right people is a first order priority for Boulet, who’s as happy to hang out on the drumkit with Sydney alt-popsters Parades as he is playing with power violence outfit Snakeface. It’s telling that the only aspect of We Keep The Beat... that’s not entirely delivered by Boulet himself is the cacaphonic vocals, with bandmates and friends invited into the studio achieve the right effect. “That was the only part of the last record that was lacking a lot: it didn’t have genuine vocals, like real group vocals,” he explains. “[With We Keep The Beat...], it was crazy – everyone was in the
garage, there’s only one set of headphones, so I had to crank it up so they could hear where the cue is, the lyrics scrawled on the whiteboard in front of them and they could hardly read it. We’d go through a take and someone would get the hiccups and everyone would just laugh at them... It was just really fun.” As for how to translate this to the stage, the jury’s still out. “We’ll just have to make do, I guess. We’ve got four of us on stage with mics; we just change it to a two-guitars, twodrums kind of set-up. We rely a lot on our sound guy [Damian Weatherley]... he’s out of control,” Boulet says. “He’s probably the best in Melbourne and Sydney – in Australia, there you go! He’s like the sixth member of the band; without him, our shows would sound shithouse. We don’t want anyone to steal him from us, so note that he’s taken.” ...Don’t be surprised if you see a fella with ‘belongs to JB’ branded on his forehead at the next show. In between gearing up to tour the record around Australia, Boulet plans to spend any quiet moments in the coming months working on his Japanese and German. “Hopefully we’ll get over to Europe and the UK, try to do that thing,” he says, “see if they like us, or if they extradite us... I’ve gotta put on some weight so I can stay warm!” As for how he’d like listeners to feel by the time they reach the eye-of-the-hurricane stillness of album closer ‘Cent Voix’, Boulet doesn’t seem to mind: “I wanted the album to be relentless from start to finish, just to keep pushing and not letting up,” he says. “If [people] listen to it, I’m happy – but either way it doesn’t really matter. It’s not neccesary. I’m happy with what I’ve made.” What: We Keep The Beat, Found The Sound, See The Need, Start The Heart is out now through Modular Where: The Metro Theatre When: Saturday June 30
“Fell in love years ago with an innocent girl from the Spanish and Indian home, home of the heroes and villains” - THE BEACH BOYS 16 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
BEACH ROAD FRIDAYS | FREE
THE F REQUE NCY L AB PRE SE NT S
15/06/12
ELLIOT & FRIENDS.
e to
Chanc
+ special guests
22/06/12
CONICS.
PRIZE DRAW 10PM, 28 JUNE @ ROCK LILY
STAR.COM.AU/ROCKLILY 80 PYRMONT STREET | 1800 700 700 ;LYTZ HUK *VUKP[PVUZ HWWS` ZLL Z[HY JVT H\ MVY KL[HPSZ (\[OVYPZLK \UKLY 5:> 7LYTP[ 5V 3;7: ;OPUR (IV\[ `V\Y JOVPJLZ *HSS .HTISPUN /LSW ^^^ NHTISPUNOLSW UZ^ NV] H\ ;OL :[HY WYHJ[PZLZ [OL YLZWVUZPISL ZLY]PJL VM HSJVOVS .\LZ[Z T\Z[ IL HNLK `LHYZ VY V]LY [V LU[LY [OL JHZPUV HUK 9VJR SPS`
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 17
Julia Stone Taking Hold And Letting Go By Alasdair Duncan least I did… My grandparents married really young, and I had this idea in my head that love would look the same way for me. It took time to realise that you can’t control things like love, you can’t just put it in a frame and put it on the wall – it doesn’t feel the way you think it’s going to feel. I guess that was the feeling that inspired a lot of this album; the trials and tribulations of growing up and falling in love with different people and developing different ideas about love, whether it’s a romantic love, a love between families or a love between friends. It’s an idea that really preoccupies me.” Stone finds many of these songs difficult to perform – though not for the reason you might expect. She’s at peace with the emotional content, but the arrangements on By The Horns are bigger than any she’s worked with before, and have pushed her voice in all new ways. “’It’s All Okay’ is one of the first songs I’ve written with such a strong drumbeat,” she says. “I’m quite a soft singer and I’ve never had to struggle to hear my voice before, but that song has such a strong drumbeat on the chorus, such a strong piano part, that suddenly I’m faced with that challenge. On this tour, that’s been one of the songs where I’ve really had to tell myself, ‘Focus, Julia!’ As that song goes on, I do start to feel the emotion of it, particularly in the choruses. I do sometimes come offstage feeling a little twisted after singing lyrics like that.”
W
hen it comes to love, your teens are in a whole different country to your twenties. Your perceptions shift, old ideas fall by the wayside and your heart finds ways to fix itself after being broken for the first time. These ideas have been on Julia Stone’s mind lately, and her shifting perception of love colours many of the songs on her new solo album, By The Horns.
The catalyst for the songs was Stone’s breakup with her long-term partner, drummer Mitch Connelly, and her attempts to come to terms with the feelings that followed. “A lot of the songs on this record come from the belief in my heart, from being a 16-year-old girl to a
24-year-old woman, that this was the person I was going to marry and settle down and have a family with,” she tells me. “I had all those ideas about how the relationship would play out, and it was tough letting it go, especially since Mitch and I had grown up together and been friends for so long.” These emotional bruises show on songs like ‘It’s All Okay’ and ‘Let’s Forget...’, written as Stone tried to make sense of it all. “When that relationship ended, there was a really weird period of time touring without him and getting used to single life, which was a whole new thing,” she says. “You make plans and you think that love looks a certain way, or at
our first big regional tour of Australia, and we got to play lots of places like Bunbury and Townsville, so we were seeing all these amazing landscapes on the drive.
In the past, Stone has talked about how different instruments inspire her songs – she might pick up an unfamiliar guitar and, when playing around with it, suddenly find the roots of an all-new song taking hold. She continues to find inspiration this way, the title track of the new album being a perfect example: on her last Australian tour with brother Angus, one of the players in their backing band brought a mandolin on the road. Stone’s interest was immediately aroused – she’d never written songs with one before. “The nature of the mandolin, the size of it, makes it very easy to travel with, so we’d always have it in the car with us while we were travelling between shows,” she says. “We were all really excited to have this new instrument to play with while we were driving around the country – it was
FRIENDS
“It took time to realise that you can’t control love, you can’t just put it in a frame and put it on the wall. That was the feeling that inspired a lot of this album.”
“I’d just been through this crazy love affair, I had this fresh experience of By The Horns happening, and then I had the mandolin. It’s a combination of things like that that make a song happen,” she continues. “The voicing of the mandolin is different from the guitar. I learned a couple of chords, a couple of ways to make sounds, and then I found my way around the mandolin in the boiling hot back garden of a Bunbury motel. I was sitting out there feeling sorry for myself thinking ‘It’s all so much!’ and plucking away. The chords I was hearing were ones I’d never heard on a normal guitar. I can play them on guitar now, but that mandolin really gave me the feeling of By The Horns. Even now, when I do acoustic sessions for online stuff or whatever, I always bring a mandolin with me to play By The Horns. I feel like it always brings the sound of that song.” What: By The Horns is out now With: Jack White, Bloc Party, Miike Snow, At The Drive-In, Smashing Pumpkins, Django Django, Bad Of Skulls and loads more Where: Splendour In The Grass @ Belongil Fields, Byron Bay When: Friday July 27 – Sunday July 29
MAXIMO PARK
MANIFEST! TOURING FOR SPLENDOUR. THU JULY 26 - THE STANDARD The long awaited debut album features the singles “I’m His Girl”, “Friend Crush” and “Mind Control.
THE NATIONAL HE ALTH FEATURES THE SINGLE “HIPS AND LIPS” A superb return to form. Concise, instantly addictive pop songs that head straight for the hips even as they connect with the head.
COMING SOON THE CAST OF CHEERS FAMILY
MAN WITHOUT COUNTRY
FOE
GLEN HANSARD
RHY THM & REPOSE
LAWRENCE ARABIA
THE SPARROW Touring in July
Xxxxx
18 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
Xavier Rudd Nature Guy By Bella Arnott-Hoare
F
or lack of a more eloquent term, I’ve accidentally just called Xavier Rudd ‘Nature Guy’ – but luckily he’s amused, not offended. “’Nature Guy’, huh?” he says, stifling a laugh-snort. “I feel like a superhero. I need a cape or a theme song. That’d be pretty cool. I could eat bananas that’d give me special powers...”
I’d used the label in an attempt to highlight Rudd’s robust connection to the natural world; the longtime vegetarian and activist is about to release his seventh album Spirit Bird, inspired in part by his fondness for the scenic Kimberley region of W.A. Over a career that spans close to twelve years, the multiinstrumentalist has produced what he thinks is his most self-reflective album to date; he turned his gaze inward to produce a more musically introspective collection. The story of the album and its eponymous lead track will no doubt become part of the musician’s mythology; it’s a story he’ll retell many times during this tour, but one which frames his new album as markedly spiritual. The song ‘Spirit Bird’, he says, was penned after driving along a track in the Kimberley: “I got out of the car and there was a big mob of red-tailed cockatoos behind me. We’d been in this sacred country, and usually these birds are pretty flighty, but this one bird just looked down at me and locked eyes with me for I don’t know how long. She just spoke. She was creaking and groaning, and talking to me. Didn’t take her eyes off mine. And I started to have all these visions running through my mind really fast. It was like memories, but they weren’t my memories – they were visions of times and places and things that I hadn’t seen before. I felt still.”
Because of the pace of his success, including ARIA awards and other industry accolades, Rudd says he’s never had much time to focus on his journey. “All this stuff has happened, good and bad, and where does that leave me? This album’s a bit like that too. It’s personal. [The song] ‘Full Circle’ probably talks about that, energetically anyway. That long journey back to [where you started]. I definitely look older, feel older, but what’s going on inside?” He’s no doubt been taught a number of hardearned lessons through his time in the spotlight, but the most valuable, he says, is about our own nature: “I’m a pretty open person. I’m from a small town. Getting thrown into that world whilst having kids and everything, trying to carry that as well, I’ve just learned a lot about human behaviour.” What: Spirit Bird is out now on Salt X, through Universal Where: Enmore Theatre When: Saturday September 8
“I just started playing that song, and it poured out of me. I wrote down what I’d sung, and I was in tears at the end. I didn’t even really understand a lot of it.” That night he wrote out the lyrics to the first half of the song in the sand, and confined the ditty to the back of his memory. It wasn’t until a few years later in Canada that Rudd aired the tune again, sitting by a fire late at night. “I just started playing that song and it poured out of me again, this whole back-end which was different. It had more of a frustrated energy. So I wrote down what I’d sung and I was in tears at the end. I didn’t even really understand a lot of it.” The next morning, Rudd realised he had been inspired to write the song around the same time that police in Western Australia had moved in to claim the land at James Price Point in the Kimberley. Call it coincidence or some sort of wacky mysticism, but Rudd holds out that the Spirit Bird written about in the song is a “messenger from Kimberley Country that’s found its way through me.”
Xavier Rudd photo by James Looker
Though a funereal hush descends on us after he relates the intense experience and his piercing blue eyes search the room, Xavier Rudd is quick to snap back to familiar, jovial territory. Chatting about the album as a whole, he says it’s a result of his life’s extremities. “[My life is] always full-bore, whether it’s good or whether it’s bad. I guess the big lesson for me lately is balance.” Indeed, his arrival into the music industry was greeted on the same evening with another sort of arrival. “I was 21 when I had my first kid, and I played the Evelyn Hotel the night that he was born. I had my first sound check and went to the hospital, then went back to play the show that night.” After that show, the boy who worked at a golf course during the day and wrote his songs on a ride-on mower had a lot of attention come to him quite suddenly. He was able to become a full-time musician, and began touring Canada and the States. “I first started playing shows overseas in Canada in 2000. It was pretty fast, in that everywhere I went people appreciated [the music] and then [more] people would come. But it was still an organic, independent process; I was selling out rooms in the States and I didn’t even have a record out. It was people taping my shows and passing them around on the internet.” Canada, in fact, is another spiritual home for the musician. “I’ve got two kids that are half Canadian – their mum’s from Vancouver Island, and that was the initial connection. My current partner is Canadian too – I don’t know how this keeps happening,” he laughs. BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 19
Witch Hats Post-Pleasure Syndrome By Michael Hartt
M
elbourne quartet Witch Hats released their second album, Pleasure Syndrome, last October to glowing reviews; indeed, their mix of post-punk and noise-rock has enjoyed consistent critical success since they released their debut EP, Wound Of A Little Horse, back in 2006. But the favour they’ve found with reviewers has done little to attract attention from a wider audience. Singer-guitarist Kris Buscombe says that once this latest album came out, things seemed to quickly come to a grinding halt. “In the past when we’ve put out releases, it’s kind of pushed us along for a bit longer, in that we’d be getting offered more shows, doing more touring and that sort of thing. It’s just gone a bit quiet for us at the moment,” he says. “It usually doesn’t happen after we’ve put something out but for whatever reason, it has this time. “I guess I can understand that the type of music we make is a bit more marginal, so it’s just what you’d expect the case to be,” he continues. “We were just a bit disappointed with the longevity of Pleasure Syndrome and we’ve had lots of problems with the label that put it out. It feels like the record is dead, so I’m hoping to get another one out as soon as possible and move forward that way.” He adds: “I don’t want to sound too whingey about it; it’s more like, ‘Oh well, let’s just try again, put another record out and try and get some momentum’.” In spite of some of the hassles surrounding it, Buscombe is satisfied with Pleasure Syndrome as a piece of work. “I haven’t really listened to it in a long time. I started to get sick of playing the songs, as I always do; I don’t tend to maintain enthusiasm for songs that we’ve had for long periods of time. [But] I was happy with the album once we’d recorded it and I still think it’s pretty good now,” he says. The lack of recent activity has given all the members of the band an opportunity to concentrate on their other musical pursuits. Buscombe’s bass player and brother, Ash, recently returned from a tour of the US as part of Pets With Pets, and drummer Matt Cox plays drums for a number of other acts, including Pikelet. Buscombe believes that while having members involved in other projects can be beneficial for everyone, it can also be a hindrance. “Sometimes I feel it’s a little frustrating trying to tee everyone up when they’re all doing other things, but at the same time I go through phases of not really wanting to play live for whatever reason,” he says. “I just get a bit sick of it sometimes, and I’m quite happy just focusing on trying to write songs by myself and work up to periods of activity.”
THU 21 June, Brisbane Black Bear Lodge
WIIW TOUR (feat. full band) S U P P O R T ED BY
K ANGAROO SKU LL FO RC ES / D C M / H T R K D JS J U GG ER NAU T D JS
T I C K E TS A N D W I I W 7 ” AVA I L A B L E:
FRI 22 June, Sydney Goodgod Small Club
FRI 22 June Sydney Goodgod Small Club
FRI 29 June, Melbourne Phoenix Public House
“We were a bit disappointed with the longevity of Pleasure Syndrome. I don’t want to sound too whingey about it; it’s more like, ‘Oh well, let’s try again, put another record out.’” Having only just begun work on it, the next record’s still very much in its embryonic stage, but Buscombe says the tracks so far span a wide terrain of music. “One of them’s really poppy; it almost sounds like a rough Beach Boys song. In lots of ways it’s quite melodic. Another one’s probably more reflective of what’s on the first record; it’s a bit more of a strummy rock song,” he says. “It’s quite early so I’m not really able to describe the direction we’re heading in, but I’m just trying as hard as I can to come up with songs, because I’m keen to do another record.” Witch Hats are making their second appearance in Sydney since the release of Pleasure Syndrome, as the headlining band for the Eight Miles High event at GoodGod Small Club. Starting in 2011 as a mini-festival at The Zoo in Brisbane, Eight Miles High has spread in its second year to include events in Sydney and Melbourne, with the lineup encompassing many branches of the ever-broadening garage and psychedelic tree. Headlining an interstate show while not appearing at the event in their hometown seems a little odd, but Buscombe explains that it was a personal decision. “Originally we were going to do the Melbourne one as well, but it got moved to Yah Yah’s. I kind of really hate that place,” he laughs. “We’ve played a couple of shows there and the sound is really awful. We whinged about that and ended up saying we didn’t want to do it if it was there… So we sort of wussed out of it.” With: Sister Jane, Grand Atlantic, Bloods, Buried Feather, Atom Bombs Where: Eight Miles High @ GoodGod Small Club When: Friday June 15
Xxxxx
20 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
H T T P: //S I B E R I A R EC O R D S .C O M
This recent lull, for instance, has given Buscombe impetus to start working on some new material. “Hopefully we’ll be able to record some new stuff this year,” he says. “We’ve got a few that we’ve been rehearsing. I’m having a bit of trouble getting all the lyrics together at the moment, which tends to happen; it takes me a while to get anything that’s useable. They’re all pretty shitty lyrics and I don’t know what the songs are about or anything like that. There’s probably a couple that we’ll have ready for the [upcoming] show. If I don’t have the lyrics in time, I’ll just mumble some shit and hopefully no-one will notice…”
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 21
Charge Group Charged Up By Bridie Connellan
“I
t’s a shamanistic drug-induced transformation from human to animal. For thousands of years, Amazonian tribes have been using ayahuasca to enter hallucinogenic states and assume the body and form of a jaguar. Then when jaguars were seen in the wild, they’d be revered as shamans too. Apparently jaguars have also been known to eat hallucinogenic vines. Pretty cool concept.” Asking Charge Group’s Matt Blackman to explain their song ‘The Jaguar Complex’ was always going to be awesome. Sitting somewhere between Fugazi, Sonic Youth and running through the forest naked wearing a hat made of banana leaves, Sydney’s Charge Group had the record everyone should have been listening to in early 2012 while they were still going nutballs over Royal Headache. Spacious, melodic, transcendent, effervescent, mulling, cinematic; the foursome followed up their 2008 debut Escaping Mankind with a self-titled album, That Video Starring Brendan Cowell, and just a little bit of special. Alongside drummer Matt Rossetti, violin guru Jason Tampake and bassist Adam Jesson, Blackman leads the Charge… Where have you been since Escaping Mankind? Doing just that? Escaping... mankind? Far from it, actually. We signed with a European label, toured Australia, toured Europe, then got busy with a bunch of different projects (some
ongoing, some not so). It’s been really nice to approach this record with a bit of time, space and the perspective that comes from working on other things. I spent a LOT of time in that period jamming with Palace of Fire (with Chris and Myles, ex-Wolfmother), which really helped me think about songwriting and improving my shitty guitar playing. A lot of the tracks on both the latest Charge Group record and Escaping Mankind are quite visual in their lyrics and concepts. What is it about aesthetics that really inspires your writing? I guess I just like art that leaves room for interpretation, for magic… feeling. I’m really interested by the weird, instinctive, primal power of sound – much more so than the lyrics attached to it. I prefer the idea that the lyrical ideas carry enough weight to provide a beautiful sketch on the canvas, but then you get to paint your own masterpiece with it. In writing ‘Run’, which is a pretty driven and catchy track, were you guys conscious of writing a ‘single’ per se? Did you feel like you should? It was never meant to be a single, and we never felt like we needed one. We just found ourselves reacting to that song when we’d be driving, or staying up late being idiots. There was an involuntary physical response to it, and it conjured all sorts of weird fucked-up sexy dance
routines. Not surprisingly, Brendan [Cowell] liked that idea and got on board with the video, and then it ended up as a single by default. Can you tell me a little bit about the album art for the latest record? Jack Warren is one of our dearest friends; a bona fide genius and madly prolific painter. He lives in a converted South Williamsburg studio (which used to belong to the Magnetic Fields dude) and trades in the currency of dystopic ideas, both the abstract and the figurative. Perfect match for Charge Group! The most commonly used adjective bandied around about you lot is ‘unpredictable’. What is it about the uncommon and unexpected that ends up being the core
of Charge Group’s music? We always make a conscious choice to approach every song and our instruments in ways that surprise us, I suppose simply to keep things interesting. I use guitar tunings that force me to regularly re-learn, and stop me from becoming a virtuoso douche. And riding a knifeedge is a pretty exciting place to create stuff. It can either go horribly wrong or spectacularly well, but at least you don’t sound like zillions of ideas that have been butchered before. What: Charge Group is out now through Microphone & Loudspeaker With: Joe McKee (ex-Snowman) Where: The Red Rattler, Marrickville When: Friday June 15
Millencolin Re-collection By Ben Watson
I
t’s been thirteen years since Swedish punk veterans Millencolin released their first B-sides compilation, The Melancholy Collection, twelve years since the release of their seminal Pennybridge Pioneers, and twenty since they formed their band. Drowning in this trinity of anniversaries, and at home nursing his sick four-yearold daughter, is Erik Ohlsson – the band’s guitarist, artist and, now, documentary maker. Sounding level-headed, content and totally clear, Ohlsson says that despite the four-year gap since their last album, the band has been very busy indeed, touring old material for the anniversary of Pennybridge Pioneers, organising their twenty year anniversary festival, and putting together a new DVD and CD package. The new release, confusingly titled The Melancholy Connection, brings together nearly all the B-sides from the second decade of the band’s existence – plus two brand new tracks. “It’s continuing from the B-sides of The Melancholy Collection,” Ohlsson explains, “and that’s why we chose the name ‘Connection’ of course. We’ve confused a lot of people with just changing two ‘l’s into ‘n’s. Still, I like the obvious connection to the first collection.” There are a few covers and live and acoustic tracks that weren’t included, but this is still a pretty comprehensive overview of Millencolin’s harder-to-get tracks, and Ohlsson thinks they fit together remarkably well. “I don’t think we left out any real ownwritten Millencolin songs,” he says. “These are the ones: the twelve. [It was] kind of obvious to use these twelve. “We could have fitted in some acoustic stuff as well, but these songs actually sound pretty good. I was surprised,” he continues. “A lot of people say now that it feels like a new album almost, or maybe an unreleased album from
five years back or something, in the middle of when we were recording and releasing all these B-sides. So it’s surprisingly good that they fit together.” In addition to the compilation, this new package contains a documentary of the making of their landmark album, Pennybridge Pioneers. Featuring ‘Fox’, ‘No Cigar’ and ‘Penguins & Polarbears’, Pennybridge was the band’s first album recorded outside of Sweden, and their first to be certified Gold, with 35 000 Australian sales. The 90-minute film continues the ‘ten year’ theme from their recently concluded anniversary tour. “I thought it would be a good idea to dig through my drawers and find the old footage we shot ourselves in the studio which no one had ever seen before, not even me,” Ohlsson says. “It was definitely fun, because we didn’t remember all that stuff. It was fun, and a little bit scary too, because I realised that, ‘Hey, this is just random footage, and I promised Epitaph a movie!’” Thankfully, it all came together in time, and the band was able to focus on their anniversary party in Sweden: a two-day skating and music festival that just took place on June 8 and 9, featuring the likes of The Hives and Danko Jones. Ohlsson says the band could do with a vacation before they get started on their next album, but is as confident about their future as he is about their past. “We’ve been pretty lucky with this band,” he says. “We’ve had our share of success the whole time, so everything has felt fun with Millencolin over these years. We love playing in this band. We really, really, really love this life, so it feels good.” What: The Melancholy Connection CD + DVD is out now through Epitaph
Founds Finders Keepers By Krissi Weiss
A
fter winning the triple j Unearthed BIGSOUND competition in 2011, a young Brisbane band by the name of Founds stumbled across some pretty intoxicating opportunities. They snagged local support slots for Grouplove, The Naked & Famous and Oh Mercy, as well as appearances at Peats Ridge Festival and the Big Day Out. Now with an album on the cusp of a release, it appears that their glistening and haunting sound has found its feet. Keyboard player and singer Elle-louise Burguez is deep in student mode when we chat, and a run-down of her timetable shows a creative passion that stretches further than music. “I am studying film and drama in a creative industries course,” Burguez explains. “I am doing an assessment; it’s a monologue from Girl, Interrupted, and a music theatre piece.” So which shines brightest in Burguez’ future plans: music, or acting? “I still am finding myself at the moment,” she admits. “It’s my last year at uni and I have been doing an internship at a film studio, and it’s showing me how hard it is. I haven’t really done many plays professionally, so I dunno – I am still working out what I want… [Founds] is the only band I’ve been in and we seem to really connect with each other and get into this rhythm with each other. I’m aware of myself on stage, but I still lose myself – and you finish a set and go, ‘Woah, where did the time go?’ It’s pretty special.” The churning, hypnotic, harmony-infused sound of Founds comes across as a fairly organic creation, and Burguez reveals that most of it is born from improvisation. “It’s mainly done in the
jam room; we just feel it as we go,” she says. “We might bring in a personal idea, just some chords or a melody, but we don’t think it should be done in some [particular] way; it just kind of evolves.” Things really took off for Founds after the Unearthed BIGSOUND win, but despite the many opportunities that came from it, their relationship with producer Mark Myers (The Middle East, Emma Louise) is what Burguez is the most thankful for. “We started getting some radio play, and we toured Sydney, but the main thing that happened was meeting Mark Myers,” she says. “He liked us and wanted to work with us – and we recorded with him last year. We went to Cairns where he lives and we just chilled out. He made it really special. We were set in the songs ... but he had some great ideas. We went climbing waterfalls together, and it really opened up our minds, and we were able to make the songs the best we could.” Hadean, Founds’ forthcoming album, was the result of this time, and is set to be released in the next few months. But before then, the band are embarking on a small, pre-release tour; six dates through June, co-headlined with Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!. “We need to get a feel for things, and for how to tour,” Burguez explains. “[This tour] is definitely to put ourselves out there and get people interested, and then we will do it again for the album’s release.” With: Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire! Where: The Standard When: Friday June 15
“Just in time words that rhyme Well bless your soul Now I’ll fill your hands with kisses and a Tootsie Roll” - THE BEACH BOYS 22 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
Fri 22 June Annandale Hotel Sydney + IMMIGRANT UNION & THE WALKING WHO TIX: ANNANDALEHOTEL.COM OR 02 9550 1078
Sat 23 June The Workers Club Melbourne + IMMIGRANT UNION & FIELD TRIP
TIX: CORNER BOX OFFICE (57 SWAN ST, RICHMOND) OR 03 9486 1677
‘PROVENANCE ~ COLLECTED WORKS’ (YEP014) CD & DIGITAL DOWNLOAD OUT NOW ON YEP! RECORDS UNDERCOVERMUSIC.COM.AU | SELECTMUSIC.COM.AU
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 23
arts frontline
free stuff email: freestuff@thebrag.com
arts, theatre and film news... what's goin' on around town and more...
five minutes GIGI VINE
S
Up Australia, it become very clear we had found our niche. I have been producing live events for many years and Betty had been designing and exhibiting – so we combined desig both our experiences and interests and dreamt dream up the Parlor.
isters Gigi Vine and Betty Belle are bringing their Pin Up Parlor to The Standard this week, with a little help p from a lineup of ladies that includes Bunni ni Lambada (Miss Burlesque Sydney 2012, Miss Pin Up Australia 2011), Baby Blue Bergman and renowned Hula dancer Veronica Bloom – plus an eclectic arts spread featuring tattoo and street artists, typographers and designers. It’s their third event since launching the Parlor last September…
Tell T us about this upcoming soiree? Come Fly With Me is inspired by travel C of the 1950s: trains, boats and eventually air. A time when women were allowed to be women and love was still declared with w a letter. le
What do you guys do for day jobs? Betty ty is an illustrator and designer and I’m a creative producer and project manager by day – and a burly host and performer by night! Basically we combined our talents to o create the Pin Up Parlor: live events inspired red by all things from the 1940s and '50s. What’s your signature routine? I’m a cabaret girl at heart – I love anything from the classic top hat and tails, to avant-garde skits and quirky acts telling slapstick tales. What items can you just not live without? Chanel number-35 red lipstick, lashes and a victory curl. Who are your inspirations? We are inspired by courageous ladies of the past such as Elizabeth Taylor, and women who enjoyed a laugh whilst living out their dreams, such as Lucille Ball.
What was the inspiration for Pin Up Parlor? Betty and I have always been vintage girls at heart, following the interests and inspiration of classic films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Gypsy, and repeatedly falling for heart-throb James Dean over and over. The collection of luggage, accessories and many fashion items made the passion undeniable. As Betty’s illustrations and design work found a new direction inspired by tattoo queens and circus art, and my Pin Up adventures led to taking out the title of Miss Classic Pin
Starting up a business is daunting Star – what’s your secret? Hard work, wh determination, and never giving up. Find deter your niche and go for it. Be an individual, stay true to yourself and above all else do it with a smile on your face and remember to always be a lady. There’s a Lucille Ball quote we like: “Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work and realising what is opportunity and what isn’t.”
As part of FraserStudios' closing-down festival behemoth 30 Days & 30 Nights, they’re holding a series of ‘showings’ by their favourite residents over the years, every Friday and Saturday night. We’re heading along this week for Tin Shed Camping Tours – a mini-fest of shenanigans presented and performed by Tin Shed (Phil Spencer and Scarlet McGlynn), Matilda Ridgeway, Tim Spencer, Zoe Norton-Lodge, Gemma O’Nions and The Miller Family Band. Expect ghost stories, campfires, sing-a-longs, cider and possibly some bears. Portable BBQ’s optional, sleeping bags provided, attendance mandatory. Friday June 15 from 7pm at Studio 14 @ FraserStudios
(10–14 Kensington Street, Chippendale). queenstreetstudio.com/30days30nights
RESCUE THE FUTURE
Opening this week is Rescue The Future, an exhibition of epic new works by skater/painter/ filmmaker Brett Chan. Promising to “link multiple dimensions, via multi mediums, to the here and now”, the show will feature paintings, drawings, and the premiere of a short CGI film Chan created with fellow skate-filmmaker Jason Morice. It’s all part of what Chan calls ‘Future Primitive’ – a brand of abstraction that meshes visions of the future with lo-fi/primitive execution. The result, just going on the flyer, looks like what happens when you raid you nephew’s dress-up box, take acid, and watch Prometheus. If that sounds like your cup of tea, head along to China Heights (Lvl 3, 16-28 Foster St, Surry Hills) on Friday June 15 from 6pm. allfrequency.com
STRATHFIELD FLICKS
If you like your cinema bite-sized and straightto-the-point, check out the Strathfield Youth Film Festival, taking place this Saturday June 16 in Strathfield Town Centre, and showcasing fresh talent tackling the positive community safety message ‘Keep It Safe’ (or as Gandalf likes to say, "Keep It Safe, and Keep it Secret" – but don't keep it secret). It’s all about personal safety and not becoming a victim of crime – which is one of those things that Everyone Can Agree On. Other things include ‘winning’ and ‘prizes’ – which will also feature on the night. The films kick off from 6pm – for more info, head to youthfilmfestival.com.au
Rafael Bonachela just dropped his first program in a three-year tenure as the curator of Sydney Opera House’s annual Spring Dance festival. Bonachela already has a track record, as artistic director of Sydney Dance Company, of drawing key choreographers from the international dance scene to Sydney, for one-off, world-premiere collaborations. Top of our Spring Dance wishlist is the Australian premiere of Dunas, the flamenco-inspired show by wunderkind Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, closely followed by the Australian debut of Beijing’s TAO Dance Theatre, whose Weight x 3 and 2 are set to the minimalist music of recent Sydney Opera House resident Steve Reich. Spring Dance runs August 20 – September 2. Check out the rest of the program at springdance.sydneyoperahouse.com before tickets go on sale Wednesday June 13.
TRANSMISSION
Musicians and artists lock horns in the epic group show Transmission, showing at Campbelltown Arts Centre from now until August. The basic concept is a series of collaborative works that pair a visual artist with a musician – and the lineup spans high art to low-brow: louche performance artist Renny Kodgers teams up with the Sweet Tonic Singers community choir; video artist Heath Franco (see our interview on p. 31) with Itch-E & Scratch-E’s Andy Rantzen; Jess Olivieri & Hayley Forward (aka Parachutes For Ladies) with Sydney Chamber Choir; painter Nell with Wollongong punk Babymachine – and so on. Thank crap this one goes for eight weeks, because there’s probably too many good things to see in just one visit. For more info, head to the world’s least convenient URL: campbelltown. nsw.gov.au/Exhibitions 24 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
CONFESSION BOOTH
The Wall are onto a good thing with their Confession Booth series; it turns out no-one doesn’t like hearing funny/clever people tell embarrassing personal stories. Their next event will feature Melbourne writer-slashcomedian Lou Sanz (Please Don’t Use My Flannel For That), blogger-slash-broadcaster Max Lavergne (reallyreallyreallytrying. tumblr.com), Sydney comedienne Gen Fricker, writer-slash-broadcaster Shaun Prescott (2SER/shaunprescott.com), Vine/ TwoThousand/etc writer Bethany Small, and Sydney musician, scientist and radio journalist Joel Werner (Off Track on ABC Radio National). Lists! It’s hosted by A.H. Cayley, and happens Wednesday July 4 from 7.30pm at The Wall @ World Bar (top level).
COMING SOONER
Take a little breather from the intensity of world cinema at Sydney Film Festival Hub this week; we suggest washing down your Thursday slice with Coming Sooner: The Art of the Movie Trailer – presented by former Hungry Beast-ers Marc ‘That Movie Guy’ Fennell, Nicholas Hayden and Nicholas McDougall. Find out what brainwashing techniques Hollywood is using on you and why they care so much, and how trailers have evolved with cinema over the decades. It’s free, and it’s at Lower Town Hall (483 George Street – enter via Druitt Street) from 7.30pm this Thursday June 14. For the nightly Festival Hub program of live music, performances and screenings, head to sff.org.au/hub
Spring Dance – photographer Ellis Parrinder
From the people who brought you 22 Girls Smoking Weed and Seven Hundred Photos, comes… Seven Hundred Photos – the third instalment of a series that basically sets up a wonderland of installations for the snapping pleasure of shutterbugs. They’ll be taking over seven hotel rooms on the upper level of Darlo Bar, each containing an art/fashion installation created by a different artist or designer (the lineup includes designer Phoenix Keating, who dressed Lady Gaga on her last visit to Sydney, fashion-film-director Alex Goddard, and vintage label Laurel & Hector) and then fitted out with attractive model-types. All you have to do is turn up with your camera and snap – to the tunes of Buzz Kull and New Brutalists. Check it out at sevenhundredphotos.tumblr.com and head along Thursday June 28 from 7pm.
TIN SHED CAMPING TOURS
SPRING DANCE
Take This Waltz opens on June 14 at Palace Verona & Norton Street, Dendy Newtown and Hoyts Cinema Paris – and if all the above sounds like your cup of maple syrup, we have FIVE IN-SEASON DOUBLES up for grabs; to get your hands on one, tell us one other film starring Michelle Williams.
What: Pin Up Parlor presents: Come Fly With Me Where: The Standard / Lvl 3, 383 Bourke St, Surry Hills (above Kinselas) When: Sunday June 17 from 7pm More: wearethestandard.com.au
700 PHOTOS Sydney Dance Company dancers Charmene Yap and Richard Cilli
It’s named after a Leonard Cohen song, features the best use of a scrambler and The Buggles’ ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, stars Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen and a little bit of Sarah Silverman, contains at least one scene of pants-moistening unresolved-sexual-tension, and at least one other guaranteed to make you lose your shit laughing – so what’s NOT to like about Take This Waltz? It’s the second feature by perennially youthful (seriously, we’re pretty sure she’s not aging) actress-director Sarah Polley, and it's all about falling in and out of love, and being serially addicted to infatuation.
Xxxx
WITH
TAKE THIS WALTZ
Queen Street Studio
Join me and 400,000 others, because if it’s ON... it’s on Eventfinder. Australia’s leading online events & entertainment guide
10–14 Kensington Street, Chippendale
1st–30th June: 30 days & 30 nights to celebrate FraserStudios …before we pull down the roller doors for good after almost 4 amazing years
What’s on:
Monday 4 June | 6pm
FREE Jamaican Dancehall & Reggae Class Get energetic, sensual & fierce with Caroline Garcia
Tuesday 5 June | 6pm
Saturday 9 June | 7pm | $10
Platform 5
International Bodyweather performers
Thurs 14 June | 7pm | FREE
POST
FREE Konga Class
Wild mix of dance & boxing with Yin Chuah
Wednesday 6 June | 6pm
FREE Stage Combat Class With Sydney Stage Combat
Thursday 7 June | 6pm
FREE Bollywood Class With Ramona Lobo, Siren Dance Company
Sydney’s favourite performance trio on theatre, the absurd & the classics
Friday 15 June | 7pm | $10
Tin Shed Camping Tours Ghost stories, tents, cider and possibly bears...
Saturday 16 June | 7pm | $10
Double Trouble
Martin del Amo & Julie-Anne Long explore duets and double acts
PLUS:
Open daily 2–6pm & during performances... “Our House” Visual Arts Residents Exhibition “100” FraserStudios Archival Photography Exhibition
More info: queenstreetstudio.com/30days30nights FraserStudios is an initiative by Frasers Property and Sekisui House to creatively activate heritage warehouses within the Central Park development site. Managed by Queen Street Studio, FraserStudios has provided free studio and development space to 200 Visual Arts and Performing Arts Residents since late 2008.
queenstreetstudio.com.au | centralparksydney.com BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 25
The Cabin In The Woods
“We just wanted to make a horror movie that people would really, really enjoy. I don’t see this as a watershed movie… It’s not an answer. It’s a new question.”
Meta Is Better By Steph Harmon
Most important to both writers was that the characters remain human and real, even as they encounter some of the most over-the-top and gory scenarios conceivable. But while extreme, the violence seems justified, offering a commentary on an entertainment-fuelled society that fetishizes the demise of others for its own cheap thrills. “I don’t think that [the gore] is exploitative in this film,” Whitford says. “I’m totally fine with violence with consequences, and I’m totally fine with what I think [in this film] is a very interesting look at … ‘Why do we have to watch this?’” Anyway, he says, obscenity is in the eye of the beholder. “The definition of obscenity is the act of creation. What would be more pornographic than that image to us? I always joke that it’s like, God came down and said [weighs with one palm] ‘Act of creation, [weighs with the other] Definition of sin. Good luck with that.’”
From left to right: Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Jesse Williams and Fran Kranz
I
f you’re a Joss Whedon diehard, you’ve already read ten of these articles, and each one has started with the same guarantee: you will find no spoilers here. To write about a movie when revealing its premise would give the game away is certainly a tricky Whedon (left) on set
feat – but speaking just before the world premiere of The Cabin In The Woods at this year’s South by Southwest festival, writer/producer Joss Whedon (Buffy, Dollhouse) and writer/first-time-director Drew Goddard (Buffy, Cloverfield) issued a plea to the packed-out cinema:
JOSS WHEDON ON HIS CHARACTERS:
“Part of this movie was definitely about the idea that people are not expendable, and that as a culture, for our own entertainment, we tend to assume that they are. And although I absolutely love horror movies and always have, I love them the most when I really, really care about the people who are in dire trouble. With the exception of Alien…Those guys would sell each other down the river in a heartbeat. That actually freaked me out more than the [H.R.] Giger stuff.”
ON HIS STORY: “It’s so clearly the kind of thing that [Drew and I] love: true horror with one cold eye turned towards it – ‘What is that about?’ – at the same time as we’re in the thick of it.”
ON HIS VOICE:
G IV EA W AY S
“It’s a blessing and a curse to have your style recognised... But ultimately, I don’t want people to hear my voice; I don’t want people to think about what we wrote. I want them to go, ‘Ohhh, what’s going to happen to Marty?’ [But] we are still us... Every day I wake up and I look in the mirror and I’m like, ‘God damn! I’m still not the Coen Brothers!’”
“We hope you enjoy the film… And then keep it to yourself.” Two days later, the pair and their cast are doing round-table interviews in a room filled with journalists, shooting tough looks at anyone who dares to ask for a spoiler quote, and censoring the answers as they like. “These are going to be like the Nixon tapes,” Whedon laughs into our dictaphones. The (very) basic set-up of The Cabin In The Woods revolves around five fresh-faced college students – Anna Hutchison, Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Jesse Williams and Fran Kranz, playing the flirt, the virgin, the jock, the brain and the stoned side-kick respectively – who head to the woods on a weekend trip to get drunk and play truth or dare, but instead end up in every single horrific scenario that you could possibly imagine. Par for the course for a slasher film, right? …Well, not quite. The kicker comes courtesy of screen veterans Bradley Whitford (The West Wing) and Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under), whose sub-plot pulls the curtains back on the film and its genre until both are turned on their heads entirely. Remarkably, the writing of the script took Goddard and Whedon just three
“We just wanted to make a horror movie that people would really, really enjoy.” days. “We bandied back and forth: ‘You know what’d be hilarious?’, ‘You know what’d be fun?’, ‘Oh, I wish we could!’,” Whedon says. “And this is an entire movie of ‘I wish we could’; it’s two raging ids just enjoying themselves for 90 minutes.” The result is a fun, frightening and complex ride crammed with whip-smart Whedonic dialogue, nuanced performances, and tonnes of re-watch value; a love-letter to the slasher genre wrapped in a list of things it could do better. In their past work, both Whedon and Goddard have shown an inclination to embrace tropes so tightly that you’re forced to question them – and with Cabin, as one journalist in the room suggests, ‘There’s kind of a sense of this movie dropping the mic [on the genre] and walking away like, ‘There it is guys. Ball’s in your court.’ “Try not to be more articulate than us,” Whedon laughs in response.
SUPANOVA! POP CULTURE! EXPO! S
tormtrooper armour in need of airing out? Spock ears gathering dust? Vial of fake blood threatening to dry out? Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, the extravaganza that is Supanova offers fans of pop culture the perfect excuse to engage in cosplay whilst rubbing shoulders with beautiful and/or famous people. This year’s lineup includes Verne ‘Mini-Me’
None of the younger cast were shown the script before they were offered the parts, and the audition sides were fake – “I think Joss wrote them to fuck with us,” Williams laughs – but as Hutchinson points out, there were a couple of clues that Cabin would be more than what it said on the tin: “You kind of have a bit of a blind faith if there’s a project with Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard.” It wasn’t until the film was fully cast that the actors found out exactly what they signed up for – and after that they were forced to keep it under wraps for A Very Long Time. Cabin was finished way back in 2009, but placed in purgatory after its financer, MGM, went bankrupt. In 2011, cult favourite Lion’s Gate picked the film up and scheduled the world premiere at SXSW – a perfect fit. “Everything has worked out for the best here,” Drew Goddard says. “We have a studio that loves this movie and is behind us 100%, and our actors are turning out to be huge superstars, whether or not they were when we cast them…” He’s referring most of all to Chris Hemsworth, whose title role in Thor lead into a part in Whedon’s massive Avengers – the success of which was another high tide that Cabin got to ride in on. But for Whedon, there was a far more visceral advantage to the delay: “The pain of childbirth is somewhat forgotten, and all of this is just a big gift.” When: Opens June 14 Where: Chauvel Cinema
WIN!
Troyer (Austin Powers), Noah Hathaway (Atreyuuuuuuuuuuu! from The Neverending Story), Christopher Lloyd (Emmett ‘Doc’ Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy), Heroes’ Hayden Panettiere and the truly hideous Tricia ‘Cyclon 6’ Helfer (Battlestar Galactica, and pictured right) – among oodles of other heroes from the comics, manga, TV and sci-fantasy-novel and film worlds.
Supanova Pop Culture Expo is happening from June 15-17 at The Dome, Sydney Showground, Sydney Olympic Park. To grasp one of five double passes with your Wolverine claws, email us at freestuff@thebrag.com and tell us what a supernova is. Full lineup and hoopla at supanova.com.au
26 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
BOBBY WOMACK THE BRAVEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE
RETURN OF A LEGEND First album of original material since 1994. Co-produced by Damon Albarn (Gorillaz/Blur) and Richard Russell (Gil Scott-Heron) â&#x20AC;&#x153;His extraordinary vocal power is undiminishedâ&#x20AC;? NME â&#x20AC;&#x153;A lifetime of regrets fuels the soul greatâ&#x20AC;? Rolling Stone (USA) â&#x20AC;&#x153;The soul legendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s voice is given even richer resonanceâ&#x20AC;? The Guardian â&#x20AC;&#x153;All the more powerful for coming so late in a bold careerâ&#x20AC;? Pitchfork â&#x20AC;&#x153;Stops you in your tracksâ&#x20AC;Ś soul-baring vocal deliveryâ&#x20AC;Ś ultra-modern productionâ&#x20AC;? KCRW
FUTURE OF THE LEFT
POP ETC
The Plot Against Common Sense
Pop Etc
49.8 minutes of singing, shouting, slinking, smashing and (at times) sobbing Includes Sheena Is A T-shirt Salesman, Polymers Are Forever and I Am The Least Of Your Problems
NED COLLETTE & WIREWALKER 2 The New Album
CD / DL / LP + DL voucher Includes Il Futuro Fantastico, Long You Lie & Happy Heart
MYSTERY JETS Radlands Featuring the single Someone Purer
Until February we all knew this band as The Morning Benders. Now they are Pop Etc
â&#x20AC;&#x153;Strong, conďŹ dentâ&#x20AC;Ś guitar pop geniusâ&#x20AC;? BBC Radio 1
With contributions from Danger Mouse and Andrew Dawson (Kanye West, Lilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Wayne)
â&#x20AC;&#x153;Eel Pie Islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rag-tag gang returning to a straighter indie rockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;nâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;roll sound - while losing none of their trademark joyous bent.â&#x20AC;? NME
JOE MCKEE Burning Boy
The debut solo album from former Snowman guitarist / vocalist
1MBZJOH MJWF JO +VOF CFGPSF SFUVSOJOH UP &VSPQF 'SJ '#J 4PDJBM 4ZEOFZ
5PVSJOH +VOF XJUI $IBSHF (SPVQ 'SJ 3FE 3BUUMFS 4ZEOFZ 4BU -BTT 0 (PXSJF /FXDBTUMF
LEMONADE
SPACEGHOSTPURRP
Diver Bold and sensual electronic pop debut album from San Francisco three-piece â&#x20AC;&#x153;Experimental R&B thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s absolutely spellbindingâ&#x20AC;? Prettymuchamazing â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tropically informed, R&B-tinged synth-popâ&#x20AC;? XLR8R
REMOTE CONTROL BLOG
Mysterious Phonk: The Chronicles of Spaceghostpurrp â&#x20AC;&#x153;A torchbearer for the next generation of chopped and screwed rapâ&#x20AC;? Stereogumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 40 Best New Bands of 2011 â&#x20AC;&#x153;One of 2012â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brightest starsâ&#x20AC;? Fact â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weird and wonderfulâ&#x20AC;? Dummy â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sounds more ready for the big time now than ever beforeâ&#x20AC;? Dusted
LATEST NEWS | EXCLUSIVE CONTENT | FREE MP3s | GIVEAWAYS WWW.REMOTECONTROLRECORDS.COM
"WBJMBCMF BU "CJDVT t )6. t -BOETQFFE 3FDPSET t .VTJD #J[BSSF t 1IPFOJY .VTJD t 3FECBDL .VTJD t 3JDINPOE 3FDPSET t 4BOEZ T %FF 8IZ t 4UPQ AO 3PDL BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 27
Supanova [POP CULTURE] Mercedes McNab: Harmony In Chaos By Alasdair Duncan
F
inding work as an actor can be stressful enough, but for Mercedes McNab, getting a job on Buffy The Vampire Slayer meant the added anxiety of never knowing whether her character would make it out alive from week to week. “Joss Whedon liked to keep us on our toes!” she tells me of the show’s creator. “I don’t know if he’s personally sadistic or if that’s just the nature of TV shows, but it felt like torture sometimes not knowing if you’d live or die.” As you might imagine, each new script was greeted with a mixture of excitement and dread. “We’d all get them and skip straight to the end to see what would happen to us!”
Harmony’s mixture of sweetness and coldblooded evil made her a fan favourite, and I ask McNab how much of her went into the character. “It’s funny,” she says, “I do remember a scene in the very beginning with Cordelia and her posse, and all the girls who hung around with her were quite bitchy, so I thought to myself, I need to be something other than that in order to stand out, we have enough bitchy girls. [So] I started playing her as a kind of loveable airhead, and the writers took notice, and between us we started to shape the character together.”
Intermission [DANCE] Body Works By Rebecca Saffir
“W
e haven’t seen each other in a while… I’ve been feeling an intense urgency to get back to it.” Matthew Day, dancer and choreographer, isn’t talking about his latest paramour – or at least, not a human one. He’s talking Intermission, his forthcoming self-choreographed solo dance work: “It had a two-week development at PACT at the beginning of the year, and then I did another two weeks of development back in Melbourne… They were really broad, bluesky research periods. There was a question, I guess, that I just kept coming back to: How do I ride a wave with my body? Most of my preparations lately have been kind of computer-based; I won’t be working physically until I get into the [PACT] space in Sydney.” Intermission is the final instalment in Day’s trilogy of solo dance works exploring the potential of the body. His journey began with the critically acclaimed Thousands, which premiered at Sydney Fringe in 2010. While he was making that, Day recalls realising that “there was another piece inside that piece” – Cannibal, which debuted at PACT in February 2011. Intermission, he says, continues his exploration of questions of bodily freedom and autonomy. “I guess what I’m really struggling with is the idea of the body being so full of potential to be this amazing thing, and on the other side, a body that is conditioned by history, trapped, isolated. They both happen at the same time: we’re trapped by our history but we’re able to make choices. You start to ask questions about your own history, your family… How much can I determine my own future?”
In Buffy’s third season, McNab’s character, the ditzy but sweet Harmony Kendall, was chomped on by a vampire. She was sure this meant curtains, but was greatly relieved to learn that the show was bring her back – this time, with added fangs. As any Buffyphile knows, Harmony’s subsequent on-again offagain relationship with bad-boy Spike was one of the show’s comic highlights. “They were a really fun couple in the ways they bounced off each-other,” McNab agrees, “but even then, I didn’t know if I was going to be sticking around for all that long. It wasn’t until later, when I joined the cast of Angel and became a regular that I felt I had any kind of job security – and that only took six years or something!”
Solitude is a key theme of Day’s works and a crucial part of his creative process. “I always knew that I would make a few [solo works],” he explains, “[because] I knew that I had a bunch of questions [as a choreographer] that I wanted to answer, and as soon as you’ve got other people in the room that can be hard.” Consequently, Thousands, Cannibal and Intermission are primarily solo explorations, driven by Day’s own interests and impulses – albeit dramaturged by leading contemporary choreographer and performance artist Martin del Amo, and scored by composer and musician James Brown. “[They] come in, then it’s necessary for me to go and work by myself again,” Day tells me. “I’ve been working with ideas of the unconscious body and the underwater body… For the first couple of weeks I would just lie on the floor and listen to really drone-y music and try and go into a space of quiet. I’ve realised what I’m choreographing is an energetic exchange with the audience.”
Throughout Buffy, and even to some extent Angel, the women characters seemed to be a lot more important, or to have more to say, than the men – a hallmark of many Joss Whedon productions. McNab was thrilled to be involved with this kind of project. “To this day I feel like it was a really empowering thing,” she says. “It was great to have Buffy, a strong woman, as the central character of her own show. A lot of people come up to me and tell me that they watch the show with their teenage daughters, and tell me how great it is that Buffy shows the strength that women can have, and that it featured so many really strong roles for women.” Thinking back on Buffy, one of my favourite moments in the show was the slow-motion slap-fight between Harmony and Buffy’s hapless sidekick Xander. McNab laughs when I bring this up, telling me that the fight scenes were always her favourite to shoot. “I thought those were fun, because I would never fight or hit anybody in my real life, so accessing that part of my personality in a safe environment was really good fun. That Xander one in particular was very funny. When we were shooting it, I had no idea it was going to be shown in slow-motion, so when I watched it back for the first time, it was even better.”
How does Day cope with the solitude of working alone for extended periods? “Sometimes I feel like I’m going insane,” he admits, “but there is also refuge and solace in the studio. It can go from being an asylum to a sanctuary in a day.” How does he keep the madness at bay? He pauses before answering simply: “This time I’ve been using music as a friend a lot.” What: Intermission Where: PACT centre for emerging arts / 107 Railway Pde, Erskineville When: June 19-30 More: pact.net.au
What: Appearing at Supanova Pop Culture Expo 2012 When: Friday June 15 – Sunday June 17 Where: Sydney Showground, Olympic Park More: Full lineup and tix at supanova.com.au
Rock The Ballet [DANCE] The Bad Boys Of Dance By Kate McCarten
about putting me in these crazy activities,” Thomas explains. Until, after playing-up in one of his beloved karate lessons, Rasta was given the ultimate punishment: ballet classes. “I hated dancing for the first couple of years; and then seeing the attention that I was getting from my friends and my teachers, I kind of started liking it just because I was good at it,” Thomas recalls. As dancing became less of a punishment, he began looking to the likes of Michael Jackson, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire – and once he realised that dancing could actually be cool, he became unstoppable, performing in over 20 dance companies from Russia’s Kirov Ballet to Japan’s K-Ballet, dancing at the Oscars and The White House, and showcasing his talent from Broadway all the way to Hollywood, alongside dance demigod Patrick Swayze.
I
n 2007, acclaimed dancer Rasta Thomas bet his career on the potentially premature step of founding his own dance company, Bad Boys Of Dance. Fast-forward five years, and Thomas’ ambitious endeavour continues to silence the sceptics; the company’s first show, Rock The Ballet, is still selling out seasons all over the world, thanks to its unique, highenergy blend of musical theatre, martial arts, tap, gymnastics – and an epic rock’n’roll 28 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
soundtrack that ranges from Michael Jackson and Prince to Queen and Coldplay. Thomas’ diverse interests and broad skill-base started in childhood: an unusually hyperactive child, he was enrolled by his despairing father in a slew of extracurricular activities: soccer, basketball, swimming, gymnastics, karate. “He felt that if I came home and I wanted to sleep then I couldn’t get into trouble, so he was all
Like most dancers, however, Thomas constantly felt as though he was “only one injury away from unemployment”. So instead of waiting for age or injury to catch up with him, he decided to found his own dance company – while he was still in his midtwenties. The result was Bad Boys Of Dance, a company comprised predominantly of male dancers. Rock the Ballet, for example, features six ‘bad boys of dance’ and just one female dancer – in inverse proportion to typical ballet productions.
But Thomas was interested in more than just breaking the mould: “I always enjoyed the boy bands of the world – The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, or even N*Sync and Backstreet Boys. I always thought there was some sort of magic when guys come together – even to play soccer or whatever – and I really didn’t feel there was a ‘boy band’ of the dance world; I thought it could be unique and fun.” It can be argued that what the Bad Boys Of Dance do cannot really be classified as ballet, as it incorporates everything from tap to hip hop to jazz. Thomas has affectionately coined the term ‘pop-ballet’ which he believes is a much more accurate description of his direction. Besides the unorthodox fusion of disciplines and dance-styles, the company is also less concerned with plot or romance. “There are little emotion rollercoaster’s up and down, here and there, depending on what song we’re dancing to,” says Thomas, “but it’s not Romeo & Juliet; it’s not a story.” What: Rock The Ballet Where: State Theatre / Market St, Sydney CBD When: June 19-24 / Tue-Sat at 8pm; Sun at 6.30pm More: rocktheballet.com.au
LEADING THE WAY BEHIND THE SCENES TRAINING
30&days 30 nights Frid day 1 June–S Saturday 30 June 2012 > The Cake Pop-Up Bar > Book Launch > Our House » Visual Arts Residents’ Exhibition > 100 » Photography Exhibition > Masterclasses > Free Drop-in Classes > Commissions > Showings > Backyard BBQ
A month-long celebration of art, FREE classes, workshops and performances for the 30 days and 30 nights of June to farewell the FraserStudios space. 10–14 Kensiington Street, Chiippendale www.queen nstreetsstudio.com m/30days30nights
Queen Street Studio Q BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 29
Arts Snap
Film & Theatre Reviews
At the heart of the arts Where you went last week...
Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.
■ Dance
BE YOUR SELF Reviewed May 31 / Sydney Theatre
entertain us! launch
PICS :: AM
What lies at the heart of “I”? It’s a question no shortage of philosophy and art has tried to answer. Human history is littered with explorations of selfhood and attempts to understand subjectivity. Australian Dance Theatre throws its hat in the ring with Be Your Self, a tight 70-minute physical excursion into the ways we define our selves.
closer
PICS :: AM
31:06:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool Street Sydney 9267 3787
31:06:12 :: Art Equity :: Lvl 6, 16-20 Barrack St Sydney
Set to a thumping electronic score and fractured strobe lighting, Be Your Self sets about pulling apart all the usual strategies we might employ to orient ourselves: familiar movements are made strange and jerky; an amplified voice (Annabel Giles) narrates in almost painful detail the thousand tiny processes that go into the moving of a foot. It is a relentless, sometimes beautiful, sometimes discomfiting world in which bodies are disconnected, reimagined and repurposed, all against the shifting and surprising backdrop constructed by New York architects Diller Scofidio & Renfro. Yet for all the making strange, something about Be Your Self feels oddly familiar. Its attempt to dispel the Cartesian split, the grotesque shapes the dancers form, the eardrum-bleeding insistence of the soundtrack, the use of spoken word – these are all tropes increasingly familiar in contemporary Australian dance, and are not used to any new ends here. For all the flashing lights and whirling shapes, it veers towards monotonous in both form and theme, lingering just a moment too long on each motif or idea. The final, fluid sequence, while definitely a much-needed and welcomed contrast to the preceding athletic juggernaut, outstays its welcome by half, and almost destroys its beauty in the process. Be Your Self is a technically excellent and often beautiful work, which successfully pokes at our flimsy understandings of what it might mean to have a body and a mind. But it never quite manages to make anything new of this old question, leaving any foundations rocked ready to be resettled as we walk back into the night.
personality
PICS :: AM
Rebecca Saffir
01:06:12 :: China Heights :: 16-28 Foster St Surry Hills
Arts Exposed What's in our diary...
GRIFFIN’S FESTIVAL OF NEW WRITING June 12 – 17 / SBW Stables Theatre, Nimrod Street Kings Cross Scratch your creative itch this week at the Griffin Festival Of New Writing. It starts on Tuesday June 12, with the announcement of the Griffin Award (eight Australian writers – including Sydney’s Kit Brookman and Melbourne troublemaker Declan Greene – duke it out for a shot at $10,000 and a spot in Griffin’s 2013 season). Then on Wednesday June 13 you can take part in Lovely Ugly, one-night-only immersive, sitespecific theatre work that takes audiences on a trail from the Griffin mascot 'Brown Trouser', with coffee cup... SBW Stables to the Altamont Hotel and the Kings Cross Hotel. And from 7pm on Friday June 15, as part of the 24-Hour Play Project, six NIDA writing students and six NIDA directing students have 24 hours to write and produce a play inspired by or featuring the Griffin mascot (pictured), which will be showcased at on Saturday June 16 at 7pm. For the full FONW lineup and tickets, head to griffintheatre.com.au 30 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
■ Film
PROMETHEUS Released June 7 Ridley Scott’s shiny 3D prequel to his grimy 2D masterpiece Alien is...not bad. If you’re a fan of the Alien series, you’ll be vaguely satisfied. If you’re not, it won’t change your mind. And if you’ve never seen the 1979 original, there’s almost no point seeing this at all. Prometheus follows a deep space mission (funded as per usual by the shady Weyland Corporation) to a farflung planet that idealistic archaeologists Shaw and Holloway (Noomi Rapace and Logan MarshallGreen) are convinced has alien life. They’ve found ancient cave paintings on Earth that not only suggest that the aliens “want us to come and find them”, but also that they hold the answers to the origins of mankind. So it’s a search for God movie. Except Shaw remains a faithful Christian throughout. So it’s kinda not.
The crew, a pack of loose cannons who – considering the stakes – don’t take their jobs seriously enough, are bossed around by Weyland rep and ice queen Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron, in an entirely redundant role) and assisted/sabotaged by creepy android David (Michael Fassbender, channeling two parts Ian Holm and one part HAL). Once the eponymous spacecraft touches down, everyone suits up, rushes outside, and walks straight into an enormous alien hive where hilarity ensues. During the caper we discover (sort of) who the alien race is, and what they were doing genetically engineering those nasty things we’ve come to know and love. There are some nice alien landscapes, a few enjoyable set pieces involving people getting reamed out by creatures that look like mashups of human genitalia, and Fassbender is so good that it’s worth watching for him alone. Not a bad achievement for a character that “has no soul”. Guy Pearce also does a turn as the ancient company founder Peter Weyland, in funny old-man makeup. But ultimately, Prometheus isn’t as engaging as the original, nor as fresh, nor as subtle. Rapace is a shallow protagonist that makes you miss the hard-ass charisma of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley; the alien-attack scenes aren’t as masterfully constructed as we’ve seen previously, and the plot doesn’t make it to a satisfying conclusion, leaving far too much “up in the air”. You’ll have a decent time if you’re already into this kind of thing – but a DVD night with Ripley, the Nostromo, Jonesy, Ash and The Bitch is easily the better option. Nikos Andronicos ■ Film
FRIENDS WITH KIDS Released June 7 The title Friends With Kids refers both to the divide that springs up when your old mates suddenly become parents – initiated into a completely foreign and terrifying world – and to the central plot contrivance that takes the old When Harry Met Sally chestnut to possibly its furthest extreme: can men and women just be friends, even if they have a child together? Jennifer Westfeldt (writer and star of 2001 indie hit Kissing Jessica Stein) wrote, directed, produced and starred in this odd confection, which has a lot of the gestures of a mainstream romcom – not to mention the cast of one – but the budget and largely low-key aesthetic of an indie. The cast, it should be noted, is stellar – Westfeldt stars with Adam Scott (AKA Parks & Recreation’s Ben Wyatt) as Julie and Jason, the long-time platonic pair who watch their close friendship group descend into screeching about poop and never leaving Brooklyn, and decide that if they have a kid together, there’s no relationship to ruin and they can save all the romance for The Actual One. Maya Rudolph and Chris O’Dowd are wonderful as the affectionate, mildly frumpy old hands on their second baby; Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm, rounding out the Bridesmaids reunion, are given sadly little to do as the couple who go from banging in bathrooms to brittle needling about whose turn it is to do everything.
Logan Marshall-Green, Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender in Prometheus
See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews
Street Level
Film & Theatre Reviews Hits and misses on the silver screen and the bareboards around town.
All do great work with roles that are more archetypes than characters. Scott, the card-carrying actual Cutest Man In The World™, turns in a couple of lovely moments despite being hopelessly miscast as an oblivious serial monogamist. And the script is peppered with surprising, complex insights about becoming and being a parent. (Westfeldt and Hamm, who’ve been together since 1997, have no children.) But we are told, rather than shown, that Julie and Jason are super close – 4am phone calls, running jokes that her new beau doesn’t get – and it takes work to be invested in the success of the experiment. That said, the resultant spawn, Joe, is implausibly adorable; Friends With Kids romanticises the family the way most romcoms promote coupledom. Rated C for Clucky. Caitlin Welsh ■ Film
TAKE THIS WALTZ Opens June 14 Sarah Polley’s sophomore feature is funny, bittersweet, achingly sad, smolderingly sexy and melancholic; and it is all of these things intensely. As with her debut feature, Away From Her, which dealt with an older couple coping with the onset of Alzheimer’s, in Take This Waltz, Polley strikes only the most plangent notes of human experience, and does it deftly and with great skill. Her subject is Margot (Michelle Williams), a perpetually ‘restless’ young woman in her fifth year of a loving and stable marriage to Lou (Seth Rogen), and holding down a stable but boring job writing pamphlet copy for Parks Canada. As we meet her, however, she is just about to meet and fall for Daniel (Luke Kirby), a rickshaw
With Heath Franco
P
runner who paints as a hobby. An intense but unconsummated infatuation ensues between the two, despite her better judgment and efforts to maintain an even keel at home.
ainter-turnedvideo-artist Heath Franco (FUN HOUSE, WUNDER CLOSET) specialises in multi-channel video installations that feature him in several demented roles/characters, acting out bizarre scenarios, superimposed over photographed backdrops using greenscreen technology. His latest piece is DREAM HOME, a dual-channel video work that follows on from his recent work DREAM HOME Rainbow.
The roles are perfectly cast and executed (including Sarah Silverman in a role that demands a transition from stand-up and TV to Proper Films; and Williams reprising her sweet-but-damaged shtick, that probably isn’t a shtick at all, to perfection) – perhaps no surprise for a director who is also one of her generation’s more talented actresses. Rogen acquits himself for the most part effortlessly, with only a couple of on-thenose Rogenisms, and one ill-conceived scene involving jump cuts and him trying uncomfortably hard to be ‘upset’.
How do you feel your former practice in painting and drawing informs your video work? I think it gave me the chance to experiment with picture composition and colour combinations. I always found it difficult to settle on a static image and so would overpaint pictures to the point of oblivion, or just give up on them, unfinished. Also having a general knowledge and interest of the history of painting has affected the video work, I think. I always wanted to make films or videos, but when I was at uni, I didn’t have the money for a camera and computer equipment. I think it worked out for the best, as the excitement of working it out as I go is a factor that drives my practice.
The overall effect of Take This Waltz is a buttery-yellow, summer-hot and slightly sweaty vision of young romance that perfectly captures the experience and the mood of falling in – and out of – love; that ineffable, intensely romantic melancholia that typically strikes girls in their 20s, and that deeply earnest dedication to courtship that often strikes young men. It’s true – there are familiar and even clichéd elements to the characters, plot and dialogue – but Polley skillfully throws her audience off balance with bursts of the completely unexpected (in one case, literally) in the middle of potentially mawkish scenes. While you’re wondering how Margot came to be in a wheelchair all of a sudden, you’re not noticing (or minding) that Daniel has conveniently turned up at the same airport as her at the same time, and yes, on the same flight.
What drives you as an artist? Making work I find exciting to watch, that sort of scratches the surface of the pain and madness I see in everyday life. When I stop to think about it, life can be a horrifying thing. The fact that you can be seriously injured or die at any time is quite confronting and the way people treat each other is sometimes confusing and destructive. Any perceived control a person has over their situation is quite miniscule in relation to the terrifying possibilities of nature. Through my work, I seek to, at once, escape and indulge the madness, by creating alternate realities which I have some control over, that in turn sort of reflect the condition of living in this world at this time.
It may be a matter of taste whether all this feels finely wrought or just overwrought – for me, this is an acutely observed, moving and moody relationship dramedy that bears re-watching. Dee Jefferson
How did DREAM HOME come about? The production of the work began last year when I found a hand-made model house at the Salvos store in Parramatta. I thought it would be fun to try using an artificial environment for my characters to exist in. At the same time, my fiancée and I have been thinking about moving into a new place and trying to find our ‘dream home’ – a common phrase that I thought would be fun to use and exploit the ‘dream’ factor, which allows limitless possibilities as anything you can imagine can happen in a dream. There is also an element of sarcasm in the title. What’s going on in this frame (pictured)? This character is like a bratty teenage bully exerting his power over something weaker. My characters usually only say one or two lines; his line is “stop hitting yourself”, as he’s forcing the doll to punch itself with its own hand. In this shot he is posing for a portrait with his little buddy, you can see another portrait on the wall behind him. I think this scene explores selfobsession, helplessness and frustration. Come see the video and make up your own minds! What: DREAM HOME by Heath Franco Where: Galerie pompom / 2/39 Abercrombie Street, Chippendale When: Opens Tuesday June 19 from 6pm More: Franco is also featured as part of the Transmission group show, at Campbelltown Arts Centre until August 5.
“By tUrNs sWeEt aNd sAlTy, qUiRkY aNd dIrTy, TaKe tHiS WaLtZ iS a dEcEpTiVeLy cAnDy-cOlOuReD eXiStEnTiAlIsT rOm-cOm – wHiCh iS tO sAy tHeRe iS nOtHiNg qUiTe lIkE iT.” The Village Voice
“DeLiCaTe, bEaUtIfUl aNd pOwErFuL.” Hitfix
IN CINEMAS THURSDAY JUNE 14 PALACE VERONA, PALACE NORTON, DENDY NEWTOWN & HOYTS CINEMA PARIS
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 31
Album Reviews
What's been crossing our ears this week...
ALBUM OF THE WEEK GRAVEYARD TRAIN
Melbourne’s Graveyard Train may have given up a bit of the tongue-in-cheek humour and supernatural subject matter in their third full-length instalment, but the loss leads us on an epic, ballad-filled journey into deep dark philosophical ponderings, reminding us that we’re all just bags of bones waiting to turn into dust.
of the seven-man chorus and the soulful slide guitar. The menacing chorus in ‘Mary Melody’ welcomes back a snippet of horror narrative through a heavy haze of spurs and whiskey and a galloping bonanza-style showdown at the end, while ‘The End Of The World’ starts off dark and sultry with the man choir chanting about – wait for it – the end of the world. With monumental lines like “God’s breath ain’t a breeze / It’s a red hot burning wind” and a spooky ethereal slide guitar curling over the rolling banjo, it makes a fitting album closer.
Hollow builds leisurely, with tracks like ‘I’m Gone’ and ‘Life Is Elsewhere’ marching us through twangy guitar and steel string over smoky vocals and stompin’ beats. The band’s songwriting skills become apparent throughout the second half of the album, notably with the hauntingly beautiful ‘Hollow Wind’, which hangs heavy with the echoing
Graveyard Train continue to surpass their altcountry/blues band contemporaries even with the toning down of their horror and their humour. With the combined power of their voices, delivering lyrical imagery like “I’ve got a rattlesnake curled up in my brain”, along with arguably one of the best slide players in the country and the rattling of
Hollow Spooky Records
We’ll all eventually rot to dust, so you may as well put your boots up and enjoy a few whiskeys on the way.
FRIENDS
NEIL YOUNG & CRAZY HORSE
Manifest! Lucky Number/Co-op How much more tribal can Brooklyn get? Does the entire borough actually consist of post-industrial structures covered in vines, where bearded boys and girls accompany you on timpani as you negotiate the perilous emotions of daily life? Extravagant mood-setting rhetoric aside, if you’re going to do this kind of music almost three decades after Paul Simon released Graceland and four years after Vampire Weekend pillaged the same, you have to do it really well. The good news for latest Brooklynites Friends is that, following the necessary internet hype for their two advance singles, they’ve managed to release a fairly solid and compelling debut. The back instrumentation is a welcome feature, with the basslines adding direction as well as the usual bulk. Middle track ‘A Thing Like This’ would be pleasant and forgettable were it not for the nasty bass wobbling away beneath the flute trills and frontwoman Samantha Urbani’s vocals. Fans would already be aware of the band’s penchant for bass from early single ‘I’m His Girl’. The late-appearing track is probably the most polished on the album, and almost manages to hide the band’s greatest secret: Urbani has huge range. While she may appear the disinterested heroine on the single, through the record she reveals both fantastic technique and the ability to shift seamlessly between moods and scenes. On ‘Sorry’, for instance, she alternates between pleading and despising, dominating first before sliding beneath the snaps and clicks. After so much hype, Manifest! does not disappoint – and given the oh-so-natural feel of the playing, there's no doubt Friends will inspire even the hippest kids to boogie on down when they tour later this year.
JAPANDROIDS
It’s been ten years since we’ve heard Neil Young backed by Crazy Horse, a break that has seen Young devote his time to retrospectives and solo recordings, highlighted by the most recent, 2010’s forgotten classic Le Noise. With Americana, Young reunites the band responsible for some of the greatest rock records of the ‘70s to cover a series of American folk songs, with results ranging from the highs of 1975’s ‘Zuma’, to the forgettable lows of 1981’s ‘Re-ac-tor’. As you can imagine from the inclusion of the rugged Crazy Horse, the songs on Americana don’t exactly feature traditional folk arrangements. ‘Oh Susanna’ is blasted with distorted strut, while ‘Jesus’ Chariot (She’ll Be Comin' Round The Mountain)’ retains all the lip-pouting aggression you’d expect of the band responsible for classics like ‘Cinnamon Girl’ and ‘Hey Hey, My My.’ ‘Wayfarin’ Stranger’ is fed with a strange sense of dark sincerity by Young’s wavering vocal, and while the mockery of ‘God Save The Queen’ isn’t exactly a pleasant listen, it at least fits with what you’d expect of a big rock‘n’roll lampooning. But not all the re-workings are successful experiments. Woodie Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ is a plodding disaster, while the absurd vocals and dull arrangement of ‘Get A Job’ just sounds silly. There’s just enough loose fun on the record to make it worthwhile – but Americana cuts it very fine. At 67 years of age, Neil Young is in danger of becoming irrelevant – and returning from the experimental streak of Le Noise with a covers album, he does little to dispel the claim that maybe he already is. Max Easton
Do not adjust your headphones – those crackles are just fireworks. How else would you start an album called Celebration Rock? Back those fireworks up with a simple, slamming drum beat, some choppy guitar and triumphant vocals, and you’ve got a track so emphatic it almost blows you off your chair. ‘The Nights Of Wine And Roses’, the first song of Japandroids’ second album, tells us definitively that this is not a celebration in name only. The chorus, “We don’t cry for those nights to arrive / We yell like hell to the heavens” (followed by a lot of yelled “Woah-oh-ing”), could be a mission statement for the entire album. Since Japandroids’ debut Post Nothing came out in 2009, similar rabid, desperate punk has been made with more brutality by No Age, and more verbosity by Titus Andronicus. But there’s no other band that could boast the stampeding, ridiculously catchy melodies that run rampant through this record. ‘Younger Us’ is an ode to teenage abandon, which follows charming lyrics “Give me that night you were already in bed / Said ‘fuck it’, got up to drink with me instead” with fuzzed out shredding guitar, as though the memories are too raw to articulate. Then there’s the ‘throw a chair through a window, punch your boss in the face’ righteous rage of first single ‘The House That Heaven Built’, where over the crash of cymbals and frantic guitar the listener is ordered: “When they love you and they will / Tell ‘em all they’re loving my shadow / And if they try to slow you down / Tell ‘em all to go to hell”. I don’t think anyone’s going to be telling the Japandroids to slow down any time soon. Triumphantly righteous and goddamn fun. Madeleine Laing
Benjamin Cooper
Up And Left Laughing Outlaw It seems a month didn’t go by in the mid-‘90s without a new release from a Tom Morgan project. A frightfully prolific songwriter for someone firmly entrenched in the ‘slacker-rock’ movement (can anything defined by inactivity be called a movement?), Morgan penned the most important Lemonheads songs, steered Smudge through three albums which are required listening for pop students, and recorded numerous other records with acts such as Sneeze and Godstar.
32 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
But while Bambino Koresh’s debut album Up And Left at times leans closely to both the more country-tinged Lemonheads numbers and the scrappy pop of Smudge, it is clear that despite Morgan’s presence on bass and scattered backing vocals, this ship is steered by vocalist and songwriter Leticia Nischang. The Argentinean frontwoman effortlessly sails through fourteen tracks of alarmingly high quality; her coolly detached vocal and lyrical deftness anchor the album as it flits from country to breezy Californian pop to slacker rock (sorry) – with liberal dashings of Neil Young throughout. Pedal steel (by guest Jason Walker) adds a nice cohesive quality to the record, popping in here and there to augment
Maxïmo Park’s debut, A Certain Trigger, was released in 2005 to critical and commercial acclaim, garnering them both a Mercury Prize nomination and more than 300 000 album sales. Their fourth record, The National Health sees the Geordie lads tightening up the sonic excursions of their subsequent releases, whilst tackling that most necessary of subjects for British artists: the modern crumbling of the homeland. The aforementioned tightening sees the band recognising that chasing the high-octane aesthetics of their debut is pointless. Instead, they have chosen here to play to their greatest strength: singer Paul Smith’s unwavering timbre. The guitars and rhythm section seem wholly united in their support of Smith’s narrative, in which he traces their patriotic concerns alongside the breakdown of a personal relationship. Not the most original trick, and one that will surely be replicated by fellow BritPop revivalists Bloc Party on their own imminent fourth album, but it works here thanks to the degree of control exercised by the band. There are some questionably prosaic lyrics, such as in opener ‘When I Was Wild’ wherein Smith asks, “Do I really need to give an introduction/Must the artist bleed over the new production?” But you forget about such missteps when the title track immediately follows, which strikes with the greatest effect and poise that the band have displayed in years. In the muss of hooks and direct piano lines, it all seems much more urgent and focused than their past work did. Returning to the notoriously autocratic Gil Norton for production has yielded Maxïmo Park’s most mature work to date, in which questions about retaining their spark and playing to their strengths have been answered. Benjamin Cooper
the more back-porch tracks. ‘Just Accept It’ is the album’s highlight: a mid-pace country-pop song that sees Nischang defusing an unrequited lover in the sweetest way possible. ‘Satan, Do Me A Solid’ chugs into play before blossoming into a Fleetwood Mac-esque chorus that will bounce about in your head for weeks, ‘Sleeping In Pain’ is a lovely lament, and ‘Indirect Putdowns’ contains the shambolic quality of the aforementioned Young’s Tonight’s The Night. There really isn’t a weak song present, which is quite a feat for a fourteentrack record that traverses as much territory as this. Victoria Lucas
THE BAMBOOS Medicine Man Inertia
The National Health Warp
INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK BAMBINO KORESH
Anna Kennedy
MAXÏMO PARK
Celebration Rock Pod/Inertia
Americana Reprise
chains and blasts of banjo, Hollow maintains the essential elements of the band while delving into newer, more sombre territory.
I’ve had the pleasure of tracking the The Bamboos from the very start; from the Melbourne oufit’s first forays into raw funk breaks, and on through frontman Lance Ferguson’s gradual rise to becoming one of the most respected musicians in the country. It’s a well-deserved reputation that’s aptly demonstrated by the long list of collaborators that feature on this album: Daniel Merriweather, You Am I’s Tim Rogers, Aloe Blacc, and of course Megan Washington, who records with Ferguson’s alter-ego Lanu, and returned to the studio with his band for this record. ‘I Got Burned (ft. Tim Rogers)' is the album’s clear highlight: blues, funk and soul all come together in a beautiful synergy with Rogers’ dusty vocal, making for a formidable song. Unfortunately the same can't be said for album opener ‘I Never (ft. Daniel Merriweather)’ – I just can’t see myself coming back to this track. Whilst not a fan of Megan Washington’s largely “nice” and “safe” approach to recording with Ferguson – Lanu’s ‘Beautiful Trash’ is a case in point – her cover of James Blake’s ‘The Wilhelm Scream’ on this album is inspired, and shows she’s listening to some good music in her downtime. But her other contribution to this album, ‘Eliza’, is exactly that pale designed-to-be-synched-to-AustralianTV-drama sound that you may as well skip right past. The record's saving grace lies in two commanding vocal tracks from Kylie Auldist; long-time Bamboos fans will find at least some joy there. I’m always going to miss the days when the ‘boos would reach out to a little known MC and put together a massive hip hop track. But that ground has long been covered and, for better or worse, the group are now striding through a contemporary pop landscape. Tony Edwards
OFFICE MIXTAPE And here are the albums that have helped BRAG HQ get through the week... DNTEL - Aimlessness PATTI SMITH - Banga RAPHAEL SAADIQ - Stone Rollin'
DAN KELLY - Dan Kelly's Dream NAS - Illmatic
LV L 3 , 3 8 3 B O U R K E S T S U R RY H I L L S
L I V E M U S I C , V I S U A L A R T, T H E AT R E , CO M E DY, B U R L E S Q U E & B O O Z E
SUN 10 JUN THU 14 JUN SILENT DISCO
JUNE LONG WEEKEND
JOY RIDE
A-TONEZ
FRI 15 JUN SAT 16 JUN AND
SUN 17 JUN MON 18JUN The Pin Up Parlor Presents...
performances by: Gigi Vine / Jerry Fox Bunni Bergman / Veronica Bloom Lambada / Baby Blue artists FEAT. Betty Belle / Vanessa Rodriguez Alex Lehours / Mr Sweet / Rachael Wiggins / Shannon McKinnon / DJ Bex
COMING UP
JUNE
19th 21st 28th 30th
A WINNER-TAKES-ALL BATTLE ROYALE BETWEEN SYDNEY AND MELBOURNE’S MOST BRILLIANT BARTENDERS.
MUSIC NSW PUBLISHING WORKSHOP SELECT MUSIC 7TH BIRTHDAY ART FOR JUNGLE PROJECT JAY BRANNAN
OPEN TIL 3AM COME VISIT US AT FACEBOOK.COM/THESTANDARDSYDNEY
TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT WEARETHESTANDARD.COM.AU
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 33
live reviews what we've been to see...
RAP CITY: GHOSTFACE KILLAH, DOOM, CHINO XL Enmore Theatre Saturday June 2
It has been two years since the inaugural Rap City visited Australian shores, but the lineup promised for this chilly evening in the inner-west was enough to draw scores from across the city. Chino XL took to the stage with a whole bunch of hustle. The guy is a keen bodybuilder, but there wasn’t necessarily much strength to his rhymes. Pacing across the front of the space, he continued to play the macho card – and thankfully, the crowd loved it. DOOM made his much-anticipated Australian debut last year. He played a show on Oxford Street that was strangely lacklustre, with the presence of a hype-man jarring against the clarity of expression his lyrics require. Tonight he performed solo, and had a lot of fun doing it – though to curious effect. Perhaps it was due to the absence of a
DJ, or potentially due to a restless crowd awaiting the main act, but the crowd turned on Mr Dumile. He slid into ‘Hoe Cakes’ from 2004’s Mm.. Food, and at his urging the punters down the front shouted out the “Super” refrain – but the folks up the back were booing hard, barely twenty minutes into his set. Rapturous applause greeted Dennis Coles as he emerged flanked with some of his boys. Ghostface Killah had clearly been watching the crowd’s treatment of his (superior) tour-mate, so elected to simply shut up and play the hits. As soon as he started embarking on some between-song spiel, however, the crowd turned again – resulting in the somewhat bizarre situation where the second half of his set was dedicated solely to covering the solo work of his Wu-Tang brethren. Sure he contributed a lot to Raekwon’s Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, but it seemed seriously odd for him to be singing GZA’s ‘Liquid Swords’. He didn’t get booed for it, though. Benjamin Cooper
THE TEMPER TRAP
more than to become all but lost, as people trample in and out to buy drinks and talk loudly amongst themselves…
Eyebrows swiftly rise as the Concert Hall’s cavernous innards fill with ecstatic moaning, groaning and phrases too explicit to republish here… Whether it came from a staffer channelling Tyler Durden, the inadvertent capturing of a backstage, erm, warm-up routine, or a newfangled rap song for Kids These Days, the unexpectedness of the sound neatly portends the tone of tonight’s proceedings.
Not a single iota is lost of the sound emanating from The Temper Trap powerhouse – who also enjoyed closed doors, fully-dimmed houselights, stagecraft with more wattage than the Vivid light show, and a full house of eager fans. Returning after a year away, they have a definite presence and generate a wall of sound to make Phil Spector quiver. Against a lighting configuration resembling a gigantic, back-lit lace doily, eight anthemic songs from each of The Temper Trap’s two studio albums are powered through. New tracks including ‘Need Your Love’ and ‘Rabbit Hole’ are equally powerful as older favourites such as ‘Down River’ and ‘Soldier On’. Is this what attending a Toto or Styx concert in the ‘80s would have been like? Yes, says the rapturous squealing of transfixed audience members chanting every lyric while performing the middleaged-lady-in-an-RSL-club dance (where both hands are raised above the head and each elbow traces the outline of a small circle in opposite directions, such that the chest swings from side to side).
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House Thursday May 31
Pity Chet Faker, whose marvellous ‘trip hop meets folk and they sing Dirty Beaches together in a blues club hosting a jazz/ soul night’ music must contend with a lot of setbacks tonight. The powers-that-be ineptly elect to half-dim houselights and leave all doors open for Faker’s set. Uncharacteristic for Vivid LIVE, this move – combined with a volume that’s consistently muted through the sound desk – forcefully and disrespectfully relegates Faker and his band to background music, while communicating to an unwittingly obedient audience that (dis)engaging with his performance accordingly is acceptable. Faker admirably plays the cards he has been dealt, but the beautiful nuances of his vocals and backing beats deserve
AMON TOBIN: LIVE – BEYOND 3D
immersive as we might have hoped, then the pulverising force of the sound system, which was probably-definitely turned up to 11, made up for it.
In ISAM, Amon Tobin wrote what even he considers to be an incredibly challenging album. Thankfully, someone gave him a run at reinventing it as a live audiovisual show – and the result doesn’t simply make sense of the album, it makes you feel as though it was specifically written for the inner workings of machinery, and timed against the whirring pump and compression of the factory-line.
Stand-out sequences included the euphoric album opener ‘Journeyman’ (the beat accompanied by plumes of thick white mist shooting upwards across the stars-on-ink night sky of the screen-installation, and jets of milk liquid falling down through space against a projection of, one assumes, one of the major battle cruisers from Star Wars), the metal-machine-music of ‘Piece Of Paper’ (set to visuals of machine cogs, factory-line compressors and turbines), and the building momentum of ecstatic album closer ‘Dropped From The sky’ – in-between which things got, at times, almost impossibly abstract, with strobing and shuddering synth lines, rhythmic clangs, sprockets and springs. The very best sequences, surprisingly, were the two encores, each of which surpassed what came before.
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House Saturday June 2
The reputation of Tobin and the Beyond 3D show preceded it, with the crowd already so psyched that all it took was a glimpse of Tobin during the set (when the screens enclosing his cubed controlbooth became translucent) – let alone the two curtain calls – and shit went nuts. (Also, I’m pretty sure this is the first time the EDM community has truly owned the Concert Hall). The visuals, projected onto a structure of three-dimensional whitescreened cubes, ranged from the expected spaceships, computer circuitry, future cities and machine cogs, to hypnotic, eye-twisting geometric contortions, and more elemental images such as slow-motion fragmentary explosions, and rhythmic eruptions of flame. If the installation was perhaps a little small for the stage, proportionally, to be as
Frontman Dougy Mandagi is unexpectedly joined by the most genteel streaker in the history of public events for a few lines of the chorus of closer ‘Sweet Disposition’ (aka the ‘500 Days of Summer’ song) – and then the strange night is over.
Dee Jefferson
DENCE UPTON OUR PHOTOGRAPHER :: PRU
Andrew Yorke
LANIE LANE, STEVE SMYTH, THE RUBENS The Metro Theatre Saturday June 2
With torrential downpours threatening to dissolve Sydney, it is a pleasure to finally be within the dry embrace of The Metro Theatre – an embrace to which the pining, whiskey-soaked growls of hirsute bushranger Steve Smyth add a much-appreciated warmth. Obligatory Tom Waits comparison aside, the inimitable musical-sandpaper pipes with which Smyth has been gifted are astounding. Add to the mix a guitar that is less played than convulsed with and you have a performer so powerful that talkers become shushed into silence by other audience members, as he belts out an a capella cover of Harry Belafonte’s take on Lead Belly’s ‘Sylvie’ – a tribute to a recently-lost friend. Whilst a crowd quieting itself to maximise the performance is testimony to Smyth’s charisma, his high musical and emotional intensity could prove uncomfortable for those feeling tender. Clean cut, befringed south-western Sydneysiders The Rubens grace the stage with a visually pleasing pastiche of checkered and paisley shirts. They are a tight outfit that, according to a fellow audience member, are “good to drink Coopers and stomp to”. Although DENCE UPTON OUR PHOTOGRAPHER :: PRU
34 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
At its best, Beyond 3D is an inspired and masterfully executed blending of electronic music and visual projection, giving rise to feelings of euphoria; but to be honest, half the charm of this show was the ridiculously up-for-it crowd.
the consistency of their music runs the danger of being perceived by the uninitiated as generic, those familiar with their Creedance Clearwater Revival/The Greenhornes sound are singing along loudly and applauding enthusiastically. After a wait so lengthy it only just manages to scrape through on the favourable side of the anticipation/ frustration divide, Lanie Lane appears. At least, I think it is Lane; so striking is the woman who stands before me with a high quiff, gold earrings, sequined bolero jacket, super-short black ruffled skirt and towering heels that I have to do a doubletake to ensure she is the same girl who sat placidly underneath a cowboy hat and lent her acoustic support to Justin Townes Earle less than a year ago. Although Lane’s image and stage presence have evolved rapidly over a short period of time, she is at ease with her newfound confidence. Tonight’s performance is further evidence of how her original compositions are remarkable in the extent to which they sound like old standards. Whilst the tracks on her 2011 album To The Horses comprise most of the setlist, other highlights include ‘Like Me Meaner’ and its accompanying super-hot, swing-dancing couple, and a fantastic revivification of The Black Keys’ ‘Gold On The Ceiling’. Andrew Yorke
live reviews what we've been to see...
KAREN O: STOP THE VIRGENS Sydney Opera House Wednesday May 30 On paper, Karen O’s Stop The Virgens seems like a no-brainer: the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ charismatic and fashion-forward front-woman, themes of youth and sexuality, theatrical design (including costumes by long-time YYY collaborator Christian Joy) – all packaged up and presented in the Opera Theatre. But for me, the reality never quite managed to be more than the sum of its parts and, despite moments of brilliance, never quite felt like a cohesive whole or built the kind of emotional and even ecstatic momentum that one might expect from a concert or an opera. This is partly because of the format – a series of tableaux, without a strong connecting narrative – and partly because of the execution, which left gaps a little too long between each scene/ song: a cloak that takes too much time to fasten while nothing else is happening, or a pause while the stage is reset for the next scene. These things are not problems in themselves, but in combination, they make for a strangely disjointed evening. Simply put, the concept of Stop The Virgens involves the sexual awakening of 30-or-so tow-headed young virgin ‘acolytes’, who are ruled over by a high-priestess/witch-queen with the assistance of two black-robed
BOUD OUR PHOTOGRAPHER :: DANIEL
nuns – or cosmic ‘Sentinels’. It began life as a song-cycle, devised by Karen and Sam Spiegel in 2005 – not necessarily with a narrative, but with certain overarching themes (the getting of wisdom, sexuality, catharsis and regeneration) and motifs (light versus darkness, black sugar versus white sugar). The songs range from languid American bar-room croons (highlight ‘Last Lullaby’, which book-ends the show) to energetic hand-clap anthems like ‘Get ‘Em On The Run’ and ‘You Gotta Nail It Down To My Feet/The Scum Runs Deep.’ Karen and her cast careen from joy to aggression to melancholy and even catatonic states. It’s an intriguing universe, beautifully brought to life through a production design that involves layers of digital projections over an onyx set-cum-portal, as dreamt up by K.K. Barrett; extravagant, symbolinfused costumes by Joy; primal, joyous choreography by Mariangela Lopez; and a band that included YYY’s Nick Zinner and Brian Chase, Money Mark on keys, plus strings, sax and brass. But even as you’re appreciating the artistry of this piece of theatre, you’re losing its effect. At no point did I feel involved enough in what was happening on stage to care much about where it was all going. Dee Jefferson
& PRUDENCE UPTON
cambodian psych-out party!
party profile
It sounds like: Psychedelic and highly danceable classic Khmer rock and pop from the ’60s and ’70s. Who’s spinning? Filmmaker Davy Chou & Richard Kuipers (Variety film critic and curator of Sydney Film Festival’s Freak Me Out sidebar). Sell it to us: Unknown outside Cambodia until the ’90s when backpackers started bringing cassettes home, this music reflects the vibrant arts scene before the Khmer Rouge. Most tracks were recorded in the only “recording studio” in Phnom Penh: a shopfront with a single microphone. The master tapes were flown to Paris and pressed into 7-inch singles. Most was destroyed and almost every singer was killed. Original vinyl of Cambodian pop is extremely rare, and this is a unique chance to dance to some forgotten tunes! The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Smashing Khmer covers of Shocking Blue’s ‘Venus’, Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ and ‘House Of The Rising Sun’. Crowd specs: A mixed and vibrant crowd. Wallet damage: FREE! Where: Sydney Film Festival Hub @ Lower Town Hall (entry via Druitt Street, opposite the QVB) When: Friday June 15, from 8.30pm.
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 35
snap sn ap
up all night out all week . . .
Panama party profile
It’s called: Panama @ Upstairs Beresford It sounds like: Sunsets on the beach, a beautiful stranger, free-poured tequila. We like to think of ourselves as tropical, eclectic, post-nostalgic pop. Having recorded our forthcoming EP in Los Angeles, our sound is steeped in the smell of coconut oil and bikini-clad girls on roller skates. Who’s playing? Panama, Demons To Diamonds, Ollie Brown and DJs. Sell it to us: URB Magazine called our debut single ‘Magic’ uplifting, and said it reminded them of an impending spring renewal, which is a potent antidote for anyone’s case of the winter blues. Our music is made for the sunshine, so hopefully we’ll warm the cockles of even the coldest winter heart. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Probably not much at all, if you’re doing it right. Crowd specs: Hopefully some Hawaiian shirts or panama hats; think Hunter S. Thompson. Wallet Damage: Free! Where: Upstairs Beresford / Lvl 1, 354 Bourke St, Surry Hills
lanie lane
PICS :: KC
When: Friday June 15, from 6pm
simple plan
PICS :: AM
02:06:12 :: The Metro Theatre :: 624 George St Sydney 9550 3666
sufjan stevens
PICS :: PU
01:06:12 :: Hordern Pavilion :: 122 Lang Rd Moore Park 8117 6700
sui zhen
PICS :: RJ
30:05:12 :: Concert Hall :: Sydney Opera House 9250 7111
goons of doom
24:05:12 :: Beach Road Hotel :: 71 Beach Rd Bondi Beach 9130 7247
PICS :: KC
deep sea arcade
02:06:12 :: The Standard:: Level 3/383 Bourke St Surry Hills 9331 3100 36 :: BRAG :: 466: 11:06:12
PICS :: RW
03:06:12 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William St 9331 9900
:: KATRINA CLARKE :: RASA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) CHY :: GEORGE POPOV :: TIM OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER PEA MAS THO :: NS MUN :: DANIEL ON JUSKEVICIUTE :: ASHLEY MAR UPT CE DEN PRU :: IDE TES :: SAM WHI WHITNEY :: ROCKET WEIJERS
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 37
Remedy More Than The Cure Since 1989 with Murray Engleheart
LOVE IT TO DEATH
saving grace. We know that you shouldn’t judge an album by its guests, but you sure can get some sort of handle on it – and we have. To further weigh down our view, the album reportedly clocks in at around the two-hour mark and our attention span is only about 30 minutes, tops. “It’s the culmination of every previous Swans’ album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined,” says mainman Michael Gira of the new recording. “But it’s unfinished, like the songs themselves. It’s one frame in a reel. The frames blur, blend and will eventually fade.” Be careful what you muse about, mate.
AXL TIME Sighted on eBay last week: an original Alice Cooper Love It To Death t-shirt – although we aren’t sure band t-shirts were actually a thing way back in the early ‘70s. Anyway, the going rate? Almost $600 Australian.
HEARING IMPAIRED
There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald last week about the risk of hearing loss for those who listen to music too loudly via earphones. There’s nothing new in this: the same argument has been run periodically ever since the Walkman first hit the scene in the ‘80s. The difference between now and then, of course, is that the quality of what’s being listened to has gone down the shitter. So folks are allegedly going deaf not through eardrum pressure from great music such as say, AC/DC’s Powerage or High On Fire’s De Vermis Mysteriis or even The Beatles or The Stones, but due to excess exposure to utter crap. In short, they’re suffering for someone else’s lousy art. Pretty noble in a weird sort of way, really.
RIP BOBBY D
Not everyone who passes away is a legend, but that’s no reason for them not to rate a mention. Bobby Durango, the singer from LA-via-Florida ‘80s rockers The Rock City Angels, has left us. The band, who at one point had Johnny Depp in their ranks, are nonetheless well remembered in these parts for their 1988 Black Crowes-inspired raunch-and-roll effort, Young Man’s Blues.
OZ ROCK’N’ROLLINS
There was an interesting ‘dispatch’ on henryrollins.com on May 25: “I am listening to a band called Dick Diver from Australia. I am on a serious Australian music bender at present. Eddy Current Suppression Ring, UV Race and Total Control albums have been on all weekend. There could be worse things to have happen to your ears.” Indeed.
SWANS SONGS
Swans have a new album called The Seer out in August, which features Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mimi Parker of Low, Grasshopper from Mercury Rev, and ‘honorary Swan’ Bill Rieflin, who has long been something of an industrial-rock gun-for-hire, having done time with (and in) everyone from Ministry to Nine Inch Nails. On paper at least, his presence seems the
The consistently late Guns N’ Roses outdid themselves at their show in Manchester on May 29: not only did they hit the stage after 11pm – more than an hour later than scheduled – but they still played a full three-hour show, which wrapped up in the very, very early morning by which time the crowd had almost halved. But really, who at this point could have been surprised? The band has been running on Axl time for years now. It’s what they do, and is as much a part of the act as performing ‘Paradise City’. And yes, it’s even part of their charm. Nonetheless, maybe tickets should carry a disclaimer/warning: “The show will start and finish when it does. No sooner and no later.”
THE REAL DR FEELGOOD Manic former Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson has a book out called Looking Back At Me. It’s filled with all manner of who-knew info on his formative years, and the booze-fuelled band that almost single-handedly blasted a pathway for punk. It’s also revealed that Johnson, who can be seen on TV in Game Of Thrones, is an accomplished painter who preferred speed to booze during his Feelgood days, and owns a pistol that was at one point the property of William S. Burroughs. But perhaps most the telling revelation comes as the band was nearing the end of its road: Johnson was making serious money as a songwriter by that point, and so approached his publishers about doing a split of those payments among his bandmates. Honourable, yeah? But before anything could be put on paper, the outfit broke up.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Turbonegro’s new slab, Sexual Harassment, is out this week, with the first single titled ‘You Give Me Worms’. The recordings are the band’s first with new singer Tony Sylvester (aka The Duke of Nothing) in place of Hank von Helvete, who left in 2010. It’ll be interesting to see just how much of their thing has changed in Hank’s wake. A major shift in dynamic, we’re thinking.
NEW DINOSAUR
A brand new Dinosaur Jr record has been completed, and is due for release in September. Can we expect a tour, maybe? Please? Meanwhile, J Mascis – that grand grey-haired gent of the alternative scene – is also prepping a new solo effort.
Swans
ON THE TURNTABLE On the Remedy turntable is Open Your Heart, the third album by New Yorkers The Men, who someone described as “Thurston Moore and the E Street Band” – which only comes close to capturing one element of what this mob does so masterfully. They’re post the hardcore of Hüsker Dü and post the punk-pop of The Buzzcocks, while being waist-deep in equal parts of the various dynamics of Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine – yet with a clear working knowledge of the trance-rock end of the Krautrock spectrum. That might sound way too disparate, and we do hear you on that – we hate our bands attempting to cover too much terrain – but this works. Very, very powerfully.
Send stuff to remedy@ozemail.com.au by 6pm Wednesdays. Pics to art@thebrag.com www.facebook.com/remedy4rock 38 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 39
g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Russell Neal, Matt Dewar, Senani, Tommy D, Massimo Presti, Chris Brookes Kellys On King, Newtown free 7pm
Sister Jane
TUESDAY JUNE 12 ROCK & POP
Harry Manx (CAN) Notes Live, Enmore 8pm Matt Corby, Alpine, We Are The Birdcage Metro Theatre, Sydney sold out 8pm Rob Henry The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm Unity Floors, King Tears Mortuary The Flinders, Darlinghurst free 8pm
FRIDAY JUNE 15
JAZZ
GoodGod Small Club, Sydney
Eight Miles High: Witch Hats, Sister Jane, Grand Atlantic, Bloods, Buried Feather, Atom Bombs $20 (+ bf) 7pm MONDAY JUNE 11 ROCK & POP
Co Pilot, The Donovans The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 5pm Ian Moss, Marshall Okell, DJ Urby Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 6pm Jackson Firebird, River of Snakes Brass Monkey, Cronulla 8pm Open Mic Night Hard Rock Cafe, Darling Harbour free 8pm
Pod Brothers Ettamogah Pub, Kellyville free 1pm Sarah Paton, Cambo The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm Unheard Open Mic Night Downstairs, Sandringham Hotel, Newtown free 7.30pm
JAZZ
Darling Harbour Jazz & Blues Festival: Dr Lonnie Smith, Trevor Watts, Veryan Weston, Smith Stack & Thistlewayte, Christa Hughes & the Honky Tonkshonks, Kira Puru & The Bruise, The Crusty Suitcase Band, Greening from Ear
to Ear,Jonathan Zwartz Ensemble, Amphibious, Compass Sextet, James Valentine, Moth, Alice Terry & the Skinny White Boys, Sister Jane, Brothers Grim & The Blue Murders, Bob Abbott’s Fabulous Green Machine, Joshua Kyle, Elly Hoytt, Fuji Collective, Richard Perso, Swamphouse, Big Ol’ Bus Band, The Louisiana Roadshow, Nicky Bomba’s Bustamento, The Bombay Royale Various Venues, Darling Harbour free 11am Monday Jam: Danny G Felix The Lansdowne, Broadway Rob Eastwood Dee Why Hotel free 6.30pm
Ian Blakeney Dee Why Hotel free 6.30pm Jazzgroove: The Drip Hards, Impermanent Quartet 505 Club, Surry Hills $8 (conc)–$15 8.30pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Andrew Denniston, Arthur Marder, Henry Fraser, Matt Dewar, Brian Manning Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 7pm Russell Neal, Under the Purple Tree, L J Phillips, Betti Laila Taverners Hill Hotel, Leichhardt free 6.30p
WEDNESDAY JUNE 13 ROCK & POP
Andy Mammers Duo Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 9.30pm Don Hopkins Cosmopolitan Cafe, Double Bay free 7pm The Drey Rollan Band, Two Timin Playboys, DJ Brian Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 6pm Harry Manx (CAN) Brass Monkey, Cronulla 8pm Julia Stone Cell Block Theatre, Darlinghurst $51 (+ bf) 8pm Kids of 88 (NZ), The Griswalds, Fairchild Republic Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm Matt Corby, Alpine, We Are The Birdcage Metro Theatre, Sydney sold out 8pm Matt Jones Trio Novotel Homebush, Homebush Bay free 4.30pm Maux Faux, Lines Of Charlie, Blink 182 Tribute, Ten Thousand Free Men And Their Families Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $10 8pm Mike Bennett The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 9.30pm Monsieur Camembert Big Band Presents Nilsson, Cohen & Camembert Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $35 7pm Sole Tattoo The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm
Steve Tonge Duo O’Malley’s Hotel, Darlinghurst free 9.30pm Tina Arena, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $49-$129 7.30pm Zoltan Coogee Bay Hotel free 9pm
JAZZ
Motif Ensemble (Norway) The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $20–$25 8.30pm The Motion Band 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm World Music Wednesdays: The Hi-Tops Brass Band Macquarie Hotel, Sydney free 8pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK Russell Neal, Men With Day Jobs, Selftort, Dennis Aubrey, Pete Scully, Maianne, John Chesher, Gavin Fitzgerald, Paul McGowan, Ken Mclean Coach & Horses Hotel, Randwick free 7pm
THURSDAY JUNE 14 ROCK & POP
Anthems Of Oz The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm The Colors Tribute Band The Union Hotel, Newtown free 8pm Dave White Experience Coogee Bay Hotel free 10pm Harry Manx (CAN) Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $59–$117 (dinner & show) 7pm Ghastly Spats, Julia Why?, God K, The Purgatories, Beef Jerk FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $5 8pm Hot Damn!: Silverstein (CAN), Skyway Spectrum, Darlinghurst $12 (guestlist)–$15 8pm Hunting Grounds, Glass Towers, In Measures Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 6pm Kellie Lloyd, Pony Face The Green Room Lounge Bar, Enmore $13 8.30pm Live Thursdays: After Dark Hard Rock Cafe, Darling Harbour free 8.30pm Machinemachine, Restless Leg, Jon Hunter The Town & Country Hotel, St Peters 8pm Matt Corby, Alpine, We Are The Birdcage Metro Theatre, Sydney sold out 8pm Monsieur Camembert Big Band Presents Nilsson, Cohen & Camembert Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $35 7pm Neightbourhood Watch: Phebe Starr, Goldsmith, Iluka, Thieves
The Standard, Darlinghurst $5 (+ bf) 8pm Oliver Tank, Fishing Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $12–$15 8pm Over-Reactor Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt $15 (+ bf) 8pm Phil-EC, Jesta, Serial Sadist, Homicide feat. Hype Man, Tom E Gunz, KMF Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Simple Plan (CAN), We The Kings (USA), The Never Ever Agincourt Hotel, Ultimo $62.35 (+ bf) 8pm Staff Picks: Jack Carty, Achoo! Bless You, Annie McKinnon, Ross Henry Annandale Hotel $10 8pm Tina Arena, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $49-$129 7.30pm Witch Fight, Snake Tide Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $10 8pm Wild Katz Paragon Hotel, Sydney free 6pm
JAZZ
Cellar Jazz Jam: The Phil Stack Trio The Spice Cellar, Sydney free 6pm Jo Fabro Band, The Vampires The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $11.50$16.50 11am Lionel Robinson Dee Why Hotel free 6.30pm Miriam Lieberman 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 (conc)–$15 8.30pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 8pm Sarah J. Hyland, Nadia Ackerman, Sons Of Summer Blue Beat, Double Bay $15 (+ bf) 7pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Andrew Denniston, Linda Wood, Max de Groot, the Planets, Jake Bennett, Ben Moore & Jodie Gibson, Boris Sladakovic Narrabean Sands free 7pm The Idea of North The Basement, Circular Quay $25 (+ bf)–$79.80 (dinner & show) 8.30pm Russell Neal, Massimo Presti, Nick Domenicos, Spencer McCullum Kogarah Hotel free 7pm
FRIDAY JUNE 15 ROCK & POP
Bambino Koresh, Suzy Connolly, Sam Shinazzi, Bryan Estepa, Wilding, Charlie Horse Annandale Hotel $10 (+ bf) 6.30pm Black Diamond Hearts, DJ Smithers Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 6.30pm The Bloodpoets, The Sculptures, Sex In Columbia
“Suntanned bodies and waves of sunshine, the California girls and a beautiful coastline, warmed up weather let’s get together and do it again” - THE BEACH BOYS 40 :: BRAG :: 466 : 11:06:12
Alpine
Dirty Three photo by Annabel Mehran
pick of the week
Sonic Mayhem Orchestra Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay 8pm
g g guide gig g send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com
Oliver Tank
The Factory Floor, The Factory Theatre, Enmore $10 (+ bf) 7pm Charge Group, Joe McKee The Red Rattler Theatre, Marrickville $14.30 8pm The Chronics, South Devine, Equal Army, Judah Call The Square, Haymarket $10 8pm Club Blink: Gatherer, On Sierra Club 77, Darlinghurst $10-$12 8pm Dark C3ll, Celebrity Morgue, Mordern Murer, DJ Zotty Shudder Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm Doug Williams Macquarie Hotel, Sydney free 8pm Eight Miles High: Witch Hats, Sister Jane, Grand Atlantic, Bloods, Buried Feather, Atom Bombs GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $20 (+ bf) 7pm Forever 27 –The Songs of Hendrix, Joplin, Cobain, Winehouse: Jeff Duff, Tania Murray, Damien Lovelock, Sam Joole, Clare O’Meara, Rex Goh The Basement, Circular Quay $25 (+ bf) 8pm Founds, Fire! Santa Rosa Fire! The Standard, Darlinghurst $12 (+ bf) 8pm Graveyard Train, Jackals, OXBLVD Metro Theatre, Sydney $25 (+ bf) 8pm Harry Manx (CAN) Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $59–$117 (dinner & show) 8pm He She Wonderland, Dead Ears Band, Second Nation Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $10 8pm Hit Machine Rooty Hill RSL Club free 8pm The Holy Soul, Melodie Nelson, Luke O’Farrell The Green Room Lounge, Enmore 8pm Homegrown Engadine Tavern free 9.30pm Hugo Race Notes Live, Enmore 8pm Jon Stevens, Daryl Braithwaite Rooty Hill RSL Club 8pm Monsieur Camembert Big Band Presents Nilsson, Cohen & Camembert Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $35 7.30pm Mr Breeze Richmond Inn free 8.30pm MUM: Royston Vasie, Monsieur Moon, Janita & The Jaguars, The Canyoneersmen, Cuervo, Teal, Cries Wolf DJs, Glenn Be Trippin’, Sammy K, 10th Avenue, Wet Lungs, Swim Team DJs, Reg Harris The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm Ned Collette & Wirewalker, Mary Ocher (GER), Swimwear FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Next Best Thing Sutherland United Services Club free 7.30pm Oliver Tank Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm Panama, Demons To Diamonds, Ollie Brown,
Kristy Lee Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Roots: Eboola Goldfish, Local Resident, Failure, Prevailing Disorder Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Spenceray Coogee Bay Hotel free 10pm Streams Of Whiskey Paragon Hotel, Sydney free 6pm The Strides Brass Monkey, Cronulla 8pm Tina Arena, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $49-$129 7.30pm Trial Kennedy, After The Fall, My Echo, Lovers Jump Creek Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $20 (+ bf) 8pm Triangle Revolution, Mr Bamboo, Toydeath, Rica Tetas, DJ Alley Cats The Lansdowne, Broadway free 8pm
JAZZ
Amphibious The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $10-$20 8.30pm Edwina Blush 505 Club, Surry Hills $15 (conc)–$20 8.30pm Forever 27: Jeff Duff, Tania Murray, Damien Lovelock, Sam Joole, Clare O’Meara The Basement, Circular Quay $30 (+ bf) 8pm James Morrison Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $24 (+ bf) 7pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Celtic Divas: Lumiere (IRE), Noriana Kennedy (IRE), Nicola Joyce (IRE) The Factory Theatre, Enmore $69-$79 7.30pm
SATURDAY JUNE 16 ROCK & POP
50 Years of The Rolling Stones – A Historical Perspective: Damien Lovelock The Basement, Circular Quay $25 (+ bf) 8pm Avarin, Sabertung, Atomesquad, Fenrir Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm The Black Seeds (NZ), Cheap Fakes Metro Theatre, Sydney $33 (+ bf) 8pm Courtney Barnett & the Courtney Barnetts, Royston
Vasie GoodGod Small Club, Sydney $12 8pm Crowsfeat, The Sahara Sound, Adaptors Coogee Diggers 8pm Even, The Fauves, Dune Buggy Attack Squadron Annandale Hotel $20 (+ bf) 8pm The Furious Five Jannali Inn free 8pm Ghosts On Broadway, Caulfield, Stand For The Fallen, My City Screams, The Sweet Apes The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $14 (+ bf) 4pm Group Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Hendrix & Heroes Tribute: Steve Edmonds Notes Live, Enmore 8pm Hira Hira, Mere Women, Hence therefore, Sweet Teeth, Zita Grimm, Surprise Wasp, The Reverend Jesse Custer, Spoonfed, The Cold Mean Reds Blackwire Records, Annandale $5-$10 1pm Jon Stevens, Daryl Braithwaite Revesby Workers Club 8pm Kittens: Claire, Dotcoms Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Kym Campbell Lane Cove Plaza free 10am Mental As Anything Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $54–$112 (dinner & show) 7pm Motosoul Marrickville Bowling Club $10 8pm Movement, Cake Shop, Lion & The Lotus, Minus Horse, DJ Sparkle Dragon FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $12 8pm Mr Wilson, Vivienne Kingswood Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7.30pm Original Sin INXS Show, Swingshift Cold Chisel Show Blacktown RSL Club free 8pm Rapids, I Know Leopard, Feeding Edgar, Bert & Ernie Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Reels on Fire Paragon Hotel, Sydney free Rock Circus, Joe Davis, Eddie Boyd And The Phatapillars Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $12 8pm Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolt: Special Patrol Group, Thundabox, Tombstone Ramblers, Ya Mum The Lansdowne, Broadway free 8pm Royal Knights Revesby Heights Ex-Servicemen’s Memorial Club $20 6.30pm all-ages Sasha Waltz Riverside Theatres, Parramatta $27 1pm all-ages SFX: Sleepwalkers, B-Don & Mizi, RG, L.F.M. St James Hotel, Sydney $12$15 9pm Shade Of Red Coogee Bay Hotel free 10pm Straight Arrows, Raw Prawn, Housewives, Red Red Krovvy The Shannon, Chippendale $5 8pm
Take Two Brighton RSL Club, BrightonLe-Sands free 8pm Tina Arena, Sydney Symphony Orchestra Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $49-$129 7.30pm Trav & Rosco Show Coogee Diggers 8pm Waiting For Guinness, Belle Jar Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $15-$20 7.30pm Wake The Giants, Past Is Practice, Hivemind, Tenpenny Towers, Emergency Syndrome, Adversary Valve Bar, Tempe 12pm Wormwood: Making, Where Were You At Lunch, Nyquist, Broadcasting Transmitter, Austin, Simo Soo The Red Rattler, Marrickville $10 9pm
JAZZ
Clayton Doley Blue Beat Bar & Grill, Double Bay $18 (+ bf) 7pm Major Tom & The Atoms Macquarie Hotel, Sydney free 8pm Peter Head The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 5pm Sarah McKenzie 505 Club, Surry Hills $15 (conc)–$20 8.30pm Steve Hunter Quintet The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $10-$20 8.30pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Russell Neal, Jac Yvonne Terrey Hills Tavern free 7.30pm Sean and Moss Bow Newport Markets @ Bert Payne Park free 11am
wed
13 June
SUNDAY JUNE 17 ROCK & POP
Ace Brighton RSL Club, BrightonLe-Sands free 7pm Big Ben Coogee Bay Hotel free 7.30pm The Big Mischief, Damage Inc, Mirrors In Iceland, Angels Of The Tattooed Generation Valve Bar, Tempe 3pm Blues Sunday: Mark Hopper Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Buried in Verona, The Plot In You (USA), In Hearts Wake, Silent Screams (UK) The Hi-Fi, Moore Park $20 (+ bf) 3pm licensed all-ages Come Fly With Me: Gigi Vine, Jerry Fox, Bunni Lambada, Baby Blue Bergman, Veronica Bloom,Betty Belle, Vanessa Rodriguez, Alex Lehours, Mr Sweet, Rachael Wiggins, Shannon McKinnon, Bex The Standard, Darlinghurst $20 (+ bf) 8pm English Avenue, Leek & The War Wick Tragedy, Sons Of Alamo The Lansdowne, Broadway free 8pm Fastrack Zodiac The Three Wise Monkeys, Sydney free 10pm The Great Craic Paragon Hotel, Sydney free 6pm Hunter & Suzy Owens Band Marrickville Bowling Club free 4.30pm Kaato, Another Avenue, Realigning Alice, Big
Smack, Courage For Casper Lucky Australian Tavern, St Marys $10 2pm all-ages King Tide, Jesse Morris & The 3 Beans Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7.30pm Lolo Lovina Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $20 6.30pm Salsa Night Hard Rock Cafe, Darling Harbour free 8.30pm Screaming Sunday Annandale Hotel 8pm Tina Harrod, Rob Woolf Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 2pm
JAZZ
John Leigh Calder The White Horse, Surry Hills 5pm Mike Nock, Matt McMahon, Greg Coffin 505 Club, Surry Hills free 5pm Nadia Ackerman Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $24 7pm The Peter Head Trio & Friends The Harbour View Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm
ACOUSTIC & FOLK
Aimee Francis Salisbury Hotel, Stanmore free 2pm Black Diamond Hotel William, Darlinghurst free 6pm Russell Neal, Dan Usher, Alex Johnson Corrimal Hotel free 3pm Soulfood Sunday: Bobby Singh and Adrian McNeil Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $15-$20 1pm
STATE OF ORIGIN AFTER THE GAME
(Approx 9:15PM )
thu
14 June
(9:00PM - 12:00AM)
fri
15 June (5:00PM - 8:00PM)
(9:30PM - 1:30AM)
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
SUNDAY AFTERNOON
(4:30PM - 7:30PM)
sat
16 June
SATURDAY NIGHT sun
17 June
(9:00PM - 1:30AM)
(4:30PM - 7:30PM)
SUNDAY NIGHT
(8:30PM - 12:00AM)
Fire! Santa Rosa, Fire!
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 41
gig picks up all night out all week...
WEDNESDAY JUNE 13
FRIDAY JUNE 15 Charge Group, Joe McKee The Red Rattler Theatre, Marrickville $14.30 8pm
Kids of 88 (NZ), The Griswalds, Fairchild Republic Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Beach free 8pm
Graveyard Train, Jackals, OXBLVD Metro Theatre, Sydney $25 (+ bf) 8pm
Matt Corby, Alpine Metro Theatre, Sydney sold out 8pm
The Holy Soul, Melodie Nelson, Luke O’Farrell The Green Room Lounge, Enmore free 8pm
THURSDAY JUNE 14
MUM: Royston Vasie, Monsieur Moon, Janita & The Jaguars, The Canyoneersmen, Cuervo, Teal, Cries Wolf DJs, Glenn Be Trippin’, Sammy K, 10th Avenue, Wet Lungs, Swim Team DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm
Hunting Grounds, Glass Towers, In Measures Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 6pm Oliver Tank, Fishing Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $12–$15 8pm
Matt Corby
Kids Of 88
Ned Collette & Wirewalker, Mary Ocher (GER), Swimwear FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 (+ bf) 8pm
SATURDAY JUNE 16 The Black Seeds (NZ), Cheap Fakes Metro Theatre, Sydney $33 (+ bf) 8pm Even, The Fauves, Dune Buggy Attack Squadron Annandale Hotel $20 (+ bf) 8pm Hira Hira, Mere Women, Hence Therefore, Sweet Teeth, Zita Grimm, Surprise Wasp, The Reverend Jesse Custer,
Ned Collette
Straight Arrows, Raw Prawn, Housewives, Red Red Krovvy The Shannon, Chippendale $5 8pm Wormwood: Making, Where Were You At Lunch, Nyquist, Broadcasting Transmitter, Austin, Simo Soo The Red Rattler, Marrickville $10 9pm Xxxx
The Black Seeds
Spoonfed, The Cold Mean Reds Blackwire Records, Annandale $5-$10 1pm
www.fbisocial.com
L2 Kings Cross Hotel
Wednesday June 13
Friday June 15
Saturday June 16
LUNCH BREAK
NED COLLETTE
MOVEMENT
MARY OCHER (BERLIN) SWIMWEAR
CAKESHOP LION & THE LOTUS MINUS HOUSE
presented by Alberts
& WIREWALKER
JONO BOULET 1PM // FREE Broadcast live on FBi
LAUGH YOUR TITS OFF
8pm // $14.30 from Oztix // $15 door
MIKEY ROBINS / SCOTT DOOLEY MICK MEREDITH / CHRIS WAINHOUSE AND MORE
8pm // $16 + BF from Oztix $22 at the door
ROBOPOP A FISTFUL OF CHEESE!
DJs FRANNE DAMME MISS ADVENTURE PING PONG TIDDLY 11:30pm // FREE
Thursday June 14 JuliaWhy? / Ghastly Spats / God K / Beef Jerk / The Purgatories 8PM// $5 at the door
42 :: BRAG :: 466 : 11:06:12
DJ SPARKLE DRAGON 8pm // $12 at the door
LATE NIGHT SOCIAL 12pm // FREE
BRAGâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guide to dance, hip hop and club culture
brag beats
inside
+ sleep d + mark rae also: + club guide + club snaps + weekly column
fashawn
nik fish the other beat generation
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 43
dance music news
free stuff
club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
five things WITH
MUX MOOL (GHOSTL (GHOSTLY INTERNATIONAL/USA)
Growing Up 1. My most significant childhood memories involve spending time alone in my own imagination land. My parents are both artists, separated shortly after I was born; in some ways they were both struggling artists trying to find their way. Art has always been very important to me, and I think they’re proud to see that I’ve managed to make it work for myself. Inspirations 2. Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Bon Scott, Led Zeppelin, Weird Al – all very significant for me. Weird Al was the first music I ever heard and loved, the first albums I ever bought. What inspires me the most is seeing people choosing to be themselves despite everything. Your Crew 3. I like DJing with my friends wherever we are, and just hanging and working on loops. Usually what connects me with others is meeting people
Skream
who aren’t ego-maniacs, people who are aware of themselves and can laugh about awa it. I llike people who can respect an opinion that they don’t agree with. The Music You Make I started by making dance/house music 4. back in ‘98 using a friend’s computer. I met friends in high school who I played with frien and DJ’d with, and eventually I wanted to make hip hop beats. I’ve been focusing mak the hip hop-style for many years, with on th occasional trips into other genres for occa practice and experimentation. Everything prac has been recorded at home on my computer myself. The live show is just a fun dance by m party; it comes across as a house party vibe party – I lilike it that way – and the focus is on fun and dancing, not face-melting or non-stop insane bass wobble. insa Music, Right Here, Right Now The music scene now is the same as 5. been since the advent of pop music, only it’s b now everyone is looking at us computer guys. We’re on top at the moment, which is guys pretty fun. Obstacles have included getting prett of my Brooklyn hometown, and reaching out o broader audience; the local scene here is a bro full o of unheard talent. Wit Expensive Looks (USA), Moonbase With: Commander, Mike Berkley, Astral DJs Co Where: GoodGod Small Club Wh When: Wednesday June 13 Wh
– we’ll go with the full ‘intelligent dance music’ in BRAG from here on in.) Mux Mool will take to the stage of GoodGod following the release of his second full-length album, Planet High School, earlier this year, which differed from its predecessor as Lindgren narrowed his sound, building the LP around bouncing boom-bap grooves and retro-futuristic samples. Doors open at 8pm, with support from Expensive Looks (USA) and Astral DJs.
ILLY TO TOUR
Off the back of his new single ‘Heard It All’, MC Illy has announced a national tour in the lead-up to the release of his third album Bring It Back, which will come out later this year through Obese Records. Illy’s previous album The Chase spawned the singles ‘Cigarettes’ and the Gold-selling ‘It Can Wait’, landing him ARIA and AIR Award nominations. Speaking of the impending follow-up, Illy elucidated, “Bring It Back is a record I’ve had in mind for some time. Usually I work with a very small team, so being able to branch out and work with lots of new people has resulted in a really different sound.” The ‘new people’ include the likes of M-Phazes, Pez, Trials (Funkoars), Mantra and Reason, all of whom have contributed to
SKREAM + JOKER + PLASTICIAN TRIPLEHEADER
The long-running DMC World DJ Championship has announced its return for 2012, with the Australian leg of the competition commencing at the end of the month, ahead of a showdown between the state champions at the national competition in Melbourne in August. In what will be a first for the DMC Championships, contestants will create a six-minute routine on their choice of digital vinyl system with two turntables and mixer. Submissions are open until Monday June 25, with the Sydney finals slotted to take place at The World Bar on 44 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
FASHAWN + EXILE
Since releasing his first mixtape in 2006 at the ridiculous are of 17, Californian MC Fashawn has graced the cover of XXL, toured the world with acts like Talib Kweli, Wiz Khalifa and Dilated Peoples, released a groundbreaking debut and five mixtapes, worked with Dr. Dre and Aloe Blacc, and had himself a kid. He’s only 24, which should make most of you feel like under-achievers. He and producer Exile, who worked together on his 2009 debut Boy Meets World, are heading to Australia with new tracks from its imminent follow-up The Ecology in tow. The pair are set to play on Thursday June 21 at The Civic Underground with support courtesy of Dialectrix, Tuka and DJ Morgs, hosted by Shantan Wantan Ichiban. Drop the name of an Exile album to win one of two double passes... the LP. “There are a bunch of songs on Bring It Back that I can’t wait to do live, so getting back out on the road can’t come quick enough,” Illy reveals, providing a neat segue for us to mention his Sydney show. Illy headlines The Standard on Saturday August 25, with presale tickets available through www.illyal.com from Tuesday June 12.
DOORLY
Producer, promoter, presenter and label boss Doorly is making his way to our shores in July, and will headline Soho on Saturday July 28. In addition to overseeing his label Pigeonhole, over the past year Doorly has been the tour DJ for RnB poster boy Usher, toured with Fatboy Slim and collaborated with Grandmaster Flash, Beardyman and Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters. This adds to a production CV that includes remixes of the likes of Prodigy, Dizzee Rascal and Basement Jaxx – so in terms of what to expect from his DJ sets, well, expect everything. Doorly is a keen proponent of anything from house and ‘bassier dubstep’ and jungle sounds to hip hop and techno, so it’d be foolish on our part to rule out any particular sounds being indulged in on the evening.
Yuksek
Perth club brand Big Ape will celebrate its first birthday with its first ever national tour, which includes a Sydney gig at the Metro Theatre on Saturday July 21, a co-pro with the Niche Productions crew. The lineup was put together with the intention of representing “where dubstep came from, what it should be and where it’s going”, and given the international triumvirate that are fronting up, it’s safe to say that aim has been more than fulfilled. Most famous outside the dubstep cognoscenti for his crossover hit ‘Midnight Request Line’ released in 2005 on Tempa, Skream is widely credited as the chap who laid the foundations of London’s dubstep scene. Meantime, Joker burst onto the scene as a 16-year-old prodigy, and after years of laudable EPs following his debut single ‘The Kapsize’, he finally released his debut album, The Vision, late last year. Rounding out the triple bill is Chris Reed, also known as The Plastician (formerly Plasticman), whose participation in the Rephlex Grime compilations, primetime radio shows and BBC Radio One Residency slot on the In New DJs We Trust show have contributed significantly to the rise in popularity of dubstep and grime. The Plastician has released records on labels such as Rephlex Records, Soulja, ROAD, Slimzos, A.R.M.Y. and Southside Dubstars, and also runs his own label, Terrorythm Recordings. It’s a huge bill, and presale tickets are currently available, through metrotheatre.com.au
DMC DJ CHAMPIONSHIP: SYDNEY HEATS
Fashawn
Saturday July 7. Aspiring Digweeds should head to dmcdjchamps.com for further details.
MUX MOOL
Minneapolis producer Brian Lindgren, who works as Mux Mool, will perform at GoodGod Small Club this Wednesday June 13 as part of his debut Australian tour. Lindgren’s first official beats came via Moodgadget, a launchpad label of Seth Troxler and Outlier, before he dropped an EP on Matthew Dear’s Ghostly International ahead of releasing his debut LP Skulltaste in 2010, an album “steeped in tinny, IDM-tinged electro”. (I’m not too fond of the ‘IDM’ acronym
YUKSEK SIDESHOW
French electro producer Pierre Alexander-Busson, better known as Yuksek, will headline The Standard on Saturday July 28 for a Splendour In The Grass sideshow. The Frenchman’s sound is known for its catchy hooks and acidy loops as he infuses his beats with a strong pop sensibility – a formula perfected on last year’s Living On The Edge Of Time, an album which The Guardian said “finds that the best cure for loneliness is to bound off in a pop direction, with the emphasis on optimism and giddy choruses.” Yuksek returns Down Under having previously performed at Fuzzy events such as Field Day and Parklife in the past.
;/ 1<5, -964 74 (33 50./; 365. .66+.6+ :4(33 *3<)
7(92:0+, SLEEP D +LH[O :[YVIL 4LSI 409969 409969 7PJUPJ 7(92:0+, +1»Z A,<:
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 45
dance music news
free stuff
club, dance and hip hop in brief... with Chris Honnery
FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM
PARKSIDE
five things WITH
Beginning life as a beach shack mix session, deep house party Parkside identifies its major source of inspiration as “legendary parties from every decade”. Did someone say “opulent fun”? Moving easy breezy coastal vibes to the hustle and bustle of the city, Parkside DJs will be joined by Melbourne sleaze-house duo Sleep D, Sydney twins Mirror Mirror and local futurists Zeus for an unforgettable night of dancefloor decadence within the Miami Vice-like confines of GoodGod Small Club on Saturday June 16. To be in the running to win one of two double passes that are up for grabs, tell us about something funny (and G-rated please) that you’ve seen happen in a park.
JOYRIDE
Growing Up When no one else was home, I used to 1. slow-dance with myself in the living room to old Perry Como records that my mother bought at a neighbour’s garage sale. Some nights I’d get lucky, some nights I wouldn’t. Inspirations Beyond Perry, some of my favourite 2. musicians include Lex Luger, Just Blaze, Timbaland, Cody ChesnuTT and that Jamaican cat who plays reggae from a stolen car stereo on Oxford Street sometimes. Jah bless.
Sleep D
Your Crew I am part of the One Day family. It consists 3. of myself, Horrorshow and Spit Syndicate. We are bound more by horrible jokes at each others’ expense than anything else. We also make half decent music together from time to time. It definitely takes a back seat, though. The Music You Make Music, Right Here, Right Now When I DJ, I like to play really great rap 4. With regards to hip hop party culture, things 5. and rap-inspired music that inspires and uplifts. are looking up. Nights like Itchy Beats, Halfway SpaceGhostPurrp’s ‘Suck A Dick 2012’ comes to mind as a shining example. Beyond that, I also act as frontman for The Accidents, I have a solo project where I do all the singing and production, I DJ for Spit Syndicate, I play bass for Winter People, and I sing on songs for rappers that can’t sing good. It keeps me relatively busy.
Crooks and Player Haters Ball have really brought the crowds back. There’s nothing like dancing to threatening music in a completely safe and comfortable environment... As for the Australian hip hop scene, things seem to be quite healthy. There has been a definite lean towards the “hipster rap” side of things. It’s not the worst thing in the world, especially if it
Chez Damier
means that pretty boy rappers who worry about how their jeans fit are getting more girls to come to shows. Shout out to Nick Lupi. What: DJ Morgs (Thundamentals), Zarkov (Jackie Onassis), DJ Ntaprize Where: Itchy Beats @ Upstairs Brighton Hotel When: Saturday June 16
Australian show in more than ten years. Middleton is a Sydney favourite, having regularly closed Playground Weekender over the years while attracting a diverse listening public via remixes of Röyksopp, The Rapture, Faithless, The Presets and Coldplay. Park was one of the original resident DJs at Manchester’s iconic club The Haçienda, way back in the late ‘80s, and is regarded as one of the key figures in the acid house movement. Since those glory days, the Englishman has maintained a consistent presence in the house music scene, hosting shows on various radio stations for the past 15 years as well as continuing to DJ regularly in the UK and abroad. The High Flyers Little Secret party will run from 8pm until 3am, with an array of locals including RussTee and that man Simon Caldwell also spinning.
BADU SERVES THE FLAMING LIPS
A recent video for the Erykah Badu/The Flaming Lips cut ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ has caused Erykah to give the ‘Lips
a good ol’ fashioned internet lambasting. The impugned video featured Badu and her sister Nayrok in various glossy (and sometimes explicitly) nude positions, and was apparently released without the sisters’ approval. According to emerging music website “Pitchfork”, Badu has taken serious affront to the clip, claiming to have been manipulated and falsely represented. While The Flaming Lips have released an apology statement, here at BRAG we’re all about the salacious outrage, which means our focus is Badu’s Twitter tirade that was directed at Lips frontman Wayne Coyne: “Perhaps next time u get an occasion to work with an artist who respects your mind/art, you should send at least a ROUGh version of the video u PLAN to release b4 u manipulate or compromise the artist’s brand by desperately releasing a poor excuse for shock and nudity that sends a convoluted message that passes as art( to some)… You obviously have a misconception of who I am artistically… you are an ass… you can KiSS MY Glittery ASS [sic]… O and Nayrok told me to tell u to kiss her ass too [sic].” That, ladies and gentleman, is a first class diatribe.
Simon Caldwell
CHEZ DAMIER @ SPICE CELLAR
Chicago luminary Anthony Pearson, aka Chez Damier, will headline The Spice Cellar on Saturday July 21. Damier has played close witness to many of the pivotal moments in the development of house and techno since opening The Music Institute in Detroit in the late ‘80s. Jointly responsible with partner Ron Trent for Prescription Records, Damier crafted the blueprint for what would become known as deep house with a string of releases on Prescription in the early ‘90s. Damier then took a lengthy break from production work and hence might not be known to house neophytes, although his hiatus ended in recent years when he committed to a series of releases for the German label Mojuba as well as launching his own new project, Balance Alliance.
DEATH STROBE RECORDS’ LABEL NIGHT
The Spice Cellar will host a Death Strobe Records label night this Friday June 15. DSR is a boutique label that was set up in 2009 and is run by Sydney-based DJs Ash Moses and Andy Webb, the man behind the popular Disco Delicious blog. With a shared appreciation for the old and the new, or, to use their phrasing, “for the future and for the future-tech,” Death Strobe has just released its sixth record, the Bacon EP, which arrives courtesy of Melbourne duo Sleep D who will be headlining the showcase. The release is self-described as a “deep disco-drenched monster” that has a cosmic soul vibe, and this will be the duo’s first Sydney jaunt since the Bacon hit the streets. The Death Strobe DJs will be providing support, with entry free with guestlist before midnight.
SONUNDA
The next Sonunda party, which boasts the mission statement ‘whatever goes technos’, falls this Saturday at The Gladstone, a venue 46 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
located at 115 Regent Street, Chippendale. An alternative to the all the ‘bells and whistles’ hoolaboola that often surrounds a nightclub outing, Sonunda prides itself on being an event where you can have a beer and a chat and meet some new people, while enjoying a music policy that offers a broad array of underground beats. The lineup for this Saturday’s event features Kayros, who has just flown in from Spain, Jordan Zed, who plays bass-oriented tech house, Trena and Azza, known for their rollicking sets at the Subsonic parties, the irrepressible Kimba, and Oblongmonster, who presents a distinct take on electronic music. Entry is $5 before 10pm – not bad for an event where whatever goes, technos.
HIGH FLYERS FT TOM MIDDLETON GRAEME PARK The forthcoming High Flyers Little Secret warehouse party, slotted for Sun Studios on Saturday June 23, will feature renowned poms Tom Middleton (of Global Communication fame) and Stalwart Manchester club figure Graeme Park, who will play his first
CALLING ALL CALDWELLIANS
Picnic struck gold when they decided to give hugely respected local DJ Simon Caldwell a whole night to spin in a warehouse one whimsical autumn evening back in 2011. And following on from that epic bash, Picnic have again invited Caldwell to play all night long in a warehouse space at Sun Studios this Saturday night, to sate the appetite of all those Caldwell-inclined. Caldwell’s DJ pedigree is well-documented; he’s co-promoted one of Australia’s freshest and longest-running dance parties Mad Racket for the last 12 years, hosts the Monday night Sunsets show on FBi Radio (tune in from 6-8pm; plug, plug, plug), and had the honour of being only the second Australian to put together a podcast for the esteemed Resident Advisor website. Presale tickets for this Saturay’s Picnic party are available through Resident Advisor, with added incentive coming from the fact that the party is a BYO affair.
Nik Fish Hard Bass Historian By RK
N
ik Fish is one of Australia’s favourite sons, a stalwart of the industry for close to 20 years. From compilations to tours, and headlining events here, there and everywhere, his name is synonymous with harder-edged music and its many and varied changing faces. “It’s like the last 20 years don’t matter,” Nik says. “When you’ve got that many under your belt, you really see how the market has evolved and changed. The fans you had early on have themselves had the chance to have kids, who come up and say things like ‘My dad listened to you!’” In a fickle industry like his, careers tend to be flash-in-the-pan, and Fish is humbled by and modest about the longevity of his success: he tells me that his entry into the revolving door of the EDM world started “like everyone else’s”. “Basically, I walked into a room and was completely taken by the sound. It was an experience I’d never had before,” he says. “You sort of walk out into the light of day and realise the world of nightclubs, festivals and parties is just completely another world altogether. If it’s the sort of thing that tickles your fancy, then you’re going to be hooked. “I think more than anything I was attracted by the sounds and vibes that were around in the 1980s,” he continues. “I went to a lot of house parties around the time of the boom, in the Chicago and acid house sort of era. There was this place in Sydney called the Hordern Pavilion, and that’s really where I burst my cherry. It took me to another reality.” Hordern may have started out as the sentimental home of big room bass in Sydney, but by the time the 1990s rolled around, dance music was exploding all over the place – and things really started to fall into place for Nik. “There was this kind of dominant scene in various parts of the world – everyone was sort of doing their own thing. There wasn’t a lot coming out of the US for a while there outside of Chicago, Detroit and New York, and Europe had its own sub-cultures with techno and things like that. It was really the UK that was doing something really different... Producers were doing some pretty amazing things; the whole thing was very raw, and it allowed a lot of producers to push their own style. It wasn’t necessarily rave or hardcore or trance or whatever; it wasn’t necessarily happy or sad or hard. It wasn’t anything in particular – it was just a freedom of movement.” Above all else, Nik Fish remembers the impact the sound had in big warehouse environments. “I think that’s what gravitated me towards a slightly harder-edged sound,” he explains. “It’s what I found nice, and what I found worked for me – and over the decades, it was what I pushed on with.” Which brings us back to the topic at hand: a new Wild 3CD compilation, Hard Bass Anthems, co-mixed by Fish and DJ Weaver. “I’ve
“When you’ve got 20 years under your belt, you really see how the market has evolved. The fans you had early on have themselves had kids, who come up to you and say, ‘My dad listened to you!’” worked with Central Station records on a number of these kinds of projects over the years,” Fish says. “It was good to be able to do something that covers the history of the second wave in the harder-edged movement, because if I think of the ‘90s as a bit of a rave culture era, then the new millennium was really characterised by hard trance. It was really coming from everywhere in the world, and it brought a lot of this kind of music to a mainstream audience in Australia... Breaks was around as well, but harder sounds were becoming very popular, so when I was asked to think about a compilation that sort of wrapped up the era, I really had to think about how I was going to do it. It was a pretty exciting process.” The final result is a compilation that goes back to its roots, with classic tracks featured alongside obscurities that pay homage to the past. “I had a lot of ideas about which way to go ahead and how to approach it. I ended up doing a lot of edits for a lot of the tracks; at a minimum, I sort of trimmed a lot of them down. But I was really conscious of remaining respectful to the artists that I was featuring on the mix, so when I was editing I was consciously thinking about keeping the best parts without compromising or churning the tracks… It was hard too, because I didn’t want it sounding like a mega mix. So the process was very long.” In fact, Fish claims to have spent dozens and dozens of hours of studio time – more than on any other project he’s done – to finalise and polish the mix. “I wanted to get it right, so I worked harder. It was an honour that they asked me to do it, and I wanted to use it as an opportunity to honour the music and the fans from the past, from that era,” he says. “Of course there are tracks you want that you can’t clear because you can’t locate the original artist or whatever – but I think we really captured the spirit of the period, and I’m pretty happy with the result.”
What: Wild Hard Bass Anthems mixed by Nik Fish and Weaver is out now on Central Station Records Where: Masif @ Space Nightclub When: Saturday June 23
FREE BOWLING WITH EVERY DRINK SOLD!
ALL DAY SUNDAYS AT STRIKE KING ST WHARF THE PROMANADE, KING ST WHARF, DARLING HARBOUR
$6 MINIMUM SPEND. CONDITIONS APPLY. PLEASE SEE WEBSITE FOR DETAILS.
FIND US ON
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 47
Mark Rae
Fashawn
Unfinished Business By Krissi Weiss
Stone Cold Killer By Benjamin Cooper
M
ark Rae is best known as one half of Rae & Christian and the pioneer of Grand Central Records, with remixes and collaborations that have had him working alongside names like Pharcyde, Bobby Womack and Mr Scruff. But although he’s touring with his solo set at the moment, it is the forthcoming and, dare I say it, comeback album that he and Steve Christian have been working on that has him the most excited.
F
resno rapper Fashawn exploded out of the blocks in 2006 with his Grizzly City mixtape, which had mixtape master Planet Asia hauling the then 17-year-old out of school and into world of touring. Fast forward five years and the young man, born Santiago Leyva, has dropped his successful debut full-length Boy Meets World (2009) and is about to embark on his first antipodean jaunt alongside producer Exile, before their next collaboration, The Ecology, comes out later this year. Between the two records, he hasn’t stood still: Fashawn released five other mixtapes, one of which tackled the ambitious task of re-imagining Nas’ genre defining debut Illmatic – oh, and he had his first child as well.
So why did Rae & Christian spend this time apart? “Steve had a family and he wanted a break because really, in six years, we did over 100 remixes, two DJ mix albums, and worked continually,” Rae explains. “I moved to America for three years and when I came back, actually just before I came back, we started to work together again. That’s how the connection with Mark Foster from Foster The People – but that band didn’t even exist then – developed. Steve and I basically had unfinished business.”
The mixtape work is a highly important part of the process for the Californian. “[It’s] what I consider practice, in some ways,” he explains. “I get to experiment with other people’s beats and look at different genres, and the whole time I’m honing the sound.” He’s quick to isolate the difference, however, between the mixtape and the album. “The mixtape circuit is my sandbox, you know? I can play around, so it all becomes this really animalistic process; wild and free. But when it comes to making an album, I’m a stone cold killer.” The period around the release of his debut album was a hectic time for a multitude of reasons – the main one being that Leyva had become a father for the first time. Having a child changed his perspective on a number of levels, and had a significant effect on his approach to lyrical expression as well. “My daughter came out a month before my album came out, and straight after she was born I had to go back on tour,” he explains. “I was travelling across the country and it felt like I had the responsibility of two kids: my little girl, and my first album. And then I realised that from now on, this little girl’s life is in my hands. I honestly wouldn’t have anything to say without her. It’s what has made me into a man, because I feel like creatively I have arrived at a point where I have to express myself honestly. Becoming a father also means I’m no longer limited to rapping about the same four elements most hip hop is about,” he laughs. Six months after releasing his debut, he stepped out even further with Ode To Illmatic. Unlike many of his older peers, the young Fashawn hadn’t been listening to the Nas classic since its 1994 release – yet he had undertaken his own journey of discovery with the record, one that continued when he commenced work on the project. “I remember being ten years old, and going to the store to get the album to start my vinyl record
Mark Foster is just one of many varied artists who have been collaborating with them – and the music that the pair have been pursuing is quite a departure from what Rae’s fans might expect. “I’ve been working on getting my singing down. Steve’s classically trained, so he wanted to get his musicianship into my stuff that was always beat- and sample-based,” he explains. “There’s a story that hadn’t been told, that needed to be completed. The songs are fully written with key changes, chords and live instruments; there is not a sample in sight on the whole album. That is the music that has most inspired me lately, and that is the sound I will be bringing out to Australia as well. There is still an element of dance music through the funk, soul and hip hop influences. We’re trying to hone in on what the beautiful parts of music are – you gotta make some stuff from the heart.” For someone who has seen the development of the music industry from both sides of the fence, Rae believes that what he established with Grand Central was revolutionary. “The most interesting thing is that what I achieved with Grand Central Records was a model that is essentially the [same] model that people use now,” he says. “We had a 360 deal ... which is what the business does nowadays.” With Rae willing to touch on the Grand Central legacy, it would be foolish not to ask about the end of the label. The business closed its doors in 2006, leaving much speculation in its wake. “The negativity, well – I’m writing a book to go with my next solo album that explains that,” he says, giving only a little away. “It was a simple issue of the mechanical copyright company shutting us down for a bill that got too big. Then they fined us for it, and then they charged us to do the audit, and at that stage we didn’t have any big records coming out to keep the business going, so it had to go. The fact it lasted eleven years is achievement enough. That’s life, really. I make music, and that is what I am sticking to.”
collection,” he says. “People were looking at me like I was a dumb kid, but I could relate to the isolation in the music so I didn’t care. Remaking the album was a challenge: it’s a five-microphone album with all of the complicated production that that involves. But it taught me a lot, and made my skills come up. After working on that I feel like I can rhyme over any production, because my grab is just so much better now.” Fashawn warns that he and producer Exile “are really gunna storm Australia” on their forthcoming tour: “So tell everyone to be prepared. We’re pretty sure we’ve perfected the art of touring,” he says. “We heard it’s a long flight over there, so we thought we’d warm up by freestyling the whole way.”
With: Frenize, Lok Stok Vs Mr Speaker & Trent Rackus Where: Late At TheLoft @ TheLoft, Darling Harbour When: Saturday June 16
With: Exile Where: Civic Underground When: Thursday June 21
Sleep D Wide Awake By Alasdair Duncan Their new EP, Bacon, collects four of these, and is warm, melodic and strange in all the right ways.
kind of just made up, and Bubbles is Mayros’ dog. She’s a little pug – she’s really cute and we love her.”
I ask Corey Kikos, one half of the duo, how he and production partner Mayros Syawish began making music together. “We went to the same primary school, but we didn’t become friends until high school, really,” he says. “I was kind of getting into dance music, but I was pretty young, so it wasn’t the best music … and then from there, we started to make music together. I think we were about 14.” Not the best music, I ask? “We were into pretty shit artists,” Corey admits, “people like Dirty South and stuff like that. We were young and that’s what was big back then...”
When making music, the pair primarily use digital plug-ins, although they look forward to the day when they have more synths to play with. “We have a few bits of gear, a Korg 707 and stuff like that, but most of what we use is ‘in-the-box’,” Corey says. “We really love gear, and we’d like to get more outboard stuff, because we love the sound of it. Synths really do sound better – it’s like driving a car in real life versus driving a car in a game.”
It’s fair to say that Sleep D’s tastes have become a little more underground since then. “There’s a lot of music we love out there,” Corey says. “There are a few Melbourne dudes for sure, people like Lewie Day and stuff like that. There’s also a guy called Villa Savoye. It’s all kind of one big group – most of the producers in Melbourne are pretty tight.” In terms of international artists, there are a few that Sleep D would count as inspirations. “We really like Shed, who also records under the name Wax, but we go as broad as stuff like I:Cube. They definitely have some good shit.”
M
elbourne’s Sleep D are a prime example of the ingenuity that electronic producers so often possess. A pair of old school mates, they program beats and play around with keyboards together whenever they
48 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
can – usually at one another’s houses, they tell me, with right now being a prime time to work thanks to the uni holidays. From these relatively humble circumstances have come a series of truly inspired deep house tracks.
The tracks on Sleep D’s new EP are predominantly instrumentals, and the titles – ‘Bacon’ and ‘Bubbles Vs The Cat’ being two – have the ring of internet memes. Do the likes of Nyan Cat and Rage Face inspire the pair, I wonder? “Yes and no,” Corey says. “‘Bacon’ was
With the EP out and a number of shows ahead of them, I ask what the future holds for the duo. “We don’t want to make the same sound over again, so we’re going to keep on making different stuff,” Corey says. “The music on our EP was made about six months ago, and we’ve moved on since then, so we’re working on a lot of different things. Expect stuff that doesn’t sound like what we’ve already put out. Apart from that, we’ll just be DJing a lot. We want to work on a live show as well. We just need more music and more gear to put it all together.” What: Bacon EP is out now on Death Strobe With: Mirror Mirror (Picnic), ZEUS (Compound), Parkside DJs Where: Parkside @ GoodGod Small Club When: Saturday June 16 More: Death Strobe label showcase @ The Spice Cellar on Friday June 15
Deep Impressions Underground Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery
LOOKING DEEPER SATURDAY JUNE 13 One Night Stand ft Simon Caldwell Sun Studios Alexandria
SATURDAY JULY 7 Basic Soul Unit Venue TBA
SATURDAY JULY 28 Mad Racket ft Vakula Marrickville Bowling Club Vakula
“I
n Ukraine there are three types of people. 50% from them like to listen to music telling about difficulties of life in prison, songs in which the singer is constantly complaining how hard life is… 40% of people listen to Russian/ Ukrainian pop music. I do not understand this music either. And 10% listen more serious music. These ten percent include fans of totally different styles starting from jazz up to electronics.” You’ve come in on Ukrainian DJ and producer Vakula – insert the obligatory vampire quip here – who has been announced as the headline act for the next Mad Racket party, following a recent bash featuring the one and only Levon Vincent. Vakula initially showcased his jazz-influenced take on deep house with releases on labels like Uzuri, Quintessentials and Doppelschall, before ramping things up over the past few years. After a prolific 2011 that included an EP on the always-interesting Archipel label, Vakula dropped his debut artist album earlier this year, released under the name V through Seattle’s Nuearth Kitchen. This was quickly followed by another album, Vedomir, which was released only last month. Resident Advisor explains that “the two records are distinctly different in style: while Vedomir continues on the weird and modern trajectory Vakula’s been on as of late, V goes for more of a classic deep house feel (while maintaining his left-field flair).” In addition to being described as ‘weird and modern’, Vedomir received other – extremely positive – reviews, with one online rag gushing, “The spread of ideas and moods across this album only bode well for a diverse future for Vakula, while all the time sounding cohesive against all odds. You can’t ask for more than that from an artist or an album.” In light of Vakula’s prolific last few years, it is safe to say the Racketeers have lured the Ukranian to Australia at the peak of his creative powers. In terms of what to expect from his Sydney performance, Vakula elucidates, “I like the old era DJs Joe Claussell, Theo Parrish, Francois K, DJ Harvey…” and if that’s any indication, you can anticipate a broad sonic banquet at the Bowlo come the end of July. Omar-S' cousin Leonard Strickland – aka Big Strick – will release a new album, Resivoir Dogs [sic], on June 21, the followup to his impressive 2011 debut Detroit Heat. Like that album, Resivoir Dogs will be released via his own label, 7 Days Ent. Strick first came to worldwide attention in 2009-10 with a brace of EPs on Omar-S’ FXHE label. So it comes as no surprise that Omar-S makes an appearance on the album, contributing to a track called ‘Family Affair’. Aside from Strickland ‘keeping it in the family’, the LP also features a 16-year-old
SATURDAY OCTOBER 13 Âme The Spice Cellar
Âme
member of the Strickland clan going by the name of Generation Next, who features on the track ‘Bloodline’, and Detroit legend Reckless Ron Cook, who guests on ‘Night Moves’. Few flit between aliases with quite as much panache as Deep Impressions favourite Sasu Ripatti. The Finnish producer has made his name with a slew of different sonic personas, including Uusitalo, Luomo and the Moritz von Oswald Trio, who have a new album out next week. Ripatti fans will be truly spoilt this month, as news has emerged that he will also release a new EP under his best-known moniker, Vladislav Delay, before the calendar hits July. (You can tell he’s not a chap with commercial imperatives at the forefront of his mind – if he has material ready to go, he will release it.) Espoo follows on from last year’s Vantaa LP, and will feature a couple of “conceptual, rhythm intense tracks” that nod towards Terry Riley. Meanwhile, for anyone who missed my coverage of it a few weeks back – tsk, tsk – the imminent Moritz von Oswald Trio album is entitled Fetch, and is apparently set to have a “darker and more driving mood” than either of the collective’s previous two LPs. The fact that Fetch was the product of a mere four hours session time perhaps indicates why Ripatti was able to simultaneously work on that project along with his new Vladislav Delay material.
Sasu Ripatti
Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand. Contact through deep.impressions@yahoo.com BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 49
club guide send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com
club pick of the week Mux Mool
WEDNESDAY JUNE 13
Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs free 8pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn Hot Damn DJs $15-$20 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Rack City DJ Tikelz, DJ Lenno, DJ Ziggy, DJ Lyrikz, DJ Rkays, Mista Cee 8pm Space, Sydney We Are Electric Resident DJs $5-$15 10pm Venue 505, Surry Hills Eastside Live At 505 Miriam Lieberman, Dial Africa DJ $10-$15 7.30pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Urby, Shag, Ali, Dan Bombings free (student)-$5 8pm
FRIDAY JUNE 15
GoodGod Small Club, Sydney
Mux Mool (USA), Expensive Looks (USA), Mike Berkley, Astral DJs $12-$17 (+ bf) 8pm MONDAY JUNE 11 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway End Of The Line Guido Schneider (GER), Hayden Strom (NZ), Carlos Zarate, Volta, Marcotix, MSG, Dylan Griffin, Jordan Deck, Dave Stuart, Chris Honnery, Ghettafunkt, Mike Witcombe, Mesan, Kali, T n A, Kimba $25 (+ bf) 12pm Bank Hotel, Newtown Jack McCord vs Scott Pullen free 4pm Scruffy Murphys, Sydney Mother Of A Monday DJ Smokin Joe free 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice Volta, Matt Weir $20 4am
TUESDAY JUNE 12 Empire Hotel, Kings Cross Tight Resident DJs free 9pm Establishment, Sydney Rumba Motel Salsa DJ Willie Sabor free 8pm Scruffy Murphys, Sydney I Love Goon Tuesdays DJ Smokin Joe free 8pm
50 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Coyote Tuesday – DJ SpinOff! DJs 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Jam Conrad Greenleaf, Andy & Mike free 8pm
WEDNESDAY JUNE 13 The Bank Hotel – Velvet Room, Newtown Lady L, Resident DJs free 9pm The Bank Nightclub, Kings Cross Money Talks DJs free 10pm Epping Hotel DTF Resident DJs free Flinders Hotel, Surry Hills Hip Hop Resident DJs free 8pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney Mux Mool (USA), Expensive Looks (USA), Mike Berkley, Astral DJs $12-$17 (+ bf) 8pm The Lansdowne, Broadway Frat House DJ Alley Cats free 9pm The Marlborough Hotel – Cellar Bar, Newtown DJ Pauly free 9pm
Valve Bar, Tempe 2Five, Soul Solution, Lex, Luke Pickler, Andrei Boyd, Q Bal, DJ Da-V 7pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Ravine, Kovacs, Subaske, E-Cats, Pat Ward, Deckhead, Sherlock Bones $5 9pm
THURSDAY JUNE 14 The Cool Room, Australian Hotel & Brewery, Rouse Hill We Love Thursdays Troy T, Anthony K, Big Will 9pm GoodGod Front Bar, Sydney Girls Gone Mild Eliza & Hannah Reilly free 9pm The Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney The Greenwood Thursday Nights Resident DJs free 8pm Gypsy Lounge, Darlinghurst Naked Resident DJs 9pm Ivy Poolclub & Changeroom, Sydney Changeroom Thursdays Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Elly K, Yohi & Huski, Kato 8pm
Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Totally Barry Bad Barry DJs free 9pm Arq Sydney, Taylor Square Twinkland Scott Tanner, Will Sabin free 9pm Bank Hotel, Newtown DJ Du Jour free 9pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Movement Elliot, Monk Fly & Friends free 8pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Nightmoves Kyro & Bomber, The Mane Thing, Cunningpants, Nightmare, Matty P $10-$15 8pm Cargo Lounge, King St Wharf Kick On Fridays Resident DJs free 4pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Bass Mafia Doctor Werewolf, The Abyss, Victims, Empress Yoy, Zwelli, Kemikoll, Big Deal Gillespie $15-$20 10pm Club 77, Darlinghurst Club Blink – Cage Dancing Competition Club Blink DJs 9pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Gimme Five Jeddy Rowland, Mike Silver free 9pm Epping Hotel Flirt Flirt DJs free FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel Robopop Fran Damme, Miss Adventure, Ping Pong Tiddly free 11.30pm Hugo’s Lounge, Kings Cross Hugo’s Fridays Resident DJs 8pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Rain Julz, DJ Ivan Drago free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KK Fridays Falcona Agency DJs 8pm The Marlborough Hotel – Level 1, Newtown Resident DJs free 9pm Metro Theatre, Sydney Technoboy (NED), Pavo $69 (+ bf) 11pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm Shantan Wantan Ichiban
Omega Lounge, City Tattersalls Club, Sydney Unwind Fridays DJ Greg Summerfield free 5.30pm Pontoon, Darling Harbour Perfect Resident DJs free 9pm Ruby Rabbit, Darlinghurst Show & Prove Ology, A.S.K., Platterpush, Bom, Herb, Promisques $10 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross My Studio Nacho Pop, Dim Slm, Digital Mouthm Mike Ruckus 8pm Scruffy Murphy’s, Sydney Frisky Friday DJs free 6pm Serial Space, Chippendale Bee Mask (USA), Pimmon, Secret Birds, Stitched Vision, Nigel Lee-Yang $18 7.30pm The Shark Hotel, Sydney Puls8 DJ Jono, Guest DJs free 9pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Death Strobe Label Showcase Sleep D, Death Strobe DJs 10pm St James Hotel, Sydney Play House Dan Copping, Frankie Romano free 5pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Eve Resident DJs 9pm The Watershed Hotel Bring On The Weekend! DJ Matt Roberts free 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM Royston Vasie, Monsieur Moon, Janita & The Jaguars, The Canyoneersmen, Cuervo, Teal, Cries Wolf DJs, Glenn Be Trippin’, Sammy K, 10th Avenue, Wet Lungs, Swim Team DJs, Reg Harris $10$15 8pm
SATURDAY JUNE 16 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Strange Fruit Strange Fruit DJs free 9pm Bank Hotel, Newtown DJ Meem free 9pm Beach Palace Hotel, Coogee Reggae Meets Hip Hop Sevin, R.E.I.G.N., VTribe $20 (+ bf) 8pm Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst Itchy Beats Joyride, Morgs, Zarkov, DJ Ntaprize, DJ Riley JM $10 8pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Big Guns Stalker, Crumb Eye, Sherlock Bones, Robust, Worimi, Sohda, Dostruction, Dizzie Dayze, Shadowplex $20 9pm Cellar Club, Erskinville Foundry Rawk, Lotek, Decker, Balazo, Requ13m $10 10pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Guy J (Israel), Walden, The Immigrant, Vengeance, Blaze Tripp, Samrai, A-Tonez, Tones, Rodskeez, Mike Hyper, Ella Loca $15$25 9pm Civic Hotel, Sydney Psylent Night Ryanosaurus,
Kierra Jade, Poseidon, Superbeast, Kilyen, Phsiris, Herotoxin $15-$20 8pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Yellow Sox Brynstar, Candidate free 9pm Establishment, Sydney Sienna Usher ‘Looking 4 Myself’ Launch G-Wizard, Troy-T, DJ Def Rok, Lilo 6pm Gladstone Hotel, Chippendale Sonunda Presents Ripper Trena, Kimba, Kayros, Oliver Gurney, Jordan Zed, Oblingmonster, Azza Huasca $5-$10 9pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney Parkside Sleep D, Mirror Mirror, Zeus, Parkside DJs $10 11pm Home Nightclub, Darling Harbour Homemade Saturdays Trip Kicks DJs $20-$25 9pm Ivy, Sydney Pure Ivy Beni, Ember, Radio Ink, Jace Disgrace, Pat Ward, Tom Dance, Mike Gadget, Ego, Rome & Kalcic $20 6pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Simon Laing, DJ Michael Stewart free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KKBB Devola, Kristy Lee, Liz Bird, Isbjorn, Pat Ward 8pm Lucky Australian Tavern, St Marys The Hed Ubd & Fortay At Large, Sesk & Merc Mason, Shake Digga, Prozacc & MC Luvin, 2Loco $10 2pm all-ages The Marlborough Hotel – Level 1, Newtown Resident DJs free 9pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm One22, Sydney The Box Bump DJs, Michael Scholes, Michael Doney, Jay Smalls, Defined By Rhythm $10-$15 10pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Wasted Years Wasted Years DJs $10 8pm Sandringham Hotel, Newtown Naomi Wenitong, Alphamama, She Rex, Poetic Transition, Madame Wu, Lomas, Verity, Dawn Laird, Exekreye $12 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Charlie Brown, Big Will, Dim Dlm, Discokid, Troy T, Jo Funk, Steve S, Adamo, J Smoove 8pm The Sly Fox, Enmore Headspace Album Launch Aeriae, Telafonica, Lunar Module, Grime & Jones, Data Transmit, Actual Russian Brides free 8pm Soho, Potts Point The Usual Suspects Andy Murphy, Oakes & Lennox, Mike Rukus, Brendan Fing, Jackd Up, Here’s Trouble, Bounce Crew DJs, Taylor Wolf, Recess 9pm Space, Sydney Masif Saturdays Kutski (UK), Steve Hill, Suae, Pulsar, HSB, The Khemist, Nomad, Nasty, DJ Husband, DJ Bennett, VLN, Astral, MC D $25-$30 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Resident Night Robbie Lowe, James Taylor, Mat Weir, Nic Scali, Sam Roberts, Dean Relf $20 10pm Sun Studios, Alexandria One Night Stand Simon Caldwell $30 (+ bf) 9pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Trademark Saturdays Resident DJs 9pm Tunnel Nightclub, Kings Cross ONE Saturdays Resident DJs $10-$20 10pm
club guide send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com The Watershed Hotel Watershed Presents… Skybar $15 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Act Yo Age, Hump Day Project, Mike Hyper, Bentley, Temnein, Astrix, Go Freak, Oakes & Lennox, Northie & Man He Can, Cntrl-Alt-Delicious, Wongo, Nicc Johnson, Illya $15-$20 10pm
SUNDAY JUNE 17 The Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H. Sundays S.A.S.H. DJs $10 2pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 5pm Goldfish, Kings Cross
Guido Schneider Martini Club Sundays Martini Club, Tom Kelly, Straight Up Steve free 6pm Hugo’s Lounge, Kings Cross Sneaky Sundays Sneaky Sound System, Resident DJs 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Easy Sundays Resident
DJs 8pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Daydream DJs 4.30am The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice Robbie Lowe, James Taylor, Nic Scali $20 4am The World Bar, Kings Cross Dust James Taylor, Morgan free 9pm
club picks up all night out all week...
MONDAY JUNE 11 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway End Of The Line Guido Schneider (GER), Hayden Strom (NZ), Carlos Zarate, Volta, Marcotix, MSG, Dylan Griffin, Jordan Deck, Dave Stuart, Chris Honnery, Ghettafunkt, Mike Witcombe, Mesan, Kali, T n A, Kimba $25 (+ bf) 12pm
Stitched Vision, Nigel Lee-Yang $18 7.30pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Death Strobe Label Showcase Sleep D, Death Strobe DJs 10pm
SATURDAY JUNE 16 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway Strange Fruit Strange Fruit DJs free 9pm
WEDNESDAY JUNE 13 The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Ravine, Kovacs, Subaske, E-Cats, Pat Ward, Deckhead, Sherlock Bones $5 9pm
THURSDAY JUNE 14 Ivy Poolclub & Changeroom, Sydney Changeroom Thursdays Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Elly K, Yohi & Huski, Kato 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Urby, Shag, Ali, Dan Bombings free (student)-$5 8pm
FRIDAY JUNE 15 Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Movement Elliot, Monk Fly & Friends free 8pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Bass Mafia Doctor Werewolf, The Abyss, Victims, Empress Yoy, Zwelli, Kemikoll, Big Deal Gillespie $15-$20 10pm Serial Space, Chippendale Bee Mask (USA), Pimmon, Secret Birds,
Guy J
Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst Itchy Beats Joyride, Morgs, Zarkov, DJ Ntaprize, DJ Riley JM $10 8pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Guy J (Israel), Walden, The Immigrant, Vengeance, Blaze Tripp, Samrai, A-Tonez, Tones, Rodskeez, Mike Hyper, Ella Loca $15-$25 9pm GoodGod Small Club, Sydney Parkside Sleep D, Mirror Mirror, Zeus, Parkside DJs $10 11pm One22, Sydney The Box Bump DJs, Michael Scholes, Michael Doney, Jay Smalls, Defined By Rhythm $10-$15 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Resident Night Robbie Lowe, James Taylor, Mat Weir, Nic Scali, Sam Roberts, Dean Relf $20 10pm Sun Studios, Alexandria One Night Stand Simon Caldwell $30 (+ bf) 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Act Yo Age, Hump Day Project, Mike Hyper, Bentley, Temnein, Astrix, Go Freak, Oakes & Lennox, Northie & Man He Can, Cntrl-Alt-Delicious, Wongo, Nicc Johnson, Illya $15-$20 10pm
ALBUM LAUNCH GOOD GOD WITH SMALL CLUB KILTER & SAIKO SAT JUNE 23 BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 51
snap up all night out all week . . .
foundry
PICS :: DM
mum
party profile
It’s called: Foundry
shivers
Three songs you’ll hear on the night: Ramm stein – ‘Du Hast’; Motörhead – ‘Ace Of Spades’; The Prodigy – ‘Smack My Bitch Up’. And one you definitely won’t: Anything by Sisters Of Mercy. Sell it to us: An epic mash-up of genres, twistin g past favourites and reinterpreting contemporary music. Foundry smashes through the dreary repetitiveness of Sydney’s alternative music status quo with a piercingly acute and brutal declaration of intent: dark alternative. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Brightly-colo ured cyber go-go girls, the cheap entry, and a complete venue renovation that’ll take Newtown – with the extra twist of being a full-blo you back to the classic vibe of wn nightclub. Crowd specs: Expect a sea of bodies dress ed alternative to kinky. No hipsters/ suits. Wallet damage: $10 Where: Cellar Bar @ Imperial Hotel / 35 Erskin eville Road, Erskineville When: Saturday June 16, 10pm til 4am!
PICS ::AM
01:06:12 :: TheWorld Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd, Kings Cross 9357 7700
It sounds like: Hard-hitting industrial/electro nic beats and riffs. Who’s playing? Resident DJs Decker and Rawk, with guest spots from Lotek, Requ13m and Balazo.
future classic party
02:06:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9958 :: KATRINA CLARKE :: RASA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) CHY :: GEORGE POPOV :: TIM OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER PEA :: DANIEL MUNNS :: THOMAS ON JUSKEVICIUTE :: ASHLEY MAR UPT CE :: SAM WHITESIDE :: PRUDEN WHITNEY :: ROCKET WEIJERS
52 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
propaganda
PICS :: GP
ministry of sound
PICS :: AM
01:06:12 :: The Studio :: Sydney Opera House 9250 7111
31:05:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Kings Cross 9357 7700
PICS :: AM
01:05:12 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney
snap
the cool room
PICS :: TW
hot damn
PICS :: SW
up all night out all week . . .
31:05:12 :: Australian Brewery :: 350 Annangrove Rd Rouse Hill 9679 4555
02:06:12 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney 8084 0587
strike
PICS ::AM
ghostface killah + mf doom 02:05:12 :: Strike Bowling :: 22 The Promenade King Street Wharf 1300 787 453
PICS :: AM
01:06:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9958
house inspection
PICS :: AM
crissy cris
PICS :: AM
31:05:12 :: Spectrum:: 34-44 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9360 1375
02:06:12 :: The Enmore :: 118-132 Enmore Rd Newtown 9550 3666
:: KATRINA CLARKE :: RASA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) CHY :: GEORGE POPOV :: TIM OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER PEA MAS THO :: :: DANIEL MUNNS ON JUSKEVICIUTE :: ASHLEY MAR UPT CE DEN PRU :: :: SAM WHITESIDE WHITNEY :: ROCKET WEIJERS
BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12 :: 53
snap up all night out all week . . .
movement
strange fruit
PICS :: AM
party profile
It’s called: Movement It sounds like: The future of electronic music , beats and hip hop. Who’s playing? Elliot and Monk Fly, with specia l guest DJs. Three songs you’ll hear on the night: Elliot – ‘Not Another Moniker’ (Monk Fly remix); Monk Fly – ‘Bulleting’; Herm itude – ‘Hyperparadise’ (Ta-Ku Remix). And one you definitely won’t: Jedward – ‘Wate rline’. Sell it to us: Aside from the fact you won’t hear Jedward, which is worth the price of entry alone (did we mention that it’s free?), you should come because you support local electronic produ cers who are throwing their weight around alongside the world’s best these days: Elliot and Monk Fly are two of Sydney’s finest. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The bass, the beats and the beers. Crowd specs: Sportos, motor-heads, geeks , sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads and righteous dudes (for the Ferris Bueller fans...) Wallet damage: Free! Where: Beach Road Hotel / 71 Beach Road Bondi When: Friday June 15, from 8pm
teen spirit
PICS ::AM
02:06:12 :: The Abercrombie Hotel :: 100 Broadway Ultimo 9211 3486
wasted years
PICS :: SW
01:06:12 :: Spectrum:: 34-44 Oxford St Darlinghurst Sydney 93312956
one22
PICS :: AM
02:06:12 :: Spectrum:: 34-44 Oxford St Darlinghurst Sydney 93312956
:: KATRINA CLARKE :: RASA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) CHY :: GEORGE POPOV :: TIM OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER PEA :: DANIEL MUNNS :: THOMAS ON JUSKEVICIUTE :: ASHLEY MAR UPT CE :: SAM WHITESIDE :: PRUDEN WHITNEY :: ROCKET WEIJERS
54 :: BRAG :: 466 :: 11:06:12
ricki-lee
PICS :: AM
02:06:12 :: One22 :: 122 Pitt St Sydney
31:05:12 :: Upstairs Beresford :: 354 Bourke St Surry Hills 8313 5000
1800 GALLINS
SALE!
NO REASONABLE OFFER REFUSED! $3 MILLION WORTH OF STOCK MUST GO!
N E P O S DOOR 0 AM! AT 1
www.gallinsmps.com.au
www.facebook.com/gallinsmps ANNANDALE (02) 9517 1901
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
55 PARRAMATTA ROAD ANNANDALE
gallinsmps.com.au
THE RRP IS THE RECOMMENDED RETAIL PRICE SET BY THE AUSTRALIAN DISTRIBUTOR OF THE PRODUCT, WHICH MAY NOT HAVE NECESSARILY BEEN SOLD AT THIS PRICE POINT IN THE PAST OR FUTURE. ALL PRICES WERE CURRENT AT THE TIME OF PRINTING, JUNE 2012. WE CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR PRICE RISES OR REDUCTIONS AFTER THIS DATE. WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO CORRECT ANY MISPRINTS. STOCK SUBJECT TO AVAILABILITY. SOME STOCKS ARE LIMITED. GALLIN’S RESERVES THE RIGHT TO DETERMINE WHAT CONSTITUTES A ‘REASONABLE OFFER’ AND REJECT OR ACCEPT ANY OFFERS AT THEIR DISCRETION.
IN CINEMAS NOW
IN 3D