The Brag #488

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rock music news welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly

five things WITH

JAMES FROM DRIFFS Arthur have been shredding for a lot longer.

They actually both swapped instruments during high school, and come from quite musical families.

Inspirations Artists who can craft together some 2. classic pop arrangements while adding original character and tight jams really get us jazzin’.

We love a good psych jam like nothing else – bands like The Go-Betweens, The Feelies, Yo La Tengo, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Real Estate and Bruce Springsteen, just to name a few. Oh, and don’t forget Stephen Malkmus.

3.

Growing Up We all grew up in the Southern Highlands 1. area before coming to Sydney a few years ago.

We were introduced to music when we were

quite young – Tom and I were taking drum lessons in primary school. I personally don’t come from a very musical family, and only got my first guitar when I was 18, but Henry and

EDITOR: Steph Harmon steph@thebrag.com 02 9552 6333 ARTS & ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Dee Jefferson dee@thebrag.com 02 9690 2731 STAFF WRITERS: Alasdair Duncan, Benjamin Cooper, Krissi Weiss NEWS: Nathan Jolly, Chris Honnery ART DIRECTOR: Sarah Bryant GRAPHIC DESIGN: Alan Parry SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER: Tim Levy SNAP PHOTOGRAPHERS: Jovan Atanockovic, Ashley Mar, Daniel Munns, Elke Owens, Step Back Photography, Pedro Xavier, Alexis Zlamal COVER DESIGN: Sarah Bryant

DROPKICK + TURNER

We swear this isn’t a meticulously over-thought April Fools’ Day prank, but Dropkick Murphys, Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls and Swingin’ Utters are teaming up for a massive Bluesfest sideshow at Big Top Luna Park on April 1. Tickets are on sale this Thursday November 15, and if this was an April Fools’ Day prank (it’s not!), sending you all to Luna Park to stand around the Big Top in black punk tees would be kinda genius.

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With: Millions, The Dandy Warhols DJ Set, Sures, Black Vanilla, Mannequins, Rascals & Runaways and Felix Lloyd Where: Millions Prom – MUM @ The World Bar, Kings Cross When: Friday November 16

PURITY RING II

When a band’s sound is described as “otherworldly”, it usually means that they use an obnoxious amount of reverb and tasteless flange. In the case of Canadian band Purity Ring, however, it truly is the best way to summarise their unsettling, off-kilter, rapturous sound. Their debut record Shrines came out a few months ago, and they’ll be beaming it into your brain at a second show on March 5 at Oxford Art Factory, after March 4 sold out quicker then you could say ‘otherworldly’. Tickets are on sale now, so hurry!

PAUL SIMON!!!

About four minutes before this issue went to print last week, we received a little embargoed missive from Bluesfest – the final artist announcement for the epic festival, which will be held in Byron from March 28-April 1. And as rumoured, it’s a huge one: Mr. Paul Simon will be coming down, he of Graceland, GRAMMY and & Garfunkel fame. He and Rufus Wainwright have been added to a list that already included Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Ben Harper, Wilco, Iggy & The Stooges, Glen Hansard & The Frames and more. (It’s been a while since we’ve been able to yell ‘STOP THE PRESSES’. Let it be known that we really made the most of it.)

Paul Kelly and Neil Finn. Just hanging.

CAT POWER

Cat Power is a singular live performer.

Notoriously shy, prone to fits of nervousness, cutting songs short midway, and suddenly belting out with that amazingly broken-but-pure voice.

People complain about this aspect of her performance, but those same people probably think that guy from Nirvana just screamed about suicide. In other words, don’t listen to them: if you love Cat Power’s soulful, fragile records – no least her latest, the surprisingly pop-fuelled Sun – you’ll love her live show. She’ll be playing The Enmore Theatre on March 2; tickets on sale November 16.

CRAZY HORSE!

Neil Young’s new record with Crazy Horse (his unhinged, manic, magic, fluid, brilliant backing band) is called Psychedelic Pill, and the opening track on it goes for half an hour!

Welcome back, Neil – and game over, everyone else. Perhaps the best ever description of Young’s voice came from Ricky Gervais who said, “it’s like he’s worried about what he’s got to tell you, but he’s going to tell you anyway.”

Young and Crazy Horse will be telling you all sorts at their first shows in Australia in almost a decade: March 10 at Sydney Entertainment Centre, or the day before at A Day On The Green at the Bimbadgen Winery in the Hunter Valley (although Neil’s more a whiskey-drinking guy). Tickets go on sale from November 19; pre-sale from this Wednesday November 14.

PAUL KELLY + NEIL FINN FTW

THE BRAG were lucky enough to attend the press conference at Sydney Opera House last week, announcing Paul Kelly and Neil Finn’s joint tour – both of them on stage together, plucking from both of their catalogues, with Liam’s son Elroy (ELROY!) on drums, and Paul’s nephew Dan Kelly on guitar – and as we were all sitting there, the two of them strolled in from the right side of the room with guitars slung over their shoulders like assault rifles, hit their mark, and started belting out ‘Into Temptation’. Amazing. From the press conference we also learnt that Neil’s working on a new record (scoop!), Liam Finn’s working on a new album (scoop!), and Paul Kelly wishes he wrote ‘Four Seasons In One Day’ and ‘Distant Sun’ – just like all Australians do, really. They play the Concert Hall at Sydney Opera House on February 10, 11 and 12; tickets on sale from this Friday November 16.

Paul Kelly and Neil Finn photo by Prudence Upton

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GEORGE CLINTON AND PARLIAMENT

You know that scene in the (horrendously romanticised and factually inaccurate) Oliver Stone film about The Doors, when they go through customs and are asked to list their name and job, and Morrison just drawls ‘Jim’ and grins at the camera? Well, we like to imagine George Clinton will be doing similar at Sydney airport, claiming his job as the ‘Godfather Of Funk’ while his 22-piece backing band squeal and hoot and laugh. George Clinton And Parliament’s show is described in press releases as a “22 piece P Funk Space Circus”, which we’ll be watching with openmouthed amazement on March 8 at The Hi-Fi. Tickets on sale now.

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REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS: Benjamin Cooper, Alasdair Duncan, Christie Eliezer, Murray Engleheart, Andrew Geeves, Chris Honnery, Nathan Jolly, Anna Kennedy, Chris Martin, Sheridan Morley, Jenny Noyes, Hugh Robertson, Rebecca Saffir, Romi Scodellaro, Jonno Seidler, Rach Seneviratne, Roland K Smith, Laurence Rosier Staines, Luke Telford, Rick Warner, Alex Sol Watts, Krissi Weiss, Caitlin Welsh

garage-y pop vibe. Recording from home

heard, and it seems that people are a bit more responsive to stuff they like these days. We’re always finding local music that blows us away.

On the weekend we played with this band called Disgusting People who were real tight, keep your ears peeled for them. Bands like Straight Arrows, Twerps and Eddy Current are great inspirations for what we want to achieve within Australia.

Cat Power photo by Austin Conroy

Cat Power

The Music You Make We’re going for a sound that combines 4. a bit of surf and psych while having a raw,

Music, Right Here, Right Now The music scene in Sydney is improving.

5.

There are lots of opportunities for bands to be

Xxx photo by xxxx

Your Band We started playing together when Henry, Arthur and I were living with each other last year, and finally got around to putting a band together when we found Tom. We had ideas of playing together for a while, and took our time with it. In hindsight that was good for us, as we developed our sound a fair bit. We love playing with Boats Of Berlin – they’re sweet dudes who were nice enough to give us our first show supporting them.

is ideal for us – no time restraints and just working with what we got: a few mics, a tape machine, and an interface. We were fortunate enough to record our first single at REC studios recently, which was a good experience for us. Our live show consists of a range of different songs, which will in turn have you blissfully chilled out, boogying to our poppy surf stuff, and then rocking out to our rawer, garage stuff.

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rock music news

free stuff

welcome to the frontline: what’s goin’ on around town... with Nathan Jolly

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

HOMEBAKE!

five things WITH

JARROD FROM ARTS MARTIAL Your Band Gav Murray on guitar, Ben Bowdell on 3. bass, and Gabe Thomas on drums. We all dabble with vocals from time to time, but I handle most of those duties. We’re all Perth boys and I’ve known Ben and Gabe for quite some time. We actually all went to the same high school together, and those two used to play in a band in London together. Gav’s a Beatles man; I’m a Stones guy.

The Music You Make We’ve got broad tastes in music. At 4. our core we are a four-piece rock band with a bit of a pop flavour. That’s probably the British influence. We released a six-track EP in 2010 called Silhouette. It’s a pretty raw production. Our debut album, Promises Will Get You Nowhere, came out on Friday. It’s a more deliberate and rockier release, and was recorded, produced and mixed by Tom Larkin from Shihad.

Music, Right Here, Right Now Perth has a pretty strong reputation 5. in indie pop, but there’s been a bit of a

Growing Up I learnt to play clarinet at school, but 1. after I’d turned 13 I convinced my parents and my school to let me change to guitar, and never looked back. I played in the high school classical guitar ensemble at Sydney Opera House when I was 16. My first concert was Bryan Adams at the Perth Entertainment Centre, circa ’94. Ben’s dad played in a

band that supported Pink Floyd back in the ‘70s. Gabe’s dad used to be a funk session drummer in New Zealand. My dad is a big Springsteen fan.

Inspirations Guitar-wise, I’m a fan of Tom Morello 2. and Adam Jones. Silent Alarm by Bloc Party was pretty a pivotal album in my life.

BATTLESHIPS

STRAIGHT ARROWS, BLOODS, GOOCH PALMS ET AL.

Write down Straight Arrows, Bloods, The Gooch Palms and Black Zeros in your TV Hits diary, under the date Friday November 30 (next to the bit about Ben Stiller’s birthday). That’s the evening they all play a truly great Hand Games party, which will feature go-go dancers, skate demos, face painting and much more. The venue is a secret though, and will only be revealed 24 hours before the event.

Email rsvp@handgames.com to receive the details, and don’t Tweet it or you’ll be the one who ruined everything, you jerk.

Bloods

PUSA!

On the day of the US Election last week – a date where the world could have very easily swung into a deep, dark depression run by sexists, racists and bigots – a lot of Australians were tweeting the word “Presidents” with the type of excitement that could only mean one thing: ‘90s joke band The Presidents Of The United States Of America had announced an Australia tour, during which they will perform their entire self-titled debut record, plus other scattered hits. To call them a joke band is unfair though: their debut record contains hit after hit after hit, fuelled by quality songwriting, hooks aplenty and songs about dune buggies and peaches and kitties and lumps. It also contains the wonderful couplet: “I can’t explain glacial motion. Or why Los Angeles don’t drop into the ocean.” The tour swings

by The Roundhouse at UNSW on March 15, and tickets go on sale from November 15.

What: Promises Will Get You Nowhere is out now on Ten To Two Records

BEIRUT!

When Gulag Orkestar came out back in 2006, it was one of those truly startling albums that sounded like nothing else at all.

Back then, Beirut was largely the solo project of a precocious New Mexico teenager, Zach Condon; a lover of travel, he’d fused Eastern European and Balkan sounds together in an extraordinary way. Since then he’s moved to Brooklyn, pulled together an awesomely talented band, and recorded two more albums: the love letter to France of The Flying Club Cup, which brought him and his brass section to Australia for the second time, to play Sydney Opera House, and his more settled, personal and full-bodied release, The Rip Tide. It’s the latter he’ll be leaning on at The Enmore Theatre this Wednesday November 14 for his Harvest Festival sideshow, and we’ve got a double pass to give away. To win, let us know the name of your favourite Beirut song.

JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION

KINGS OF SWEDEN

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion reissued their entire catalogue a few years back, which was a timely move considering all the Black Keys-ness and White Stripes-ness that was permeating the landscape. Last time they were out here, they sold out their Sydney show fairly quickly – and considering how popular these guys are now, we imagine their March 9 show at The Hi-Fi show will do likewise. Tix go on sale November 16.

Kings Of Convenience (Erlend Øye from The Whitest Boy Alive and Eirik Glambek Bøe) play beautiful, stripped-back folk that has the insular feel of Elliott Smith’s pre-DreamWorks records, with the bookish whimsy of Belle And Sebastian, and that indefinable Swedish sound that would probably be racist if I attempted to define it (lucky it’s indefinable). They’ll be performing tracks from their four albums on February 7 at Sydney Opera House, which is the perfect venue for them, really. So don’t talk over it!

DEER TICK + TWO GALLANTS

DINOSAUR JR IN HI-FI

You know how you were saying that Sydney venues are great at bringing the rock, punk, hip hop and pop, but where they really fall down is in housing the swaggering American alt-country? Well a) that was a weird thing to declare, and b) you’re dead wrong, because on February 8, The Annandale Hotel plays host to two of the finest acts to fall under that banner: Rhode Island’s Deer Tick and San Fran’s Two Gallants. Tickets are on sale already, and we recommend you plan ahead and buy them soon.

If you enjoy the full-functionality of your ears, then you cannot come along to Dinosaur Jr’s show at The Hi-Fi on March 16, as they are possibly the loudest band since My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields perfected his ear-splittingly beautiful sound in 1991 and then went off to do other stuff. The support acts are first class, too: Redd Kross (whose ‘Mess Around’ is one of the best power pop songs ever, and whose fuzzy bass tones may rupture your sternum) and Royal Headache (superlative, superlative). Tickets on sale now, via Moshtix.

Father John Misty

INDIE SHUFFLE

Indie Shuffle (a US-based blog that only covers Australian bands – take that, Animal Collective!) are throwing a gig at FBi Social on Saturday November 24, and if you guessed the lineup would consist of Palms, Made In Japan, City Riots, Olympic Ayres and Jubilants DJs, then you probably didn’t guess it at all – you must have cheated. This is why we can’t be Words With Friends friends.

STARS IN YOUR EARS

SAM SPARRO

Seeing as he had to get his gear outta storage for Homebake on December 8, Sam Sparrow figured he may as well play a show at The Standard the night before (December 7). The gig also co-incides nicely with the November 30 “Reissue! Repackage!

Repackage!” of his second record Return To Paradise, which features seven bonus remixes. He has won ARIAs. Have you?

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Stars, that shimmering indie-pop quartet from Montreal (which we have on good authority is actually pronounced Mun-treeall – I know, right?) are playing The Factory Theatre on February 9 (tickets on sale this Friday, November 16). If you need a recommended starting point to prepare for this show, begin with Set Yourself On Fire, then jump backwards to Heart, then forwards to In Our Bedroom After The War. Then go harum scarum, higglety pigglety, helter skelter through the entire catalogue until you only love the obscure stuff that you won’t have a chance of hearing at this show.

THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN OF FATHER JOHN MISTY

Before the Fleet Foxes slowly melded into one big ball of harmonising beard-fluff, drummer Father John Misty (he has a real name, but he wants you to call him Father John Misty) slid out from behind the drumkit, hightailed it, and focused on his solo career, releasing his eighth (yup!) record Fear Fun, which he’ll be bringing to Australia for the second time after some incredible shows earlier this year. Catch him at The Metro Theatre on February 19, or at Bar Century beforehand, where he will be shooting three-dollar spirits and wondering why there are so many backpackers in there. Tickets go on sale Wednesday November 14.

Xxx

Straight Arrows

This Friday November 16, rather than picking fights with the underworld characters of Kings Cross in an attempt to see yourself portrayed by Isabel Lucas in the next series of Underbelly, you should instead come along to FBi Social. There you’ll catch Sydney four-piece Battleships (BBC6 in the UK love these guys), who are launching their mini-album To You with support from Belle And The Bone People and Light Giants. Then either stick around for DJ Tom Loud at midnight, or go and cement your name in the underworld… or have your shoes filled with cement, however it plays out for you.

stigma previously that you need to move to Melbourne or Sydney to get anywhere.

The scene is starting to become more selfsufficient though, which is a point of difference and a cool thing. Perth bands to check out: Emperors, Kill Teen Angst, Rainy Day Women and The Love Junkies.

Our besties at Homebake have cooked up a storm with this year’s lineup, throwing in mammoth international acts for the very first time. With Blondie, Tim Minchin, Hilltop Hoods, Kimbra, Birds Of Tokyo, Jinja Safari, Sam Sparro, Tim Rogers, The Bamboos and a whole lot more joining forces with a Power Rangers-like gusto, you’d need a really good excuse to miss out on a slice of the action. A really, really good excuse. We’ve got two absolutely massive prize packs to give away, featuring a double pass to the event (Saturday December 8 at The Domain) AND a huge CD pack, filled with ten albums from different Homebake artists. To win, just send in a photo of something you’ve baked at home – extra points if you can somehow show you baked it specifically for this…

SW EEK !

THI

SW EEK !

AN EVENING WITH

THI

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The Music Network

themusicnetwork.com

Music Industry News with Christie Eliezer

THINGS WE HEAR

* Is the Bruce Springsteen tour for March/April to be announced in the first week of December? Meanwhile, all eyes are on the next Bluesfest announcement.

It is for one of the biggest acts from the 1960s – and no, it’s not Neil Young, who is touring around the same time. * Police are hunting down organisers of an illegal rave on Runnyford Road in Bateman’s Bay. The Sister Smooth Halloween Party was advertised through Facebook, and the site revealed at 3pm that day. Police, alerted by residents complaining of traffic, found an unconscious woman whom they sent to hospital, while two P-platers were charged with drink driving the next day. * Is Dave Grohl joining Queens Of The Stone Age? * Lady Gaga donated $1 million to the Red Cross for victims of Hurricane Sandy. * Nova 93.7’s Shaun McManus is a betting man, but he’s been beaten by his mum. For the Melbourne Cup, mum Sue placed a $12 bet, choosing a nag for its name and another because she has 11 grandchildren. She thought she won $400 and was rapt… until someone told she

APRA/AMCOS ROYALTIES UP 13.9%

Music copyright organisation APRA|AMCOS announced that it distributed a total of $236.9 million to 244,623 member songwriters, composers and publishers in the 2011/12 financial year. This was a rise of 13.9% (or $28.9 million). Much of this was due to the hefty 25% gain in revenue to $71.7 million for AMCOS, which represents royalties from physical sales, digital downloads and other reproductions of music. APRA – royalties for public performances, broadcasts and online communications – grew by a modest 1.5% to $185.7 million. In a reflection of Australians finding greater success abroad,

actually won $484,703. * US adult toy manufacturer Pipedream Products unveiled an unofficial Justin Bieber blow-up sex doll, priced at US$26, called Just-in Beaver. “Barely legal boy-toy who’s waited 18 long years to stick his lil’ d**** in something sticky!” goes the blurb.

Pipedream have also made sex dolls based on Christina Aguilera and Miley Cyrus. * Yes, laid back surf hippie Ash Grunwald is writing a song for the next Arnold Schwarzenegger shoot-em-up Hollywood action thriller! * Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger revealed that during a boring part of a German tour, he paid a drum technician £235 to stick his penis into the metal blades of an electric fan. He said, “He took the money… I can still hear the ‘bleh-bleh-blehhhhhhh’ of the blade slowly spluttering to a stop, and this blood-curdling scream. It was fantastic.

Somebody had video footage of this somewhere that needs to be resurrected and shown at the guy’s next birthday party.” * In the first week of being served to US college radio, the Regular John single ‘Slume’ was picked up by 30 stations, including the prestigious CMJ adds for WIXQ in Millersville, Pennsylvania and WNSU in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

* Oxford Street’s gay celeb Mecca Nevermind signed off with a bash that saw Courtney Act fly in from the US. The new owner is turning the place straight. * Max George of The Wanted was so impressed with a beard on a guy that he gave it a tug – and got a punch in the face for his troubles. * Oh dear: Kylie Minogue is doing another movie, and this is a, gulp, “musical comedy” with an ‘80s soundtrack. Walking On Sunshine is about a mother and daughter who fall in love with the same man in Spain. * Among the Northern Territory’s nominations for Australian Of The Year were Darwin label Skinnyfish’s founders Michael Hohnen and Mark Grose, while The Medics’ bassist Charles Thomas was up for Queensland’s Young Australian Of The Year for his work in combating bullying. * Six60 and Kimbra dominated the New Zealand Music Awards, with six and five wins each. Hip hop act Home Brew arrived in Biblical costumes leading a goat, which was soon banished when it soiled the red carpet. At their acceptance speech, they thanked “God for not existing”, and attacked NZ Prime Minister John Kay “for not supporting the working class.”

CREAN: INDIA & AUSTRALIA MUSIC COLLABORATIONS

international revenue for local writers was up 9.1% to a record $22.1 million. In addition, revenue from digital downloads and online sources grew by 17.9%, to $35.6 million.

markets, including SXSW, Canadian Music Week, The Great Escape, Music Matters and CMJ. In May, the Federal Government allocated an additional $1.75 million in funding for it.

Federal Arts Minister Simon Crean wants the music businesses in Australia and India to cooperate and collaborate more closely, he said in a keynote speech at the Music Connects India conference in Mumbai.

“As India’s music industry rises to global significance, we want Australian voices to be prominent both as recording and touring artists, and for Indian voices to feature equally prominently in our music industry,” Crean said. “We are already seeing cultural fusion between our two countries through initiatives such as Oz Fest: Australia Unlimited (in the first week of November), which has seen Australian acts Big Scary, Jinja Safari, Karnivool, Sheppard and The Aston Shuffle tour India and showcase the quality of our contemporary musical exports.” Crean told the conference that Australia is the sixth largest music market in the world, at US$2 billion a year. He also pointed out that the Australian Prime Minister has recently signed a Memorandum of Association (MOU) with India’s film fraternity for potential co-production. “Asian music is the growth sector, and Bollywood and Korean pop have gone global. We have an AU$1.7 million fund for developing talent, and are in the process of finalising a cultural policy – the first in 20 years.”

APRA/AMCOS’s admirable initiatives were also successful. It held nearly 200 career development, networking, and community events, and awarded $700,000 worth of grants to the music industry through the Music Grants Fund. Its joint effort with the Australia Council, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) Music Office, and Sounds Australia expanded their activities.

ATSI provided programs and internships to its members. This year Sounds Australia took 145 acts to ten international music

MUSICIANS REACT TO OBAMA VICTORY

SA WINERY'S MOTÖRHEAD SHIRAZ

The stars hit the Tweet button minutes after Barack Obama gave Mitt Romney a right slapping, to return to the White House for a second term. Will.I. Am declared he was rushing out a new track online to celebrate. Dave Grohl, Garbage, Gossip, Rihanna, Foster The People, Mark Ronson, Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry sent wishes.

“Take that Mitches!” posted Beyonce.

Ryan Adams declared, “I voted. Feel the Power of Awesome.” P Diddy: “4 more years, bitches!” Chuck D told Black America, “Ain’t no time to be complacent,” and to keep celebrations to a minimum.

[V] OZ ARTIST TOP 10

Sliced from 50 are the final ten nominees for the [V] Oz Artist for 2012: Ball Park Music, Delta Goodrem, Guy Sebastian, Nine Sons Of Dan, Oh Mercy, Reece Mastin, Seth Sentry, Something For Kate, The Jezabels and The Veronicas.

Vote now at vmusic.com.au. The top four finalists will be announced live on The Riff, Saturday November 17 at 10.30am on Channel [V].

NEW DIRECTORS FOR NEW WEIRD AUSTRALIA

Brisbane musician and studio engineer Innez Tulloch and musician, DJ and promoter Andrew Tuttle join Stu Buchanan as directors of the three-yearold experimental music collective, New Weird Australia. They’ll come up with new projects for NWA, which operates the digital record label Wood & Wire, Output Device video blog, free compilations, a podcast show, and live events.

AJ MADDAH BUYS INTO STAGE SYSTEMS

Soundwave/Harvest promoter AJ Maddah has, through his Clementine Music/ Madjo Enterprises, bought the backline rental company Allans Billy Hyde Stage Systems. The most lucrative part of the now defunct Allans Billy Hyde business, grossing $2 million a year, Stage Systems avoided going into receivership. Roger Foote will manage the Sydney warehouse at Alexandria and Ben Jobson the West Melbourne warehouse, and Billy Hibben is now National Manager.

MAMA OF MULLUM

The Mullum Music Festival on the North Coast has appointed sassy soul singer Mama Kin its patron saint. Aside from having a home nearby, Mama Kin played the festival twice before and blew the place apart.

ABC EXTRA

The ABC’s pop-up digital radio station ABC Extra will broadcast Queensland’s Eclipse Festival on November 14 (6am

14 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

to 7pm) from the remote Indigenous community of Ramingining. It will also broadcast Pacific Break’s unveiling of Pacific talent on November 17–18 between 9am–10pm. See abc.net.au/digitalradio.

Australia’s Distorted Beverages has launched the Motörhead Shiraz, named after the metal trio, for the Australian market.

The robust 2009 vintage was selected by founder Luke Willis, from the Mt Benson region in southern South Australia. He says, “This is a serious, complex wine that demands your attention and glass.”

Lifelines Hospitalised: Sharon Osbourne had a double mastectomy after discovering that she carries a gene that boosts the risk of breast cancer.

13 hours before the op, she was told that her breast implants had leaked into her stomach.

Hospitalised: One-time Joe Cocker and Paul McCartney & Wings guitarist, Henry McCullough, 69, in critical condition after a heart attack.

In Court: Britney Spears’ ex confidante and “manager” Sam Lufti had his defamation case against her family thrown out, for lack of evidence.

In Court: A US judge dismissed allegations by Illinois songwriter Guy Hobbs that Elton John and Bernie Taupin took the words to his song ‘Natasha’ (western dude falls for Russian chickadee during Cold War) and used it for 1985 hit ‘Nikita’.

The judge called the theme too general to get copyright protection.

In Court: 50 Cent is asking a judge to throw out a case brought about by Robert Poindexter, who claimed Fiddy sampled his Persuaders song ‘Love Gonna Pack Up And Walk Out’ for his ‘Redrum’ – because Poindexter sold the rights to his song to Warner Music ages back, and therefore cannot sue.

In Court: Lil Wayne must pay Quincy Jones III US$2.19 million for wrongfully blocking the release of the documentary about Wayne’s life, because he didn’t like some of the things it unearthed. Wayne grumbles that the case should have been delayed, as he was still recovering from the seizurelike symptom he suffered, and couldn’t address the jury.

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BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 15

asked 12 filmmakers to interpret one song from Valtari however they saw fit. Each was given the same modest budget of $10,000, the goal being to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow total creative freedom.

Dubbed the “Valtari Mystery Film Experiment”, it’s a process that has yielded results both stunning and strange. Most notable is Alma Har’el’s interpretation of ‘Fjögur píanó’, which features a nude Shia LaBeouf acting out the song through interpretive dance.

Out Of This World By Joshua Kloke

Dýrason finds the films both “cool” and “interesting”, and says he’s always appreciated how their work is interpreted. Indeed, it’s often during Sigur Rós’s own live show where their music is painted in thousands of different shades. Fans of the band have never been shy about expressing their sheer adoration after gigs; consider comments on the Sigur Rós website following their recent string of European dates: “I could perceive your spirit very clearly, I could feel the sweetness, the softness, the beauty of your selves and your art cascating (sic) over the public,” said one, while another remarked that Sigur Rós was “simple heaven on Earth. No band on Earth can create the atmosphere the way you do it.”

Dýrason explains that, when constructing their live sets, the band are more concerned with creating something that’s cohesive than something promotional. “We try to find a flow, and we try to find an order that makes sense. There’s very often connections between our songs, and it’s our job to find those connections for the audience… We know what works, we’ve rehearsed a lot, and we try to stick to that,” he explains earnestly. “We’ll mix up four or five songs a night, but that’s it.”

Their set lists may lack variety, but Sigur Rós certainly don’t take their live shows lightly. “Oh yeah, absolutely,” Dýrason replies with enthusiasm, when asked if touring is vital for Sigur Rós. “We’re so lazy, and we wouldn’t leave the house that much if it weren’t for touring. It’s very important for us.”

So important, in fact, that their 2012 touring calendar alone will see them hit 20 different countries in four different continents. A travel agent’s dream, Sigur Rós have never stuck to any standard routes.

“We try to go to as many different places as possible, though that doesn’t always make our booking agents very happy,” he laughs.

“We understand that sometimes it can be very expensive to travel to these places, but we still believe it’s necessary.

L

ate in 2009, rumours began to circulate about Sigur Rós’s then-untitled sixth album, a follow-up to their 2008 full-length, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. The Icelandic band’s rabid fans began frothing at the prospect of what was described as a more “ambient” record: considering the nature of Sigur Rós’s body of work, the idea that the band was adding more ambience was certainly saying something.

But as is so often the case with internet-fuelled rumours, this one came to nothing. In 2010, lead singer Jónsi Birgisson stated publicly that the record Sigur Rós had been working on had been scrapped, and that the band was going on hiatus to “have babies”.

Birgisson inadvertently added salt to the collective wound by releasing an album with partner Alex Somers in 2009, entitled Riceboy Sleeps, before releasing a solo album, Go, in 2010.

While fans worried they’d seen the last of Sigur Rós, the break proved what many already knew about the intensely ethereal post-rock

16 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

“It was a very good break for us, very healthy. We’d been going non-stop for ten years. It was important for us to be able to continue to work together, so we had to walk away from the band for a bit.” act: things are not always as they seem. Now, after a hiatus of barely two years, the Reykjavik band has re-emerged triumphant, with an extended and elaborate touring schedule, and all signs indicating a sound collective conscience – not least the band’s fiercely egalitarian approach to press, with media duties rotated equally amongst the members.

Looking back on the break, drummer Orri Páll Dýrason insists that while it might have been a difficult decision for Sigur Rós at the time, in the long run it served them well. “It was a very good break for us, very healthy,” he says down the line from Reykjavik,

where he’s taking his pregnant wife to the doctor for a routine check-up. “We’d been going nonstop for ten years, always on the bus. It was important for us to be able to continue to work together, so we had to walk away from the band for a bit.”

When Sigur Rós did eventually return, they came bearing a gift: Valtari, their sixth full-length, is a delicate and paced release, which remains an incredibly methodical listen without negating the band’s ability to seduce listeners over time. Their latest record might be something of a departure from past releases, but Dýrason insists the band had no pre-destined plan

going into the writing process.

“Maybe while we’re recording we go for a certain approach, but while we’re writing, definitely not,” he says emphatically. “[Valtari] was interesting because we wrote it while we were recording it.” Still, he clarifies, the album’s creation was far from a spontaneous process.

There’s an element of smoke and mirrors in the very ethos of Sigur Rós. Consider the band’s recent string of European festival dates, meant to promote Valtari.

When Dýrason is asked how the new material translated live, he’s quick to correct my assumption: “We didn’t play very much from [Valtari], because it’s a very quiet album. It can be difficult to deliver that kind of music at festivals, because people have been drinking for three days. So we tried to play a set that was more designed for festivals.”

While their recent live sets might not have been designed to move copies of Valtari, the band is taking more creative approaches to the promotion of the record.

Always favouring a cinematic feel within their music, Sigur Rós

“It always brings us back together and closer as friends and as people, too, to get back on the road for a few weeks,” Dýrason continues.

Although it may have pulled them apart a few years back, it is the road which will keep Sigur Rós together for the foreseeable future. “Iceland is very small and people don’t leave very often, so whenever we get the chance to leave, we’re always aware of where we are.”

It would appear then that Sigur Rós is influenced by geography, including that of their native country – but again, things aren’t always as they seem. “We might be just as easily influenced by the geography in Canada or Greenland [as in Iceland]. The geography is one thing, but the social conditions are another. That might be something we’d write about instead,” Dýrason says. “We’re influenced by the people around us more than anything.”

With: Beck, Ben Folds Five, Grizzly Bear, Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane, Cake, The Dandy Warhols, Liars, Chromatics and more Where: Harvest Festival @ Parramatta Park When: Saturday November 17

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Tame Impala On Focus, Fireworks And Fwends By Benjamin Cooper

“Wayne Coyne got me to walk through fireworks, as he was setting them off outside in the snow.

And then after all of that, his fucking camera phone didn’t work. It was beyond perfect...”

“Actually,” he qualifies, “the environment can influence you by informing the shape of what you do, but it shouldn’t have any bearing on the amount of work you do. If you consider a guy like Leonardo Da Vinci: amazing painter and manipulator of particular surfaces, but he’d probably be a graphic designer if he was alive right now.” So would he ride a fixie, too?

“Definitely not,” Parker laughs. “He’d invent a whole other way of doing it!

“But my point was more [that] people shouldn’t sweat the small stuff when it comes to writing or creating art,” he continues. “If you have it in you, it’s going to come out some way. And if you’re stuck in an area without instruments or paint, well, you can just carve out some crazy crop circles...The important thing is to persist, regardless of what gets thrown your way,” he beams, “and eventually, your life will be as weird as ours!”

I

18 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

The band’s second record, Lonerism, is generating plenty of reasons for celebration, from social network hype care of names like Mark Ronson, to a recent nomination for next year’s J Award. Recording the LP over an extended period of time between Parker’s home in Perth and his temporary digs in Paris late last year allowed him the time to expand and modify the group’s sound. He took inspiration from mercurial outsider Todd Rungren’s 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star, before deciding to make the pop album he’d dreamed about since childhood. “It didn’t seem to matter where I was writing for this one, because there was time and I could just work at my own pace,” he explains. “We were actually talking, in the band, about writing yesterday. My theory is that if you’re a creative person, then you’ll be creative regardless. Your environment shouldn’t really have that great an influence on you.

Tame Impala’s involvement with the seminal group began much earlier: The Lips’ resident knob-twiddler Dave Fridmann handled mixing duties on Tame Impala’s 2010 debut Innerspeaker, as well as its follow-up. “You just feel inspired to be working with people like Dave,” Parker says. “We’re always trying to learn more, and I think it’s really important to use the energy that you get from people who’ve worked so hard for so long, because it’s just invaluable. It keeps us focused – because a lot of the time we’re moving from those extreme highs of travel and touring back to the normal aspects of daily life.

“I’m definitely not complaining, though,” he adds. “Every day we’re with our friends, never in one place for long, and seeing something new constantly. It’s just a bummer sometimes that we can’t just be at home, chilling out with the girlfriend.”

What: Lonerism is out now through Modular Where: The Enmore Theatre When: Thursday December 13 & Friday December 14 More: Also playing Homebake on Saturday December 8 @ The Domain, and Pyramid Rock Festival held from December 29-January 1 on Phillip Island

Tame Impala photo by Matt Saville

t’s a beautiful sunny day by the water’s edge in Sydney, and Kevin Parker is in a world of pain. “I am going to defeat this hangover. Whatever it takes, I’m gonna beat the bastard. Though I’ll happily admit I might ask Nick [Allbrook, bandmate] to sub in for me later. After Rolling Stone buy me lunch.” His fighting words belie the calmness that exudes from Parker, the centre and controller of local psychedelic heroes Tame Impala. The parkland setting outside his label’s office is idyllic, and the Perth native is lying down on the grass face up, confessing to an evening spent with his bandmates and that most classless of companions: cheap wine. “I know – you’d think we’d at least have bothered to get something decent,” he shrugs. “We do have a new album, so that probably warrants us getting something that’s a touch classier. And I’m quite in love with this album, even more so than normal.”

One of the stranger things that came out of Parker’s sojourn was the opportunity to work with the grandaddies of weirdo psych pop, Oklahoma’s The Flaming Lips. In addition to his instrumental contributions to the Heady Fwends album, Parker was also asked to provide bandleader Wayne Coyne with a sample of blood. “We’ve kinda just become accustomed to crazy shit like that happening,” he laughs.

The blood of each contributor was pressed into the vinyl edition of the album, for April’s Record Store Day. “I was a bit of a wildcard in their sessions – I actually don’t think I was even meant to be part of it initially. I had just finished two weeks of recording when Wayne and everyone showed up to start work. They got me to do a bunch of guitar takes, wail for about 30 minutes, and then do some vocals. Then I walk outside to get in my cab to the airport and Wayne’s there, chatting away to the guy about death and the stars. I think he might have also been showing him the explosives, because he

was asking a few questions about blowing up cars.” Do things regularly explode when The Flaming Lips are working? “Well, they did on this day because Wayne was making a little movie with a bunch of fireworks. He actually got me to walk through them, as he was setting them off outside in the snow. They were these really weird fireworks that were shooting these purple globules into the air... And then after all of that, his fucking camera phone didn’t work. It was beyond perfect,” Parker deadpans.

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BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 19

Violent Soho Neighbourhood Watch By Lachlan Kanoniuk

S

hooting like a thunderous meteor from Brisbane across the Pacific, filthy rock exponents Violent Soho proved to be one of Australia’s most worthy musical exports in the past few years. Touching down in the US with the guidance of Thurston Moore, the group recrafted their anthemic arsenal of tracks into a consolidated self-titled sophomore – including the all-conquering single ‘Jesus Stole My Girlfriend’. While the band have performed a handful of shows across the country since winding down their album touring cycle, the upcoming national tour – for double A-side ‘Tinderbox’/‘Neighbour Neighbour’ – marks their first headline run of dates in over two years. As frontman Luke Boerdam explains, the outfit have been keeping busy, working on their follow-up LP.

‘Tinderbox’ is the first taste we get of the album, and it also marks the first release from Violent Soho since freshly inking a deal with the I Oh You stable. “When we got back from America I had never even heard of I Oh You. Then I heard of them through Shane from DZ Deathrays, because we caught the same bus in the morning. Then I remember seeing Bleeding Knees Club around and thinking they’re such a good band… I met Johann [Ponniah, label founder], and I saw that I Oh You were really young, but they have just the right attitude when it comes to putting bands out there. They just try and create a party and make it fun, that’s the way I see it. And it is fun,” Luke says. “They put the bands out there without sacrificing any of the music or making people do shit they don’t want to do. We’re really happy.”

Luke is philosophical about Violent Soho’s homecoming, after spending considerable time Stateside. “In Australia, it’s hard. Yeah you could get played heaps on triple j, but if you compare them to Nova, is it success if you get on that radio station instead? Or if you don’t get on Big Day Out?” he muses. “There are so many ways

bands can be perceived as being successful or not. I never really thought about it, though; I [only] care if my band is touring and working. So I suppose success is if you can keep going and keep working.

“I think the album did well in Australia,” he continues. “To get nominated for an ARIA is pretty cool; I don’t know what the hell they base that on [though]. And record sales, I don’t think they really mean anything these days. If you get high record sales, doesn’t it just mean a heap of old people are buying it? That’s the way I see it – they don’t know about Rdio or Spotify, they’re just

buying it from JB Hi-Fi. I don’t know if I want a heap of old people buying my music,” he laughs.

“In all honesty man, if we came back from America and no one wanted to work with us and no one came to the shows, then I’d accept it. But there was enough drive there when we got back, and we were thinking, ‘This is awesome’. For me, that’s success.”

What: ‘Tinderbox’/‘Neighbour Neighbour’ is out now on I Oh You Where: Goodgod Small Club When: Thursday November 15

Hiatus Kaiyote A Perfect Storm By Krissi Weiss

E

lectronic/soul/hip hop/jazz/ridiculously talented and indescribable Melbournites, Hiatus Kaiyote, are just over a year old and smashing it already. On their debut album Tawk Tomahawk, their refined yet experimental hard bop jazz musicianship combines with the ultrasmooth vocals and songwriting of front woman Nai Palm. But despite Palm’s intoxicating stage presence, bassist and laptop extraordinaire Paul Bender is quick to point out that the four-piece (plus backing vocalists) are not just a frontperson-and-backing-band kind of prospect.

“Our harmony is what unites us as a band; the fact that it’s always been there,” Bender says, of the relationship between Palm, Simon Mavin (keys), Perrin Moss (percussion) and himself.

“Everyone has such good ideas all of the time, and if you ever feel like you don’t have something to contribute, there’s always someone else with a great idea that we’ll want to work on. For me personally, that’s the most exciting part: just getting in a room together and fleshing out new ideas and trying so many new things. It’s always that first time you try an idea and nail it that’s the most exciting.”

But although each member plays an important role, the band began as a vehicle for Palm’s solo songs. “Nai already had a whole bunch of songs she’d written, and from there the first process of the band was learning her stuff and finding our own way of interpreting it,” Bender explains. “Since then, though, we’ve done a lot more collaborative writing, and every song has come together in a totally different way. It’s not the kind of project where anyone in the band could ever be replaced – everyone brings something so specific.”

While audiences are drawn in by Palm’s captivating vocals, Hiatus Kaiyote manage to straddle the line between pop appeal and hard bop jazz. The songs appear initially to be easily digestible, but there’s a whole 20 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

After a studio reshuffle, the band are planning on getting ready for the music conference Mecca that is South by Southwest in Austin, Texas.

“Tawk Tomahawk was largely recorded and mixed in a share house that me, Simon and Perrin were living in with a few other guys, which is sadly no more,” Bender says.

“But we’ve found a new headquarters that we need to set up as our studio space, and then we’ll get back into working on another record.

We’ve also got plans to be overseas next year; we’ve been accepted into SXSW and a few other things are waiting to be confirmed...”

Jason Lytle The Simple Life By Joshua Kloke

S

ounding charming in a disaffected sort of way, Jason Lytle answers the phone from his Montana home casually, exerting “favourite uncle” cool. “I’ve spent the day running errands,” says the 43-yearold, who recently reunited with seminal lo-fi outfit Grandaddy for a short series of reunion shows. “I grabbed a few beers at the end, knowing that I’d have to do a few interviews today,” he chuckles.

It all sounds very nonchalant, as if Lytle was just filling our prescribed interview time with inane small talk. Yet there’s nothing nonchalant about Lytle’s approach. Long a recluse in terms of giving interviews, Lytle has found a new, benign headspace thanks to his recent move from the celebrity-saturated California to the untamed wilderness of Montana. Amongst the Grandaddy reunion shows, Lytle found time to write and release Dept. Of Disappearance, his fourth full-length solo release.

Xxx

Bender, who’s originally from Tasmania, returned to Melbourne after studying jazz (“being a full jazz nerd,” he calls it) in Miami. “I wanted to see somewhere else in the world and I also wanted to study, and it just made sense to me … to try to get into a US school – that’s where that music originated,” he explains. “I knew dudes would be really serious about it over there, and really onto their shit. I flirted with the idea of going back for a number of years; I made a lot of really good friends over there that are scattered all throughout America. But Melbourne is really happening. There are so many amazing musicians and it’s really inspiring to be a part of something where there are so many awesome things bubbling up everywhere.”

load of experimental choices going on in the background. “The fact that we have such an amazing front person who is super charismatic and super talented – [that] helps any band reach people,” Bender says. “Nothing was ever a conscious decision; it’s just that Nai has that effect, and is that sort of performer. People are really drawn to her doing her own thing and we can do some crazy bullshit behind her, and everyone’s totally fine with it…. It’s so great – I feel we can get away with our most bizarre ideas and still have people on board. Just because I like strange musical ideas doesn’t mean I ever want to alienate anyone.”

What: Tawk Takeout, the Tawk Tomahawk remix album, is out now With: Bon Chat Bon Rat, DJ Huwston Where: FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel When: Thursday November 22

There’s an intricate, winding nature to the album; after each of the 11 tracks find their footing, they land in a place of determined poignancy. The songs may start small, but Lytle always has an idea of where they’ll end up; after all, writing songs has never been something he takes lightly. “I’m really in love with the idea of a journey,” he says, “and it applies to every part of my life. Even when I’m out running errands I really put a lot of thought [into] what order the errands are going to happen in. I try to start out with some easy stuff and graduate to something more important and difficult. I’ve had the temptation to write unbalanced music, but for me it’s all about reaching a point after you start somewhere… Once I have an idea about a song, I just try to get somewhere interesting.

I wish I had more of an intellectual way of breaking it down, but I don’t.”

There’s a blatant honesty to the way Lytle speaks, as if he truly has nothing to hide.

He’s always been something of a lone wolf in the music industry, comfortable sticking to his artistic vision regardless of critical appeal or financial success. He attained a cult following as the man behind Grandaddy, and has largely continued that cultish personality since the band split in 2006. In that sense, Dept. of Disappearance is a rather telling title.

Is Lytle, who has long been openly critical of the music industry, hell-bent on fading away?

Or are his solo releases smoke signals, reminding onlookers that he’s still a vital, truly independent-minded presence? “I think I just really like making records,” he says.

“I’ve had some great people behind me as of late, my management company and my record label. I’ve been really reluctant with the whole promo thing lately, but the people I work with convinced me that there’s a certain amount of work that I have to do to ensure these albums of mine even exist. That being said, I’d have no problem making these albums on the down-low and watching my bank account shrink. I’d be OK with that. It’s an art form, these albums, and I’m just here to make the best of it.”

While Montana may not have the sex appeal of California, it does feature the sort of living conditions that suit Lytle’s personality and his approach to songwriting. “I don’t have to worry about crime and I’m not super stressed out. I require a lot of outdoor, recreation activities.

I have to blow off a lot of steam. I have to get out into areas and not see a lot of people, and reset my own compass. I’m able to do that here. I’m able to come back to the studio and just think a little bit more clearly,” he says.

“Being outdoors so often has allowed me to relax and focus on the music. My creative process hasn’t been poisoned by all kinds of ill-intentions.”

What: Dept. Of Disappearance is out now on ANTI- Records

xxx

“Basically it’s just been about writing the album,” Boerdam explains. “It’s really hard to write while touring, especially in America.

We’re sharing one hotel room, so to get time alone to write while people want to sleep is hard. The rest of this year, besides touring, has just been about hitting the rehearsal room.

We have a lot of ideas to work through… It’s funny – after all these years of playing, what you used to like and what you used to be happy with you now find boring. It’s a natural

progression; you need to keep writing until you’re happy. It took a while to find our feet, but now we’ve hit our stride.”

The Living End The Retrospective By Krissi Weiss

N

ot even Chris Cheney and Scott Owen, the founding fathers of The Living End, could have foreseen the journey their little band would undertake. They formed the group in a Melbourne high school, and got their big break supporting Green Day on their 1996 tour, before releasing their breakthrough double A-side ‘Second Solution’/’Prisoner Of Society’. When they appeared in the mid-‘90s, grunge was slowly suiciding, and rockabilly hardly looked set to take its place. But The Living End had far more than catchy hooks and punk-infused rockabilly up their sleeve; masterful musicianship and a killer stage show cemented their place in the Australian rock landscape. What followed was three number one albums, six ARIA awards, and a whole lot of fans.

After close to 20 years in the game, the band are embarking on The Retrospective Tour, which will see them in Sydney playing all six studio albums in full over seven nights (the self-titled debut will be played twice). “Because of the nature of this tour, there’s a hell of a lot of rehearsing to do,” bassist Scott Owen says, as he takes a moment out from the rehearsal studio. “There are a lot of songs off our records that we haven’t played live for years, and some we’ve never, ever played live. We had to put about a month aside to dust out the cobwebs and try and get the memory banks working again and physically relearn all of those songs. Rehearsal has never been such a huge part of a tour as with this upcoming tour. We really wanna do all those old albums justice; we don’t wanna just get up only half knowing what we’re doing.”

The tour makes sense given the mammoth career these lads have had, but fans could be forgiven for thinking that this could be some sort of farewell; there’s certainly a feeling of finality to a retrospective tour. And even Owens isn’t entirely sure whether that’s the case. “It sort of does have that feel to it,” he says. “To be perfectly honest we just don’t know. I could see us playing music until we’re really old men, but you never know what the future holds. We don’t have any plans to stop soon, but we don’t have any plans for the next thing at all either. We’ll see what happens. I guess I don’t know how to answer that, apart from [saying that] we don’t have plans to split up, and we don’t know what the future holds.”

With: Area 7, Even, Cabins, and a DJ set from 2manyPJs (Grinspoon’s Phil Jamieson) What: The Retrospective Tour @ The Hi-Fi When: Wednesday November 21 (White Noise); Thursday November 22 (State Of Emergency); Friday November 23 (Modern Artillery); Saturday November 24 (The Ending Is Just The Beginning Repeating); Sunday November 25 (Roll On); Monday November 26 & Tuesday November 27 (The Living End)

The rehearsal process hasn’t just been a technical venture; as the band have revisited every song from every album, the memories have come flowing thick and fast. “It’s been an enormous trip down memory lane and actually a really pleasurable experience,” he says. “The songs eventually do come back – the memory of how to play them – but with that comes all the memories of where we were when we recorded them or toured them, or when they were written.”

“No one’ll actually take responsibility for this idea. Everyone’s blaming each other. It started off like, ‘Let’s go out and play the first album,’ and it grew into this monster...”

By all accounts this is a mammoth undertaking, but The Living End have never done things by halves. Owen laughs when asked whose idea this actually was. “No one’ll actually take responsibility for this idea. Everyone’s blaming each other,” he chuckles. “It started off like, ‘Let’s go out and play the first album’ – it started off like that and then it grew into this monster of an idea that no one really remembers who came up with... Before we started rehearsing it was quite frightening, because [there was] no way of knowing if we’d be able to learn all of these songs. We started thinking it was a stupid idea and why the hell were we doing it, but as soon as we got into the room and started playing, it was surprising how much muscle memory kicks in. All those songs are buried way back there somewhere.”

While Owens is proud of all that his band has achieved, the preparation for this tour has given them some time to reflect on the music they’ve created – and occasionally question their artistic motivations. “Roll On, our second album, particularly brought that up,” he says. “The first album had songs that we’d had for years and worked on a lot live, and then when it came out we toured heaps – and as soon as we finished touring we went straight back into the studio to make another album. We had this point to prove.

Everyone thought we were this three-chordpunk-and-rockabilly novelty act, so we had this bee in our bonnet: we wanted to prove we could actually play our instruments, and that we were into all of these different styles of music. So we recorded this monster of an album that had a ridiculous amount of parts in every song, and the whole thing was just such a marathon that now that we’re playing it again there are moments we look at each other like, ‘What the hell were we thinking?

“But ya know, all the records have their place in time, and we believed in them all when they were coming out. Because we’re not the sort of guys to sit down and listen to our albums – don’t look back, just look forward kind of thing – the one unforseen circumstance with this is that I’ve been able to go, ‘You know what? I actually really like this band.’ That’s a pretty cool experience to have this far down the track.”

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Grimes On Dancing And Dualisms By Amelia Schmidt

“I want to be simultaneously more acceptable and more experimental. I want it to be a lot more aggressive ... with really catchy vocal lines.”

“H

Proficiency with electronic musical equipment aside, she’s clearly not a fan of VoIP, and when my phone rings with a blocked number her Canadian accent surprises me; I’m halfway through browsing her Twitter feed and crossing a question about K-pop off my list: Grimes is very open about her interests on social media, and she’s recently posted about her number

one K-pop love, G-Dragon’s new single, ‘Crayon’.

(Crib notes: G-Dragon is the superstar Grimes of Korea, a fashion icon and trendsetter as much as a music icon, and part of Big Bang, one of the most successful boy bands in Korea.

He’s 24, androgynous and raps.) “G-Dragon is definitely the pinnacle of pop for me,” she tells me. “Have you seen the video for ‘Crayon’? It’s INSANE. I think he maybe came out in a song recently? It was like, switching between he, and then she, the whole time. I was like, ‘Woah, that’s pretty ballsy to openly be bisexual…’”.

Grimes’ addiction to K-pop is fascinating.

Compared to shining K-pop idols like G-Dragon, she is notably less high-production and less glamorous, instead pursuing a deliberately grungy, industrial-influenced garage-nymph vibe.

But K-pop is still a huge influence. “I think it’s great. [K-pop stars] really use their music videos to their advantage,” she explains. “In Western pop videos, we have that [money], but we don’t

she explains, suddenly emphatic. “I want it to be a lot more aggressive and violent, and I want to use a lot more industrial beats, with really sparse instrumentation besides the percussion, with the vocals really clean and up front. I want to write really catchy vocal lines; good pop songs that are also minimal and industrial at the same time.”

“The other thing that I think is really great about the K-pop style is the choreography. It’s always really, really good, and I think it’s something that I’ve taken for granted – how effective that can be,” she goes on. “Like ‘Gangnam Style’; all the viral videos that get really, really big have intense choreography. People just love watching really good co-ordinated dancing; I don’t know why, but that’s a thing.”

It’s a Nine Inch Nails sort of sound that seems to form in my imagination, which is unsurprising seeing as Boucher’s youth was spent in goth and industrial circles. But the blending of ‘alternative’ with ‘mainstream’ strikes me as something that could anger purists. “It’s definitely become clear who my real friends are,” she laughs, reflecting on her more mainstream success. “But real friends don’t judge. When people are engaging in a type of art form where the point of it is that you’re remaining alienated from mainstream culture, [you] should be accepting everything – so... whatever.”

In her videos, Grimes definitely dances.

‘Genesis’ opens with her dancing in the headlights of a car at dusk for three friends; it’s mesmerising, and yet starkly natural and free.

Her videos aren’t choreographed – she’s never even taken dance classes. “I did ballet when I was younger, but I’ve never done hip hop or anything,” she admits. “Actually for the next album, with all the videos, I definitely want to do some choreography.” The videos for Visions were completely improvised, she says. “They were made on a tight budget – it’s usually like, I’m in the city for a week, and that’s the longest time that I’m anywhere.” Choreography, more than anything, takes a long time, and time is something that Grimes has very little of at the moment. “It adds a week or two to a video. I mean, [trying to get] everyone to learn a dance!

You’ll be in the studio every day for a week, you know? You can’t half-arse it.”

It seems that choreography would fit better on her next album, with its apparently more controlled and focused direction. “I want to be simultaneously more acceptable and more experimental and weirder, if that makes sense. I want it to be really clean, like the cleanest thing, but I want it to be a lot weirder, especially vocally,”

“I feel like it’s the same with K-pop,” she explains, neatly bringing us full-circle. “People refuse to accept that it could be art because it has money behind it or because it is kind of mainstream.

Like Ciara or Nicki Minaj; people don’t think they could be innovators or interesting. I think Nicki Minaj is like weird, noisy performance art most of the time. It’s not even enjoyable; it’s assaulting and abrasive, but crazy. But because it’s mainstream, a lot of people won’t even look at it or try to find out what it is.” It’s a double-edged sword that Grimes is willing to wield. Pop success with integrity and style may not be totally impossible: it’s dreams like these that make her one of the most interesting artists of our time.

What: Visions is out now Where: Oxford Art Factory When: December 10 & December 11 More: Also playing Meredith Music Festival, held from December 7-9 in Victoria

Blondie Clear Eyes, Glass Hearts, Can’t Lose By Alasdair Duncan

B

londie were one of the defining bands of the new wave era. Their singer, the pneumatic Debbie Harry, was a style icon who continues to inspire today, and their songs, from ‘Heart Of Glass’ to ‘Sunday Girl’, ran the gamut from spiky rock riffs to smooth, synthetic disco. The band originated in New York, and in many people’s minds the music and the city are inextricably linked. When I put this to drummer Clem Burke, he agrees that New York has been of huge importance to his group. “The people of the city, the different cultures all assimilating – those are the things that make the city unique, and they make for a big pool of influences,” he says. “Whether it’s rap or disco or The Velvet Underground, all those things have come out of New York, and we’ve taken inspiration from all of them.”

Over the years, Blondie’s music has moved in many different directions, but at the centre there often seems to be a pull between the competing energies of punk and disco. Burke says that those two influences were key to the sound of classic tracks like ‘Atomic’, but as musical movements they weren’t as contradictory as people might think. “The thing that people forget is that disco and punk were happening simultaneously,” he says, “and if you were in a major city like New York at the time, you were exposed as much to punk rock as you were to disco. Disco was very underground for a long time. It started out in underground clubs, in gay clubs, and it took a long time to make its way to the mainstream. Punk started in underground clubs as well. There’s a synergy there between the two forms of music – people talk about them like they were opposing forces, but we responded to and were influenced by all of those things.”

Blondie started out as a product of the punk scene in the mid-‘70s, but their rise to fame saw them dominate pop charts the world over. As Burke tells it, the band never had any particular attachment to the underground.

They always wanted to be huge. “We always aspired to be successful,” he says. “We wanted our music to be heard by as many people as possible. We were inspired, in the beginning, by the kind of music we would hear on commercial radio, and honestly, that continues to this day. Of course, you know, success is relative,” he continues. “Success for us at the beginning was selling out CBGB, then success was selling out a theatre in midtown Manhattan, and then success was selling out an arena somewhere. The music business is a bumpy ride, of course, and we’ve achieved success to varying levels over the years, but there was no illusion that that’s what we were aiming for.”

The iconic CBGB was renowned as the centre of a thriving musical culture in ‘70s New York, igniting the careers of bands like The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, and of course Blondie themselves. Burke tells me he still stays in contact with many of the other musicians of that era – those who are still alive, at least. “CBGB was considered to be the spawning ground for a whole musical movement, although really it would probably take less than two hands to count the bands that came out of it. As far as the bands that got some real notoriety, there’s really only a handful,” he says. “When you see someone from back in the day, it’s like seeing someone you were in school with… It was an interesting time and place, and it was very inspiring, but it was definitely a one-off thing.”

“Disco started out in underground clubs, in gay clubs, and it took a long time to make its way to the mainstream. Punk started in underground clubs as well. There’s a synergy there.”

22 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

Speaking of The Ramones, Burke once took some time out from Blondie to play some shows with the legendary punk band, and I take the opportunity to ask what this was like.

“It was interesting, because they were all totally out of their minds,” he says with a rueful laugh.

“If I had stayed on and played any longer with the band, there’s a very good chance that I might be dead now too. I was friends with Joey, and Dee Dee was a very eccentric individual.

Johnny was very right wing. There was an energy to his playing, but not a passion – there was a lot of physicality to them. I played three or four shows with them and that was great, but that was enough. I mean, they’re a tremendously influential band and I love them a lot, but if you saw the inner workings of The Ramones, you’d understand why the band’s fatality rate is so high.”

After a hiatus between the ‘80s and ‘90s, Blondie reunited just over a decade ago.

They’ve been going strong ever since with tours and album releases, including last year’s Panic Of Girls. On the eve of their return to Australia, I ask Burke what we can expect from their sets. “People are going to hear some songs they love, and they’re going to hear some new stuff – which hopefully they’ll love too,” Burke says. “We still like to generate excitement from the stage, and we really like to see that translate to the audience. The last time we came to Australia we did a tour with The Pretenders and had a great time. I think this is going to be just as good.”

Where: The Enmore Theatre When: Thursday December 6 More: Also playing Homebake 2012 on Saturday December 8 at The Domain, featuring Hilltop Hoods, Tim Minchin, Kimbra, The Saints, Sonicanimation, Tim Rogers, Pond, Emma Louise and more

Grimes photo by John Londono

ey this is like, uh, Grimes, or like, Claire or whatever…” – Grimes doesn’t know how to use Skype, so she just calls me instead. The 24-year-old is almost equally respected for her experimental, dreamy electronic music as for her role as a tastemaker, aesthete and burgeoning fashion icon, and she’s heading to Australia next month to blow minds and win hearts at Meredith Music Festival in Victoria, and a series of sideshows.

(Hopefully, that is – a few weeks ago, she cancelled her entire preceding European tour for health reasons, rumoured to be tinnitus).

do anything with it and it’s just really boring…

With K-pop they have these huge budgets, and they really just use it to make something awesome. It’s like what a cloudy pop music video should be. People think that it’s really corporate or whatever, but you can’t deny that it’s just really well done.

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FA C E B O O K . C O M / B E A C H R O A D H O T E L BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 23

arts frontline

free stuff email: freestuff@thebrag.com

arts, theatre and film news... what's goin' on around town and more...

five minutes WITH

P

eter Helliar and Merrick Watts met doing community radio in regional Victoria in the mid-90s – and it was friendship at first sight. Merrick got Pete into stand-up, taking him under his wing, and later they met up at triple j, where Merrick and Rosso made him a regular fixture of their morning show.

This month, they’re storming the Comedy Store stage together in a two-hander show.

Merrick Watts (left) and Peter Helliar

PETER HELLIAR

If you like your comedy high-energy and a touch wrong, this one’s for you.

you it’s my best material yet (which will also be the case for next year’s show).

Tell us about Merrick! And how similar or different are you? Mez is brilliant company. He is funny, engaging, interested and interesting. He’s a big kid with a big brain and a touch of ADD. I’ve always loved watching him perform; he’s a great storyteller and laces his stories with great gags and big punchlines. We have a pretty similar sensibility and we grew up in the same area, but we have different delivery. We’re both pretty high-energy – and we both demand hookers and cocaine in the rider.

What’s more daunting for you – a million theoretical viewers at home watching/ listening, or a few hundred people in the same room? Probably, the million at home.

Not because there are many, many, many more of them but because you’re usually working in much tighter time frames. I have an hour or half hour or twenty minutes at least when I perform live, so if I stuff something up I can get [the audience] back in my own time. On TV, you may have three minutes to deliver something – it’s much less forgiving.

What’s it like doing a show with another comedian? Do you just try and one-up each other all the time? I personally reckon stand up is an extremely supportive industry, considering how competitive it is. The late Dave Grant called it ‘the brotherhood’ and I believe that. We all know what it’s taken to get wherever we are because we all started at the same point: standing in front of a microphon, shit-scared, with some illconceived dick jokes – and somehow we survived. I love doing shows with mates because it’s simply more fun – much less lonely than travelling around doing shows by yourself.

What’s your plan for the Comedy Store show? I didn’t get a chance to bring my last show Snazzy to Sydney, so it’ll be a mix of stuff from that show and some for the new show Whateves […Foreves]. Let me assure

Andy Nhan (Master of Digital Media): Fruity Stories, photographic print

Of your massive back-catalogue of comedy work, what stands out? I think the project I’m really proud of on a personal level is I Love You Too. It took eight years to write and get made but it was worth it. I learnt a lot, got to act alongside Brendan Cowell, Peter Dinklage, Yvonne Strahovski, Bridie Carter, Trav McMahon. It was well received, sold to nearly 20 markets overseas but mostly it was an absolute blast to make. Hoping the next one is sooner rather than later.

What: Peter Helliar & Merrick Watts When: Thurs November 15 – Sun November 25, 7pm Where: Sydney Comedy Store / Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park Tickets: $35 from comedystore.com.au

Nick Coyle (Me Pregnant!), Kenzie Larsen, Phil Spencer (Tamarama Rock Surfers), Matt Prest (Whelping Box), Emma Beech, Brian Fuata, Romi Graham, Zoe Robertson, Nitin Vengurlekar and Quizzle Schizzle host Zoe Coombs Marr. And just to up the creative ante and get the competitive juices flowing, they’ve called it an Eisteddfod – so prepare for an onslaught of one-up-manship from which only the audience will emerge the winner… Club Cab Sav’s Early Xmas Eisteddfod is on Wednesday November 28 at FBi social, tix are $10 on the door, see you there.

EYE-CANDY

Just when you thought you’d never trust yourself with a proper pair of sunglasses again, Colab dangle a pair of their limited-edition artistcollaborations in front of you, like car-keys in front of a baby. Too easy. This Thursday they’re showcasing their latest exploits in a show, featuring art and specs designed by Anthony Lister, Ears, Elke Kramer, Deanne Cheuk, Geoff McFetridge, Mike Perry, Timba Smits, Above, French, Dmote, EBOY, Jonathan

MAD MEN: SEASON 5

Season Five of Mad Men is the best yet. If season four is the gang at their renegade best, the fifth season sees Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce begin to eat itself – and everyone that’s invested time, money, marriage and whisky decanters to it. Impossibly tight skirts and impossibly loose morals collide and collapse, and as the middle of the ‘60s swings around, we see the once untouchable characters thrust into the rise of feminism, the civil rights movement, psychedelic music, the pill – and all those other exciting things that made ‘66 still oddly seem like the future…

We have TEN copies of Mad Men: Season 5 on DVD up for grabs; to get your hands on one, tell us your postal address and the name of your favourite character.

Calugi – and ‘more’. In keeping with the theme of exclusivity, the show is only on for one night –Thursday November 15 from 6pm – and in the limited-edition pop-up gallery at Lower Fi (7-9 Little Bourke Street, Surry Hills). TREAT YO’SELF, wash it down with an Asahi, repeat.

TOTEMS

Melbourne artists, wall-buddies and Just Another Agency stablemates Apeseven and Kaitlin Beckett are co-exhibiting this Friday at China Heights, in a show called Invincible Fathers. Why? They’re both into dystopian art that mashes up the organic and the technological. Expect shit to get weird. Apeseven describes his new work as “a visual science fiction of possible futures”; Kaitlin, who is originally from New Zealand, says her new works explore the shifting cultural significance of totems: “What if these protective totems were real creatures that had been abandoned?” Invincible Fathers opens Friday November 16 from 6-9pm (Level 3, 16-28 Foster St, Surry Hills) and runs Saturday November 17 from 12-5pm. chinaheights.com

COFA ANNUAL

What do Del Kathryn Barton, Adam Cullen, and the Dinosaur Designs team have in common (besides an addiction to colour)? They all went to COFA. So head along to the COFA Annual next week to see the future of Australian creativity, as their 300-or-so graduates serve up a feast of animation, ceramics, drawing, digital imaging, graphics, installation, interactive media, jewellery, motion graphics, objects, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, sound, textiles and video works. The behemoth exhibition part shows at UNSW Roundhouse from November 23-28, and the screening component takes place at Chauvel Cinema on Monday November 26, from 6-10pm. cofa.unsw.edu.au

FINDERS KEEPERS

It’s about time (like, literally) the Finders Keepers returned to Carriageworks for their bi-annual showcase of brilliant homegrown design. And their Spring/Summer markets, held on the weekend of December 8-9, are just in time for Christmas – the perfect excuse to snap up a hand-woven basket-full of hand-knitted kids toys, one-of-a-kind jewellery and ceramics, textiles and totes, bespoke brogues, and all of the good and anti-generic things you can imagine – from around 65 stalls. Instead of the normal Friday/ Saturday trading hours, Finders Keepers SS2012 will run on Saturday December 8 from 6-8pm, and Sunday December 9 from 10am-5pm.

For the full list of stallholders and *bands* see thefinderskeepers.com

MUM’S IN: EXTENDED CUT

Vashti Hughes adults-only Razorhurst tribute show, Mum’s In, has been extended to run over into Sydney summertime – so it’s prolly time you found out what all the fuss is about. Hughes, a Kings Cross resident and stalwart of Sydney’s alt-cabaret scene, came up with the idea after reading about the dangerous dames of ‘20s and ‘30s ‘Razorhurst’. The result is a one-woman montage of characters, including brothel madam 24 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

Afro Tanaka timez

Tilly Devine, sly-grog entrepreneur Kate Leigh, and high-end hooker Nellie Cameron – all to the sweet sounds of Ross Johnston. Mum’s In runs on Sundays at 5pm in the revamped, totally pimpedout level 4 of Kings Cross Hotel, and tickets are $30 (or $20 for those dressed to the nines in vintage fashion). mumsin.com.au

BONDI SHORTS

If you’ve got a short attention span or just love a quality film combined with some of Sydney’s best scenery, the Bondi Short Film Festival have announced their finalists. From over 200 talented Australian filmmakers they’ve selected 14 who’ll battle it out at Bondi Pavilion to win a prize pool valued at $10,000. Highlights include a metaphysics student reliving his own groundhog day in The Grand Design by Samuel Bartlett, and Elena Hattersley’s short documentary about a gnome collector. Grab your tickets ($33 + bf) to one or all of the three viewing sessions on Saturday November 24 from moshtix.com

CHRISTMAS CAB SAV

For their final Cab Sav of 2012, the Club are offering up a special Christmas-stocking edition of good things, including pocket-sized performance and comedy from: Charlie Garber (Masterclass),

JAPANESE FILM FESTIVAL

And finally, some good news: besides an endless supply of sushi and panty-vending machines, Japan also has all the cinema you can wrap your face around, and it’s going to be at Event Cinemas George Street from November 14-25. People who like lols should head along to Opening Night film Thermae Romae, a comedy about as architect who time-travels between the bath-houses of ancient Rome and modern Japan; fanboys and fro-hounds should check out the manga adaptation Afro Tanaka; arthouse snobs will wanna see Kaneto Shindo’s Postcard, the Ozu-influenced A Chronicle of My Mother, and Kenji Uchida’s Key Of Life; samurai heads need to see box-office behemoth Rurouni Kenshin. For all the rest of you – do your own homework! Full program and tickets at japanesefilmfestival.net

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THE SESSIONS Sexual Healing By Alicia Malone

Helen Hunt and John Hawkes in The Sessions

O

n a snowy day in January this year, a little film called The Surrogate held its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. A heartwarming true story about a man with polio, critics expected it to be good. But the reaction once the credits rolled surprised even the cast. “That was the first time I saw it, and it was a surreal moment,” admits actor John Hawkes, whose soft-spoken demeanor is at odds with his recent creepy roles in Winter’s Bone and Martha Marcy May Marlene. “I was watching the movie with over a thousand people and wasn’t sure what they were feeling. I was moved by the film as a whole, how it all came together, but the reaction afterwards was really unexpected.”

After that screening, The Surrogate was snapped up by Fox and renamed The Sessions, to avoid confusion with the Bruce Willis sci-fi movie – though their plots couldn’t be more different. In The Sessions, Hawkes plays Mark O’Brien, a sufferer of polio who decides at age 36 that he would like to lose his virginity. To do this, he hires a sexual surrogate (played by

Helen Hunt) and confesses all the awkward details to his embarrassed local priest (William H. Macy).

The idea for the film came from a short story the late Mark O’Brien wrote in 1990, which Australianborn, Hollywood-based writerdirector Ben Lewin thought would make an interesting film. Lewin himself is a polio survivor and was adamant that this wouldn’t be a stereotypical film about disability.

“I’ve spent my life avoiding bleeding hearts situations, so it’s the last thing I want to do in a movie,” he says. “At the same time I thought, ‘My goodness, by telling someone else’s story, I’m also venting a lot of my own emotions’. I think I brought some humour and even glamour to disability.”

Hawkes loved the script – but had one concern: “I was nervous about portraying a disabled person when there are disabled actors out there who already are underrepresented in film,” says the actor. “But Ben assured me that he had taken a lot of time over several years trying to find his Mark O’Brien in that community. He felt he hadn’t found

him. So once we got past that, I was most concerned with mining the humour in the film wherever we could. Ben wanted him to be a real human being, and sometimes a real jerk. We usually see disabled people as someone that we pity or as some sort of saint because they’re dealing with a great deal of pain. I hope the disabled community are happy with the idea that Mark is a fully-rounded human being, full of frustration and love and darkness just like we all are.”

Once on set, playing the role of a severely disabled person meant serious physical challenges for Hawkes. “It’s mentioned in the script that his spine is horribly curved, so in order to do that I made a device that I would lie on to curve my spine; it was a large soccer-size ball of really firm foam rubber that put me into a position where I was curved.

There was no CGI or body double or anything, just this ball that was stuck underneath. My chiropractor told me that my organs were beginning to migrate a little bit. It was harder to breathe…it was harder to speak. …

It was a large amount of pain I went through, but a fraction compared to

what many people deal with moment to moment in their lives. I have some residual back issues now,” he adds.

“I’m not going to sue anyone, but it was not good for my body, that’s for certain!”

in Winter’s Bone, Hawkes was nominated for an Oscar, and now The Sessions could bring him a second nomination, with much buzz after the Sundance and Toronto Film Festival screenings.

The Sessions marks the first lead role for Hawkes, who admits a preference for smaller parts. “That’s, I think, one way to a long career as well as to have a range of sorts,” he says. “Growing up as a kid, I didn’t watch a lot of TV, but when I did I was often drawn to the people on the side that were interesting or unusual. I like portraying characters that we don’t see a lot, people that you would avoid talking to if you saw them walking down the street.”

“I am not against it,” says Hawkes, laughing, “But I am a fairly private person. I want as little of me in the world as possible. Hopefully any awards buzz or nominations or actual awards will help bring more people to this movie. It’s just a little gem; I hope a lot of people see it. I hope that for the sake of independent film it does well. Maybe people will take more chances if a film like this can have a wide appeal.”

“Interestingly enough, John seems to be associated with disturbing characters,” says Lewin. “When the casting director first said to me, ‘Look, this is your man,’ and I watched Winter’s Bone, I thought, ‘What? This old creepy guy? No.’ But then I looked at a lot of other things he had done and I realised he was a real chameleon.”

“I’m very interested in this whole marketing process,” admits Lewin.

“This is like going down the rabbit hole and seeing where it comes out.

The Oscar talk is exciting but I’m keeping my eye on the ball. I want to know what people are going to wear, that’s what interests me!”

As the terrifying Uncle Teardrop

What: The Sessions When: Released November 8

Brand X Productions in association with The Kings Cross Hotel presents…

A dark comedy cabaret which lifts the veil on the Razor Gang era in Sydney during the 1930’s

. . . ix m ’t n o d w o n s “Guns and ” e z o o b e h t n io t n e not to m ATE LEIGH — K

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Eve ery Sunda ay @ 5pm m The Bordello Theatre, Kings Cross Hotel (opposite the Coke sign)

www.mumsin n.com.au u

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Gorelesque 4 [BURLESQUE] Body Horror By Josh Fergeus & Dee Jefferson

G

orelesque: noun – a dark burlesque juggernaut featuring the bizarre and the bloody. Oh, and a bit of naughty fun. This month Miss Nic, one of Melbourne’s favourite burlesque divas, is stepping up to the plate once more for the fourth instalment of monstrous burlesque extravaganza Gorelesque. “I’m very proud of our efforts,” she admits. “I love that we have been able to develop an event which is unique within the burlesque industry and is being so well supported.”

“The success to date has been due to our unique combination of gore, horror, high theatrics and dark comedy,” says Miss Nic. “We’ll continue to push boundaries as much as we can and evolve within these themes to ensure we’re presenting exciting, new and – most of all – horrific performances that leave our audiences feeling captivated.”

To keep their content fresh and top-quality, Miss Nic and Vesper program their events through

The call out is how they found two of the acts for Gorelesque 4: Legs 11.11 (whose space-age madness and elaborate costuming Miss Nic fell in love with) and Canadian alternative fashion entrepreneur and fetishburlesque queen Emily Badsville. Previously a headliner of both the Toronto and Montreal instalments of Torture Garden, Badsville will be performing a macabre new show that includes actual ‘flesh suspension’. “It’s not for the faint-hearted,” Miss Nic warns.

The other major lineup coup is Australian burlesque Queen (and genuine reigning World Burlesque Queen) Imogen Kelly.

“We’ve always wanted her for our lineup as we are huge fans,” says Nic, “so we’re very excited to have her this year.” Fans of Kelly can expect to see something totally different: a new character called ‘Dusty Vagine’ – a washed-up porn star. “Her act in Melbourne was incredible,” Miss Nic gushes. “You will need to see it to believe it!”

Other performers include aerial trapeze specialist Tana Karo (aka Tank), former Gurlesque ringmaster Glitta Supernova, 34B regular Renny Kodgers, pageant-princessgone-wrong Betty Grumble – and Gorelesque’s own Vesper White. “This is one of our strongest lineups to date,” says Miss Nic.

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The other star of Gorelesque – and the only one to return each year – is the Opening Sequence: a specially made trailer-cumwarm-up directed by White, who moonlights as a filmmaker when she’s not on stage.

While previous instalments have offered up loving homage to everything from Russ Meyer to Grindhouse and horror classics Dawn of the Dead, Halloween and Scream, this year’s theme is twisted sports, with bloodstained cheerleaders, diabolical pitchers and satanic batters. So brush up on your Carrie – and remember, there are Gorehound King and Queen prizes for best dressed.

Vesper White and Miss Nic

What: Gorelesque 4 When: Sunday November 18 Where: The Standard / Lvl 3, 383 Bourke St, Surry Hills More: gorelesque.com.au

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Gorelesque was established in 2009 by Miss Nic and Sydney’s Vesper White, after they met while sharing a bill and discovered they were kindred spirits and b-movie fans. Miss Nic, who got her start as a go-go dancer in Melbourne’s neo-burlesque scene, was looking to explore the untapped market for the darker side of the art-form, and she persuaded White – who has since moved to Melbourne – to team up to create Gorelesque, an annual showcase for creepier burlesque, circus, vaudeville, dance and cabaret.

careful selection of established pros from the local and international performance scenes, and an open call-out for new acts – which are then thoroughly vetted. “Sometimes we get acts submitted that have no thought behind them,” says Miss Nic. “For example, they pour blood on themselves and that’s it; I mean, how many sets of boobs do you want to see just getting covered in blood? So we look for more than that – a great storyline, originality, great costumes, confidence – and the ‘grand finale’!”

Jo Koy

[COMEDY] Standing Ovation By Alasdair Duncan

F

or the last couple of years, comedian Jo Koy has been touring and working tirelessly, turning himself into one of America’s biggest stand-up drawcards. Besides a regular gig on Chelsea Lately, he has several coveted Comedy Central specials under his belt – pretty high indicators of success for anyone.

But comedy can be a tough game to crack, as Koy, who took ten years to get from scrounging gigs in Las Vegas to his lucky break, knows well. That breakthrough moment, he tells me, happened seven years ago, after an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He was one of very few comedians to ever receive a standing ovation on the show – Leno took Koy aside to tell him this – and overnight, he went from anonymous comic to receiving random compliments from strangers on the street. “I went from working three jobs to working every comedy club in the country,” he says, “and I’ve never looked back since.”

Koy is of mixed Filipino and Caucasian heritage, and in the early part of his career, a good deal of his material drew on this cultural background, and many of his jokes were about challenging and exploding common stereotypes. His focus, however, has changed with age, and these days, a lot of Koy’s jokes focus on his family – his mother in particular. His routine regularly features impressions of her, and some of his most hilarious bits revolve around her near-sociopathic concern for his wellbeing. The appeal of this material, he insists, is its universal quality – she’s not a Filipino mother, just a mother who dotes on him a little too much – something many can relate to. “At the end of the show I’ll get a black couple or a white guy come up to me and they’ll tell me that their mother is just like that,” he says. “It has nothing to do with

Dead Europe

my mom being Filipino, it’s just that every mom does pretty much the same things.”

Koy's mum's not the only aspect of his family life he exploits for comedic value: a few years back he did a bit that was themed around advice for couples considering having a kid: "Just pull out!” he shouted, to the great delight of the audience.

In retrospect, this could have been an awkward joke to make, considering that Koy has a son who is just about old enough to start understanding his dad’s shows. Family life, however, is fair game for Koy. “I just keep my point of view personal,” he explains. “Family and a kid – that’s my life, that’s all I like to talk about.” Ultimately, it’s all in good humour, and Koy is delighted that he is able to provide for his family by getting on stage and making people laugh every night. “Travelling and being away from my family is the only part of my job that sucks,” he says, “but I understand that my son lives a great life, so I suck it up. I love my job, by the way.”

A lot of comics say that growing up, they would have one or two VHS tapes of certain comics that they would watch over and over, learning the rhythm and cadences of the jokes. “Actually, there were two stand-up specials that I couldn’t stop watching when I was a kid,” Koy says. “Number one was Bill Cosby’s Himself – my favourite bit was ‘Chocolate Cake’, of course. Number two was Eddie Murphy’s Delirious. I think I watched this special over a million times. No exaggeration.”

What: Jo Koy – Lights Out When: Sunday November 18 Where: The Enmore Theatre

Ewen Leslie Greek style in Dead Europe

[FILM] The Dark Continent By Alasdair Duncan

C

hristos Tsiolkas’ Dead Europe is a dense and multi-layered novel, the story of a young Australian man slowly losing his mind as he travels through the seamier side of modern-day Europe. His story is intertwined with a secret and shameful family history, and the pages are filled with ghosts both literal and metaphorical. Director Tony Krawitz fell in love with the book as soon as he read it, finding it provocative and fascinating. Many had called the book ‘unfilmable’ (including its own author) but to Krawitz and screenwriter Louise Fox, that statement seemed more like a challenge.

The film they made diverts from the novel’s plot in a number of ways, but stays true to its dark and twisted spirit, truly getting to the heart of Dead Europe.

“When I read the book, the first thing I realised is that, to make it into a film, we’d have to lose the part of the story that takes place in the past,” Krawitz tells me. “That was the first challenge, because I love the sections that take place in the mid-20th century, but they were beyond the scope of the film, so we had to find a way to put that past in the present.”

Thankfully, Tsiolkas himself was happy to offer help and advice throughout this process.

“Christos was so beautifully generous with us,” Krawitz says. “He knew the film would have to be very different from the book, but he trusted us enough to come up with something of our 28 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

own. I was very nervous, because I respect him and his work so much, but when he saw the finished film, thankfully he loved it.”

Dead Europe stars Ewen Leslie as Isaac, an Australian photographer who goes to Europe to mourn the death of his father, but discovers a world of ghosts and family curses there. “Ewen is the kind of actor who completely disappears into a role,” Krawitz says, “he transforms, and that’s why I love working with him.” Leslie also starred in Krawitz’s film Jewboy, and the closeness between director and actor proved a tremendous advantage. “Portraying this character took Ewen on quite an emotional ride,” Krawitz says. “Having worked together before, we were able to cut the bullshit a lot quicker. We didn’t have to be polite with each-other, we could just get to it, and that really helped.”

In terms of its view of Europe, Krawitz has described his film as a sort of anti-Contiki tour, showing a darker side of the continent than many would normally see. “I went to Europe and backpacked when I was 21, as so many people from this country do,” he says. “It’s almost a rite of passage. It’s really interesting to see a character like Isaac, who’s out to have a fun time in Europe, to get rid of his grief at his father’s death by diving into this world of sex and drugs, but instead he goes down this very dark rabbit hole as he finds out more about the

curse. Isaac never gets to see the Eiffel Tower, or get drunk in a fun bar … his experience is very far removed from the kinds of experiences that young backpackers would typically have.”

Parts of the film were shot in Greece, around the time of the country’s austerity protest, and the experience left Krawitz floored. “It’s funny, because the film is the story of a photographer who is an outsider, passing through and documenting the things he sees, and in making the film, we were doing much the same thing,”

he says. “We were observing other people’s reality, not ours. That’s one of the interesting things about being an Australian – we’re removed from a lot of the events that happen overseas. In Europe, people all live in incredibly close proximity, and there’s a lot of hatred that comes out of that – that’s not so much an experience we have as Australians.”

What: Dead Europe When: In cinemas from November 15

We has internets!

Extra bits and moving bits without the inky ďŹ ngers.

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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.

Aaron Pederson (centre) steals the show in Signs Of Life

Signs Of Life photo by Lisa Tomasetti

■ Theatre

SIGNS OF LIFE Until December 22 / Drama Theatre Tim Winton has a lovely way with language, and a preternatural talent for telling tales – so it would be hard for a night at the theatre with him to go far wrong; and Signs of Life does not disappoint. It’s lyrical and poetic, earthy and funny, and at 80 minutes, a fairly lean and muscular piece of storytelling.

PICS :: KC

the rocks village bizarre opening night party

The narrative takes up ten years from the events of Winton's best-selling novel Dirt Music; heroine Georgie (played here by Heather Mitchell) is middle-aged and in mourning for her recently deceased husband, Lu Fox, when an Aboriginal couple turn up late one night on the road just off her property. They’re out of petrol and out of sorts – they look and sound like trouble, and as the days go by, it looks like they’re in no hurry to leave. But Bender, the younger of the two (played

by TV actor Aaron Pederson), is the kind of rascal that grows on you; a straighttalker with just enough bullshit-power to survive society, but a pretty good heart.

His sister Mona (Pauline Whyman) is another story – a recovering alcoholic who seems plagued by the ghosts of her son and her Pa. As the days pass, Georgie, Bender and Mona (with a little help from the Ghost of Lu – played by the extraordinary-looking George Shevtsov) share stories and gradually unravel what draws each to this particular piece of dry and salty land, working their way towards an understanding of how to survive here, against the odds.

bennett: don’t shoot the messenger

PICS :: AM

02:11:12 :: Cleland Bond Building :: 33 Playfair St The Rocks

01:11:12 :: Soldiers Rd Gallery :: Suite 405/342 Elizabeth St Surry Hills

Arts Exposed

Signs Of Life gets off to a slightly dubious start, thanks to over-acting and a heavy dose of monologue exposition; too many of the lines feel stagey, and Mitchell’s delivery careens between stiff and overwrought.

It’s uncomfortable. But the moment Pederson takes the stage, he steals the show and your attention with an effortless, charismatic performance, and the kind of delivery and stage presence that feels spontaneous rather than rote (in contrast to Shevtsov, particularly). It doesn’t hurt that Bender’s rough-around-the-edges lost soul is easily the most likable character, and (with a couple of notable exceptions) is given all the best and funniest lines.

Bender/Pederson is the emotional and comedic heart of the narrative/production, and sets in motion a thaw that eventually encompasses the whole. It’s wonderful stuff, and worth the ticket price alone.

GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS November 14 – December 22 / Stills Gallery @ 36 Gosbell Street Paddington Some of our favourite photomedia artists are assembled under one roof this month at Stills. Among the ten-strong lineup, Narelle Autio explores underwater kingdoms in selections from her recent Water Hole series; Polixeni Papapetrou invites you down the rabbit hole into her wonderland of strange creatures and staged tableaux; and Mark Kimber will present his tiny, perfect microcosms of documented diorama. On the humorous end of the spectrum, The Visitor by Polixeni Papapetrou Garry Trinh presents his wry observations of life on Parramatta Road, and Australian magnum photographer Trente Parke plays tourguide on a humorous journey through his family Christmas. If you’re in the hood, drop in for a peek.

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PTA pitches his tent in 1950s America, within a nascent self-help movement called ‘The Cause’ (based on early Scientology).

The self-styled prophet and leader of this movement, Renaissance man Lancaster Dodd (modelled after L. Ron Hubbard and played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) is spreading an evolving form of psychological therapy, when he finds himself a “guinea-pig and protégé”: itinerant troublemaker and alcoholic Freddie Quell (played with scenerychewing intensity by Joaquin Phoenix).

Freddie looks to be irreparably damaged by his years as a sailor in the Pacific during World War 2 – but there are also hints that his troubles run both deeper (a drunk for a father and a mother in the loony bin) and shallower (a mind stripped by home-made fuel-laced hooch). On first glance, he’s the antithesis of his well-heeled, urbane host.

Far more than a period piece on Scientology, The Master is a love story between these two men, who each are the other’s happiness, just out of reach. Freddie seeks in Dodd’s travelling entourage a sense of acceptance and love that he’s never known before; a chance at normality. Dodd sees in Freddie all the freedom and indulgence he’s forsaken to control his inner beast. At every point of the way these two are struggling with the alternative values that the other represents – while Dodd’s prettily steely wife Peggy (Amy Adams) watches on and does her best to re-exert control. It’s a toxic cocktail of repression and yearning, from which ‘The Cause’ emerges looking less like a sinister cult and more like a group of lost souls trying to heal past traumas.

PTA’s direction veers between controlled mastery (a glorious sense of framing and single-take movement, and some very pointed juxtapositions of sound and image) and an unshackled montage of moods and excerpted experiences, peppered with visual and aural motifs. The latter comes courtesy of Jonny Greenwood, channelling Penderecki and Messiaen as he does in his equally unsettling soundtrack for There Will Be Blood, but allowing a little sunshine in to disperse the clouds, in the form of halcyon chords and Ella Fitzgerald. The cumulative effect is a chaotic masterpiece – from which enough moments of glory and greatness emerge to make it easily one of the best films of the year.

Dee Jefferson

Dee Jefferson

■ Film

■ Film

THE MASTER

TWO LITTLE BOYS

In cinemas from November 8

In cinemas November 15

Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the great maximalist filmmakers of the century.

He offers us visual spectacle, large performances, big emotions and grand ideas. Even in his debut, Hard Eight, you see the blueprint of this ambition; even in the relatively modest Punch Drunk Love, the drab urban environment pops with energy and ‘50s technicolour. All his central characters sizzle with barely contained, primal emotions. The Master might be the pinnacle of all this; a film of surpassing ambition that runs head on at the modern machinery of psychological control, and

You could easily be forgiven for assuming that a film starring comedians Bret McKenzie (Flight Of The Conchords) and Hamish Blake (of comedy duo Hamish & Andy) is going to be a laugh-a-minute comedy goldmine.

But you’d be wrong: whilst Two Little Boys is not without its funny moments, this little Kiwi gem is more than meets the eye.

Based on Duncan Sarkies’ novel of the same name (and directed by his brother, Robert), Two Little Boys is set in New

See www.thebrag.com for more arts reviews

The Visitor by Polixeni Papapetrou, image courtesy the artist and Stills Gallery

What's in our diary...

focuses on two men locked in a see-saw between bestiality and enlightenment, animal urges and civilised control.

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

Zealand’s far south in 1993, where bogan no-hopers and best mates Nige (McKenzie) and Deano (Blake) find themselves on a dark coming of age journey after an unfortunate accident involving a meat pie, a ginger cat and a Norwegian backpacker.

Fraught with conflicting issues of loyalty, truth and commitment (and with the odd sea lion and penguin thrown in for good measure) the narrative sees Nige and Deano confront their imploding friendship head-on.

The stunning natural scenery of New Zealand’s Catlins coastline provides a spectacular backdrop to this nostalgic and tense little tale of a bromance under strain.

Male relationships are too often portrayed on screen only for superficial gags and fart jokes, with very little offered in the way of emotional honesty and/or moral scrutiny.

Thankfully, Two Little Boys is well written and clever enough to do both.

McKenzie and Blake’s measured performances are a long way removed from their comedic roots, and their plainspoken portrayals make the bumbling Nige and dependant Deano both endearing and believable anti-heroes. We can’t help but sympathise with McKenzie’s everyman Nige, while Blake spins comedy gold out of the psychopathic tendencies of motor-mouth Deano.

The film is greatly enhanced by top-notch production and costume design – giving it a strong sense of time and place. At times a little predictable, and with an implausible conclusion that ties up all the loose ends just a little too perfectly, Two Little Boys nonetheless has far more substance than your average male-buddy movie.

Rufus Richardson

Julie-Anne Long – photo by Catherine McElhone

Hamish and Bretsy? Could work.

Street Level WITH

JULIE-ANNE LONG

he last show in Performance Space’s current gendergazing SEXES season is called Something In The Way She Moves, and it’s the work of Dr Long: artist, academic and Invisibility Consultant (you can call her JulieAnne). Julie-Anne is a trained dancer who six-or-so years ago became interested in the so-called ‘invisibility’ of the middle-aged woman, and turned this interest into a series of performance works and experiments. Something In The Way She Moves takes everyday kitchen rituals as its starting point and inspiration.

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What kind of kitchen rituals do you explore in this work? It’s very definite activities such as doing the dishes, unpacking the shopping, vacuuming, and I also make a real truckload of sandwiches!

Describe what people will see/hear: Without giving anything away, I really want people to recognise themselves in parts of the work. The performance is drawn from the everyday and it plays around with these ideas of an exterior, public life and an interior, private life. There are things that both men women, old and young will recognise of themselves in parts of the show.

How does the show explore or relate to the SEXES theme? I began the work being really interested in the media hysteria about the invisibility of middle-aged women and this supposed ‘loss’ of sexual power attributed to middle age. Which I have to say, I think is quite strange. So that was at core of the work and I used it as a starting point. I hope that Something in the Way She Moves makes people think differently about middleaged sexuality and the middle-aged ‘lady’ in particular.

gallery and its public spaces. The interesting thing about that performance was that even though I was wearing a high-vis vest, to a lot of people I was invisible. Many visitors asked me where the toilets were, or they handed me bits of rubbish that I might have missed on the ground. The experiences that I had with people were quite perfunctory, really. Not so much weird…but I did overhear a mother tell her young daughter that the reason I was hanging around cleaning and tidying the space was because the building wasn’t quite finished yet.

What originally made you interested in exploring invisibility? I suppose that I started from my own personal experiences, everyday experiences of being middleaged – and what was happening to me as a performer and as a person was a tangible reality. I was becoming invisible. As a female performer who puts her body out there, it’s something that I’m confronted with professionally and I have to address that too. Dancers are often considered to be past their prime after their twenties, so ageing and continuing to dance is something I am really interested in exploring.

You’ve explored invisibility in public (and private) performances – what’s the weirdest thing that’s happened during those? At the MCA I performed ‘Val the Invisible’, who was an invisible worker in the

What: Something In The Way She Moves When: Wednesday November 14 – Saturday 17 at 8pm (+ 2pm Sat matinee) Where: Carriageworks, Track 8 More: performancespace.com.au

Experience Film International Film School Sydney Open Day Saturday 17th November 9:30am – 12:30pm Want to experience film like never before?

Then you need to experience IFSS. Come along to our Open Day on Saturday 17th November, where you will be guided through the realm of filmmaking by students and teachers that are practicing in the industry.

Every school says “we’re different”. The difference at IFSS is that we live up to that promise.

In two years with us, you make up to six films and work on up to 24 other films being made by your peers. You won’t get to do that at any other film school in Sydney!

So come along on Saturday 17th November and experience IFSS.

RSVP online at ifss.edu.au/whats-happening/open-days-events T: 02 9663 3789 E: info@ifss.edu.au W: www.ifss.edu.au L: 27 Rosebery Ave, Rosebery NSW 2018

Apply Now for Feb 2013 Intake at ifss.edu.au

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

ALBUM OF THE WEEK effect makes that quality a plus: the vocals sound velvety, soft, and slightly eerie without being overly polished.

To The Dollhouse Broken Stone Records

Melodie Nelson’s second record is a sensual beauty. Drawing from a deep well of cinematic, literary and musical influences, Ms Nelson, aka Sydney’s Lia Tsamoglou, has crafted a collection of songs that feel like an immersion experience into the world of the Hitchcock heroine: mysterious, sexy, impossibly sad and quite possibly dangerous.

Draw the curtains, light a cigarette and slip into something more comfortable: you’re invited to drinks at the dollhouse tonight, and things might get a little dark.

This album wallows in its languid gloominess in a thoroughly enjoyable way. Clever, uncluttered arrangements create an atmosphere of woozy stillness, and allow the lush vocal harmonies and scene-making lyrics to star throughout the record.

Lines like “She rises up to meet her maker/he reaches down with heavy arms to take her/to the dollhouse”, and “No one even knows whose bones lie in those bedclothes” are delivered with a sigh. Lia’s voice is fragile and at times imperfect, but the layering

ART OF SLEEPING

TAYLOR SWIFT

Frontman Caleb Hodges both blames and thanks his incessant insomnia and “being in love with the reality of life” for his band’s most recent, emotionallycharged EP, Like A Thief. The Brisbanebased five-piece come from humble and yet typical jam band origins, and manage to embrace the quasi-art rock/ folk rock sounds of contemporaries Boy & Bear, Mumford & Sons and Husky, while taking it all up a notch.

The EP opener and lead single, ‘Empty Hands’ is a powerfully catchy and gut-wrenching tale of love lost, with delicately layered harmonies of contrasting but cohesive guitar and keys. The title track sees sticksman Jean-Paul Malengret assaulting his drums like they’re a midnight intruder, while the ebb and flow of meticulous dynamism furthers the desperation seeping from Hodges vocals. They sound awfully Mumford & Sons on both this track and ‘Above The Water’, but that needn’t be a bad thing.

Like A Thief contrasts the tinkling of keyboard melodies with acoustic and electric guitars and an unrelenting rhythm section (extra credit points for the syncopated craziness of ‘One Hundred Thousand’), throwing the listener into a fully-realised EP, replete with both a darker rock sound and a more soulful folk ambience than any of the artists they're referencing. Art Of Sleeping face the potential criticism of being labelled derivative to the point of mere pastiche – but there’s rarely anything definitively “new” in music, and while Like A Thief wears its influences on its sleeve, it’s almost impossible to deny that the band do this sound near perfectly.

Life A Thief is an excellent introduction for the uninitiated, and fulfilling for the already converted – and it hints at awesome album potential.

Krissi Weiss

Taylor Swift is just like you. Well, in a strictly literal sense Taylor Swift is nothing like you, because Taylor Swift is a dazzling 22-year-old megastar who sells out venues all over the world, dates people like John Mayer and has had a string of multi-Platinum albums in an era when nobody even buys albums anymore. Taylor Swift’s genius, however, is in giving off the impression that Taylor Swift is just like you.

Her lyrics tap into a very particular sort of romantic angst, a sort of up-beat, optimistic, ‘gosh, boys are just the worst’ mentality, and in her performances she gives the air of the girl next door who is just, like, sooooo pretty, even though she doesn’t even realise it yet. Red is Swift’s fourth album, the latest chapter in the ongoing bildungsroman that is her journey of self-discovery.

The songs, as usual, are impeccably constructed and super catchy, with a few (‘Begin Again’ and ‘Sad Beautiful Tragic’ amongst them) that explicitly hark back to Swift’s country roots, but stylistically there are a couple of bold, attention-grabbing departures.

First of these is her blatant flirtation with crossover success: Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin has been drafted in as a co-writer on three tracks, and it’s no coincidence that these songs, including the nowubiquitous ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’, are the album’s catchiest moments. Secondly, and more surprisingly, is the album’s flirtation with dance beats: ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’ grafts twangy country pop hooks onto a grimy dubstepinspired breakdown, a combination that should spell disaster, but somehow works through sheer force of the song’s aggressively up-beat Taylor Swift-iness.

Red represents an even further step towards Taylor Swift’s mainstream pop dominance.

Alasdair Duncan

Jenny Noyes

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS

Red Universal

Like A Thief EP Dew Process/ Universal

In To The Dollhouse, Melodie Nelson plays on a sense of retrospective nostalgia and deja vu, with references to literary dames like Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Jacqueline Susann.

There are obvious comparisons to be drawn to female vocalists like Nancy Sinatra and Dusty Springfield, yet in terms of the songwriting I couldn’t go past Air (in particular, the Virgin Suicides soundtrack) as a musical reference – especially on the tracks ‘Six Six Six’ and ‘Martha’, where swirling harmonies and descending scales evoke the sense of vertigo that might occur atop an elegant corkscrew staircase, or at the sight of birds circling overhead.

Transcendental Youth 4AD / Inertia

This is now The Mountain Goats 14th studio album since 1994 – a remarkable number, especially considering all the EPs, collaborations and gigs not included in it. And while it’s probably safe to say that they haven’t had an essential, Best Of The Year record since 2005’s The Sunset Tree, each new album contains three or four of those wonderful, timeless tracks that most songwriters would kill to have on their CV. As with the last album, All Eternals Deck, there are a few sounds and production flourishes here that expand on the traditional Mountain Goats oeuvre. Strings and trumpets both play prominent, although not dominating, roles, complementing John Darnielle’s melodies and lyrics beautifully. ‘White Cedar’ is a case in point, with a muted yet defiant trumpet salvo rising to a spine-tingling crescendo, as Darnielle sings, “I will be reborn someday, someday, if I wait long enough / I don’t wanna be afraid / I don’t have to be afraid”.

Back in May, Darnielle described the yet-to-be-recorded Transcendental Youth as “the Satan record”. But it’s not the cloven hooves and pitchfork Satan: it’s the evil in everyday life, and he is at his best when writing about the ways in which we overcome that evil. Thematically, much of this album is in the same vein as Mountain Goats classics like ‘This Year’, ‘No Children’ and ‘Sax Rohmer #1’. Lines like “Do every stupid thing if it makes you feel alive / Do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away”, or “Some things you do just to see how bad they’ll make you feel” turn cathartic in Darnielle’s hands, as he names and overcomes his fears so that we can too.

Resonation Poison City Records Leafing through the liner notes of Hobart’s Lincoln Le Fevre’s sophomore release Resonation is akin to leafing through the diaries of late 20-yearolds everywhere. The only difference is that most people in their late 20s don’t possess the self-understanding that Le Fevre’s poetic (though often depressingly honest) lyrics contain in spades. Set to rich, acoustic-heavy campfire- and roadtrip-ready tracks, Le Fevre spins webs with stories that many

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ELLIE GOULDING

GARY CLARK JR.

Halcyon Polydor Records

Blak And Blu Warner Music

Blak And Blu, the debut album from "the saviour of blues", Gary Clark Jr., comes to us off the back of a mega year of touring and buzz-building. The production-heavy opener ‘Ain’t Messin’ Around’ leads with the boast “I don’t believe in competition, ain’t no one else like me around”, which is a bold statement but not completely unfounded.

‘When My Train Pulls In’ echoes fellow Austinite Stevie Ray Vaughan, with Clark delivering a sevenminute jam that features the kind of serious guitar work that will make blues lovers everywhere rejoice.

He channels Lenny Kravitz circa ‘American Woman’ on ‘Glitter Ain’t Gold’, and the title track features a Gil Scott-Heron sample, ‘Pieces Of A Man’ – an apt description of this album itself.

The straight-up Southern rock of ‘Travis County’ is catchy as hell, and ‘Numb’ is a sprawling face-melter of a number, with some serious Hendrix fuzz and Black Keys vocal distortion.

Clark Jr. shows his versatility with the ballad ‘Please Come Home’, which fuses meandering blues guitar with gentle soul horns and mournful RnB falsetto.

On the flip side, Blak And Blu does feel a bit tossed together; there isn’t a cohesive flow to the tracks, and it’s difficult to pin down a specific direction for the album’s sound. Still, as a snapshot of his versatility and what he can do with a guitar, the record shows that Gary Clark Jr. is more than just a blues man, for better or for worse.

In case you’ve not heard of Ellie Goulding, a quick refresher: her 2010 breakthrough record Lights saw her cemented into our hearts as a sassy little songbird, who knows how to strike the balance between a good pop tune and a gutsy power ballad. Having also found herself in the tabloid spotlight as the significant other of wobble baron Skrillex (they have matching undercuts, too – bless), Halcyon is certain to keep people talking: written and co-produced by Goulding herself, it is a dramatic step up from her debut, and in all the right ways.

While lead single ‘Anything Could Happen’ is effervescent and sweet and probably the perfect song to reintroduce Goulding as a voice to be reckoned with, it is by no means the standout here: on ‘Figure 8’ you get the full, stunning power of her voice, paired with an electro melody that will sweep you away into her world of hope and heartache.

Her cover of Active Child’s ‘Hanging On’, however, is a complete misfire.

Goulding does nothing for an already achingly gorgeous song, other than inject her own breathy, squeaky vocals (which sound as though they’re struggling in parts) into a fuzzier, more dance-ready interpretation. Thankfully, tracks like ‘Blood’ are just so unashamedly feelgood that you can’t resist belting out the chorus with her, while on ‘I Know You Care’, where it all gets stripped back to Goulding and a gentle piano arrangement, the music’s beauty comes from its simplicity.

Yet another worthy addition to The Mountain Goats’ catalogue.

As an album, Blak And Blu is pretty scattered – but the strength of most of the tracks alone, together with Gary Clark Jr.’s talent, is difficult to deny.

Running the spectrum from bangers to ballads with everything in between, Halycon is a record you’ll need if you appreciate a vocalist that can leave you awestruck.

Hugh Robertson

Natalie Amat

Marissa Demetriou

INDIE ALBUM OF THE WEEK LINCOLN LE FEVRE

Melodie Nelson pohot by Kurt Eckardt

MELODIE NELSON

of his fans know all too well. And that’s because they’re often the protagonists. It is a record that has the power to unite in that sense.

Le Fevre is fearless in his push to craft a classic Australian release. “You can’t trust your friends not to do what you did to them/And now you’re fucked up and alone again,” he sings on the solemn ‘Driftwood’. “We can make this work when I get back to town/But I have my doubts that you’ll still be around,” he muses on the joyously introspective ‘On And On’. And those two only scratch the surface.

Make no mistake – a record like Resonation has a very clear aesthetic:

simply put, Le Fevre pulls no punches with each of his 12 tracks. Resonation reminds listeners that we only have one life, and best to live it well – but in order to do so, best to come to an understanding of who we are, warts and all. Then, and only then, with Resonation ringing loudly the morning after, can all these 20-somethings begin to make sense of it all.

Resonation is a beautiful listen, tightly woven together with dense arrangements, and the sweeping understanding that the ability to tell a great story may be humanity’s saving grace.

Joshua Kloke

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

THE JAYHAWKS - Tomorrow The Green Grass FOX + SUI - Taboo JOHN SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION - Now I Got Worry

PURITY RING - Shrines CAITLIN PARK - Milk Annual

BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 33

Remedy

More Than The Cure Since 1989 with Murray Engleheart

LAZY ZEPPELIN

Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones said recently that “[Zeppelin] earns more money to this day than I could ever be able to spend.” And he’s about to get a shitload more lazy cash – and not just from the sales of the Celebration Day DVD: Jimmy Page is currently re-remastering each Zep album for release (sometime next year) as individual boxed sets with bonus material from each respective era. Page, by the way, is now being managed by Peter Mensch, whose stunning CV includes guiding the career of everyone from the original New York Dolls to late-‘70s and early-‘80s AC/DC, Ted Nugent and Metallica.

PRIMAL ZEPPELIN

Still on Zep: for some reason, Primal Scream have found the need to include Robert Plant on their next record.

ALBINI ANGELS

We thought it was weird when he produced Page and Plant’s second effort, but seeing Shellac’s Steve Albini at the Metro in an Angels’ T-shirt was a whole other trip again.

CRAZY-BORING HORSE

We just finished ploughing through Neil Young’s recently released tome Waging Heavy Peace, and came away with mixed feelings and no small measure of discomfort.

While the man is unquestionably honest throughout and makes his apologies for various moments in his past that he now realises could have been handled better, the overriding sense – to us at least – was one of a very (very) wealthy hippy who makes Keith Richards, and his book Life, seem positively humble by comparison. Let us state that this was not the image we wanted. To make matters worse, the book is hardly a rhythmic, well-structured or riveting read. We don’t care about Young’s fascination with historic train mechanisms, or his long and BORING descriptions of various episodes with his large collection of cars. What we wanted was guff on what makes Crazy Horse and their gloriously grace-filled shambles tick (bearing in mind of course that some things shouldn’t be dissected too closely – but surely a little excavating was in order?), the low down on Rust Never Sleeps (which, amazingly, was covered in about eight pages), and some discussion about Young’s totally unique

stuttering electric guitar sound and solos, long said to have been both an interpretation of or connection to John Coltrane’s playing and a reflection of Young’s epilepsy (which itself appeared to be discussed in somewhat shrouded terms). Then there was his repeated broad claim – if we understood it correctly – that the reason music sales are down is because the quality of mp3s is so poor... Like the millions of folks who download each day give a shit. Oh, and Uncle Neil likes Foo Fighters. We’re not sure what that means, but we don’t think any good will come of it.

CHRIS AWESOME-SON

We’ve shifted our thinking considerably regarding former Black Crowe, Chris Robinson. With his new band, The Chris Robinson Brotherhood, mining a sacred ground somewhere between what The Allman Brothers and The Grateful Dead attempted and represented, he seems much more relaxed and chatty – a glowing example of which was evident in an excellent recent interview with Sound & Vision. Like this grab: “I remember the first time my family came to New York – maybe a year after I graduated from high school. And the first thing I said when we got here was, ‘Take me to the Village. I want to buy records!’

The record I remember buying then was a double Easybeats collection [The Absolute Anthology]. So when we [The Crowes] released our third record, Amorica, in 1994, we printed a special edition on white vinyl… because my Easybeats record was on two pieces of white vinyl.” Find the entire piece at soundandvisionmag.com

GOV’T MULE

Our love affair with Gov’t Mule kinda waned following the passing of lovable bass beast Allen Woody and the subsequent move towards a collective rather than a solid band.

But a new six-disc live set titled The Georgia Bootleg Box has rekindled our passion.

It’s three shows from 1996 and includes all manner of covers, including The Grateful Dead’s ‘St Stephen’, with much of it delivered in the Dead’s seamless one-song-segueinginto-the-next style. When they played at Blues Fest about a decade back, they opened with Sonny Boy Williamson’s ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ then effortlessly moved into Jethro Tull’s ‘Thick As A Brick’ for a few minutes, before returning to the original tune.

And all without communicating with each other by so much as a raised eyebrow. This is that magic all over again.

RIP MICK HADLEY

A young Neil Young

Former Purple Hearts frontman Mick Hadley sadly passed away recently, after losing a fight with cancer. In the ‘60s, Hadley was our Mick Jagger – some say he was better – and the perfect foil for Hearts guitarist Lobby Loyde. We always found him to be a diamond of a bloke.

ON THE TURNTABLE On the Remedy turntable is and can only be The Mark Of Cain’s Songs Of The Third And Fifth. These guys are one of the very rare constants and absolutes there is in this world: they only emerge every once in a while, but never lose anything from that downtime. Rather, they seem to save their strength, refocus their energies, resentments and frustrations and then, when the moment is just right, spew it all forth. Also spinning is the self-titled instrumental power-trio effort by J Mascis’ Heavy Blanket, in which he ditches his pop sensibilities and love of old-school hardcore punk and lets rip as the guitar hero we’ve always wanted to see way more of. And in typically glacier style, it only took 30 years to pull off.

TOUR AND INDUSTRY NEWS Yessum: the mostly-reunited Black Sabbath will be here next year. Unlike other parts of the world, we never got to experience the previous get-togethers. In fact, last time these guys were here as a unit, AC/DC were yet to fully conquer the country. That’s a while back. They’ll be at Allphones Arena on April 27, but we’re guessing it’ll be sold out by now. (All that outrage about Bill Ward not being a part of the reunion sure died down pretty quick, huh?)

Xxxx

Iggy & The Stooges will be at the Hordern on April 2. Hopefully, half the set won’t be taken up with yet another stage invasion. (Folks are going along to see you perform, Ig, not 20 total strangers.

Just sayin’….) Anyways, The Beasts Of Bourbon are supporting.

34 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

National treasure Spencer P Jones is hitting the road with his band The Nothing Butts, which features the legendary James Baker (who was an original Hoodoo Guru and Beast Of Bourbon) plus Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin from The Drones. Their self-titled album is out now, and on December 15 they’ll be at the Annandale.

The Mark Of Cain, who are the rightly proud creators of the aforementioned Songs Of The Third And Fifth slab, have announced their first national tour in six years. On March 23 they’ll be at The Metro.

Tickets on sale on November 12.

On November 22, sludge metal kings Eyehategod will be at the Manning Bar.

Send stuff to remedy@ozemail.com.au by 6pm Wednesdays.

Pics to art@thebrag.com www.facebook.com/remedy4rock

BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 35

snap sn ap

ellie goulding

PICS :: AM

up all night out all week . . .

hungry kids of hungary

good heavens

PICS :: KC

01:11:12 :: The Standard:: Level 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100

03:11:12 :: Brighton Up Bar :: Level 1/77 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9361 3379

It’s called: MUM presents: Millions Prom It sounds like: A rock’n’roll house party with sing-a-long prom movie classics.

Who’s playing? The Dandy Warhols (DJ set), Millions, Sures, Black Vanilla, Driffs, Mannequins, Rascals & Runaways, Felix Lloyd and MUM DJs Sell it to us: The best bands in Australia, a Dandy Warhols DJ set, fairy floss, $5 spiked punch, $5 beers, goes all night. BAM. The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Marcus from Black Vanilla sexy dancing on and off stage.

Crowd specs: If you love live music, good times and new friends, come party.

Wallet damage: $15, cheaper on band guestlists.

Where: The World Bar / 24 Bayswater Rd, Kings Cross When: Friday November 16, from 9pm

36 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

the beards

PICS :: PX

party profile

mum presents: millions prom

02:11:12 :: Metro Theatre :: 624 George St Sydney 9550 3666 RKE :: ASHLEY

:: KATRINA CLA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: IER XAV RO PED :: CHY PEA MAR :: THOMAS

PICS :: PX

01:11:12 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711

snap sn ap

holy balm

PICS :: AM

up all night out all week . . .

angus stone

PICS :: AM

01:11:12 :: Brighton Up Bar :: Level 1/77 Oxford St Darlinghurst 9361 3379

01:11:12 :: The Enmore :: 118-132 Enmore Road Newtown 9550 3666

It sounds like: The Annandale’s games room, office and carpark are being demolished next Monday. To honour such a seminal block of land, we’re throwing the biggest block party that Sydney’s Inner West has ever seen, with a stage on the roof, a bar in the carpark, and over 30 market stalls set up around the venue. What do you think that sounds like?

Where: The Annandale Hotel When: Sunday November 18, from midday

mum

02:11:12 :: World Bar :: 24 Bayswater Rd Potts Point 9357 7700

tijuana cartel

PICS :: KC

Who's playing? The Preatures, Regular John, Sures, Chicks Who Love Guns, The Upskirts, She Rex. Sell it to us: Put everything else on this day aside. This is the party event of the silly season, and it’s not to be missed. It will be large. It will be messy. It will go down in history.

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: The final image imprinted in your brain of this historic part of the hotel, before it gets turned into yet more horribly boring apartment blocks.

Crowd specs: An 18+ event, for all walks of life.

Wallet damage: $15, with $5 of every ticket going towards the Cure Cancer Foundation

PICS :: TP

party profile

block party @ the annandale

british india

PICS :: KC

03:11:12 :: Oxford Art Factory :: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst 9332 3711 RKE :: ASHLEY

:: KATRINA CLA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: IER XAV RO MAR :: THOMAS PEACHY :: PED

03:11:12 :: The Standard :: 3/383 Bourke St Darlinghurst 9331 3100 BRAG :: 488:: 12:11:12 :: 37

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

pick of the week

MONDAY NOVEMBER 12 ROCK & POP

Beck

Jim Gannon Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Radiohead (UK), Connan Mockasin (NZ) Sydney Entertainment Centre, Darling Harbour sold out 7.30pm

JAZZ

Martha Zwartz 505, Surry Hills $10 8.30pm Monday Jam: Danny G Felix The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway free 9pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17

Parramatta Park

Harvest Festival:

Beck (USA), Sigur Ros (Iceland), Grizzly Bear (USA), Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane (USA), Ben Folds Five (USA), Cake (USA), Beirut (USA), Santigold (USA), The Dandy Warhols (USA), Ozomatli (USA), The Black Angels (USA), Chromatics (USA), Fuck Buttons (UK), The War on Drugs (USA), Dark Dark Dark (USA), Silversun Pickups (USA), Dexys (UK), Crazy P, Liars (USA), Los Campesinos (UK), River City Extension (USA), Dark Horses (UK), Winter People $163.20 (+ bf) 12pm 38 :: BRAG :: 488 : 12:11:12

An Acoustic Evening With Ben Harper: Ben Harper (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House sold out 8pm Russell Neal, Anita Lenzo Trio, Chris Brookes, Massimo Presti Kellys on King, Newtown free 7pm

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13 ROCK & POP

OMG Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney free 10pm Radiohead (UK), Connan Mockasin (NZ) Sydney Entertainment Centre, Darling Harbour sold out 7.30pm Refused (SWE), Endless Heights Enmore Theatre $74.20 7pm Shane Flew Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Tina Harrod, Jess Pollard 505 Club, Surry Hills $8 8.30pm

JAZZ

Epizo Bangoura Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $20 7pm Jazzgroove: Tina Harrod, Jess Pollard 505, Surry Hills $8-$15 8.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

An Acoustic Evening With Ben Harper: Ben Harper (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House sold out 8pm Daniel Hopkin Harbourview Hotel, The Rocks free 7pm Darren Bennett George IV Inn, Picton free 7.30pm Russell Neal, Eva-Maria Hess Taverners Hill Hotel, Leichhardt free 7pm

Glenn Cunningham, Gang of Brothers Rock Lily, The Star free 7pm Immortal Band Comp Valve Bar, Tempe 7pm The Lonely Boys Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney free 11pm Matt Schlam Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $15 8pm Music Stage Presents: Niksta, Budi Bone, Into The Fireplace The Basement, Circular Quay $15 (+ bf) 7pm Musos Club Jam Night Bald Faced Stag, Leichhardt free 8pm The Ocean Party, Beef Jerk, Nathan Roche and the Wentworth Avenue Breeze Out, Disgusting People, Beef Jerk DJs Brighton Up Bar, Darlinghurst $5 8pm Open Mic Night Hawkesbury Hotel, Windsor free 8pm Quarry Mountain Dead Rats, Bellyache Ben & The Steamgrass Boys The Vanguard, Newtown $15.80 8pm TrickFinger Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 8pm Watsup The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm Whitetop Mountaineers (USA) Cat & Fiddle Hotel, Balmain $20 (conc)–$25 8pm Wolf & Cub, The Money Go Round, Kira Piru Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm

JAZZ

Allan Browne Trio 505, Surry Hills $10-$15 8.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

An Acoustic Evening With Ben Harper: Ben Harper (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House sold out 8pm The Folk Informal: Brett Winterford, Eli Wolfe, Sam Buckingham, Nic Cassey FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 7pm Greg Sita, Chris Neto, The Factory Wall Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Strathfield free 7.30pm Helmut Uhlmann, Eva-Maria Hess, Lucie D’Silva, David House UTS Loft, Ultimo free 6pm Jackson McLaren Folk Club, Acardia Liquors, Redfern free Russell Neal, John Chesher, Gavin Fitzgerald, Paul McGowan, Nick Punal, Ken Mclean Coach & Horses Hotel, Randwick free 7pm Songs On Stage Best Of: Daniel Hopkins, Jasmine Beth, Peter Jones, Jules Backman, Jim Baynes Brass Monkey, Cronulla $14.30 7pm

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 14

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15

ROCK & POP

ROCK & POP

Allan Brownne Trio 505 Club, Surry Hills $10 8.30pm Beck (USA), Dark Horses (UK) State Theatre, Sydney 8pm Beirut (USA), Otouto Enmore Theatre $61.60 6.30pm Bernie Segedin Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Eli Wolfe FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 6pm

031 Rockshow Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney free 10pm 1927 Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $44–$102 (dinner & show) 8pm Bang!: Jackson Firebird, The Fumes, Creo, The Guppies Annandale Hotel free (early bird)–$10 7pm Become The Catalyst, 2010, Jova Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $10 8pm

Bin Juice, Laugh Riot, Black Zeroes, Merryweather Valve Bar, Tempe free 7pm Cake (USA) Metro Theatre, Sydney $67.30 7.30pm Cambo The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 8.30pm Dave Dobbyn (NZ), Dukes The Basement, Circular Quay $40 (+ bf) 7.30pm Dexys (UK) Enmore Theatre $68.70 7pm Elton John (UK) Sydney Entertainment Centre, Darling Harbour $119.90– $259.90 8pm Emmylou Harris (USA) State Theatre, Sydney 8pm Franky Valentyn Bankstown Sports Club free 8pm Good Heavens The Loft, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo free 5pm Good Sport – FBi Radio’s Supporter Drive Party: Iluka, Evil J & Saint Celia, Briscoe FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $5 8pm Goodnight Dynamite O’Malley’s Hotel, Darlinghurst free 9.30pm Hot Damn!: Bangs, Caulfield, Atlantis Awaits, Alibrandi, Past Is Practice, RG Wings, Sleepwalkers, Hot Damn!

DJs Q Bar, Darlinghurst $15-$20 8pm Hue Williams Club Belmore, Belmore RSL free 6.30pm Joe Echo Dee Why Hotel free 7pm Josh McIvor Northies, Cronulla free 9.15pm Kristy Garrett Dee Why RSL Club free 6.30pm Mandi Jarry Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany free 6pm Michael McGlynn Greengate Hotel, Killara free 8pm Musos Club Jam Night Carousel Hotel, Rooty Hill free 8pm Nicky Kurta Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Out Sold The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 9pm Polar Knights, Mannequins, Josh Graham Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Richard In Your Mind, Bearhug, Reckless Vagina The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway free 8pm Richie Branco Duo Kings Cross Hotel, Darlinghurst free 12am Sam & Jamie Trio Maloney’s Hotel, Sydney free 9.30pm The Smith Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm They Call Me Bruce Ettamogah Pub, Kellyville free 7pm Tim Hart, Edward Deer, DJ Shag Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7pm Tim Freedman The Vanguard, Newtown $38.80–$73.80 (dinner & show) 8pm Violent Soho, Dune Rats, Bloods Goodgod Small Club, Sydney $12 (+ bf) 8pm The War On Drugs (USA), Good Heavens Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $37.50 (+ bf) 8pm Wayne Leffler’s ‘Run The Red’, The Joel Leffler Band Brass Monkey, Cronulla $14.30 Will And The People Old Manly Boatshed 8pm

JAZZ

Bandaluzia Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $25 7pm

g g guide gig g

send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com Ben Vanderwall Quartet 505, Surry Hills $10-$15 8.30pm Clayton Doley Blue Beat, Double Bay $15 (+ bf) 7pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

An Acoustic Evening With Ben Harper: Ben Harper (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $115 (+ bf) 8pm Carolyn Woodorth, Matt Lyons, Simon Marrable, Daniela & Lazaro, Dale Cosatto, Pat O’Connor Forest Lodge Hotel, Glebe free 7.30pm Daniel Hopkins Olympic Hotel, Paddington free 7.30pm Joanne Hill Corrimal Hotel, Corrimal free 7.30pm Russell Neal, Nick Domenicos, Spencer McCullum Kogarah Hotel free 7pm

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 16 ROCK & POP

Aaron Lyon Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 7.30pm Anthems Of The UK Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney free 10.30pm Bang Shang a Lang Club Cronulla free 8pm Battleships, Belle & The Bone People, Light Giant FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $12 (+ bf) 8pm Beats Antique (USA) The Standard, Surry Hills $20 (+ bf) 8pm Black Diamond Hearts The Ranch Hotel, Eastwood free 10pm Bloody Kids, Lomera, Swine, Monster Gale The Square, Haymarket $12 8pm BNO Rockshow Dee Why Hotel free 10pm Brad Johns The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 6.30pm Cambo Novotel Homebush, Homebush Bay free 5pm Coldplay Tribute St Marys Band Club free 9.30pm The Continental Blues Trio Woolpack Hotel Redfern free 6.30pm Dave Phillips Northies, Cronulla free 9pm David Agius Kings Cross Hotel, Darlinghurst free 7.30pm DJ Style Western Suburbs Leagues Club Campbelltown, Leumeah free 8pm Dream Brother – A Tribute to Jeff & Tim Buckley: Abby Dobson, Lara Goodridge, Baby Et Lulu, Matt Tonks, Krystal Rogers & Rachel Lewis, Michael Azzopardi, Amanda Easton, Matt Anderson, Andy Gordon, Greg Cade Notes Live, Enmore $23 (+ bf) 7pm Elton John (UK), Pnau Sydney Entertainment Centre, Darling Harbour $119.90– $259.90 7.30pm Empire Rising, High Noon, Broken Thought Theory, Nesta Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Fallon Bros The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 10.30pm The Faults, The Hollow Bones, Food Court Goodgod Small Club, Sydney $10 8pm Flamin’ Beauties Mortdale Hotel free 8pm

The Flaming Stars Rockdale RSL Club free 7.30pm Freshmix Bankstown Sports Club free 10pm Gary Johns Duo Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill free 8pm Geoff Rana Parramatta RSL free 5pm The Griswolds Sydney Theatre Company, Walsh Bay free 10pm Grizzly Bear (USA), Kirin J Callanan Metro Theatre, Sydney sold out 7.30pm Hue Williams Club Ashfield free 7pm Jeff Martin (CAN) Fitzroy Hotel, Windsor $37 (+ bf) 8pm Joe Longthorne North Sydney Leagues Club, Cammeray $25 (+ bf) 7.30pm La Vista Petersham RSL Club free 8.30pm Mandi Jarry Trio Kirribilli Hotel free 8pm Mark Travers Castle Hill RSL Club free 9pm Matt Jones Cronulla Sharks free 7pm Matt Price Dee Why Hotel free 7pm Melodie Nelson, Red Ghost, The Wednesday Night Music Club, Holy Soul DJs Raval, Surry Hills $10 (+ bf) 8pm Midnyt Sun Ramsgate RSL, Ramsgate Beach free 8pm MUM – Millions Prom: The Dandy Warhols DJ Set (USA), Millions, Sures, Black Vanilla, Driffs, Mannequins, Rascals & Runaways, Felix Lloyd, MUM DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm Nebraska Night: Brett Winterford The Basement, Circular Quay $30 (+ bf) 7.30pm Neill Bourke O’Malley’s Hotel, Darlinghurst free 8pm Nevermind - Nirvana Show Ettamogah Pub, Kellyville free 9pm The Nickelback Show Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills free 10.30pm Nicky Kurta The Grand Hotel, Rockdale free 5.30pm Not Like Horse, Rock And Roll Weapon, Red Bee, Delabarker The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway free 8pm Paul And Ingrid Duo Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm Rapture Customs House Bar, Sydney free 7pm Replika Blue Cattle Dog Hotel Motel, St Clair free 8.30pm Richie Branco Crows Nest Hotel free 6.30pm The Riff, Night Attack, Black Mamba Valve Bar & Venue, Tempe free 7pm Rob Henry The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 8.30pm Ron Pope (USA), Cam Nacson The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $40 (+ bf) 7pm allages Roots Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Sam & Jamie Show Crows Nest Hotel free 10pm Sarah Martyn, Dubious Blues Trio, JDH Revival Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $12 8pm Sex Wizard Sandringham Hotel, Newtown 8pm Steve Balbi The Vanguard, Newtown $33.80 8pm Swingshift Cold Chisel Show

Pioneer Tavern, Penrith South free 9pm They Call Me Bruce PJ Gallagher’s Drummoyne free 10pm Tim Freedman Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $49–$107 (dinner & show) 8pm Ultimate Pink Show Toukley RSL Club $10 9pm Unforgetable Dooleys Lidcombe Catholic Club free 8.30pm The Velvet Cave VIII: The Laurels, Eating Flowers, Madcap Zack (UK), Flashback, Alison Hobbes, Velvet Gallagher, Ken Blements 77 Yurong Lane, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Zoltan Revesby Workers Club free

JAZZ

Aaron Michael Blue Beat, Double Bay $20 (+ bf) 7.30pm Andrea Keller Quartet, Gian Slater The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale $20 (student)–$30 8.30pm Edoardo Santoni 505, Surry Hills $15-$20 8.30pm Marsala Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $25 7.30pm

COUNTRY

Dwight Yoakam (USA), Lee Kernaghan Enmore Theatre $99-$249 6.30pm

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17

Dave White Experience Crows Nest Hotel free 10pm David Campbell Bankstown Sports Club $55 8pm The Doors Experience Oatley Hotel free 8.30pm The Dudes Petersham RSL Club free 8.30pm Evie Dean Novotel Homebush, Homebush Bay free 6.30pm The Fender Benders Empire Bay Tavern free 7.30pm Finn Jack Duggan’s Irish Pub, Bathurst free 8.30pm Geoff Rana Harbord Beach Hotel free 8pm George Michael (UK) Allphones Arena, Sydney Olympic Park $110 (+ bf)– $200 8pm Glitterus, Vivienne Kingswood Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 7.30pm Group Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Harvest Festival: Beck (USA), Sigur Ros (Iceland), Grizzly Bear (USA), Mike Patton’s Mondo Cane (USA), Ben Folds Five (USA), Cake (USA), Beirut (USA), Santigold (USA), The Dandy Warhols (USA), Ozomatli (USA), The Black Angels (USA), The Chromatics, Fuck Buttons (UK), The War on Drugs (USA), Dark Dark Dark, Silversun Pickups (USA), Dexys (UK), Crazy P, Liars (USA), Los Campesinosi, River City Extension, Dark Horses (UK), Winter People Parramatta Park $163.20 (+ bf) 12pm

Heath Burdell Clovelly Hotel free 8pm Jeff Martin (CAN) Coogee Diggers 8pm Jess Dunbar Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill free 6pm Kittens: The Sculptures, Sex In Columbia, New Brutalists, Kittens DJs Spectrum, Darlinghurst $10 8pm Kylie Auldist The Basement, Circular Quay $25 (+ bf) 7.30pm Late Shift Scruffy Murphy’s Hotel, Sydney free 10.30pm Luke Robinson Sir Joseph Banks Hotel, Botany free 7pm Mandi Jarry Northies, Cronulla free 5.30pm Masterpiece Ettamogah Pub, Kellyville free 8.30pm Matchbox Campbelltown RSL free 9pm Matt Jones Band Paragon Hotel, Sydney free 8.30pm The Metropolitan Orchestra Independent Theatre, North Sydney $35 8pm all-ages Mike Mathieson Duo Dooleys Lidcombe Catholic Club free 8.30pm Natural Curve Huskisson Hotel free 8pm Nicky Kurta Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill free 7pm Original Sin INXS Show, Swingshift Cold Chisel Show, Pleasure & Pain Divinyls Show Padstow RSL Club 8.30pm Orlando Broom, True North, Opie Will Break Your Heart FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $10 8pm Over The Edge

Bankstown Sports Club free 9pm Phil Jamieson Brass Monkey, Cronulla $37.75 7pm Pop Fiction Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL free 10pm Pyjama Party: The Frocks, DJ Du Jour, Miss Krys Notes, Enmore $23.50 7pm Richie Branco PJ Gallagher’s Drummoyne free 10pm Rob Henry Northies, Cronulla free 9pm Roc-A-Tac Rockdale RSL Club free 7.30pm Rock Busters Bull & Bush Hotel, Baulkham Hills free 10pm Sam & Jamie Show Mona Vale Hotel free 9.30pm Sans, Georgia O’Connor & The Loveless Children, Tommy and the Mastersounds, brother Funk Sydney Livehouse @ Lewisham Hotel $12 8pm Seek The Silence, Eater Of The Sky, Micro The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway free 8pm Something Else Hawkesbury Hotel, Windsor free 7pm Sons of Mercury The Lair, Metro Theatre, Sydney $16 5pm all-ages Steve Tonge The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm Stormcellar Gymea Hotel free 8pm They Call Me Bruce Western Suburbs Leagues Club Campbelltown, Leumeah free 8pm Tony Cini’s Blues Explosion, The Mason Rack Band, PJ O’Brien Band, Cass Eager

ROCK & POP

Andy Mammers Brewhouse Marayong, Kings Park free 8pm Anita Spring Trio Star City Astral Lounge, Pyrmont free 8pm Bandits Band Ramsgate RSL, Ramsgate Beach free 8pm Bang Shang a Lang Unity Hall Hotel, Balmain free 9pm Bastardfest: Blood Duster, Psycroptic, Astriaal, Fuck I’m Dead, Aversions Crown, Disentomb, Hellbringer, Festering Drippage, The Dreamkillers, King Parrot, Beyond Terror Beyond Grace, As Silence Breaks, Alice Through The Windshield Glass, War Faction, Animistic Sandringham Hotel, Newtown $29 (+ bf) 8pm Bears With Guns The Standard, Surry Hills $10 (+ bf) 8pm Ben Finn Castle Hill RSL Club free 9pm Between The Buried And Me (USA), Animals As Leaders Metro Theatre, Sydney $54.20 (+ bf) 6.45pm The Black Stars, The MisMade, Valentine, Tiffany Britchford The Forbes Hotel, Sydney $12 8pm Carl Fidler The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 5.40pm Coldplay (UK), The Temper Trap, Pierces Allianz Stadium, Moore Park sold out 8pm Corps, Innsmouth, Rust, Convent Guilt Valve Bar & Venue, Tempe free 7pm The Dahlias Moorebank Sports Club, Hammondville free 9pm

wed

14 Nov

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

thu

15 Nov

(9:00PM - 12:00AM)

fri

16 Nov

(9:30PM - 1:30AM)

(5:00PM - 8:00PM)

SATURDAY AFTERNOON

sat

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

Nov

SATURDAY NIGHT

17

(9:00PM - 1:30AM)

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

sun

18 Nov

(4:30PM - 7:30PM)

SUNDAY NIGHT

(8:30PM - 12:00AM)

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g g guide gig g

send your listings to : gigguide@thebrag.com The Vanguard, Newtown $28.60–$61.80 (dinner & show) 8pm Tony Williams Kirribilli Hotel free 8pm Ultimate Pink Show Hastings Hotel, Wauchope $10 9pm Unforgetable Regents Park Sporting & Community Club free 6.30pm Urban Guerillas, Velvet Road, Mad Cowboy Disease, The Bonnie Doons, HawkKestrel, King Street Express, Self Tort Palm Grove, Darling Harbour free 11am Will And The People (UK), Louis London, The Jake Edgley Band, F.R.I.E.N.D/s Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm Zeahorse, Yes I’m Leaving, Corpus, Bad Jeep Gaelic Club, Surry Hills $10 8pm

JAZZ

Flyte Supper Club, Fairfield RSL Club free 7pm The Klezmer Divas Blue Beat, Double Bay $25 (+ bf) 8pm Manly Big Band Night Out, John Morrison Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $60 (dinner & show) 8pm Marialy Pacheco Trio, Zoe & The Buttercups, Jess Green & The Preloved, Hanah James Trio The Sound Lounge, Seymour Centre, Chippendale free 1.30pm Michelle Nicole Quartet 505, Surry Hills $15-$20 8.30pm

Monsieur Camembert Camelot Lounge, Marrickville sold out 7.30pm Murga Es Lo Que Hay The Red Rattler, Marrickville 7.30pm Yasmin Levy (Israel), Baby et Lulu The Factory Theatre, Marrickville $49 (+ bf) 7.30pm Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie Well Co. Café, Leichhardt free 7.30pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

Ange The Belvedere Hotel, Sydney free 9pm Dane and Aaron Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Strathfield free 8pm Pete Scully, Natasha-Eloise Andrade, John Chesher, Anita Lenzo Trio, Laura Zarb, Leanne Hawkins, Brian Ralston, Paul McGowan, Nick Punal, Malcolm Liehr, Ken Stewart, Beck Fielding, David Griffith, Lelly K, Charli Rainsford, Simon Marrable, Helmut Uhlmann Harbourside Amphitheatre, Darling Harbour free 11am

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 ROCK & POP

Andy Mammers Harbord Beach Hotel free 5pm Block Party: The Preatures, Regular John, Sures, Chicks Who Love Guns, The Skirts, She Rex Annandale Hotel 12pm

The Preatures Cambo, Rob Henry, Brad Johns The Observer Hotel, The Rocks free 4pm Coldplay (UK), The Temper Trap, Pierces Allianz Stadium, Moore Park $99–$149 8pm Darren Percival The Studio, Sydney Opera House $33 (+ bf)–$140 3pm Dave White Duo Northies, Cronulla free 4pm David Agius Mill Hill Hotel, Bondi Junction free 3pm Flamin’ Beauties Overlander Hotel, Cambridge Gardens free 3.30pm Harmonate Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 3pm HP Coronados, Pat Powell Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 2pm Ian Blakeney Ramsgate RSL, Ramsgate Beach free 2pm Isaac Graham, Nathan Seeckts, Matt Dundas, Mara

Threat Coogee Diggers free 4pm Mandi Jarry Mona Vale Hotel free 1.30pm Matt Price Duo St George Motor Boat Club Ltd, Sans Souci free 4pm The Metropolitan Orchestra Balmain Town Hall $35 3pm Mick Aquilina Dooleys Lidcombe Catholic Club free 4pm Nicky Kurta Kirribilli Hotel free 2pm Pharaohs of the Farout, The Suspects, Dave Hunter, The Cleanskins, Monsters of Rock, Marmoset Country The Valve, Tempe free 12pm Phil Jamieson Brass Monkey, Cronulla $37.75 7pm Richie Branco Hillside Hotel, Castle Hill free 3pm The Road Runners Marrickville Bowling Club free 4.30pm Rory O’Donoghue Riverside Theatres,

Parramatta $26 (conc)–$30 (adult) 3pm Sarah Paton O’Malley’s Hotel, Darlinghurst free 5pm Satellite V Botany View Hotel, Newtown free 6pm Sizzling Strings Lizotte’s Restaurant, Dee Why $39 (dinner & show) 8pm Stone Monks The Vanguard, Newtown $18.80 7pm Stormcellar Kent Hotel, Newcastle free 8.30pm Suite Az, DJ Kitsch78 Rock Lily, The Star, Pyrmont free 8.30pm Sunday Blues Jam: Mark Hopper Artichoke Gallery Cafe, Manly free 8pm Tripping Up The Stairs Mean Fiddler, Rouse Hill free 12pm White Brothers Ettamogah Pub, Kellyville free 1pm Zoltan Northies, Cronulla free 6pm

ACOUSTIC & FOLK

3 Way Split Oatley Hotel free 2pm Elevation U2 Acoustic Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm Jeff Martin (CAN) The Basement, Circular Quay $40 (+ bf) 7pm Russell Neal Salisbury Hotel, Stanmore free 2pm Sanitys Collision, Russell Neal Cookies Lounge and Bar, North Strathfield free 6pm Sumi Jo City Recital Hall, Sydney $95 5pm all-ages U2 Elevation Acoustic Show The Orient Hotel, The Rocks free 4.30pm Jeff Martin

JAZZ

George Washingmachine Dove & Olive, Surry Hills free 5.30pm Sunday Arvo Jazz Harold Park Hotel, Glebe free 3pm Ty Burhoe (USA), Riley Lee Camelot Lounge, Marrickville $25 6.30pm Yuki Kumagai, John Mackie, Tony Burkys, Simon Burtlett, Alan Gilbert Cronulla RSL Club free 12.30pm

gig picks up all night out all week...

Round, Kira Piru Beach Road Hotel, Bondi free 8pm

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15 Bang!: Jackson Firebird, The Fumes, Creo, The Guppies Annandale Hotel free (before 9pm)–$10 7pm Cake (USA) Metro Theatre, Sydney $67.30 7.30pm Richard In Your Mind, Bearhug, Reckless Vagina The Lansdowne Hotel, Broadway free 8pm Violent Soho, Dune Rats, Bloods Goodgod Small Club, Sydney $12 (+ bf) 8pm

The War on Drugs (USA), Good Heavens Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst $37.50 (+ bf) 8pm An Acoustic Evening With Ben Harper: Ben Harper (USA) Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House $115 (+ bf) 8pm

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 16 Battleships, Belle & The Bone People, Light Giant FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel $12 (+ bf) 8pm Beats Antique (USA) The Standard, Surry Hills $20 (+ bf) 8pm Grizzly Bear (USA), Kirin J Violent Soho

Radiohead

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 14

Radiohead (UK), Connan Mockasin (NZ) Sydney Entertainment Centre, Darling Harbour sold out 7.30pm

Beck (USA), Dark Horses (UK) State Theatre, Sydney $90 8pm

Refused (SWE), Endless Heights Enmore Theatre $74.20 7pm

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Beirut (USA), Otouto Enmore Theatre $61.60 6.30pm Wolf & Cub, The Money Go

Callanan Metro Theatre, Sydney sold out 7.30pm Melodie Nelson, Red Ghost, The Wednesday Night Music Club, Holy Soul DJs Raval, Surry Hills $10 (+ bf) 8pm MUM – Millions Prom: The Dandy Warhols DJ Set (USA), Millions, Sures, Black Vanilla, Driffs, Mannequins, Rascals & Runaways, Felix Lloyd, MUM DJs The World Bar, Kings Cross $10-$15 8pm

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17 Group Gallery Bar, Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst free 8pm Will And The People (UK), Louis London, The Jake Edgley Band, F.R.I.E.N.D/s Upstairs Beresford, Surry Hills free 6pm

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 Block Party: The Preatures, Regular John, Sures, Chicks Who Love Guns, The Skirts, She Rex Annandale Hotel 12pm Coldplay (UK), The Temper Trap, The Pierces Allianz Stadium, Moore Park $99–$149 8pm

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BRAGâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s guide to dance, hip hop and club culture

brag beats

crazy p let et itt a all ha hang g out

inside

brother ali

p.smurf

emma hewitt

als + club o: + club guide sn + week aps colum ly n

BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 43

dance music news

free stuff

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

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

he said she said WITH

P.Smurf

MATT WEIR (S.A.S.H) Me and the midget, Kerry Wallace, run S.A.S.H together. But in saying that, we rely on a whole host of Sydney’s best to play music there week-in, week-out. We’ve added a few residents recently as well, by way of Mike Monday, Gabby, Jake Hough and Robbie Cordukes, which helps take the load off too.

The music I make is house. A few different forms, but primarily just house. I write it with local guys Julien Beltzung aka YokoO and Pete Nouveau, as I don’t have a studio at mine. But to be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the studio, as I’ve been pretty busy with all things S.A.S.H and S.A.S.Hrelated.

I

remember listening to my dad’s records at a very young age. My earliest memory of music was taking a soundtrack of a TV show at the time called Tour Of Duty into my second grade (and music-mad) teacher’s class, and playing a Supremes track. I don’t think that had any influence on what I listen to now, though.

I’ve listened to such an array of different music over the years, there is no possible way I can limit my inspirations to even one genre. Punk, rap, rock, top 40, house, everything – shit, when I was younger Boys II Men got a run. I can’t see the correlation between me listening to them and being the DJ I am today, but they were definitely a solid part of my younger years.

Kerri Chandler

The underground music scene in Sydney right now is thriving. That said, what was underground 12-18 months ago is now becoming a little more crowded, with a lot more people wanting a piece of the pie and therefore making it a little more accessible. I believe that being consistent every week and pushing acts and artists that aren’t necessarily what everyone wants to hear is important.

Instead of being safe, push the boundaries a little, and see where it takes you.

With: Portable (live), with Matt Aubusson, Jake Hough, Dave Hawtin, Matt Weir and Kerry Wallace Where: S.A.S.H @ The Abercrombie When: Sunday November 18

Belfast. Psycatron have dropped releases on Carl Craig’s Planet E imprint as well as Berlin’s Tresor label, while also finding time for the odd excursion on the likes of Scuba’s Hotflush Recordings and their own upcoming Inflyte Records, which is also set to feature material from Francesco Tristano, Dave Clarke and Kirk Degiorgio in its opening year. A strong support cast of staunch local technophiles will also throw down, including Mr Disconnected Defined By Rhythm, Eoin Brosnan and I?F Records’ Sebastian Bayne, who recently returned from Berlin having played at the original techno dungeon – yes, I’m talking preBergain – Tresor.

SOSUEME DJS + FURNACE AND THE FUNDAMENTALS

SPACE IBIZA NEW YEAR’S DAY

Space Ibiza will take over Greenwood for a New Year’s Day fiesta featuring a lineup that should pique the interest of clubbers: Mathew Jonson, Carl Craig, Pig & Dan and Franck Roger will all represent, with New Jersey producer Kerri Chandler making his long-awaited debut Down Under. Since the release of his first single ‘SuperLover’/‘Get It Off’ way back in 1991, Chandler has accumulated a prolific body of work and established himself in the house music canon, producing classics like ‘Bar-a-Thym’ and ‘Back To The Raw’. Jonson is a co-founder of the Wagon Repair label, and is renowned for classic cuts like ‘Decompression’ and ‘Marionette’, in addition to his work as part of the acid techno jazz trio, Cobblestone Jazz. Meanwhile, Planet E main man Carl Craig is one of the most recognised names of Detroit techno, commanding huge respect on the strength of his groundbreaking Landcruising album, his releases under his 69 and Paperclip People monikers, and his remixes of Theo Parrish, LCD Soundsystem and our own Cut Copy, not to mention his GRAMMY nominated rework of Junior Boys’ ‘Like A Child’. Space Ibiza NYD tickets go on sale this Monday November 12 – hit spaceibizafestival.com.au for more.

4OUR 1ST BIRTHDAY

4our turns one this Saturday, and will celebrate its first birthday with a warehouse bash, which fittingly brings the party back to its (warehouse) origins. An event organised by some of the most astute women in the Sydney club sphere, 4our has developed into one of the discerning clubber’s party options of choice over the past 12 months, hosting some of the best performances from international DJs that Sydney has seen in recent times – take the sets from Eric Cloutier and Steffi for example. The organisers tell partygoers to expect some “freaky late night future funk” for the birthday celebrations, with 4our residents Magda Bytnerowicz, Trinity and Kate Doherty playing extended sets. It’s a BYO affair, and you can grab your presales online now.

VLADISLAV DELAY/LUOMO AT CIVIC UNDERGROUND

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PSYCATRON

Irish duo Psycatron will play an Eclipse sideshow at One22 this Saturday November 17. Born within 12 hours of one another, the Psycatron pair share a proclivity for all things techno, holding down a long-standing club residency at Ireland’s longest-running techno institution, Shine, in

Don’t let the moniker fool you – Larry Prichard is far from blue: after all, he’s days off releasing Smurf Village, a solo mixtape that has been eight years in the making. A founding member of Daily Meds, Reverse Polarities, Big Village and Sketch the Rhyme, his witty lyricism, punchy rhythms and tongue-in-cheek delivery have blitzed stages at Woodford and Peats Ridge. Only 24 and already a hip hop veteran, P.Smurf has invited Sydney’s cream of the crop – HyJak, Herb, Mute Oblivion, Cooking With Caustic, Mikoen, Nehi, Broken Thought Theory, and a bunch of special guests – to represent at the launch of his mixtape, on Saturday November 17 at The Annandale Hotel. We have two double passes to give away. Just tell us which cartoon character you’d rap battle. have similarly been on a festival hot streak, and promise to serve up a night of “non-stop mayhem, dancing and good times”. The revelry commences at 8pm, and entry is free.

TYCHO, BATHS, PREFUSE73 & SYNKRO

The inaugural Land Of The Giants, an event featuring a quartet of headliners, Tycho, Baths, Prefuse73 and Synkro, arrives on Saturday November 24 courtesy of Strawberry Fields and Astral People. San Francisco-based Tycho began his foray into electronica with 2002’s The Science of Patterns EP, followed by 2004’s LP Sunrise Projector, and has the distinct honour of being the artist behind the Ghostly International’s label first release. Tycho will be bringing his full band live/ visual show for his debut performance in Sydney.

Baths will also be touring Australia for the first time; the youngster made a name for himself through productions that offer lush melodies, stuttered beats and a playful eclecticism.

Meanwhile, Prefuse 73 is the experimental non-de-plume of Scott Herren, who releases almost exclusively on the esteemed Warp level, while Synkro uses classic two-step and dubstep frameworks as the basis for his unconventional works, and has remixed the likes of The xx.

Tickets are available now.

Pillowtalk

PICNIC FT PILLOWTALK

This Saturday November 17, the Picnic crew will play host to PillowTalk at Oxford Art Factory. PillowTalk is the San Franciscan trio comprised of Sammy D, Ryan Williams and Michael Tello, who have released EPs on Visionquest, Life & Death and Wolf + Lamb. They will be playing a three-hour show: their live band performance sandwiched in between two DJ sets. Speaking of Picnic, they’ll also be hosting a night at Paradiso (Town Hall) for Sydney Festival on Saturday January 19, which will feature the delectable disco double bill of Metro Area’s Darshan Jesrani and Daniel Wang. Tickets are on sale for that one through sydneyfestival.org.au Xxxx

Pioneering Finnish electronic musician Sasu Ripatti, a man dubbed by The Wire magazine as “electronica’s omni-musician,” will perform in Sydney for the first time this Friday November 16 at The Civic Underground. A man of many monikers, Ripatti is know for his dubby minimalist

output as Vladislav Delay, and will release a new album, Kuopio, under that moniker in a few weeks’ time. Ripatti also makes hyper real house as Luomo, collaborating with vocalists such as Cassy, the Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears and Apparat, and notching up classic cuts such as ‘Tessio’, which was remixed by the likes of Stimming and Akufen. And that is only scratching the surface of Ripatti’s vast musical pedigree – he is also part of The Moritz Von Oswald Trio, working alongside the Basic Channel man and Ricardo Villalobos collaborator Max Loderbauer, and has released as Sistol and Uusitalo. The Finnish chameleon will be given carte blanche to explore his various sonic personalities in a live set this Friday, with support from Simon Caldwell and FBi Radio’s Northern Lights finalist Thomas William. $20 presale tickets are available through Resident Advisor.

SOSUEME DJs, Furnace And The Fundamentals and Frames will take over the main room at the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi on Saturday November 17. Furnace And The Fundamentals have a reputation for being “more than your typical covers pub band”, after being announced to play the Falls Festival main stage this year. Frames has spun at festivals such as Splendour In The Grass, Future Music Festival and Big Day Out, boasting a sound that has been described as “handclap disco, hip-thrust house and letchairdown techno.” SOSUEME DJs

P.SMURF

BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 45

dance music news

free stuff

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

FREESTUFF@THEBRAG.COM

five things WITH

Pillowtalk

KATE DOHERTY to techno and doof parties at around 18, I was really taken by music I hadn’t heard before, and some of the friendliest, most down-to-earth people I had ever met. These people are still my buddies today. We’re a bunch of party animal dancing crazies (or maybe that’s just me?).

The Music You Make My taste in music has evolved over the 4. years, and the way I approach a set is very different now. There will always be a techno sound in my sets, but I love throwing an array of different genres in, from hip hop to house, from drum’n’bass to funk.

5.

Growing Up Inspirations My earliest memory of falling in love with DJing is still very male dominated, so I’m 1.

2. music would have to be when I was about always inspired by female DJs. I’m inspired five: Peter Gabriel’s ‘Shock The Monkey’ was my most treasured white cassingle. A few years later, I was given a baby keyboard, and I annoyed the hell out of my family with ‘Heart And Soul’! Then I moved on to making mixtapes using my duel-tape deck, for anyone and everyone – whether they wanted one or not.

when I see a DJ working hard behind the decks and taking risks, and also when I hear music that evokes ‘that feeling’. I’m inspired by creative folk, and I’m constantly inspired by genuinely good people.

Crew When my older sister Gem exposed me 3. Your

Music, Right Here, Right Now Locally, I feel the Sydney electronic scene is thriving, especially the underground warehouse feel. We’re really spoilt for choice. There has been an influx of quality international acts, and the local talent is just as amazing. Respect goes to the promoters.

For me, parties work so well when promoters put on a night that is as much about the music as it is the vibe; I feel that will always draw an awesome, open and fun crowd.

With: Trinity, Magda Bytnerowicz Where: 4our’s 4irst birthday @ secret warehouse (announced week of party) When: Saturday November 17

PILLOWTALK

Ever wondered what you’d get if you threw Frankie Vallie, Curtis Mayfield and Theo Parish in a blender? San Franciso has pumped out the perfect concoction with our new favourite RnB-techno-pop-soul-housepretty-damn-talented act PillowTalk. Having crossed titanic international events like Croatia’s Garden Festival, BPM Festival in Mexico and the 2012 WMC in Miami off their schedule, the charmers will continue to laugh in the face of sleep, bringing their infinite energy to Australian shores on Saturday November 17 at Oxford Art Factory. The eclectic trio will be DJing before and after their set: an electrifying three hours in total, and we have two double passes to give away. For your chance at one, let us know the name of the three PillowTalkers.

SWEDISH HOUSE MAFIA

Swedish House Mafia are doing a John Farnham, and will play a Sydney show on Saturday February 2 at the Showground Stadium in Homebush, as part of an international farewell tour. SHM are currently basking in the success of their single ‘Don’t You Worry Child’, another Megaladon hit that follows cuts like ‘One’, ‘Miami 2 Ibiza’ and ‘Save The World’. With the trio continuing to occupy a lofty position in the charts, more perceptive readers may question why they decided to end the project. In answering that very question, Axwell expounded, “It’s so easy to stay content with the machine that is the Swedish House Mafia, but we’ve always been about challenging ourselves and doing different things. We felt we’d taken it as far – or even beyond – where we thought we could go with it… We didn’t want to end up repeating ourselves.” First release tickets go on sale for $99.95 on Monday November 19.

PATRICE SCOTT

Detroit deep house and techno impresario Patrice Scott will headline Phoenix on Friday November 23. Scott is known for the deep, vintage shades of melodic house that he has released predominately through his own label, Sistrum Recordings. So far this year, Scott

MICHAEL MAYER

Kompakt Records co-founder Michael Mayer will return to Sydney to play an all-night set at Oxford Art Factory on Saturday December 1, courtesy of Future Classic. As a DJ, Mayer is a one-man institution, responsible for classic compilations such as Fabric 13 and the Immer trilogy, which were all characterised by masterful sequencing and track selection that spanned everything from peculiar pop and space disco to micro house and minimal techno. Mayer’s extensive back catalogue of remixes, which comprises the memorably brazen rework of Baxendale’s ‘I Built This City’ and last year’s irresistibly catchy refashioning of WhoMadeWho’s ‘Every Minute Alone’, is similarly beyond reproach, while his collaborations with fellow Kompakt mainstays Superpitcher (as Supermayer) and Tobias Thomas have also contributed to his deserved reputation as an auteur within the contemporary club milieu. Mayer’s tour will follow the release of his long-awaited second artist album, the laudable – if underwhelming titled – Mantasy, which has just been released. $40 presale tickets are available online.

has put together featured mixes for online tastemaking institutions such as Resident Advisor and Little White Earbuds, while he’s also dropped an EP, Orbital Bliss, which explored “the sinewy space between house and techno”.

For an indication of Scott’s considerable talents, you only have to cast your eye over the list of fellows who chart his releases: Levon Vincent, Efdemin, Lawrence and Fred P – not too shabby, eh? Scott will be supported by Magda Bytnerowicz and Matt Costain.

Russ Yallop

Michael Mayer

WORLD’S END PRESS + COLLARBONES

After spending the last few months crafting their debut album with DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, Melbourne four-piece World’s End Press are set to return to the live fray. World’s End Press announced their arrival on the dance music scene with their EP Faithful in 2010, and have generated considerable hype for an act that is still yet to release their first LP, thanks in part to their cover of the classic Pet Shop Boys cut ‘West End Girls’, and support slots for acts like Primal Scream and !!!. World’s End Press will play Goodgod Small Club on Thursday December 6 alongside Sydney/ Adelaide future pop duo Collarbones, who’ve just released the album Die Young, with Polographia on support duties. Following their run of double-headline dates with Collarbones, World’s End Press will also be turning out at the Falls Festival, and warming up for Hot Chip at The Enmore on Tuesday January 8.

S.A.S.H NEW YEAR’S EVE

Sunday institution S.A.S.H has announced a 12-hour New Year’s Eve party that will run from 6pm-6am across two rooms at The Abercrombie. Russ Yallop from Hot Creations will headline the event, and there’s also the tantalising promise of a secret international still yet to be revealed. Yallop broke through on the Crosstown Rebels Label with his EP ‘I Can’t Wait’, a vocal disco house number that was vigorously supported by the Hot Creations crew. While we can’t reveal the other mystery headliner, there is a lengthy support cast of DJs that we can go through in unflinching detail: expat Mike Monday, Thug Records main man Carlos Zarate, corporate cowboys the Glitch DJs, with Gabby, Jake Hough, Robbie Cordukes, Mesan, Eoin Brosnan and Simon Brayford also peddling beats, along with S.A.S.H main men Matt Weir and Kerry Wallace. Presale tickets are on sale through Resident Advisor.

Xxx

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World’s End Press

Crazy P Chasing Summer By Morgan Richards

S

ometimes you just can’t get away from the past. When Prince changed his stage name to a strange, hieroglyph-like symbol, people simply referred to him as The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. In much the same way, Nottingham funk/soul outfit Crazy P have often had trouble distancing themselves from their old moniker, Crazy Penis. It’s not really hard to guess why.

Heading to our shores for Harvest Festival next weekend, with a DJ set booked at The Spice Cellar on the side, we caught up with Crazy P’s singer Danielle Moore to talk about their upcoming album, touring a live band, and, er, knobs. “We’ve just, as of yesterday, gone into the studio to write the new album,” explains Moore. “We’re sort of just kicking things off at the minute. We had a massive summer, we’ve been really busy, so we sorta locked the month out to start the new album.

Right now, it’s myself and [founding members] Jim and Chris who are going into the studio together, so [the album will be] a bit more on the production side rather than the full live band. And we’re experimenting, shall we say, with various sounds.”

What exactly does “experimenting” entail, for The Band Formerly Known As Crazy Penis?

“We’ve not got our genitals out, if that’s what you mean,” Moore laughs. “It’s not sexual.

Well, it could be – I mean, everybody knows our minds are very open. But it’s a bit more

Experimenting has always been a part of how Crazy P operate, after all. “Because the guys in the band are musicians, essentially, their instruments are very important to them, but also the production is an experiment.

Matt, for example, works on a live drum kit, but also works on a drum sample kit as well, to achieve more house sounds.

Tim’s also got various bass pedals that allow him to experiment with his sounds a little bit. It sounds funny, but – but we’re all experimenting with different, should I say, knobs?” We both giggle a bit at this point.

“Sorry – I’m not technologically minded, so my musical vocabulary is very limited. I’m bringing it back to the base level – ‘knobs’ is the only word I could think of!”

Elegantly avoiding a, shall we say, lengthy tangent about knobs, Moore stays on the topic at hand. “The production is completely different [from the live band]. For the last album that we made, that was a production album. We don’t always take the live band into the studio and record using all of us.

That’s not a necessity. What we have to do sometimes is reinterpret the productions we’ve created in the studio for a live show; we’re still booked as a festival band and a live band.

“We’ve also got a soundsystem that we take on tour, which involves a scaled-down version of the live band,” she continues. “We’d definitely take our keyboards, a synthesiser, maybe a guitar, myself with a loop pedal. For example, we’ve just done a tour of America, North and South, and that was a scaleddown version, we didn’t take the whole band.

That is now a lot more popular, and we’re looking at developing that as more of a live thing. But there is still the call for the full live band, because we do cross over a lot of live, more soulful tracks with new, more electronic

sounding music… It’s exciting – it means that you’re not stuck in that funk/soul bracket; you’re moving forward. And we’re really excited about it because it keeps us fresh as well.”

Crazy P visited our shores not much more than a year ago, but it was more a stopover than a proper tour. “It was so brief,” remembers Moore. “We were only there for four days. From that perspective, it was the most difficult thing we’ve ever done, because our jet lag was horrendous. The shorter the time you spend down there, having taken 26 hours to get there, the worse the jet lag’s going to be. We played New Year’s Eve in New Zealand and New Year’s Day in Sydney, then we did a DJ gig in Sydney that night. It was amazing but it wasn’t a tour, it was just a couple of shows,” she says. “This time we’ve got something to get our teeth into!”

How are the band feeling about their upcoming Harvest dates? “Well, it’s just gone into our

autumn now and it’s got really cold. So for one, we get the sunshine. And two, we all love to come back to Australia! It’s become a really welcoming crowd, and we have a really good time every time we come over because we’ve met some amazing people. They’ve almost become a side-itinerary for us, like, ‘Let’s do this today; we’re gonna take you to that place tonight!’” she gushes. “Also with Harvest, we’re looking forward to seeing Beck and various other people: Cake, Santigold… We’re really excited, yeah!”

With: Sigur Rós, Beck, Cake, Ben Folds Five, Grizzly Bear, Silversun Pickups, Beirut, Santigold, Liars, Fuck Buttons and more Where: Harvest Festival @ Parramatta Park When: Saturday November 17 Sideshow: Hot Toddy and Danielle Moore from Crazy P are playing a DJ set at The Spice Cellar on Friday November 16

XXX photo by XXX

“We’re all experimenting with different, should I say, knobs? Sorry – I’m not technologically minded, so my musical vocabulary is very limited...”

[that] we’re trying to leave all our troubles behind, shake all the toxins out before we go through the [studio] doors, and not have any inhibitions – put it that way. We’re open to suggestions from the ether as to what we should do. But our genitals are generally zipped up in our trousers.”

BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 47

Emma Hewitt

Brother Ali

High Flyer By Annabel Maclean

The Good Word By Andrew Hazard Hickey

S

ome artists will simply pay lip service to get attention or target a specific audience, whether through political commentary, social activism, or headlinegrabbing quotes. But for Brother Ali, his life and beliefs are manifested in his music and vice versa. An activist for social progress and creativity within his genre, he is committed to everything he is involved with, and one of the most important influences in his life has been Islam, which the former Jason Newman – now known as Ali Newman – has been practicing for several years.

An Islamic albino from America’s Midwest, Ali is recognised as a down-to-earth, honest

guy who makes his life an open book in a scene full of posturing. It’s all part of the intriguing package that has made this 14-year music veteran such a beloved figure among hip hop fans and beyond. “I’ve been on tour the last two months,” the tireless Ali says.

He’s speaking to me in a rare moment of downtime at his home in Minnesota, as he takes a break from promoting new album, Mourning In America And Dreaming In Color.

The album is being critically ranked among his best work, and commercially it hit the top on the Billboard Rap and RnB album charts.

“The response to the album has been really good, and the performances have been great too,” he says.

Harking back to the days of the classic ‘one rapper and one DJ’ formula on Mourning In America..., Ali worked exclusively with prolific hip hop producer Jake One. “I like to build a momentum, a relationship with somebody. I think getting beats from a few different people is tough; I really like to build that relationship.”

While the process of developing their chemistry, and putting together the tracks that would make the cut, took place over a year-long period, the recording was done in a matter of two months, with the pair driving each other on. “He started making beats just for me, and I think I pulled him a little in my direction and he pulled me a bit in his,” Ali says. “I really like the result.”

Last here in 2007/2008 for Falls Festival, Brother Ali is glad to be returning. “We didn’t end up coming to Australia [for the last album], which was a big mistake – people have shown so much love down there, and triple j has always played the stuff. I hated the fact I couldn’t come, so I’m really looking forward to it this time.” He’ll be playing a huge double bill shared with another uncompromising lyricist, Sean Price; they seem like a somewhat odd couple, but the two have a history together. “That’s a friend of mine and I love his music,” Ali says, “so I’m excited to do this tour together. His music is very, very street and aggressive, and I think mine’s a bit more revolutionary-type stuff – but it’ll come together.”

A

lthough Emma Hewitt is from Geelong, she admits she’s not the biggest football fan – much to her family’s dismay. “They are all huge Cats fans,” she says. “I am of course a Cats fan too at heart, but I couldn’t tell you who any of the players are and I don’t really follow any of the games. Actually, I met one of the players a while ago who was apparently the captain or something, and I asked him what he did for work, which was, as I was made aware, a huge embarrassment to my friends,” she laughs.

Hewitt has her own set of priorities. The singersongwriter and trance vocalist has toured with some of the world’s most high profile trance DJs, sold out solo shows in 25 countries this year alone, and released her debut album Burn The Sky Down and, more recently, the acoustic EP Starting Fires, which features previously unreleased demos and live acoustic takes – a bit different to her usual line of work. “This release was actually

something I have wanted to do for a while, and something I will probably do more of from time to time,” she says of the EP. “My brother [Anthony Hewitt] and I write the songs in this form – this is how they are born, and this is how we play them ourselves – so it is nice to be able to share this side of the music with other people, as well as the dance versions.”

Having collaborated with some of the world’s biggest names in EDM, including Cosmic Gate and Dash Berlin, Hewitt is constantly on the road with other artists and in solo mode. “When I’m in travelling mode, I tend to read a lot; I have a Kindle that my parents gave me a while back which has been a life saver, so I have read loads of books this year,” she says. “I do love watching Breaking Bad or Arrested Development when I have the time too.”

Despite all the travelling, Hewitt is doing what she loves; she says it’s difficult to pick a favourite from this year’s batch of shows.

“They are all unique in their own way. We always meet interesting people and see amazing places that are all so different, so it is difficult to compare and choose,” she tells me. “I did particularly enjoy the Australian tour with Cosmic Gate in April though. It was so fantastic to go home and play such wellreceived, sold out shows on home turf, and to have some of my friends there. That was a pretty memorable experience!

“I found Israel extremely beautiful [too], and I am always blown away by the people and crowds in South America. Milan last week was an extremely energetic crowd, and the big festivals in America like Nocturnal Wonderland are loads of fun, with an absolutely electric atmosphere… I am working on earning those frequent flyer points,” she chuckles.

While Ali leans heavily on new music in his sets, he’s sure to play things from every record. And there’s plenty to draw from. “I’ve been making music for ten years now, and there’s people who come that are fans of all the different periods,” he says. “So it’s good to do stuff from all the albums.”

With: The Prodigy, Dizzee Rascal, Bloc Party, Azealia Banks, Steve Aoki, Fun., The Stone Roses, Madeon, Sven Väth, Richie Hawtin, Seth Troxler, Ricardo Villalobos and more Where: Future Music Festival @ Randwick Racecourse When: Saturday March 9

With: Sean Price (Duck Down), Mantra Where: The Factory Theatre When: Thursday November 22

P.Smurf Village Voice By Benjamin Cooper video of all our friends sharing some food and some beers, just to chuck out on the net. We ended up with people spinning on the decks, everyone taking turns to bust fat raps. We got the video, and it just felt good for the vibe of the show coming up. Because I know we’re going to be rocking a fat show next week.”

Newtown-raised, Prichard is already a veteran of the local hip hop scene, having founded and participated in a range of groups and projects including Daily Meds, Reverse Polarities and Sketch The Rhyme. Smurf Village marks the natural culmination of the last eight years of collaborations with some of Sydney’s finest MCs and producers. Hyjak, True Vibenation and Herb all throw down guest verses, while in amongst the array of producers sit local luminaries Roleo, Down Under Beats and frequent collaborator P. Major. “The great thing about making this mixtape was just the amount of people who contributed and helped make it happen,” Smurf says. “Now we just need to play some shows, and really solidly get it happening [live].”

H

e may be days shy of releasing his debut solo mixtape, but Larry Prichard is still all about the crew. When we speak, the hip hop artist known as P.Smurf has only just woken up, after a casual evening at home shooting a web promo for Smurf Village evolved into something of an event itself. “It was a great night,” Prichard says,

48 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

“purely because we just had such a big crew of people here. I made up this huge batch of chilli con carne – it had a kilo of everything in it. It pushed some people to the limit, but it was definitely good times.” Did he use last night as a dry run for his mixtape’s launch?

“Ah, not really a dry run: more [of] a soaking wet run,” he laughs. “Our aim was to get some

Smurf has been honing his live show for close to a decade, within all manner of lush rooms and crappy pubs. “Hip hop is playing in even more types of rooms now!” he enthuses.

“You can actually see MCs doing their thing in any part of the city or wherever now, and the quality is just going up constantly too…

[And] there have been some amazing licensed venues that have helped the scene. The Annandale has been amazing over the years with putting on more diverse local music.

“Of course,” he sighs, “the major problems around live shows are still present. Fights and graffiti have historically given hip hop a bad name in Sydney, but now there’s some pretty solid leadership from some of the older guys in the scene against that kind of shit. They’re telling the younger guys that it’s not acceptable to graff venues or get in punch-ups out the front. And these younger guys are pulling their heads in, because they realise there’s no real place for that kind of violence. Hip hop just keeps changing, and the community just keeps building.”

Saturday’s show is unlikely to be all about P.Smurf, with many of the mixtape’s guests and collaborators due to make appearances.

“I’m really solidly about the belief of working with others, and learning from them,” he says. “I’m really happy to be finally putting out some solo stuff, and still being able to collaborate with friends and artists I’ve known for a while. Working with other people just keeps pushing us forward, I reckon, which means I’ll hopefully still be rocking out in 20 years.”

What: Smurf Village mixtape is out now With: Hy Jak, Herb, Mute MC, Cooking With Caustic, Broken Thought Theory, Native Wit & Verbaleyes (True Vibenation), DJ Cost, DJ Ask and more, with an open mic from 7-8pm Where: Freshly Squeezed @ The Annandale When: Saturday November 17; $10 presale includes hard copy of Smurf Village

xxx photo by xxx

Hewitt has a bunch of collabs due to drop in the next few months, and then will be starting work on a new release in November – not to mention more touring. She’s especially looking forward to returning Down Under for Future Music Festival next year, where she’ll be playing the Wake Your Mind! stage, curated by Cosmic Gate . “I love coming home to play shows, and Future has always been one of my favourite festivals. I am sure there will be some surprises [in my set] – maybe a new song or two!”

Deep Impressions Underground Dance And Electronica with Chris Honnery

Nathan Fake

T

his Friday night, Deep Impressions shifts into club mode, hosting a producer who has received plenty of column space over the years: Sasu Ripatt aka Luomo/Vladislav Delay/Uusitalo – and 1/3 of the Moritz Von Oswald Trio. Deep Impressions events are a rarity: I put on parties not to make money but to showcase electronic music that I think is exciting, engaging, and slightly left-field. Sasu is all of these things and more – I urge anyone remotely interested in live electronic music, whether it be house, dubby minimalism, industrial techno or more ambient soundscapes, to come down to the Civic Underground on Friday night.

The announcements for January’s Rainbow Serpent Festival continue to trickle through.

Norfolk producer Nathan Fake and Audiojack have both been confirmed among the ‘third round’ of lineup announcements, joining the likes of Christian Smith, Mathew Dekay, Guy J and Fiord. Fake will always be best known for his seminal club tune ‘The Sky Was Pink’, which was picked up by James Holden’s Border Community label and is recognised as one of those tracks that features in clubbers’ ‘all time favourites’ list. Fake released his third LP, Steam Days, only a few months ago, an outing that recaptured the psychedelic analogue synth-driven sounds that imbue the Border Community cannon. Arguably Fake’s most dynamic album-length work to date, Steam

Days, is a must for fans of Holden and Luke Abbott. As for seeing Fake live, there’s no doubt he will play a Sydney show around the end of January – or you could see him play alongside the aforementioned internationals in the middle of the Victorian outback, at an event that holds a reputation in clubbing circles as one of the premier alternative, outdoor bush parties in Australia. If that sounds like you, hit rainbowserpent.net for further festival information and tickets.

The Hong Kong-born Canadian-based Stuart Li, aka Basic Soul Unit (aka ‘Herman’), will release his debut album, Motional Response, in time for Christmas. Since first emerging as a producer of considerable promise in that acid-washed summer of 2003, Li has released on labels such as Ostgut Ton, Philpot, Left Of The Dial, Versatile and Mule Electronic, making his mark with productions that at once evoke the ‘tracky’ sensibility of underground techno and the hazy atmospherics of deep house. Li is said to have paid his respects to Detroit and Chicago club music on the forthcoming 11-track Motional Response, producing a record of deep house and techno that traverses soundscapes that are at some times melodic and at others more ‘gritty’, with a bit of brokenbeat thrown in for good measure.

Chilean producer Matias Aguayo will return to Sydney to headline Slow Blow’s third birthday bash at Goodgod Small Club on Friday November 23. It will be Aguayo’s first appearance Down Under since his headline performance at one of the most enjoyable gigs I have ever been to, Deep As Funk’s 2009 Pirates Of The Underground cruise. Aguayo rose to prominence via his collaborations with the Australia-bound Michael Mayer under the moniker of ‘Zimt’ before the turn of the millennium, and his output with Dirk Leyers as half of Closer Musik. He then released his debut EP Are You Really Lost? on Kompakt, before his single ‘Minimal’ was reworked into a club (anti)anthem by DJ Koze: “Más profundo, más sensual… basta ya de minimal!”

Aguayo’s ensuing LP, Ay Ay Ay, showcased the same kind of street-carnival aesthetic that was manifest in his live performances – which Sydney-siders will experience in a few weeks’ time. As ITM’s Seb ‘Arry’ effused, Aguayo’s memorable Sydney debut was “a beautiful, visceral, intimate, unique display of how good music can be. We felt every note, every chirp, every bark, every thrust, every grind… I’ve never seen a performer run with it like Matias Aguayo.” You’re strongly advised to run with Matias at Goodgod – presale tickets are available online.

Basic Soul Unit

LOOKING DEEPER FRIDAY NOVEMBER 16 Luomo / Vladislav Delay The Civic Underground

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 23 Matias Aguayo Goodgod Small Club

SATURDAY DECEMBER 1

Xxx

Kollectiv Turmstrasse

Kollectiv Turmstrasse One22 Michael Mayer Oxford Art Factory

Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand.

Contact through deep.impressions@yahoo.com BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 49

club guide

send your listings to : clubguide@thebrag.com

club pick of the week

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17

PillowTalk

Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst

PillowTalk (USA), Simon Caldwell, Kali $40 (+ bf) 10pm MONDAY NOVEMBER 12 Scruffy Murphys, Haymarket Mother Of A Monday DJ Smokin Joe free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Latin Jazz DJs free 7pm

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13 Establishment, Sydney Rumba Motel Salsa DJ Willie Sabor free 8pm Scruffy Murphys, Haymarket Frat House DJs free 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Coyote Tuesday - Chicks On Decks Kristy Lee, Lola Siren, DJ LaVida, DJ Johnny B, MC Danny Simms $10 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Jam Jam DJs free 9pm

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 14 Epping Hotel DTF Resident DJs free 8pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Smoke DZA (USA), Captain Franco & Levins, Monchichi, Terrible Twinz, Mike Who, Astral Huggz $17 (+ bf) 8pm Ivy, Sydney Salsa At Ivy DJ Dwight ‘Chocolate’ Escobar free 7pm The Lansdowne Hotel,

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Broadway Frat House Wednesdays Mean Dartin, Camo, Ra Bazaar free 5pm The Lewisham Hotel Garbage Resident DJs free 7pm The Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Assembly Wednesdays Inthemix DJs 8pm The Ranch Hotel, Epping Hump – Yourshot Finalist Floor Damage, Jay Kay free 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Cream Resident DJs free 8pm The World Bar, Kings Cross The Wall Resident DJs $5 8pm

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15 The Cool Room, The Australian Brewery, Rouse Hill We Love Thursdays Resident DJs 8pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Hi-Beams Resident DJs free 8pm Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney Greenwood Thursdays Resident DJs free 8pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Resident DJs free 9pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Hot Damn! Bangs, Hot Damn DJs $15-$20 8pm Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Rewind Dim Slm, Bobby Digital, Big Bee 8pm

Strike, Chatswood Spin Resident DJs 8pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross Swag Thursdays Resident DJs $10 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Propaganda Pirate Party Propaganda DJs, Spice Cube DJs free (student)-$5 9pm

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 16 The Abercrombie, Broadway Totally Barry Bad Barry DJs free 9pm Annandale Hotel Spit Syndicate $15 8pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Starjumps, DJ Georgia free 8pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Audio Sonic Pretty Young Things, Donald Crump, Dime vs Carcola, Dutchies vs Dave Tester, Chuck Base vs Kilo-G, Woolfrey, DJ Grunge $10 9pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney FreQ Nasty (NZ), Culture Shock (UK), A-Tonez, Hydaulix vs Bassriot, Sam Scratch, Nero, Singha $15$25 10pm Civic Underground, Sydney Vladislav Delay / Luomo (FIN), Thomas William, Simon Caldwell, Chris Honnery, Dave Stuart $25 10pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Gimma Five Shamus, DJ Toby Neal, DJ Anders Hitchcock free 5pm The Empire Hotel, Kings Cross

Miller City Sessions Gina Turner (USA) 9pm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel DJ Tom Loud free 11.59pm Goodgod Front Bar, Sydney Yo Grito! Yo Grito! DJs free 9pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Teebs (USA), Wooshie, Tobio, Prize, Sofie Loizou $20 (+ bf) 11pm Ivy Pool Club, Sydney Moonshine Gabby, Alley Oop, Makitan, Toni Toni Lee 9pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Ivan Drago, DJ Rain Julz free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross KK Fridays Resident DJs 9pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm Oatley Hotel We Love Oatley Hotel Fridays DJ Tone free 8pm Omega Lounge, City Tattersalls Club, Sydney Unwind Fridays DJ Greg Summerfield free 5.30pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst A Very Merry Xmas Party!

Kid Kenobi, Phesta, Doctor Werewolf, Spenda C, The Mane Thing, Blaze Tripp, Emoh Instead, A-Tonez, Kyro & Bomber, Filth Collins, Northie, Ramske, Athson, Deckhead, MC Shuershock $20 8pm Q Bar, Darlinghurst Teen Spirit – Holy Fuck! Prom Afterparty Teen Spirit DJs, Bad Habit DJs $10 9pm The Shelbourne Hotel, Sydney Neon Club Cryptic, Slinkee, Mark Halder, MikiMash, Bennett, Audiocolour $15 9pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Zaia Resident DJs 9.45pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Hot Toddy & Danielle Moore (Crazy P/UK) $15 10pm Tatler, Darlinghurst POST Resident DJs 9pm Trademark Hotel, Kings Cross The Frat Party Troy T, A Stylez, Willi, Bennett, Sweet Candy, Steve Zappa 9pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour Bring On The Weekend! DJ Matt Roberts free 5pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour Vanity Fridays Resident DJs $20 9.30pm The World Bar, Kings Cross MUM – Millions Prom The Dandy Warhols DJ Set (USA), Millions, Sures, Black Vanilla, Driffs, Mannequins, Rascals & Runaways, Felix Lloyd, MUM DJs $10-$15 9pm

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17 Annandale Hotel Smurf Village Mixtape Launch P.Smurf, Hyjak, Herb, Mute MC, Cooking With Caustic, Broken Thought Theory, Mikeon, Nehi, DJ Cost, Native Wit & Verbaleyes, DJ ASK, Kit Complete, DJ Born $10 7pm Arthouse Hotel, Sydney Eclipse After Party GMS, Earthling, Burn In Noise, Swarup, Riktam & Bansi, Ritchie Jay, MSG $15-$30 10pm Beach Road Hotel, Bondi Falcona Presents Sosueme DJs free 8pm The Bella Vista, Star City Wharf, Pyrmont Emotion Boat Party Steve Hill, Jody 6, Yoshi, Micky D, X’Dream, Krazy Jo, Torbynik,

Raissa, Scruby (UK), Sushi, Tish Tash fat. Helen Lette, Mybye aka Juzz Smart $45 10.30am Bondi Bowling Club Summer On The Green Future Classic DJs, Simon Caldwell, Mark Galpin, Al Lee, Christian, Dim vs Unpressed $25 2pm Burdekin Hotel, Darlinghurst AGWA Yacht Club After Party Miguel Campbell (UK), SubbAn (UK), Brohn, Bella Sarris, Morgan, Victor Lassance 8pm Candys Apartment, Kings Cross Big Guns Sherlock Bones, Nightmare, Rat Sandwich, Pretty Young Things, Matty Bixx, Le Bronx, Liquid Noise, Carcola, Real Talk $20 9pm Cargo Bar, King St Wharf Kick On Resident DJs free 6pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Ben Sims (UK), A-Tonez, Samrai, Northie, Dave Winnell, Fingers, Goodfella, Andrew Wowk 9pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Strange Clouds S*A*S*H DJs, Jonny Pow!!, Mars Monero, Reno, Fingers $20 2pm Cohibar, Darling Harbour Yellow Sox DJ Brynstar free 10pm Establishment, Sydney Sienna Saturdays Resident DJs 8pm FBi Social @ Kings Cross Hotel Hands Up! Staggman, Clockwerk free 11.30pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Dutty Dancing Nick Toth, Shantan Wantan Ichiban, Basslines, Mike Who $5 11pm The Green Room Lounge, Enmore Vinyl Solution DJ Nic Dalton free 7pm Ivy, Sydney Ivy Saturdays Minx, Matt Nugent, Trent Rackus, John Glover, Chris Fraser $20 8pm Ivy Pool Club, Sydney She Launch Party Moto Blanco (UK) $30 12pm Jacksons On George, Sydney DJ Simon Laing, DJ Michael Stewart free 9pm Kit & Kaboodle, Kings Cross Kitty Kitty Bang Bang Resident DJs 9pm The Lady Rose, Man O War Steps, Sydney Opera House Troy Pierce (USA), YokoO, Bella Sarris $45 12pm The Local Taphouse, Darlinghurst Black Gold Vinyl Fair Eastside DJs $5 11am allages Manning Bar, University of Sydney, Camperdown Distortion Vaski (USA), Helicopter Showdown (USA), Acetone, Deli, Enochi, Blogwars, Critter, Struz, 3Phaze, Steve P, Gee-Q $20(+ bf) 9pm The Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Andy Murphy $30 9pm Nevada Lounge, Darlinghurst DJ Hayden free 6pm One22, Sydney Psycatron (IRE), Eoin Brosnan, Defined By Rhythm, Sebastian Bayne, U-Khan (NZ) $25 10pm Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst PillowTalk (USA), Simon Caldwell, Kali $40 (+ bf) 10pm The Oxford Hotel, Darlinghurst Handle Bar – Berghain Basement Party Kiti, Dave Slade, Lovertits, Agent Cleave free 10pm Penrith Hotel Relentless Step Brothers, 3

Bit DJs, Vivasonik, Darksider, Miss K. Cee, Front To Back $10-$15 10pm Phoneix Bar, Darlinghurst Up Dayclub Resident DJs $15 5am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross The Suite Resident DJs 8pm Secret Warehouse, Sydney 4our Turns One Kate Doherty, Trinity, Magda Bytnerowicz $15 (+ bf) 10pm Soho, Kings Cross Usual Suspects Strip Steve, SCNTST, Daniel Farley, Light Out, Here’s Trouble, Valentine, Oh Glam, Skinny, Micko P 9pm Space Nightclub, Sydney Masif Saturdays Resident DJs 10pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Murat Kilic, Nic Scali, Matt Weir, Kali, Gabby $20 10pm The Starship, Sydney AGWA Yacht Club SubbAn (UK), Miguel Campbell (UK), Brohn, Co-Op DJs, Le Brouts, Sam Roberts, T-Boy $60 2.30pm St James Hotel, Sydney SFX Masquerade Ball Bzurk, Absynth, Markm, Amy, Fluxx, KillPOP DJs, Scotty Doesn’t Know Matticus, Snowflake 9pm Sydney Harbour Summit DJs Present House On The Harbour Boat Party Emmet Greene, Scotland Lamont, Mog Vilderplume, Chris Wilson, Poppy, Captain Trumpet $55 3pm Tatlers, Darlinghurst Contemprary Scarecrow Mike Huckaby (USA), Garry Todd, Carlos Zarate, Angus Gruzman $20 (+ bf) 10pm The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour Watershed Presents…

Skybar Saturdays Resident DJs $20 9pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Cakes Cakes DJs $15-$20 8pm

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays Portable (Live Set)(GER), Matt Aubusson, Jake Hough, Dave Hawtin, Matt Weir, Kerry Wallace $10 2pm The Beresford Hotel, Surry Hills Beresford Sundays Resident DJs free 3pm The Greenwood Hotel, North Sydney Sounds on Sunday Miguel Campbell (UK), Subb-An (UK), King Unique, Little Fritter, Cassette, Illya $25-$30 1pm Hugo’s Lounge, Kings Cross Sneaky Sundays Resident DJs 8pm Ivy Pool Club, Sydney Marco Polo Starfuckers $15 1pm Oatley Hotel Sunday Sets DJ Tone free 7pm Phoneix Bar, Darlinghurst Up Dayclub Resident DJs $15 5am Q Bar, Darlinghurst Daydreams Daydreams DJs 4.30am Sapphire Lounge, Kings Cross Sapphire Sundays – Fool Moon Party Resident DJs free 8pm The Spice Cellar, Sydney Spice After Hours Murat Kilic, Kali $20 4am The Watershed Hotel, Darling Harbour Afternoon DJs DJ Brynstar free 2pm The World Bar, Kings Cross Soup Kitchen Soup Kitchen DJs free 7pm

club picks up all night out all week...

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 14 Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Smoke DZA (USA), Captain Franco & Levins, Monchichi, Terrible Twinz, Mike Who, Astral Huggz $17 (+ bf) 8pm The Marquee, The Star, Pyrmont Assembly Wednesdays Inthemix DJs 8pm

Bassriot, Sam Scratch, Nero, Singha $15-$25 10pm Civic Underground, Sydney Vladislav Delay / Luomo (FIN), Thomas William, Simon Caldwell, Chris Honnery, Dave Stuart $25 10pm Goodgod Small Club, Sydney Teebs (USA), Wooshie, Tobio, Prize, Sofie Loizou $20 (+ bf) 11pm

Annandale Hotel Spit Syndicate $15 8pm

Oxford Art Factory, Darlinghurst Burss & Klub Kids Present: A Very Merry Xmas Party! Kid Kenobi, Phesta, Doctor Werewolf, Spenda C, The Mane Thing, Blaze Tripp, Emoh Instead, A-Tonez, Kyro & Bomber, Deckhead, MC Shureshock and more $20 8pm

Chinese Laundry, Sydney FreQ Nasty (NZ), Culture Shock (UK), A-Tonez, Hydaulix vs

The Spice Cellar, Sydney Crazy P DJ set (ft. Hot Toddy & Danielle Moore) $15-$20 10pm

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 16

Ben Sims

Vladislav Delay

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17

Secret Warehouse, Sydney 4our Turns One Kate Doherty, Trinity, Magda Bytnerowicz $15 (+ bf) 10pm

Annandale Hotel Smurf Village Mixtape Launch P.Smurf, Hyjak, Herb, Mute MC, Cooking With Caustic, Broken Thought Theory, Mikeon, Nehi, DJ Cost, Native Wit & Verbaleyes, DJ ASK, Kit Complete, DJ Born $10 7pm

The Starship, Sydney AGWA Yacht Club Subb-An (UK), Miguel Campbell (UK), Brohn, CoOp DJs, Le Brouts, Sam Roberts, T-Boy $60 (sold out) 2.30pm

Burdekin Hotel, Darlinghurst AGWA Yacht Club After Party Miguel Campbell (UK), Subb-An (UK), Brohn, Bella Sarris and more 8pm Chinese Laundry, Sydney Ben Sims (UK), A-Tonez, Samrai, Northie, Dave Winnell, Fingers, Goodfella, Andrew Wowk 9pm

Smoke DZA

The Lady Rose, Man O War Steps, Sydney Opera House FACT Present: Summer Boat Cruise Troy Pierce (USA), YokoO, Bella Sarris and more $50 12pm

Subb-An

Tatlers, Darlinghurst Contemporary Scarecrow Mike Huckaby (USA), Garry Todd, Carlos Zarate, Angus Gruzman $20 (+ bf) 10pm

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18 Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway S.A.S.H Sundays Portable (Live) (GER), Matt Aubusson, Jake Hough, Dave Hawtin, Matt Weir, Kerry Wallace $10 2pm

BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 51

snap

PICS :: AM

murat kilic

mark fanciulli

PICS :: AM

up all night out all week . . .

03:11:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999

03:11:12 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney 9223 5585

It’s called: Picnic presents PillowTalk (live) It sounds like: Some of the finest, smoothest, handsomest, fun-est live straight grooves, electro funk, house and techno that you’re likely to find anywhere.

Who’s spinning? PillowTalk, Simon Caldw ell, Kali.

Three songs you’ll hear on the night: ‘Far From Home’ and ‘Sunny’ – PillowTalk; ‘Hallelujah Anyway’ – Larse.

And one you definitely won’t: ‘Gangnam Style.’

Sell it to us: Three legends from San Franc isco for the first time to play one of their stupendous crooning their way over to Australia live sets – PLUS DJ sets on either side. Three performances in one, everyone’s a winner.

The bit we’ll remember in the AM: Dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing.

Crowd specs: A whole lot of friendly, aweso me, music-loving, smile-wearing, legendary boys and girls having a good old time on the d-floor. One big happy family.

Wallet damage: $40 (+ bf) Where: Oxford Art Factory When: Saturday November 17, from 10pm

shigeto

PICS :: AM

party profile

pillowtalk

state of mind

PICS :: AM

delano smith

PICS :: AM

01:11:12 :: Civic Underground :: 388 Pitt St Sydney 8080 7000

02:11:12 :: Chinese Laundry :: 111 Sussex St Sydney 8295 9999 52 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

03:11:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587 D HONCHO) :: KATRINA CLARKE

S : TIM LEVY (HEA OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER RO XAVIER :: MAR :: THOMAS PEACHY :: PED

:: ASHLEY

BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12 :: 53

snap

purple sneakers djs

31:10:12 :: Metro Theatre :: 624 George St Sydney 9550 3666

PICS :: KC

liknuts

PICS :: PX

up all night out all week . . .

mars monero

PICS :: TL

03:11:12 :: FBi Social :: Kings Cross Hotel 248 William Street Kings Cross 9331 9900

horse meat disco

PICS :: PX

02:11:12 :: The Spice Cellar :: 58 Elizabeth St Sydney 9223 5585

31:10:12 :: Assembly @ Marquee :: 80 Pyrmont St Pyrmont 9657 7737 RKE :: ASHLEY

:: KATRINA CLA S : TIM LEVY (HEAD HONCHO) OUR LOVELY PHOTOGRAPHER :: IER XAV RO MAR :: THOMAS PEACHY :: PED

54 :: BRAG :: 488 :: 12:11:12

nick curly

PICS :: KC

heaven & hell

PICS :: AM

02:11:12 :: Goodgod Small Club :: 53-55 Liverpool St Chinatown 8084 0587

03:11:12 :: The Goldfish :: 111 Darlinghurst Rd Potts Point 8354 6630

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE PRESENTS BY ARRANGEMENT WITH ARTIST VOICE

P E R F O R M I N G T H E H I T S T H AT D E F I N E D A N E R A

TO G E T H E R O N STA G E

SUN 10TH, MON 11TH, TUE 12TH MARCH . CONCERT HALL ON SALE FR I 16 NOVE M B E R 9AM

‘MUSIC AT THE HOUSE’

TO BOOK 02 9250 7777 SYDNEYOPERAHOUSE.COM/MUSIC