Mess+Noise: Today

News: Singles In Brief: Sally Seltmann, Otouto, Teeth And Tongue

2009-11-20T02:00:00Z

After two albums and a couple EPs as New Buffalo, Sally Seltmann (pictured) will drop the moniker for her next long-player, due for release in early 2010. The first taste of the album – the follow-up to 2007’s Somewhere, Anywhere – is new single, ‘Harmony to My Heartbeat’, a multilayered pop gem that was co-produced by Francois Tetaz (Architecture in Helsinki, Lior). It will be available through iTunes on November 24, but in the meantime you can listen to it here … Two Bright Lakes’ latest recruits Otouto will launch their debut single, ‘Sushi’ at the Workers Club in Melbourne tonight (November 20). The band, which comprises sisters Martha and Hazel Brown and drummer Kishore Ryan (Kid Sam), are reportedly “an inch away” from completing their debut album. Produced by Nick Huggins, it’s due out on Two Bright Lakes in early 2010. Supports by Milk Teddy and ii, who are playing another show this weekend (November 22 at Melbourne’s Empress with Sydney’s Megastick Fanfare and The Motifs) … Teeth and Tongue, the Melbourne outfit headed by former Moscow Schoolboy singer Jess Cornelius, will launch their new single ‘Sad Sun’ at Melbourne’s Northcote Social Club on November 27. The show is in support of Ned Collette & Wirewalker, who the band is currently touring the east-coast with. Other dates here. Available via iTunes, ‘Sad Sun’ is the first single from Teeth and Tongue’s forthcoming second album, due for release in – you guessed it – early 2010.

Voting is now open for M+N’s annual Readers Poll. Cast your vote here for a chance to win an Xmas gift pack that includes every “On Rotation” record released in ’09.

Review: Sally Seltmann - Track: Harmony To My Heartbeat

2009-11-20T01:00:00Z

Sparse percussion, muted keys, breathy vocals – these are the unassuming foundations upon which Sally Seltmann’s wall of sound is built. On ‘Harmony To My Heartbeat’, her first single in three years, she drops the New Buffalo moniker, fully revealing the pop classicist that reared its head, albeit in a more modern guise, on her last album Somewhere, Anywhere. Of course, she’s always had it in her. Her 2007 co-write with Feist, 1234, showcased Seltmann’s natural ability to touch the masses without dumbing things down. And ‘Harmony To My Heartbeat’, thanks to co-production by Francois Tetaz, pushes the sonic palette out even further. There are handclaps, rhythmic shifts, multi-layered harmonies and even a key change, sure, but Seltmann never lets complexity get in the way of a good hook. “You’re the harmony to my heartbeat, baby,” she sings over and over in her wistful voice, while harmonies circle around her like angels in a manger. For God’s sake, Carol, give her the keys to the Brill Building already.

News: Meredith Timetable Released

2009-11-20T12:00:00Z

Eddy Current Suppression Ring sure have come a long way from the oddly named garage outfit that played to a handful of early-risers at the Meredith Music Festival in 2005. The band will play the coveted Saturday midnight slot at this year’s festival after Paul Kelly, Animal Collective and Jarvis Cocker.

Meanwhile, M+N favourites Regular John will kick things off at 4pm on Friday while The Dacios will close proceedings on Sunday following nudie run The Meredith Gift.

MEREDITH 2009 TIMETABLE

Friday, December 11

4-4.40pm Regular John
5-5.40pm Oh Mercy
6-6.40pm Crocodiles
7-7.50pm Akron/Family
8.20-9.10pm Sia
9.40-10.25pm Patrick Wolf
10.50-11.35pm Tumbleweed
12-1am Royal Crown Revue
1.30-2.30am Yacht
2.30-4am Tim Sweeney

Saturday, December 12

10-10.40am Ballarat Municipal Brass Band
11-11.40am Kid Sam
12-12.40pm Thee Oh Sees
1-1.50pm Why?
2.15-3pm Kitty, Daisy & Lewis
3.20pm-4.05pm Pharaohe Monch
4.35-5.30pm Combo La Revelacion
6-6.50pm Heavy Trash
7.30-8.30pm Paul Kelly
9-10pm Animal Collective
10.30-11.30pm Jarvis Cocker
12-12.50am Eddy Current
1-2am Yacht Club Deejays
2-3am Mafia
3-4.30am Bag Raiders
4.30-5.30am Nathan Fake
5.30-7am Henrik Schwarz

Sunday, December 13

9-9.40am Master Song Tai Chi
10-10.40am Kes Band
11-11.40am Wagons
12.05-12.55pm The Middle East
1.15-2.05pm The Fauves
2.15-2.45pm The Meredith Gift
2.45-3.45pm The Dacios

Voting is now open for M+N’s annual Readers Poll. Cast your vote here for a chance to win an Xmas gift pack that includes every “On Rotation” record released in ’09.

Review: James McCann - Bound For The Blues

2009-11-20T12:00:00Z

Hard to believe that it’s been three years since James McCann’s last album, the excellent Where Was I Then. But then I don’t think McCann is too concerned with the passing of time. He’s always been something of a traveling player, moving across the country from west to east – and back again – over a period of years with various outfits, changing and refining his musical approach along the way. This is credited as a solo project on the cover, but on the insert there’s a nod to The Dirty Skirt Band, who like McCann are a bit of a shifting entity.

Bound For The Blues was recorded – as most of Torn & Frayed’s releases are – up in north-central Victoria, in a farmhouse-cum-studio set among the rural pastures of Nagambie. And it’s this setting, along with copious amounts of homemade red wine, that seems to imbue the sound with a degree of richness and warmth.

Having said that, this is not a cosy album. Any cobwebs are swiftly blown away with the huge descending riff and spitting vocals of opener ‘What’s Inside’. The title track shares a downbeat feel, and perhaps some lyrical concerns with The Saints’ epic ‘Messin’ With The Kid’, while ‘I Started A Fire’ is rhythmic and low key until about two thirds of the way through, when the muted guitar finally emits a spray of feedback and McCann opens his throat to roar. The contrast between those big guitar sounds, which occasionally teeter on the edge of becoming out-and-out jams, and the quieter tunes are the blueprint for most of the album. But whatever’s been held back comes to a head on last track ‘Where Do You Go?’, a headlong race to the finish that pounds like a freight train.

On the basis of some of McCann’s musical stylings, and perhaps also on some of the titles, lazy hipsters can try to dismiss this as “whiskey rock”. But pigeonhole this record at your peril – there is lot more depth to McCann and his Dirty Skirts.

News: Cave Nominated For ‘Bad Sex’

2009-11-19T11:00:00Z

Depraved sexual fantasies about Avril Lavigne and Kylie Minogue have helped land Nick Cave a nomination for this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction awards.

The “honour” is bestowed annually by the Literary Review magazine to discourage the use of “redundant passages of sexual description”, the likes of which litter the pages of Cave’s second novel The Death of Bunny Munro. Set in Cave’s home of Brighton, England, the book details the sordid adventures of a door-to-door lotion salesman who embarks on a self-destructive road trip following his wife’s suicide. The book has already gained notoriety for its depiction of Lavigne’s vulva, which Cave apologised for in an apparent PR stunt last month.

While widely considered a literary roasting of sorts, the Bad Sex Award nod puts Cave in illustrious company. This year's 10-strong shortlist also includes Amos Oz, Philip Roth, Paul Theroux and Jonathan Littell.

Voting is now open for M+N’s annual Readers Poll. Cast your vote here for a chance to win an Xmas gift pack that includes every “On Rotation” record released in ’09.

Feature: Curse Ov Dialect: Post Hip-Hop

2009-11-19T01:00:00Z

Their live shows are a whirl of colourful costumes and schizophrenic samples sourced from around the world, but as DOUG WALLEN discovers there’s a method to Curse ov Dialect’s unique brand of madness. Photo by KARL SCULLIN.

Who else could possibly sound like Curse ov Dialect? The inveterate Melbourne five-piece raps and sings over a morphing collage of arcane samples and animated beats, fluently deconstructing race and other composites of identity. Ostensibly it’s hip-hop, and when the band formed as a trio in 1994, there wasn’t the genre-defying invention we hear today. But along the way, MCs Raceless and Vulk Makedonski and DJ/producer Paso Bionic picked up the equally quirky vocalists Aturungia and August 2nd, leaving Earth’s atmosphere behind them. In 2003, their second album Lost In The Real Sky saw international release by the cult US label Mush, giving the band the wider exposure it properly deserved. Three years later, Mush issued the follow-up Wooden Tongues worldwide, including in Australia.

Now on the roster of Melbourne’s discerning Mistletone label, domestically, Curse ov Dialect have returned with Crisis Tales, an hour-long journey into their bizarre world. Words don’t do justice to its mass or oddness, and yet it’s a damn fun ride too. Blistering tracks such as ‘Identity’ and ‘Media Moguls’ are affirming rather than preachy, while the 11-minute ‘Colossus’ succeeds despite more than two dozen guest rappers spitting in different languages. Not something you’d throw on as background music, the album is a fearless, challenging achievement.

Nestled back home after recent jaunts to Japan and Europe, Raceless sat down at a cafe on Brunswick Street in Melbourne to reflect on how such a unique act has survived and thrived in Australia for 15 years.

Do you describe Curse ov Dialect as hip-hop?
We come from the sort of Public Enemy school of hip-hop, like the late ’80s/early ’90s layering of lots of sounds and the political element, except taking it further. What I see on the TV, I don’t consider that hip-hop anymore. That’s my own personal definition. I think the sociopolitical, meaningful hip-hop is actually the real hip-hop. The other stuff is actually garbage and sexist, racist, homophobic shit. Our stuff, I’d call it fundamentally hip-hop, I guess. Or maybe post-hip-hop.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure how you felt about “post-hip-hop”.
Well, Mush Records made us put that on our first record [for them]. I’m equally influenced by Harry Partch as I am by Rakim, or [Karlheinz] Stockhausen or Tom Waits. I like a lot of industrial music and world folk as well. Let’s just call it post hip-hop for now.

The group is a real anomaly, but I was wondering if you have a circle of kindred spirits.
Well, when we toured overseas, we found lots of people in Europe and Japan that were totally on our level. But in Australia, no. There are a few bands that we’re working with, like Professional Savage, Ultraviolet MC, Hugo, Pataphysics. There’s a few Melbourne acts that are coming out. There’s a lot of groups doing alternative hip-hop. To be honest, we’ve got our own style. We started off doing normal hip-hop. In the old days, we were B-boys and graffiti artists and all that. So we came from that. As a lot of hip-hop got quite negative, we just started going off on our own tangent. And now we’ve gone so far onto our own tangent that it’s like a different genre.

How do you feel about the wave of Aussie hip-hop in recent years?
I call it colonial hip-hop. A lot of ethnic people might see as it as a representation of their oppressor, in a sense. Sometimes it’s good if it’s done positively. But a lot of it is so colloquial that it will never leave Australia. Our stuff is more global, even though we still rap in our accents. It’s not exactly ocker accents. And we sing as well. I applaud anything that’s positive, but I don’t align myself with it. I align myself more with the electronic and indie acts, I think, because they seem to be our fan base.

That’s the kind of music Mush puts out, and they brought Curse ov Dialect to the States.
Yeah. When we first went there, it was funny playing with a lot of hip-hop artists. We wear costumes on stage, and that made it even weirder for people to deal with.

But in the States there are more acts somewhat similar to what you do, like the Anticon roster. Do you identify with that stuff?
Yeah, I think we do a bit more. But a lot of people that are doing stuff like us aren’t necessarily political. We are political, and surreal. I like a lot of surrealistic art, and that inspires me to write lyrics as much as Chuck D.

With two singers, two MCs, and a DJ, how do you go about assembling a song?
Well, everyone produces the tracks together.

That must be chaotic.
It is. That’s why it turns out chaotic. But some people put more into one track, and some put more in other tracks. A lot of us are sample gatherers, and we all want to get our idea into the song. Because it’s a hip-hop track, you can probably fit it all in. You can just have a different section for something and mix into the track somehow and make it work. So it becomes an eclectic mix within every single song.

Have you had those five set roles since the early days?
In the beginning, in 1994, it was only two MCs and a DJ. We were 17 or 18. But it was normal back then. It was still political, but it was more straight. All of us in the band are what we would call outcasts of our hip-hop youth. That’s our initial inspiration, but then we’ve just progressed. Then we added two more singer types.

How did you all meet?
The DJ and I just met through a friend. We’d [hear each other] on the hip-hop shows on Triple R and PBS, doing shout-outs. Then you’d actually meet them in person at a gig.

“I think the sociopolitical, meaningful hip-hop is actually the real hip-hop. The other stuff is actually garbage and sexist, racist, homophobic shit.”

What was the effect of Mush releasing Lost In The Real Sky overseas?
It made us wanna keep going. Before that, we were just local artists in Melbourne. When we found out an American label wanted to release it, it baffled us. We heard the Anticon stuff and thought there were people who were similar to us. We sent it to them and then that network ended up giving us a deal. From that, it hyped us to go further. And then we got a lot of fan mail from Europe and America. Then we toured, and our fan base overseas has been building. We had the support, and it started involving into a cult band, on a certain scale.

What’s it like when you tour overseas?
In Europe, because we’ve been there three times, the fan base has gotten bigger and bigger. Playing in Paris [recently] we did a really massive gig. Japan wasn’t as big, because it’s only the second time we’ve been there. Performing in Australian accents in France is weird. [Laughs] They think you might be American. [But] we act strange on stage and a lot of French people seem to relate to that.

There’s a real theatrical element to your live show.
Yeah, it’s fun to get dressed up in our traditional costumes of different cultures and just rap over lots of different sounds and present it in a different way.

Most hip-hop acts feel canned live, but you pull off such complexity and physicality.
Even in the early days, I used to wear a clown wig. I had a flat top and stuff. We started getting dressed up, and when our music changed and we started sampling more world folk music, we started researching our own backgrounds [as a source for the costumes]. It started off as more of a fun thing, and then it evolved into something symbolic.

Was race always such a big part of what you tackled?
Lyrically? Yeah.

And you’re all from different backgrounds?
Yeah, but that isn’t necessarily why we do it. That’s just coincidental that we happen to be from different cultures. I think because the initial inspiration for Curse ov Dialect was talking about serious issues, that’s how it evolved. But then it got into other issues as we got more open-minded as people. We tackled other issues. There’s always that hardcore anti-racism, but then there’s other tracks where it’s anti-materialism and anti-sexism and anti-homophobia. But then it’s also surreal and creative lyrics.

That’s what makes it so interesting. You’re not just lining these things up and decrying them. You’re actually getting into the whys of it.
I studied sociology just so I could write [better] lyrics.

You guys often dissect the identities people create for themselves.
Yeah, and the idea of being a patriot or whatever. We might be representing our cultures but it’s more embracing the idea of anti-homogenisation. You know when you’re traveling and you see the unique things in each city? You want to keep the uniqueness. You want to keep the cultural elements there so it’s not forgotten and just eaten away by McDonald’s. I’ve always been interested in diverse experiences, whatever they may be. Cultural and sub-cultural. Growing up in Melbourne is a perfect example of that cross-cultural development. Our music is the soundtrack to that environment, in a sense. All the influences coming in.

I’m curious about the samples you use. A lot of it sounds like world music, which is a great idea because people will never recognise the sources. There are these abstract, diverse elements, but they inform everything you’re talking about thematically.
That’s why, a lot of the time, we’ve made the beats first and written the lyrics after. There’s a track on the record called ‘Honesty In Monasteries’ where we used Turkish psychedelic, Cambodian funk and French musique concrete.

How do you find all this stuff?
I’m just an audiophile. We all just look.

Does touring overseas help you scour little shops in random countries?
Yeah. I’m looking for the [country’s] folk music most of the time, or the psych. Usually the psych stuff from the ’60s, because it’s got folk instruments in it. It’s still got that bounce that hip-hop music has, but it’s got folk in there. In Japan I bought heaps of Shinto music. I got some really awesome Ainu music. They’re the indigenous people of Japan. It was more a quest for … when I heard Gravediggaz and Wu-Tang in the early stages, they were using a lot of classical. That just clicked in my mind. I just thought, what the hell can’t I use? They opened the door to getting away from James Brown and funk [breaks]. I like that stuff, but people are still doing it now. It’s like, why? But we still keep the beats hip-hop, and we still have scratching. Those things make it have that foundation, so it doesn’t sound like some cheesy world music with a techno beat.

The track ‘Colossus’ on Crisis Tales brings in guest MCs from all over the world, rapping in different languages.
Putting it together was fun. We met [those] people on tour. A lot of it was done through the mail. Underneath every single vocalist is a different sample, so it doesn’t get boring. It keeps changing. And then at the end it’s got that “Too Much Posse” scratch [from Public Enemy], which is perfect. It was fun making that, and I wanted to make a point of showing that it’s universal. That doesn’t mean I have to understand what’s being said. I know the vibe’s right. We gave them all a theme though. The theme is change and what you wanted changed in your personal life or globally. My favourite is the Indonesian girl [Sista Nova] towards the end. There’s some indigenous [Australian] rappers too. There’s quite a lot of people on there.

Despite so many samples and political ideas, the album is quite catchy. How do you balance such density with that bouncy element you mentioned earlier?
To be completely honest, we just made it and hoped for the best. We didn’t plan on doing anything poppy or non-poppy.

Did it take a long time to come together?
It usually takes a while. Everyone’s doing different things and everyone’s busy. It’s a lot of people to get together at one time. It did take about two years to finish. It could have been quicker, but things happen. When you’re our age, it’s not the same as being 18 and having all the time in the world.

Crisis Tales is out now through Mistletone. Launch dates here.

Review: Darren Sylvester - Darren Sylvester

2009-11-19T05:00:00Z

It’s with an armful of nostalgia, irony, and deadpan humour that Darren Sylvester approaches his eponymous first album. Brimming with glam rock and new wave cliches and dramatics, its cheeks are puffed with opulence and camp. As the renowned artist flicks his impressive fringe across the album’s 10 tracks, paying homage to Bowie, T. Rex and other radio giants of the ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s, the question is as always: how much of a point is there in rerecording the past?

Sylvester’s voice is what ties this record together as it traverses slow, breezy pop, cheeky glam and even a poignancy that recalls Fleetwood Mac (on standout track ‘Twenty Three’). His articulation is woozy as befits the period from which he draws; sometimes, as on ‘Telephone on the TV’ and ‘My Boyfriend’s My Boss’, it’s patently disappointing. But that doesn’t stop him, and so it shouldn’t, because at other times (and, it should be noted, live) he pulls it off spectacularly.

Why? How? In the end, it comes down to Sylvester’s dry wit, the same that can be found in his photographic artwork. ‘That’s A Nice Haircut’ plays on mistaking chemotherapy for the work of a hairdresser (“I said – hey baby, it’s still a good haircut”), which will no doubt piss some people off. ‘Cellphone Warehouse’ manages to be both downhearted and coy, and while pairing consumerism and emotional isolation is far from unique, it’s nonetheless carried off with flair and a genuine sympathy for his subjects.

Sylvester creates his scenes with dozens of synthesizer and guitar tracks, as well as simple drum machine patterns – contrived to sound real and natural in their context. Crisp guitars splash and sparkle around the more evocative synth strings and piano lines that flesh out his compositions, while overdriven guitar figures only add to the sense of drama. On songs like ‘Too Uncool Too’, where a simple two-line bass figure anchors an addictive, chiming piano line and sweeping guitar swells, Sylvester’s talent as an arranger is apparent. Reverb and tumbling delays add space throughout the record.

While it seems inevitable that Sylvester’s voice will alienate some and tire others, and some songs don’t quite cut it (‘Michael’ being one example), there is something compelling happening here. Though it may sound like it at first blush, it’s not pure mimicry or idol worship that informs Sylvester either – more a deep phantasm that draws on a time and a place to tell its story.

Sad as they may seem, it’s impossible to take Sylvester’s songs very seriously. Perhaps this comes down to the air of desperate surrender, the overplayed performance, the knowing nod. But there is no wink, because in your mind – in this world he creates for you – his eyes are firmly closed the whole time, swimming in the many layers of his saturated tableaux.

News: Collette Plans European Defection

2009-11-19T02:00:00Z

Ned Collette will follow in the footsteps of The Devastations, HTRK, Sparkadia and most recently Grand Salvo when he relocates to Berlin next year.

The Melbourne singer-songwriter, who recently released his third album Over The Stones, Under The Stars with backing band Wirewalker, said he plans to relocate to Germany in March ahead of a European tour.

“I suspect I’ll probably write the remainder of the next Wirewalker album over there, come back here [Australia], record that, but also in the meantime start turning over some new ideas,” he told M+N in a recent interview. “The plan is at least all of next year and then see what happens. It’s a well-trodden path.” Full interview here.

In the meantime, Collette will attend to some local business when he launches his new LP at the North St Bar in Bateman’s Bay, NSW, tomorrow (November 20). The show is part of an east-coast tour that includes stops in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart. Dates below.

Over The Stone, Under The Stars is out now through Dot Dash.

'OVER THE STONES, UNDER THE STARS' LAUNCH

Friday, November 20
North St Bar, Bateman's Bay, NSW

Saturday, November 21
Raval, Sydney, NSW

Friday, November 27
Northcote Social Club, Melbourne, VIC

Saturday, November 28
Alley Cat, Hobart, TAS

Voting is now open for M+N’s annual Readers Poll. Cast your vote here for a chance to win an Xmas gift pack that includes every “On Rotation” record released in ’09.

Review: Drawn From Bees - The Sky Is Falling

2009-11-19T01:00:00Z

Since changing their name from Glasshouse, Drawn From Bees have planned to release four records over the space of two years; a self-imposed deadline that suggests the kind of solid Protestant work ethic you normally don’t get in artsy rock bands with “interesting” haircuts and bookish leanings. The Sky Is Falling is their third release and it’s ahead of schedule, which is nice, but listening to the very first lines of the very first track I wish they’d waited just a little bit longer. “The sky is falling down on me/I’m injured,” Dan James’ anguished vocals go. “The world is wakin’ up to see/That I’m broken.” It’s a shame the lyrics are straight out of an angsty teenager’s journal poetry, because the song’s layered vocal harmonies and chiming guitars mesh so well together.

Those multi-vocal harmonies are a trademark of Drawn From Bees’ songs, which tend to build themselves up from “oh-oh-oh-ohs” tumbling down with all the beauty of perfect Tetris blocks slotting into their rows just when you need them. The baroque and frilly psych-pop harmonies are held down to earth by bass grooves (‘Many Miles’) and simple, acoustic guitar (‘Say What You Mean’, which sounds like a tribute to Sigur Rós). ‘Death Of A General’ aims for bombast instead, with flugelhorn, guitar feedback and drum rolls mimicking the distant sound of shelling. ‘Bus Now’ is another highlight, with all the pomp and ceremony of Muse at their most affected – and I mean that in a good way. Even if the lyrics are occasionally half-baked, the music is top-notch.

News: NWA Releases Volume Three

2009-11-18T11:00:00Z

One person’s meat is indeed another’s poison. And with this old adage in mind, broadcasters Stuart Buchanan and Danny Jumpertz have launched the third volume of New Weird Australia.

The free compilation of eclectic and experimental Australian music can be downloaded for free via the NWA website. It features artwork by zine editor Lee Tran Lam and new releases from Afxjim, Alps, Bum Creek, Anon, 48/4, Zeal, Drive West Today, Erasers, Pompey, Jeff Burch (Songs) and The Singing Skies (aka Moonmilk's Kell Derrig-Hall).

“Given that we’re now on our third volume, we understand that in order to go deep, we also have to go wide – which means fucking with the boundaries at both ends of the spectrum,” write the pair in the sleeve notes accompanying the release. “From Zeal’s quasi-Anticon hip-pop to Anon’s 14-min noise excursion, Volume Three does indeed traverse considerable distances.”

The next volume of New Weird Australia will be available in two months. You can read an interview with Buchanan here.

Review: Bridezilla - The First Dance

2009-11-18T06:00:00Z

It’s no coincidence that Kramer – the US producer, not the doofus from Seinfeld – has had a hand in two breakthrough releases this year: Leader Cheetah’s The Sunspot Letters and Bridezilla’s The First Dance. The knob-twirler behind such seminal slowcore acts as Galaxie 500 and Low has a siege-mentality approach to recording. He puts young bands in strange locales, restricts their access to the outside world and when the shit hits the fan – in the case of Bridezilla, starvation, synchronised menstruation, mild paralysis and Oolong tea dependencies – the sadistic fucker flicks the record switch.

Conceived in a barn alongside the Colo River in rural NSW, The First Dance is an album defined by its insularity. It cares little for real-world trends, moving along to its own fractured beat with scant regard for who’s actually listening in. At times the whole thing is so frustratingly impenetrable you feel like giving up and listening to something more immediate like The Black Lips instead. But be patient with this record – put it on in the background, listen to it while you jog or do the ironing – and it’ll burst open like the pomegranate still-life on the cover, revealing far more than the mundane exterior it initially presents.

Bridezilla, of course, are masters of the slow reveal. They emerged in 2006 as a high-school band lacking the clarity of vision to pull off their big ideas. They were oddities from the outset: a group of teenage girls with old-world names – Millie, Daisy, Pia May and Holiday – and a guy known plainly as Josh, eschewing the traditional rock format in favour of sax, violin, guitar, vocals and drums (in that order). It posed some early teething difficulties – at times they sounded like a mini-orchestra tuning up in the pits – but they’ve since found a way to make each instrument coexist.

The First Dance is all about the instrumental interplay between its players, and like the lone bachelor in a sharehouse full of women, drummer Josh Bush never lets bravado get in the way. He’s expressive, colourful, inventive, but never obtrusive or showy. On standout track ‘Beaches’, he effectively assigns himself to click track duty, letting Pia May Courtley’s guitar handle the rhythm and texture while he plays pick-up sticks on the snare.

Violinist Daisy Tulley and saxophonist Millie Hall are the conjoined twins of the bunch; two distinct personalities sharing a central brain. One moment they’re playing in unison, the next they’re dancing around each other intuitively. On ‘Soft Porn’, they play a neat little one-two in the verse, while ‘Forth And Fine’ showcases their classical sensibilities, conjouring images of maypoles and garden parties and picnics by the lake. Courtley is limited somewhat by ability, but plays to her (mostly rhythmic) strengths. Her breakthrough moment is on ‘Magnetic Arrest’ when she finally cuts loose with a cascading delay.

As for singer Holiday Carmen-Sparks, her place in this delicate ecosystem is not as obvious as you’d think. She’s a force to be reckoned with on stage, but her natural theatricality is curtailed somewhat by Kramer’s reverb-heavy hand. The effect is at turns intoxicating and ethereal. Like Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval or Broadcast’s Trish Keenan, her voice is a textural element, often heard at a distance; wistful, breathy and frustratingly out of reach. It works because she’s yet to develop as a lyricist (“Whisper in my ear/Hold me closer, my dear” is a typically syrupy example), but the flipside is that it puts Bridezilla in that class of band – from My Bloody Valentine to The Cocteau Twins – where vocals are just part of the overall musical picture.

To pull that off over 40 odd minutes and 14 tracks, requires a great deal more consistency than Bridezilla offer on The First Dance. Indeed for every triumph like ‘Beaches’, ‘Queen of Hearts’ or ‘Tailback’ – songs blessed with memorable hooks and atmosphere – there are downcast plodders such as The Walkmen-esque ‘Lottery Tickets’, ‘White Feather’ (not a Wolfmother cover) and closer ‘The Last Dance’, which wash over you without so much as an aftertaste. Overall, it’s an engaging and mostly excellent first outing, but if Bridezilla are going to take that next step – and they certainly have the raw materials to do so – they’ll have to get that balance between melody and texture right.

Of course, it’s not perfect. The first dance never is.

Review: Otouto - Sushi

2009-11-18T01:00:00Z

Summer is undeniably present in ‘Sushi’, the debut single from Otouto, though it’s less feel-good pop anthem, more wistful abstraction. Its emotional stirrings aren’t the standard sort: a fine layer of perspiration from a summer day spent indoors, Moleskine notebooks, wooden flooring and politely flaking white wall paint. December to February spent mostly alone, avoiding Christmas, forgetting New Year’s Eve. Sweet old hot weather solitude.

The disarming thing about this solitary mood is that almost all the vocals are doubled or harmonised by some combination of lead vocalist Hazel Brown and sister Martha, whose voices swoon, coo and tilt with magical ease. Lyrically, ‘Sushi’ revolves around two very brief misperceptions, a pair of whimsical mistaken observations – more flash fiction than ballad. It’s good that they’re such simple utterances, because the real interest lies in the Melbourne trio’s arrangements. In particular, the slippery noodling of baritone guitar (at times stiffening into an Afro-staccato’d riff) is a dissonant standout, sliding around plainly played piano chords and the tin pan drumming of Kishore Ryan (Kid Sam, Seagull). Despite the song’s clean, articulate pop veneer, it’s one of the stranger indie tunes you’ll hear on your radio this season.

‘Sushi’ is augmented by two b-sides, ‘Spot’ and ‘Walkie Talkie’. The former is a sparse number based around a chirping Farfisa and sampled vocal treatments. It’s taut, even distraught, as Brown pleads to her estranged lover: “Where are you going to sleep?” It’s a composition that ably demonstrates the difference between spare and spacious, its melody sitting in the gaps between Ryan’s grid-like drum pattern. Dedicated to the sting of memory, ‘Spot’ falters in its closing crescendo, which carries too light a touch.

Finally, ‘Walkie Talkie’ is a slow and plaintive song with a lumbering pace, all lackadaisical delivery and low strings strummed. For such a simple, funereal piece, it vies with ‘Sushi’ for best-in-show.

This release is – as its title track describes – less straightforward than it may seem. Like an extremely minimal take on Battles, and with a hint of Catpower’s huskiness, the group’s forthcoming album is a curious prospect worthy of anticipation.

News: Final J Award Nominees Announced

2009-11-17T11:00:00Z

The final nominees have been announced for this year’s j awards – and there’s no place for Temper Trap, Dappled Cities, Leader Cheetah or the experimental crabcore act you started in your basement earlier this year (although it’s probably listed in our Readers Poll, which we’re shamelessly plugging here).

Nominations for the “coveted” Australian Album of the Year include: Oh Mercy for Privileged Woes, Paul Dempsey for Everything Is True, Lisa Mitchell for Wonder, Philadelphia Grand Jury for Hope is for Hopers, Phrase for Clockworks, Kid Sam for Kid Sam, Sarah Blasko for As Day Follows Night, Bertie Blackman for Secrets and Lies, Hilltop Hoods for State of The Art and Karnivool for Sound Awake.

In the other categories, Philadelphia Grand Jury, The Middle East, Seth Sentry (who?) and Washington will duke it out for the Unearthed Award, while Art Vs Science, The Scare, Karnivool, Astronomy Class, bluejuice and Firekites will go vie for Music Video of the Year.

The winners will be selected by a judging panel that consists of triple j music and triple j tv staff. The winner will be announced on triple j on December 4.

News: In Brief: Speak N Spell, PBS, Shiny

2009-11-17T10:00:00Z

Speak N Spell will get into the festive spirit in earnest with an Xmas party at Oxford Art Factory in Sydney on December 9. Joining headliners Crocodiles from San Diego (in their only Sydney show), will be Melbourne duo Kid Sam (pictured) and new Speak N Spell signing Skull Squadron. Between sets, Speak N Spell DJs will be spinning new releases from Warpaint, ZAZA, Danimals and Deep Sea Arcade. They’ll be joined by Pedestrian DJs, Mr PhDJ from club night Purple Sneakers, “Berko” of 2SER fame and FBI’s Alex and Anna. Tickets: $20 via www.moshtix.com.au, or $25 on the door … Punk mainstays Warped will help kick off PBS 106.7FM’s “Live Music Week” at The Corner Hotel in Melbourne on December 6. The band are part of an eclectic bill that also includes Kylie Auldist, Diafrix, Polo Club and Geoff Achison. More than 60 bands will perform at Live Music Week, which runs from December 7-13. Entrance via gold coin donation, but for those who can’t make it the gig will be streamed on www.pbs.org.au … Melbourne-based music publicity company Shiny Entertainment has joined the 21st century by launching a new "website". And to celebrate they’re giving one person the chance to win a double pass to every Shiny gig in 2010 (FYI they’re doing the Pavement tour next year). To enter, simply head to their new site and join the mailing list. The competition winner will be drawn on January 18.

Feature: Ned Collette: The Idealist

2009-11-17T01:00:00Z

Despite a university degree in music performance and a dense new album, Ned Collette confesses to DOUG WALLEN that he doesn’t like music that sounds too complicated.

Always one to stray from his comfort zones, Ned Collette has etched out a fascinating career this decade. Following two albums as leader of the Melbourne ensemble City City City, he set out alone to translate his university chops and mostly instrumental, improvised musical experience into the work of a very unique singer-songwriter. With open-ended structures and a droning, conversational singing voice, Collette turned heads with 2006 debut Jokes & Trials and its 2007 follow-up Future Suture, both released on Remote Control’s in-house label Dot Dash. Then he abruptly changed gears, drafting longtime collaborators Ben Bourke and Joe Talia as bassist and drummer, respectively, into his touring band. The pair have recently been christened Wirewalker.

On new album Over The Stones, Under The Stars, Collette and Wirewalker explore vast spaces with gorgeous, understated malleability while Collette lets loose with keenly observational lyrics that betray his mistrust of the world around him. There are cues to such past iconoclasts as Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and John Cale, but the songs are infinitely more than the sum of their influences, as Collette made clear over a cold pint at Edinburgh Castle in Brunswick, Melbourne. Over the course of a serpentine 45-minute chat, he charted his course thus far, illuminated the origins of Wirewalker, cast doubts on the Pitchfork school of American music and explained why – even with a move to Germany on the horizon – he has bittersweet feelings for Melbourne’s fickle, overprotective music scene.

Before you started making solo records, you were in a band called City City City.
Yeah. Which was largely instrumental. The first record was totally instrumental, and the second one had a couple of vocal tracks on it. I played guitar and then sang a bit right at the end.

Was that your uni or post-uni band?
I guess it was post-uni, because I studied music at uni. I played a lot of experimental and improvised music. That was my first stuff that I gigged. I did a lot of solo, noise-guitar-y sort of things, and then City City City was the first structured band I had. There were six of us, sometimes seven. A lot of people came and went. It was cool. It was a really heavy beast to move, so after a few years we took a break and never came back to it. Everyone was 24 or 25 and pulling off in other directions. Everyone from that band still plays music though. It was just some guys wanted to play real full-on jazz and I was starting to write songs [with lyrics], and Joe was getting more and more into avant garde music.

Is that Joe from Wirewalker?
Yeah. He was one of the drummers. That band had two drummers. And Ben was the keyboard player, who now plays bass in Wirewalker.

What was your focus when you studied music?
It was a degree – I guess it’s still there – at the VCA [Victorian College of the Arts] called Bachelor of Music Performance. You either did classical or improvisation. The course was founded in the ’70s by this saxophone player called Brian Brown. The reason it wasn’t called a jazz course was he hated that idea that people would just emulate jazz. His whole thing was really for people to come in with a certain amount of knowledge already and spent their time there just working on creating something of their own. But he kind of got pushed out just as I got there, and then it started going a lot straighter. So basically it was fairly focused on jazz, and now I gather, with the problems the VCA are having, it may not even exist that much longer. I don’t know. that course was weird. There’s a lot I take for granted that I learnt there, but at the same time, I find the whole learning of that kind of music in an institution really problematic.

Were you studying guitar?
Yeah, it’s always been guitar. I didn’t start singing until a few years after I’d ironed out all the shit they taught me. [Laughs]

Was your first album mostly solo?
All the songs were written solo. Seventy percent of each track was me either playing guitar or keyboards or bass and singing. Extra people played some strings and pedal steel. The next one was the same again, but Joe did a bit of percussion and Ben played a couple of bits and pieces.

And it was between the second and third albums that Wirewalker came together?
Yeah, well, I came back from an overseas tour, which was my first solo European trip, and I really wanted a band. I’d been doing this solo thing for a couple years, and I was doing lots of loops. I’d build up layers of guitar and use it to get sort of kick-drum sounds and percussive sounds. This was 2007. I was just feeling that the whole looping thing was becoming a bit of a gimmick. It’s one of those things where suddenly everyone was doing it. I didn’t stop doing it because everyone was doing it, but I was really sick of it and I really wanted to play with people again.

Since you write these sort of sprawling songs, I imagine it’d get boring playing them on your own. You’d want someone to jam with… There are pros and cons. One of the nice things is this amazing control over what happens. And good solo shows were amazing; the bond was just you and the audience. Whereas with a band you’ve got to get it together between the three of you and then present some sort of unified thing to the audience. So I did have some amazing shows, especially in Europe when I was supporting bigger acts, where it was just me and a thousand people.

You toured there with Joanna Newsom, right?
Yeah, I played shows with her. Her audience was so respectful.

You also did some shows with Bill Callahan.
Only here [in Australia]. I just got booked on a few of the shows [he and Newsom] did together here, and we had a couple of long drives, so we got to know each other. He’s a great guy. He’s amazingly, amazingly shy, I think. My tactic became just to be loud and obnoxious, and he actually seemed to react quite positively to it. I think he’s got a really keen sense of humour. He’s not a ponce or anything.

And you lived in Europe when you toured there?
Well, yeah. The first time I went [playing solo], I went for three months and had a bit of downtime. And then last year the band went for six weeks and I stayed in Glasgow, where my girlfriend was studying.

And that’s where you wrote the songs for the third album?
Yeah, most of the album. There are a couple of older ones, and I think there was one that came together just before we went into recording. But the majority was written over there, and a bunch of stuff that didn’t make it onto the album, which I think will probably make it onto the next thing.

When you decided you wanted a band, did you naturally gravitate towards Joe and Ben?
Yeah, to go back to that first tour, I got home and I knew it was those guys and I knew they wanted to. It was just really easy. But then it took a couple years for us to really work it out. Like when we toured Future Suture, which was heavily orchestrated, it was really fucking hard to try and play that stuff with just three people. I think we tried to cover a lot of bases; Joe was trying to play little keyboard lines and keep time, and I had loops going and all this shit. It was hard. It was a hard album to tour. It’s a fairly tricky album to get into, so a lot of regional places in Australia weren’t that interested.

It’s weird to imagine you guys playing regional pubs.
It wasn’t so great. It was a tough tour. I started drinking a lot before shows on that tour. [Laughs] It wasn’t good. But that was just the early days of a band. Like, we played Meredith, and I don’t think we were even ready for that yet.

But after that, you then had the benefit of writing and recording as a band.
Yeah. Everything changed on that tour, about this time last year in Europe. I reckon it takes a while for bands to settle, or in my experience it does. On that tour, because we were working on material that had their input in the arrangements, it was the first time where I just relaxed and started giving them their space to just play the way that they naturally do. I remember Joe saying to me, “Look, how are we going to be different from every other band out there?” And I was thinking, “The only way we can do that is if you guys play to your strengths.” Because they’re really amazing individual musicians. Joe’s solo work is really legitimately good experimental music.

Is that under his own name?
Yeah, it’s just Joe Talia, and he’s got a duo with this guy James Rushford. They play around. And Ben does all this crazy ambient synth music. So the band turned into a band on that tour and stopped feeling like Ned Collette Band.

When did you decide to name the band and give it equal billing?
Oh look, it was something I always wanted to do from the start. They never seemed that fussed about it. They were always happy. But I didn’t want it to feel like my band. But the thing was, it didn’t stop feeling like my band until it [just] didn’t. I tried to preempt it, and then when it happened, funnily enough, that’s exactly when the name popped up.

Who came up with that? Well, I watched that documentary [Man On Wire], and they kept talking about wirewalkers. It was like industry slang. I just liked it. It appealed to me. I don’t know why.

And they liked it?
Yeah, yeah. And that was the thing. They’d never really liked any [name]. Nothing was ever better than just, ‘Ned Collette Band’. I wrote to them and Joe said, “Yeah, I like it.” And Joe never liked any of the other names. He said it reminded him of a B-grade Rutger Hauer sci-fi movie from the ’80s that would sit on the sun-faded shelf of the VHS [section]. So it stuck.

“I get a lot of reviews where the reviewer talks about the state of my mental health and assumes that I take myself very seriously and I walk around with my own personal fucking rain cloud. Anyone who knows me knows that’s absolutely not the case.”

So you’re working toward being this fully functional trio, but at the same time, there’s this big focus on storytelling and lyrics.
Well, the lyrics is just unequivocally my area. Those guys don’t really have much input into that unless I ask if something is too shit. There’s never any more suggestion. So in that way, I don’t have any illusions; it’s still my band. I bring the songs to the table, and that includes chords, but musically their ideas are just as important once the song gets going. And they really inform my guitar playing as well. They have ideas about what the guitar should do, and I have ideas about what the drums should do. So I guess musically, it feels really evenly split these days.

I’ve sort of let go of trying to get them to do what I think they should do. The only way it’s going to sound original is if you have arrangements coming from the heart of the person playing the arrangements. And there’s a really vast range of influences between the three of us, and there’s a confluence with some of them, but at the same time, Joe’s never been into Australian songwriter-y bands. He just doesn’t do that. So you don’t get that element. But I have. And I like that shift. It’s not like we can all sit around all day and talk about The Bad Seeds, because those guys aren’t interested in that. And that’s awesome. Otherwise we’d just sound like one of these countless [other bands].

Listening to you with Wirewalker, certain things remind me of the Dirty Three musically, but the way you write songs reminds me of Leonard Cohen. And that goes together well.
Well, it’s interesting to work out how to use a band in that way. I’ve been totally influenced by Leonard Cohen, but he isn’t like a band guy really, is he? You never think, “Oh, wasn’t Cohen’s band good then?” the way you do with Dylan.

I saw Mick Turner from the Dirty Three support you guys earlier this year.
They were big for me. I always feel that Mick is the most, I won’t say underrated, but he’s the least showy of those three. I actually came off stage at that gig and said, “Y’know, Mick, I’m sorry I’ve ripped off all your licks.” They’re totally influential on me, and I know Ben was into them when we were a certain age. But Joe is often being compared to Jim White, and I don’t think Joe has ever really listened to Jim White until recently. But they’re a band that obviously processes their influences in a really unique and honest way. They don’t just go, “Alright, well, we really like AC/DC, so we’re going to sound like AC/DC.” But I know they do like AC/DC. There’s this thing in music, being influenced by something but then putting that into the pot of everything that influences you – from the newspaper to whatever. And actually thinking about what you make and processing those influences, rather than just saying, “Well, we really like Cream, so let’s just be Cream.” There’s no art in that, and there’s no creative process in that, really. Jim White is obviously really influenced by people like Elvin Jones, and Joe studied all that stuff. So when they met, they talked heaps about that stuff.

Is there a theme to Over The Stones, Under The Stars? Our reviewer took it mean, “The whole world is going to shit.”
I mean, there’s a lot of that in there.

But is there one theme running through it?
Not really one that was preconceived. I’ve never had, before any album, a concept of what the lyrical theme was going to be. But at the same time, when we sat down and chose songs, it was interesting what songs made it on there. There are a couple of songs that are sort of like ‘Polly Angel’, but there’s no point putting all three of them on. It was more like finding the right chapters for this record, and the songs that got left off weren’t necessarily worse. They just didn’t fit this story. So I guess after all the songs were recorded, then certain themes emerge. But they certainly weren’t things I was thinking of before.

Were you feeling somewhat cynical when you wrote these songs?
Oh, no more than usual. [Laughs]

And this was in Glasgow?
I don’t think living in Glasgow really came into what I wrote about. It just helped me have a lot more time on my hands to write. And I think I write better about places when I’m not there.

That’s always the way.
It’s weird, isn’t it? I used to think I just write better about home when I’m not at home.

No one can see truly what’s around them until they’re away from it.
It’s funny how you don’t know how these things work [beforehand]. I didn’t expect to write things about Melbourne. I guess my lyrics are generally abstracted enough that it’s never really clear, but there are definitely references to this city on this album that, though hidden, I didn’t even expect to come out at all. Like that lyric, “The age is just for show”, in the context of ‘All The Signs’ is about the age we live in, but actually when I wrote it, it was all about [Melbourne broadsheet] The Age. I hadn’t read any Australian news for a while, and I checked in [online] and it was fucking Cup Week or something.

It’s funny, because I get a lot of reviews where the reviewer talks about the state of my mental health and assumes that I take myself very seriously and I walk around with my own personal fucking rain cloud. Anyone who knows me knows that’s absolutely not the case. But in art I appreciate ideas that have a certain weight to them, and I think that’s really unfashionable in music at the moment. I think especially with what we’ve seen coming out of the States in the last five years, the Pitchfork-endorsed happy music. It’s fine, but have we not got to the saturation point?

It’s funny that Fleet Foxes’ ‘White Winter Hymnal’ is playing as you bring this up.
But this song is always playing, as far as I can tell. I don’t mean this song literally. And some of it’s great, and Animal Collective do this amazing thing. But I think the problem is I don’t like Brian Wilson and I don’t like Pet Sounds. I don’t hate it, I just don’t love it. I mean, listen to this [Fleet Foxes]. It’s too much. It’s like Oasis sounding too much like the Beatles. I’ve heard enough. But that’s kind of funny because we went and mixed the record in Brooklyn, surrounded by everything we find so abhorrent.

I was going to say, you mixed and mastered it in the States after recording it here.
It still sounds like an Australian record to me, but that’s a testament to Joel [Hamilton], who we mixed with, who I can’t stress enough was just one of the best people I’ve ever met.

How did you come to work with him?
It was just a fluke. There were those cheap flights to New York, and I mentioned maybe doing a few shows to Joe and Ben. But we don’t really have a whole lot of contacts in the States yet. We wanted someone else to mix the record, because usually we do this stuff ourselves, and no one here was really jumping out at us. Joe had that light bulb moment, like, “Let’s go and mix with this guy. I’ve read heaps of his columns in music magazines and forums.” Which Joe is really into. And Joe recorded the record. Joe was really enamored by his whole philosophy. I was up for it.

Joel just turned out to be a fucking champ, a real clever guy who knew exactly what our influences were but had also never heard music like this. He seemed genuinely turned on by what he heard. He kept saying, “Well, I guess I’ve never really heard Australian music. Are there other guys that sound like you guys?” And we’re like, “Well, no, but there’s a lot of other guys that sound like themselves.” He was really intrigued. It must be weird being in the States, and being surrounded by so much music that’s just from the States. But Joel is one of the good guys. We’re really into Milton Nascimento and that old Brazilian kind of psychedelic music, and he was like, “Have you checked out Jorge Ben?” And now I’m [obsessed with Jorge Ben]. He’s fucking amazing. He’s so raw but so skillful. I love skillful music that still sounds really garage-y.

You guys are a bit like that.
Well, I hope that comes through.

It’s raw but fairly complicated.
But I don’t like music that sounds complicated. It should never sound laboured. I think that happened a little bit with the second City City City record and the whole concept of that band started tiring me.

Were you the leader?
Yeah, but again, I wanted not to be the leader. I’m always wanting not to be the leader of the thing I’m involved in, but of course if anyone does something I don’t like, look out. [Laughs] I’m a passive-aggressive dictator.

What do you guys plan to do after launching this record?
Well, I have written a few things, but they seem really different so I’m not sure what that means yet. They’re more solo-y, like actually recording everything myself, which I haven’t done since before the first album. But as far as the band goes, I think there’s almost half a record from the sessions for this album that could resurface, and there’s certainly more writing I want to do in that vein. But I’m going to move to Berlin in March, and we’re going to do another tour in Europe around May, and I think Joe is planning to spend a fair bit of next year over there as well. I suspect I’ll probably write the remainder of the next Wirewalker album over there, come back here, record that, but also in the meantime start turning over some new ideas.

How long are you planning to stay in Berlin?
The plan is at least all of next year and then see what happens. It’s a well-trodden path.

So people here should see you play now, because they won’t get a chance next year?
We’d be happy to have a few good shows before we leave, but at the end of the day … I got more people at a solo show I did in Hanover where no one had ever heard of me on a Tuesday night in January than we’ve had for any of our shows this year. I think there’s a different culture there in the way people discover music. A lot more people go out and discover something they’ve never heard, especially if it’s from overseas. Whereas here people seem to want to know all about the band first.

Seeing a band live used to be a low-risk way of deciding if you like them, as opposed to buying an album, but now you can just listen to their songs on MySpace.
I just don’t trust a lot of people’s recorded output these days. For me, live music is still the place where I’m more likely to really get affected by music. I’m really going to miss the music scene in Melbourne. I’m not going to miss having very few other options in this country though. We’re not even going to Perth or Brisbane on this tour.

Also, I’ve had people who never came to a single show after I stopped doing solo shows. That’s the other thing; people are really parochial. I mean, fuck, you can go anywhere any night of the week and see people doing loops. People here are very possessive about the music they like. And that’s OK, at least it’s passionate. But it’s baffling sometimes. It’s totally about ownership. I got to a point in my life where I just had to actually consciously decide to find that stuff amusing and an interesting way to study how people work. I had to stop thinking in terms of me as a music maker and what it means, because it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad review that I couldn’t write a worse one of myself. I could crucify myself with the shit that I feel insecure about on my records. But I’ve seen comments on forums and blogs that get much closer than reviews ever have. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if that makes me hate them more or actually appreciate that there’s people who are kind of thinking along the same lines as me.

Over The Stones, Under The Stars launch dates here.

News: Curse Ov Dialect Launch ‘Crisis Tales’

2009-11-17T05:00:00Z

A Swiss rapper, a multi-sensory laser show, projections and DJ sets loaded with ’60s and ’70s Turkish and Iranian psychedelic funk – Curse ov Dialect weren’t joking when they described their upcoming hometown launch as a “carnival of cosmic talent”.

The hip-hop innovators will celebrate the release of their latest album Crisis Tales with a performance at The East Brunswick Club in Melbourne on November 20. Joining them on the night will be an eclectic bunch of acts including Switzerland’s Abstral Compost, Robin Fox, Underbelly Dance and Cumbia Cosmonauts. A Sydney launch will follow a week later at Spectrum on November 27 with Abstral Compost, Combat Wombat, Halal How Are You? and DJ Toecutter.

Out this week on Mistletone Records through Inertia, Crisis Tales was produced by the band and mixed by DJ/producer Danielsan (Koolism). Inspired by “surrealistic grappling with questions of identity and evolution”, it features guests appearances by Joelistics (TZU), Elf Tranzporter (Combat Wombat), Kaigen (Japan), RKS, Hugo 1, Eytan Messiah and Trillion (NZ).

CURSE OV DIALECT LAUNCH ‘CRISIS TALES’

Friday, November 20
East Brunswick Club, Melbourne, VIC

Friday, November 27
Spectrum, Sydney, NSW

News: In Brief: Exquisite Corpse, Emergency Room, BANDed Together

2009-11-17T04:00:00Z

Rove isn’t the only variety show pulling up stumps, with Sydney’s Exquisite Corpse going on indefinite hiatus at the end of this month. After more than a year of music and visual arts performances, Exquisite Corpse will bid adieu to Sydney with one final shindig at The Oxford Art Factory on November 26. In addition to performances by Fashion Launches Rocket Launches, Melbourne’s ITA and Domeyko Gonzalez, there will be burlesque, short films, live visuals and a DJ set from local misfits Warhorse. Entry is free … A new 150-capacity room has opened up at Melbourne’s East Brunswick Club. Dubbed “The Emergency Room”, the space has a 16-channel mixing desk and a self-contained PA, and will be open to gigs of all types – from punk to indie, noise to country. It will be christened with a performance by Useless Children, The Diamond Sea, Gold Tango and Cocks Arquette on November 22. Cost: $10. For bookings email Kody at ebcmanager@gmail.com ... New Sensory projects signing Love Connection will perform at “BANDed Together”, a benefit concert in Melbourne next month. Held at The Esplanade Hotel’s Gershwin Room on December 6, the gig is an initiative of Openaid, an organisation that helps improves the lives of families challenged by poverty and exploitation in Southeast Asia. Other bands performing include Labjacd, Money for Rope, Jess Harlen, Adventure Spirit and Secondhand Heart, with more to be announced soon. Tickets: $20 plus booking fees via Oztix.