Fortune Grey

FBi's Afterparty, March 31st 2006

2006-04-07T11:12:00.000+09:00

FBi's Afterparty, March 31st 2006
Originally uploaded by fbi945.

Boomp there it is.

Adieu Blogspot

2005-08-27T12:42:00.000+09:00

Fortune Grey has moved to Fortune Grey, so take a look at the new site and tell me what you think. Unfortunately all my comments got lost on the way, even though I used this special technique.

Apologies and all that

2005-08-26T17:20:00.000+09:00

I've been offline since arriving in China as blogspot is blocked here, stay tuned though, I'm working on a new site.

CD sales drop

2005-07-24T00:40:00.000+09:00

No surprises here. Rolling Stone reports a 7.6 percent drop in CD sales over the past 12 months.
All signs point to a music industry that's increasingly about participation rather than the standard participation by purchase. Downhill Battle is all about those moves. Pretty fascinating site.
Music Industry Music

Legal downloads up, illegal ones too

2005-07-24T00:30:00.000+09:00

So legal downloads are up, tripled in fact, over the past year.
Lobbyists for the record industry have had a field day, touting their battle against file-sharers as the reason paid downloads have finally started to make a return.
Here are several reasons why it is not so cut and dried.
Online music sales have come of age in the past year. As paid downloads have tripled, so have the number of online music sellers, up from 100 last year to around 300 now, and especially, Apple’s triumphant run from iTunes shop to iTunes software to everyone’s favourite Christmas present last year, the iPod.
Paid downloads have increased – 180 million single tracks downloaded in the US, Britain, Germany and France between January and June this year, compared to 57 million last year – but file-sharing still dwarfs its respectable sibling, there are at least 900 million files available on sites around the world.
Three years ago, researchers said that "active usage of online music content is one of the best predictors of increased consumer purchasing." Parallel research found that 81 percent of music downloaders reported that their CD purchasing remained the same or increased. Many people reported they would like to pay for downloads but couldn’t do it simply enough. In fact, there’s been a constant stream of evidence that file-sharing is a positive tool for the music industry. See articles in USA Today and Wired.
Although big record industry litigation claims to have successfully sued thousands of infringing music copyrights, it’s fair to say in practice they’ve been primarily about fear. RIAA president Cary Sherman said as much, "The lawsuits are an essential educational tool.'' Most (all?) of the people sued by the music industry have settled before appearing in court, they barely have a choice, either settle for a small slap on the wrist or fight against the big labels in court.
Certainly some people are scared of litigation, but most are paying for their downloads because (a) it’s easier to do and (b) there’s wider range of music and (c) possibly most importantly, broadband take up means a wider demographic is getting their music from the Internet.
Music Industry Music (Cross posted at Morph)

I feel the earth move

2005-07-23T17:49:00.000+09:00

I was thinking about singing Martika's classic last night at our farewell karaoke session, but I wasn't really expecting an earthquake. Still, a fairly big one hit just 30 km out of Tokyo this afternoon. As always different sizes are coming from different media outlets - radio was calling it 6.1, Japan Today, the first website to report, called it 5.7. Definitely the biggest earthquake I've felt since being here anyway.
It's been called an intensity 4 earthquake, which sounds right. (4: Most people indoors feel movement. Hanging objects swing. Dishes, windows, and doors rattle. The earthquake feels like a heavy truck hitting the walls. A few people outdoors may feel movement. Parked cars rock.) I was inside wondering whether the roof would fall in or the fridge might start to tip and a guy walked by outside the house, trucker cap a little askew, but otherwise looking quite relaxed.
The Australian reports that 5 people were injured in a shopping centre in Saitama, sirens went off and the lifts stopped in tall buildings. Still, pretty mild effects for such a big earthquake.
Earthquake Tokyo

Simon Caldwell, mixed live in a pub

2005-07-19T13:27:00.000+09:00

I was already a regular at Simon's Friday night sessions at the Cricketer's Arms in Sydney, when one Easter long weekend he converted this through and through indie kid to house music.
Raw jacking beats to the most soulful funk, hip hop and dub, there's always a weird contrast between the stark beauty and this kernel of sleazy sexiness. His radio sets are actually even better... I've long since worn through my Caldwell mixtapes from 2SER's annual Mosaic Mix. Anyway, a three hour mix set from Hi Jinks in Sydney prompted me to dig up some comments from an old interview with him.

How important is your eclectic taste in music to your enthusiasm for DJing?
SC: Well I’ve always had eclectic tastes, originating from my love for '60s and '70s soul, jazz and funk, which is still the binding thread of all dance music in my opinion. Dance music is almost built on its own genres and sub-genres now. Producers and DJs are quick to jump on a “new sound” (usually one record which sounds a bit different) and within a month or two you have a whole bunch of copycat tracks and a whole bunch of DJs flogging the same tunes for a little while until the next “sound” comes along. That, for me, leads to lots of boring music. Once you listen to a few bars you know what a track is going to do, which is not very fun. I can’t really understand people who say they love “breaks” (whatever that sounds like this month) but hate “house” or “hip hop”. They all used to be the same thing, or at least played side by side in a club. The narrow definitions of dance music are a marketing tool more than anything reflecting musical reality. It’s all just an arrangement of noise… That said, I’ve never really been a great lover of “rave” music, much of which seems to be an exercise in messing with people’s minds in a fairly mindless way. It’s effects for the sake of effect if you know what I mean. I think psychedelic trance is the ultimate as far as this goes. I can appreciate that it’s clever to be able to do that, but personally I don’t like being under mind control.
So, what I guess I mean about my music is that I try to play music which has an emotional effect on me, not just a physiological one. Hopefully that emotion carries over to people who are listening. I buy and listen to and play music which I like, whatever the “style”, and try and fit it into a situation.

You're best known for DJing clubs, but from my experience you seem to really gel best on radio?
SC: Club sets offer the challenge of playing to a dance floor and give you instant response, which can be exciting and instantly satisfying. Radio gives me a chance to play more of a soundscape of different old and new music and incorporating spoken word and other weird stuff to hopefully end up with a 90 minute sound journey. Strange juxtapositions can be interesting. I don’t talk much because I want people to concentrate on the music.

With international politics and Australia's position getting more and more cliched, how do you see the role of the DJ or music maker?
SC: I am interested in politics on many levels, but I see a distinct lack of ethics in much of this industry, being as it is, based on money, ego and drugs. There is less and less talk about dance music as an “alternative culture” and more about it as a “lifestyle choice” or “emergent market”. I think that the horse has long bolted in many ways, though, and that people (punters) generally have themselves to blame. People burn themselves out while they are still new to a scene, so how can that scene develop over time? I think hip hop is an exception, and the recent renaissance of Sydney’s scene is a great thing. I think DJs have something of a responsibility to encourage scenes to develop and push things forward. Unfortunately, most DJs seem to be more interested in the size of their fees and other less altruistic things. It’s easier that way.

Simon Caldwell - Mixed live in a fucking pub, Part 1 (hosted by Mad Racket)

Simon Caldwell - Mixed live in a fucking pub, Part 2 (hosted by Mad Racket)

Simon Caldwell - Mixed live in a fucking pub, Part 3 (hosted by Mad Racket)

Listening to Simon play is a smooth rush of excitement that starts with hearing Disco D, Bola, Bobbi Humphries, Eugene McDaniels or McFadden & Whitehead and ends with me hunched over crates of records for days on end. Beautiful.
Music DJ

Get paid to talk about music

2005-07-18T11:57:00.000+09:00

There's a job going for experienced community radio broadcasters to whip up audio packages about Australian music - artist profiles, live sets, local reports and features - to be played around the CBAA's national network.
I used to do a weekly show on the network and it's a pretty good opportunity. The job would be based at your local community radio station around Australia. If you're interested, apply before August 15. Check out reports from previous AMRAP music correspondents at their site.
Music

MP3 bloggers done for linking

2005-07-15T12:12:00.000+09:00

The internet is built around the loose mesh of hyperlinks. But the results of a long-running Australian case could put that in jeopardy. The Sydney Morning Herald reported today that MP3 blogger, mp3s4free.net, was found to have infringed copyright by linking to pirated material.
The result raises all sorts of questions. And not just for MP3 bloggers, the suggestion that linking to copyright material is illegal, could affect search engines and a wide range of websites.
Even more concerning is the fact that the internet service provider, Com-Cen was also named in the case. The SMH says, “the court found that the companies, director and staff member had had the power to stop the infringement and did not do so, and so had also infringed copyright.”
The case was brought by 31 applicants, including multinational music labels Universal Music Australia, EMI Music Australia, Sony Music Entertainment (Australia), Warner Music Australia, BMG Australia, and Festival Mushroom Records, who claim that the site cost the music industry hundreds of millions of dollars. It has been running since lawyers acting for the music labels raided the home of Stephen Cooper, operator of mp3sfree.net, and the offices of Cooper’s ISP on October 17 2003, with orders authorising them to seize information on the site and logs of internet users accessing the site.
So, under Australian law, linking to pirated material, not just downloading it, is an infringement of copyright and internet service providers may be held responsible for the activities of sites they host.
This is cross posted at Morph.
Music Music Industry MP3

The return of Star Wars

2005-07-14T22:30:00.000+09:00

I was hugely disappointed by the first two new Star Wars movies. Not that they were so much worse than the originals, just I was a kid when they first came out. Nostalgia made them gold in my memory. The latest one came out in Japan on the weekend, it wasn't any better than the others, but despite the shoddy lines and wooden acting, for some reason I loved it. I think my standards have dropped!
Star Wars

Where's the music biz heading?

2005-07-14T21:34:00.000+09:00

The people at Morph blog asked me to post there for the next month or so. It's a great site, the other contributors come from pretty wild backgrounds - the guys who made EPIC for example - so it’s a chance to stir up some discussion. This is cross-posted at Morph.

If you're involved - labels, music-making, blogger, podcaster, DJ, technology, writer, whatever - I'm interested in your opinions on where technology is affecting music business.

I listened my way through many happy hours and stacks of records while I was at university. Every week, probably far more than I should have. Carefully avoiding the glare of shop assistants, who rumour had it held the best records from any imported vinyl shipment for their friends. If you didn’t dig out the music, you didn’t hear it.
Technology has democratised the process of finding music. Digital downloads, blogs, podcasts, netlabels, MP3 blogs, file-sharing, online communities, radio streams, message boards, messaging, ezines, moblogging, wireless. Probably many more, that neither my dictionary nor I have heard of yet. They make a space for people to give and receive comments on new, old, obscure and mainstream music, they even let you download it.
But that democracy has resulted in reserves of music, many times bigger than the huge record libraries at HMV or Tower Records here in Tokyo. Where 20 or 30 years ago, you could be abreast of popular music, it’s near impossible to keep track of it all these days. Not only that, but popular culture itself is changing as a result of technology.
The whole music business is slanted towards the old model of Participation via Purchase. That’s purchase of music, but the vestiges of the previous order, when sheet music ruled the industry, are still apparent in the huge power of music publishers. But the explosion of bloggers (text, multimedia), podcasts and streams, zines, indie labels and DJs (that’s right, not just limited to the tech domain), all seem to suggest that popular culture is moving towards participation by, well, Participation.
The choice of where to go next is a difficult problem, complicated and intertwined. It gets even more twisted when you get into the inertia-bound interests of major labels, so I’m going to stick to the coalface of independent labels and artists.
Should the music industry consider a new business model? It may seem crazy, but the Digital Rights Management battle being waged by the majors seems like patching up pressure-leaks on a boat that’s sinking because it’s overloaded. Not only that, it’s alienating their core customers, record buyers.
A new cottage industry? Independent acts, who rarely do more than break even on record sales, are offering free/cheap downloads, which ideally result in exposure and income from touring and merchandise sales. International networks of like-minded labels and artists could easily spring out of the indie network to give this kind of movement real clout.
As now, the biggest issue is how to filter the mass of music.
Change could be as simple as online jukeboxes, since broadband’s market penetration makes this kind of database quite feasible. Especially since GRID programming lets websites, servers and databases weave into one another. New music formats, like Weed, which allows free download and a number of free plays before the user is prompted to purchase the piece of music, also offer a way to structure music sharing online.
The explosion of podcasting in the past few months, since iTunes 4.9 simplified the process of downloading them, coupled with the iTunes shop and the iPod’s phemonenal success, Apple seems set to be a major player in the music business, but this kind of monopoly won’t be positive! Can smaller players work together to form serious competition, like British label Warp's Bleep initiative?
Music Music Industry

Bec Paton, broken beat brat

2005-07-12T20:11:00.000+09:00

Bec Paton doesn’t have management. She’s never put out a press release, and even struggles to promote herself in interviews. Still she's one of Canberra's best loved DJs and since moving to Sydney has rapidly moved up the ranks to play several high profile gigs (Cockatoo Island, Wired for Sound) as well as picking up a couple of residencies.
I first met Bec 3 years ago. I had just breezed in from Sydney and was struggling to find my feet in a new city. As I worked out who was who in Canberra, I kept seeing her name on flyers and posters. Every time she played it would be a different set, from house to slamming drum’n’bass.
Since then, her musical knowledge and technical wizardry behind the turntables (and increasingly CD players) has matured, to the point where now rather than playing a multitude of different sounds in discrete sets, she is now able to blend them all into an intoxicating rhythm.
She’s a phenomenonally hard worker. At the same time as DJing, she studied full time (first as an engineer, and later degrees in graphic design and economics in parallel at UC and ANU respectively), worked flat out as a tax agent. A true renaissance woman of the noughties then. Now she's designing covers for books.
I interviewed her last year for the Canberra Times (don't bother looking there, it's hard to see why they bother with the site! It was also published in 3D World), check a favourite tracks rundown at Cyclic Defrost too. But here's the transcript, I think it was interesting enough to put online.

Why’d you get into music?
BP: Always a been a music head. Like I played classical piano as a young girl. And I was just discovering electronic and deciding it was cool after thinking it was incredibly heinous and was living with a guy who had two belt-driven decks and they were awful, but I just got caught up in it all I guess through him. But since then the more I learn the more I love it, because your perception of what’s out there is shifting and expanding, it just gets better and better.

What keeps you going?
BP: I don’t know, I really don’t. it’s cool like in the public sphere, like I’d always listen to music there’s nothing that could stop that, but probably the only thing that keeps me going, playing in front of people is when you see people just react in an amazing way to what you’re playing, like you’re sharing all these sounds with them and you’re putting them in a new context for them by the way you superimpose the sounds. And you know when someone gets switched on as a result of that, comes up raves, hands in the air, that’s cool.

For such a small city, Canberra has a lot of people doing interesting stuff (and they're good at what they do).
BP: It’s got a high education level, so people are a little more switched on. But also the place is incredibly sterile, especially in its design and I think to humanise everything, it needs, like people make that themselves, people need to make their own culture and because it’s relatively isolated, I mean Sydney’s fairly close, but you have to make an effort to go there, you’re always working in a vacuum, so stuff that comes out of here is innovative and is fresh, because it’s created fairly much from scratch.

How has DJing affected the way you listen to music?
BP: Playing records does change the way you listen to music in a sense. Because you go what can I do with this. Whereas you’re not just absorbing for your own sake, you’re actually like how can I do something cool with this to communicate it to other people and I’d be really sad to not have that anymore. Because it has been rewarding. I’m scared about that and not finding a job down there! But I’m also excited because I’m comfortable here and I need to be put out of my element, I want to be surprised, shocked and feel a little nervous every now and then.

You never describe music by genre or style, it's always colour or movement. Rather than just listening, how do you approach records?
BP: Any track, no matter how stunning it is, there’s always something you’d want to change or add, and you do it in the mix. It is musical collage. You go I’m going to take this bassline and rip it in with this crazy synth line coming out of this track, or I’m going to use the texture of this track, but fill it out with the melody of this or the sentiment of this. Tracks have different feels, so you go this is the kind of emotional space you’re in with this, but we can shift it just slightly and it just puts a whole different tweak on everything, so it’s really about recognising where each track’s coming from, how it feels, also the musical elements that you can use and pick up on and do stuff with and yeah.

How do you do that?
BP: I just dissect it. I’ll be listening to a track and first do the really scientific, the beat structure’s like this, the key change’s going like this it’s got a transition to a bridge section that does this and is different to this bit. But then I’ll think, it’s got a wistful feeling as though you’re wandering through a park in autumn or it makes me feel like I’m in a dirty dingy underground club with red lighting and smoke in the air.
As well there’ll be a pure overall feeling to any track, it’s like if you’ve got two fabrics sitting next to each other and you touch one and you touch the other it’s kind of like that overall kind of thing. So all those different parts and you can pick out which parts you want to interact with the next track or whatever sample you’re messing about with.

You seem to be all about colours and texture, the cover art rather than the name of the artist or the label, and especially ornate, layered sounds?
BP: Yeah totally. Like I’ll pick up on artists if I totally admire them and I want to seek out more, but otherwise I don’t really care who wrote it, because it’s a personal thing, it’s not about me saying oh you’re so great, it’s about me going cool this is this experience for me and these other people.
I get bored really easily. I can get caught up in an aesthetic, especially with house music, like if it’s incredibly dubbed out and the beats are really solid with the pure house feel, yeah I can get caught up in that. But most of the time I like to have variation and change and something a bit interesting happening that you weren’t quite expecting. Also like it when people push the sounds they’ve chosen instead of the default sound libraries and normal electronic music instruments, actually going and sampling a gamelan from Indonesia and doing something with that, and making it into something new. That’s exciting, and that’s cool.

Tell me when you first realised there was something special about music?
BP: Probably the first time that I actually gave it credit as a true legitimate form of music and creative expression, was at a Sabotage party up at Heaven. Up until then all I’d heard was trance, which I’d never liked, found it really jarring and full on and kind of ugly in its synthetic-ness. I’d heard funky house, it was cool, inoffensive, bit of a beat you could have a bit of a wiggle. Other than that I hadn’t really been exposed to much else. Went to this tweakin party and it was all sort of chunky tech house. It was ken cloud and simon Caldwell actually, yeah I heard all the sounds kind of sifting past me and I was having kind of an animal reaction to it. Like it was resonant on some level, I just went hang on, I can see a possibility for this to be awesome stuff. That’s when I really started actually going out and going so what else is there.
Before I was really into bands, I mean I still am. The thing about electronic music is that anyone can be involved as long as they’ve got an idea. You don’t need a whole band to make something amazing and it’s so accessible now, like if you’ve got a pc you can do anything, so for the first time you don’t need musical training you’ve just got to have the ear and a really good idea and the patience to make it. That’s awesome, that’s the first time in history, that I’m aware of, that people can so easily express their ideas and so fluently express them, it’s empowering.

Before the blues, people felt the same way, and then the blues really revolutionised things, just sitting there with a guitar and singing. Things have changed again in the last little while where you really need to make CDs and produce, etc.
BP: You can make something that sounds like there might be 20 musicians jamming if you want to and it’s your idea. Whereas if you were actually to orchestrate that , everyone would have their own interpretation even if you gave them the exact music to play they’d put their own timbre and spin on it. That’s great, but there’s something really lovely about you going this is my world, this is what I wish was real, and brnging that out. The Ammoncontact album is like that. He’s just gone this is my concept and made it, it’s so fresh because before hearing it you would expect that was possible.
Big faith no more fan, beastie boys. Sepultura. I was into metal, it was pretty dark stuff, bordering on industrial a lot of it, but also stuff like, I love Primus – les claypool is the best bass player I’ve ever heard, I love that stuff. Also I was really into local bands as well, we were really lucky at that point in time, we had some really fantastic local bands like Befuddle and Three. Three were really the best. That’s Ben Green, who lives in Melbourne now, and is part of High Pass Filter. That stuff is really fresh, it’s got a hip hop edge bringing electronic edge in and even folk and rock sentiments. It’s a mish mash of sound, but he brings it together in a really cool way.

They sound like comparisons to the music you’re playing now. Obviously the music is made differently but fundamentally the ways of describing it sound similar.
BP: I think a lot of musicians and electronic producers kind of go I’m going to make a track in this genre, in this style, and it’s almost like a synthesis problem where they’ve gotta get the right sound, gotta put it together with the right song structure. Whereas I’m more interested in stuff that’s like OK so previous to this here’s what’s gone down, maybe we can take elements of this and that and make something new. It’s like the art world, it’s constantly evolving according to what people have been exposed to and filtered in their own way, and the new materials and things that are available to them.

What do you think of Canberra at the moment?
BP: It’s so commercialised now. I think the sense of community has really suffered. If you go back two to four years ago, the way things worked was that the artists initiated most of the things that happened. So bands or DJs would say, we’ll get our mates and put on a night. Whereas now promoters actually orchestrate a lot of it, and because they’re not musicians, cause they want to make their money back, it’s become commercialised and things are branded really strongly and it’s been almost reduced to a consumer choice. What will I consume tonight. Rather than based on the experience.

How do you reconcile your commercial possibilities as a designer/economics grad with your creative aims as a musician/DJ?
BP: With music I pretty much let it all go, I don’t need to be the biggest most famous DJ in the world. I’m happy to play and share my music with people on the terms that that happens. But at the same time that’s not the way it works at all. You do have to make the effort to project yourself with an image and everything, you have to be consistent. The way you get gigs in this town isn’t by playing really well, it’s by talking to people and going ‘Yeah, you should get me for your night’which I find really strange because I think if I was a promoter I’d just pick the coolest music that was out there rather than thinking ‘oh this person has talked to me and they really want the gig’ so I find it all a bit confusing and I’m not very good at dealing with it all, but I guess to some extent I am managing somehow and I’m not sure how. That’s the thing I’m worst at. I have big ethical issues with the way things work, I just don’t understand how it can be like that. Music’s good or it’s not. I don’t see how you can just pick people on the basis that they seem nice or they bought you a beer or something.
There’s a serious amount of people who really dig music, and listen to music and seek it out. Most people just want background music, something with a beat, something with a beat to dance to, something they recognise so they can sing along to it, it’s a totally different world to the one I’m operating in. I’m not anti-popular music at all. If it’s great, that’s fantastic. But at the same time, I can’t imagine wanting to get the latest compilation of ‘What’s hot now’ because that’ll do.
There’s two different purposes for music. There’s really soulful, fulfilling human interaction experience. But then there’s also this is an entertainment experience that I’ll consume and it’s not that important to me so I am willing to let other people decide what I am going to listen to.
It’s so emotive, you can hear a track that you haven’t heard for five years, but you’ll remember exactly where you were when you heard it last, how you felt, your state of mind at the time, you might even get a waft of the smell that was on the wind that day. It’s emotive stuff. My record collection is more like a photo album than my photo albums, because I have such better recall of what was going on at that time from that than I would from looking at a photo.

Bec Paton - Broken Beat Brat (hosted by Southern Steppa)

Bec Paton - Mixed for ITM (hosted by inthemix.com.au)

Bec's current top ten:
Tipper - Ruck (Just Music)
Luke Vibert - Gwithian (Planet Mu)
Bruno Pronsato - Live in Cascadia (Orac)
Si Begg - Muchacha (Noodles)
Idjut Boys - Easy Amigo (Bearfunk)
I:Cube - Tokyo Uno (Versatile)
Stephen Robinson - Lord Lucan is Still Missing (12 Apostles)
Funkstorung - AP1105 (!K7)
Slope - Want'Choo Longa (Sonar Kollectiv)
Tomboy - Player, Playon (Gomma)

If you're in Sydney you can catch Bec playing Saturdays at @Newtown and at plenty of other nights around town including the upcoming Amnesty fundraisers in Canberra and Sydney.
Music DJ

News

2005-07-11T11:12:00.000+09:00

The new TV On The Radio record is done. Not on the shelves done quite yet, but there's a full tracklisting and short interview at Pitchfork. Their last album was one of the best of the year, I can't wait.
Jason Sweeney from Prettyboy Crossover and Vince from Underground Lovers are working on a new album. Perfect. Lovers were one of my favourite '90s indie groups, their hazy shoegazer pop still gets me through just about anything. Though when the started getting into drum'n'bass later on in the decade they kinda lost momentum. Teaming up with PBXO is perfect, his melancholy electronic soundscapes will complement Vince's voice to a t.
Architecture In Helsinki have to be one of the busiest twee pop, nine member bands around right now. Attention stalkers, follow them right around the world on their blog.
Music

Q and Not U not anymore

2005-07-09T11:20:00.000+09:00

After seven years, three albums and a bunch of singles, the punk disco outfit, signed to hardcore label Dischord (and Popfrenzy in Australia) since 98 say on their site that the band reached their shared goals and they're ready to move on, thanks to everyone, then they rave about how happy they are. It sounds like a cover, who's got some dirt?
Music

The single's life

2005-07-09T10:08:00.000+09:00

Noone buys them anymore, except on vinyl. But a lot of thought still goes into choosing them. They're important for radio airplay, video shows and even TV ads. So the decisions get made with whoever's most important - in Australia, indie bands will submit their album to Triple J, the national youth radio station, who then suggest which song should be the lead single. They're brutal about it too, they'll play hardball for shorter edits of the song if they think it's too long. Here in Japan it's even harder, a band simply won't get into the charts without a TV ad tie-in, so it's all about linking up with an ad agency (of course they make the decisions). Bands need the airplay to sell the album, promote tours, promote themselves.
But the thing is, most bands are fairly eclectic. Well many are. They have three dimensions, rather than the one or two they're painted in press releases and the following articles. And the choice of single has a big impact on the shape of that painted picture in the press and in their listener's minds.
So bands assume people will dig through the singles and find whatever gold is in the albums. Which they sometimes do. But mostly minds are made up by that time. That first flush defines the band.
I was watching the Cocktails last night at Shibuya O-Nest and it struck me that whatever song that band released on single would define virtually a different band. The Herd had a similar problem, their sound is pretty diverse, but their first single Scallops - chosen by Triple J - just about ruled them out for a lot of people. Despite the power of many of their other songs.
I guess some of this could change as niche radio and communities make it easier to have a whole picture of an artist. For some reason I think it's unlikely these fundamentals will shift, especially with such numbers of acts competing for attention.
But maybe it's no bad thing. Kinda like the difference between seeing a band live and hearing them on record can be totally different as they reconstruct songs outside of the studio, perhaps the single stream is just another slant on a band?
Music

Kenny Larkin in Tokyo

2005-07-06T18:17:00.000+09:00

His best known alias is Dark Comedy, but I never knew that Kenny Larkin was in the US Air Force?! From Detroit, he's also one of techno's more inspired producers, recording for a bunch of labels including Warp, KMS, Peacefrog and Transmat.
He's touring Japan with a new best of - 'The Chronicles 92 - 97' - plus an instore at HMV in Shibuya on the 17th of July at 7pm.
Music Techno

Gutterbreakz does Cyclic

2005-07-06T17:03:00.000+09:00

Check Gutterbreakz for interviews with Seb Chan (Cyclic Defrost/Sub Bass Snarl), Scott Brown (Southern Steppa/DJ Kodama) and Adam Moore (DJ Minikomi) on Cyclic's Euro sampler (see my review here), grime and the state of electronic music in Australia. It's a good read.
BTW, Kodama & Eli Murray are playing at the Bellingen Global Festival, both killer DJs worth checking. Kodama's also doing his first set at Frigid in Sydney in late August, supporting Hermitude at their album launch.
Music Media Grime

Cassette culture gets a remix

2005-07-05T18:43:00.000+09:00

Mix tape culture was basically a boot in the backside for the alternative counterculture in the '80s. Despite the record industry's comical Home Taping is Killing Music campaign, mix tapes were the heart of so much of the decade's music. Their importance is only just being registered. Thurston Moore's written a great coffee table book about them, even. But without them the international noise scenes would never have happened, people traded tapes and then sponsored each other for tours. Hip hop, house, jungle, all these were definitely built around the mixtape. It's something that feels a bit lost in this new decade of CD mixes, iTunes playlists and MP3 downloads.
Anyway a cat called Richcolour is working on getting his mixtape collection online. Mastermix.org is a collection of hip hop, house and soul mixtapes on MP3 for download, mostly sourced from mid '80s London pirate stations. And everything from Orlando Voorn to Troublefunk and Jazzy Jeff to Double Dee & Steinski's classic Lessons.
Music

Laughing with the Wire

2005-07-05T17:57:00.000+09:00

I mistakenly picked up last month's Wire at Warzawa (Shibuya) last week - assuming that the indie/electronic store in town would have the latest issue. I was wrong. The one I saw at HMV the day before was newer. Still it had the free CD, Wire Tapper 13, attached, so it was definitely worth the cover money. I might look at getting a subscription, it's expensive, but the CD is a fantastic guide to new music, and an invaluable addition to the magazine as so many of the artists are hard to access, expensive to buy and so on.
Anyway an afternoon at a Hiro-o cafe reading and I've read my way through it. The theme was humour and music, do they mix. Funny, because I asked Archer Prewitt some similar questions about his work with the Cocktails when I talked to him last week. Even funnier because the Wire is probably the biggest culprit when it comes to making cutting edge interesting music sound dull. They must be the worst of a bad bunch of music journos who think using big words (thesaurus at the ready while writing) makes them sound more intelligent. Actually it does. But it also makes it pretty damn opaque and virtually inscrutable to the novice music fan. Still, I guess they'd say, the novice fan doesn't read the Wire.
Anyway, adding a bit of comedy to the blend did wonders for this edition. I think the choice of the Chap's latest disc Ham as CD of the week must have been a reasonably cynical choice to fit with the theme. However, it was a great review and I think I like the album even more after reading the review.
The CD is fantastic too. Mandarin Movie, Rob Mazurek's new outfit sounds like Maddslinky's best most textural stuff with all the space filled up by Scorn and Godspeed. Pretty good. Ariel Pink sounds like John Waters era Divine covering '50s rock'n'roll. Hanne Hukkelberg is sweet, I'm hoping to catch her in Norway in August.
Music Media

A ghost town here

2005-07-04T14:42:00.000+09:00

My ibook has white spots. So here I am at the medical centre, also known as the Apple Centre. With any luck they will fix it quick sharp. Fortune Grey has been a little quiet, like a ghost town recently, so I will forgive anyone who says why bother posting here. Still you really should not say that. Things have been busy.
I met up with Sam Prekop and Archer Prewitt on Friday afternoon to talk about solo albums, touring, painting, comics and the Sea and Cake. Both really cool guys. And Sams band was killer on Saturday night - with Chad Taylor (drums), Archer (guitar), Josh Abrams (bass) and Rob Mazurek (cornet), actually Rob and Chad played support as Chicago Underground Duo too. Both were amazing, with many similar elements, but very different results. Tonight I will see Sams band again at Shibuya O-East, supported this time by a Japanese post-rock crew whose name I still have not worked out. Archers solo outfit as well as the recently reformed Cocktails are on next weekend too.
Music

Basic Channel pop?

2005-06-29T20:01:00.000+09:00

Well not really. Well not at all. But I've never known much about their background. They are very mysterious. But when I interviewed Thaddi from City Centre Offices recently, he mentioned in passing that Moritz von Oswald - half of Basic Channel, aka Maurizio, M, Burial Mix, Rhythm & Sound - used to play in Palais Schaumberg with Thomas Fehlmann and Holger Hiller. They were caught up in the New German Wave scene, with bands like Daf, Andreas Dorau and Nena, which Herrmann says was nothing political, just a bunch of bands doing cheaply produced, mostly electronic music with German lyrics.
Music Techno

New look Spinach 7

2005-06-27T12:21:00.000+09:00

Fascinating investigative journalism, light-hearted short pieces and music features made Spinach 7 a real page turner of a magazine, and a breath of fresh air on Australian newsagent shelves. Needless to say it was hugely disappointing when the magazine went belly up late last year. The Australian magazine industry is serious business, huge amounts of money are invested by the big houses in getting their magazines into prime newsagent real estate and the content is the least important factor. Editor Eve Vincent explained the problems at Online Opinion.
Still, it's been great to see the team band together to set up an online hub. They've split off into three cohesive units. Signature, which takes on the investigative mantle, reporting topical issues without jumping into the press scrum. This month they compare the experience of SBS journo John Martinkus, who was kidnapped in Iraq, with Douglas Wood. Soundplay, which as it says looks at music and arts. This time Dan Rule looks at lo-fi country kid and Melbourne expat Toby Burke. Mo:life, the last piece of the puzzle is an email list that looks at the impact of mobile media on media, technology and business.
Media

Listening and reading

2005-06-24T22:00:00.000+09:00

It's been a while since I last posted, so here's to another roundup of music and other things taking my fancy. The European sampler from Cyclic Defrost is unsurprisingly great. If you want to read more, check my review at Stylus. But the short version is: the track from Pivot is amazing and I'm dying to hear their new album, Francis Plagne, Inchtime and Saddleback are brilliant too. The rest is great, but those were the ones that surprised and thrilled me.
Everyone's been waiting for Bugz to drop the first big broken beat crossover, but maybe Royskopp have beaten them to it. 49%, on their new album, The Understanding, pastes a huge garage vocal ala Robert Owens onto a Maddslinky-style rocking chair beat. Those Norwegians also worked on their countryperson Annie's debut album. She's been around for a while, releasing singles that everyone from electroclash and househeads through to indie kids get hyped about. Her new album reminds me of that moment, 1am, drunk, at some dodgy bar, and dancing to Madonna, when you start to think that the conically breasted New Yorker is alright. It's kinda like St. Etienne and Madonna with a touch of Robbie Williams, doesn't sound like my usual thing, but there you go. By the way, the new St. Etienne album's quite listenable too. It's no So Tough, but it's not that forgettable last one either. Did Brett Anderson get back together with Bernard Butler? The first song on the Tear's new album sounds like vintage Suede.
The new records from The Chap, Nudge, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, The Legends, 2400W and I'm Not A Gun (AKA John Tejada) are great too. I've been hunting for the new album, the first real one, from UK grime crew Roll Deep, but after turning Shibuya upside down, I've given up for the moment. Actually I've been making do with Radioclit's screwed down and chopped up version, thanks to Jace/Rupture.
I've been flying through books lately... Yukio Mishima's oddly existential Patriotism had me up all night last night, thinking that is, after finishing the short 53 pager in no time. Insomnia isn't cool. Another short one, Murakami's Hear The Wind Sing. And I'm now reading The Elephant Vanishes, a collection of Murakami's short stories, which seem to owe a debt to Raymond Carver.
Music

5.7 quake shakes Tokyo

2005-06-20T10:30:00.000+09:00

I've always been pretty flippant about earthquakes - only nine months ago I was working in the seismology group at Geoscience Australia in Canberra and had never felt a noticable tremor - but since being in Tokyo I've felt several. Having no control over things wobbling around you is not super comfortable.
There was a 3.9 in Tokyo Bay a few weeks and another smaller one last week, but last night just as I was about to put down my book (Haruki Murakami's Hear The Wind Sing) the building started to shake. It went on for quite a while, a painting was swinging on the wall and the walls creaked a little as our house swayed. The USGS reports that it was a moderate, 5.7 magnitude, tremor at 50km depth near the coast of Honshu in Japan.
Opinion pages and online forums keep worrying about the big one, I've even heard about people leaving town because they expect it soon. Unsettling stuff.

Come to Sundown on the weekend

2005-06-18T11:43:00.000+09:00

Tokyo heads up. I'm playing music at Sundown next Sunday afternoon - 26/06 - It's a afternoon type thing with laptop live beats, DJs, VJs and all that sorta thing. Cheap entry and a cool little bar in Shimokitizawa. Kicks off at five.

Call up your local MP3

2005-06-14T13:21:00.000+09:00

I hear text blogs are passe, so last year, there's only so much you can say in 300 words, now MP3 blogs are the only way to really connect about music.
It's probably all true. But I like trying to say it, in some ways I prefer reading people talk about the music they love too, rather than just providing a list of downloads with accompanying spiels.
Still those sites are invaluable ways to hear new sounds, especially here in Tokyo where the shops have an aversion to letting you listen to CDs. Levins lists a bunch of the best MP3 sites on his great blog, you should read the Manitoba interview he has up too.
If you're after something a bit more electronic, check out De:Bug's podcast site. It's one of the best local music mags in the world, based in Berlin, so the podcasts are on point. Madstyle's Chillusion EP is great, Frank Bretschneider, Monohm, Nero, there is so much top new electronic music.

Autechre/LFO @ Club Citta, Tokyo, 10/06/05

2005-06-13T22:03:00.000+09:00

The Warp crew blew into Tokyo on Friday, the gig was about 20 minutes out of Tokyo at Club Citta in Kawasaki. I met up with a bunch of travelling Australian electro heads including Seb from Cyclic Defrost, Dan from Singularity and his partner - who were all en route to Sonar, Barcelona - as well as Andrew (Little Nobody) who's in Tokyo at the moment. First was a cheap, delicious dinner at Ootoya. Then off to La Cittadella, which is kinda like Italiantown Disneyland style, complete with a lit-up transparent Tower of Pisa.
They asked if we had cameras on entry, I said yes, so they asked me to drop it in a box. I looked at the pile of cameras and said actually I don't have a camera, so she said go through. I could see why they banned cameras when the lights went out later on, for a pitch black Autechre set.
It’s a huge club… like the Hordern Pavillion, but with killer sound, especially considering that the bar was solidly packed from the front to the back. We could barely squeeze in.
Rob Hall from Skam was DJing complex electronics leaning more to the melodic rather than abrasive end of the spectrum. It's funny seeing people spinning glowsticks to abstract IDM. Out in the foyer, the merchandise stall had every Warp CD and LP you could want, well not everything, but loads of great stuff, even the Boards of Canada promo kaleidoscope. Crowds of Japanese indie kids milled about the foyer sporting cool t-shirts - my favourite one said 'Redrum'.
LFO had plenty of flashing lights. Starting with repetitive breaks grinding into harsh industrial, he sounded like Front 242 at times, all foreboding synth sounds, freaky laugh samples and noisy clatter. The set moved into ravey sirens and plenty of bleeps. Just about the end of the set came the bleep anthem and LFO calling card, with its stripped back bleep happy beats and BBC-intoned sample, L. F. O.
The lights went out. We had to hold hands to stay together as we attempted to squeeze into the back right-hand corner of the room. Autechre were spinning a fabric of twisted electronic shapes, shards of noise, but most of all deep bassy grooves. Sure they were often wobbly, syncopated or even off kilter, but they were far from arrhythmic. They have loads of imitators on record, but noone can touch them live. Even Funkstorung, who I saw in Paris a few years ago, had to resort to bootleg pop to make it work.
Autechre's sound is uncompromisingly abstract, but the thousands of Japanese hands in the air during a particularly brutal section of the set can attest to its impact. At other times you can hear influences poking through the mix. One messy Machine Drum/Merck-esque section gradually shows up a lineage from Detroit techno, the sparkling high hats and melody breaking out over a hip hop beat.
Loads of people were asleep in the corridor, I felt as though we should be quiet as we walked out, because the trains don't start up until 4:45 am so people nap until the first train. We sat about the foyer too, chatting about Pierre Bourdieu and his theories on taste as distinction and cultural capital and its relevance to ideas of authenticity in music, especially with Detroit vs British techno (black vs white, middle class vs working class) and the extension to hip hop in Australia. Fascinating, but at 4:45 we were back on the train to Jiyugaoka.

ATP Australia

2005-06-07T13:06:00.000+09:00

Any word on an All Tomorrow's Parties in Australia? Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth mentioned it when I interviewed him last year. He said at the time that Jim and Warren from The Dirty Three were lined up to curate.
Which would be awesome. But it hasn't eventuated yet. I was thinking another premo choice for curator would be Oren Ambarchi, the wild musician who's equally revered by indie kids, avant garde sound artists and electronic heads. However, maybe it is the lessons of his What is Music? festival that cautioned against going with ATP Australia.
What is Music got into bed with Lees & West (promoters of the Big Day Out) this year. The lineup was awesome: The Residents, Chicks On Speed, Pan Sonic, Sunn O))), Black Dice, 00|00, Dead C, Scott Horscroft Ensemble and loads of others. But tickets were pricey ($80) and there just wasn't the audience.

Jens Lekman @ Mudd Club, Berlin 15/04/05

2005-06-04T12:57:00.000+09:00

Something about Jens Lekman’s tongue-in-cheek take on folky pop – music that’s often dominated by over-earnest songwriters too traumatised to cut it in public - suggested he could be a good live performer.
A couple of cute girls wandered out onto the Mudd Club stage. One was a mod, in sharp bob, playing bass. The other one was a rocker, on percussion and backup vocals. They glowed their way through the gig, while a couple of guys sat in behind on drums and guitar, serving up a fun fruit salad of acoustic indie pop, calypso rhythms and odd little cabaret moments.
Dressed in a red t-shirt, his short curly hair poking out from under an old cloth hat, Lekman looked like Superman’s copy-boy sidekick Jimmy Olsen. His warm voice reminds me of Morrissey, though where the coiffed one tends towards bleak, suicidally black humour, Lekman is closer to cheeky irony. I’ve always thought a little too loaded up on irony. But live it makes sense. His cheeky grin, and the big white corsage on his guitar instantly charmed the crowd.
The 100 or so pilsener-clutching Berliners were hooked by the indie cabaret. But a handful of American tourists kept talking. So Lekman unplugged his microphone, put down his guitar and played the final few tracks (a couple of his own, and a cover of early ‘80s mutant disco producer Arthur Russell) unplugged with a ukelele. It was twee of course, it was a ukelele! But despite the fact that nobody could hear a thing, it was wonderful.

Tell me how any sane person could resist lines like “If I’m your psychologist / then who’s the psychologist’s psychologist?” or “I’m not a political fighter / I don’t even have a cigarette lighter”.
Music

Interpol @ Columbiahalle, Berlin, 13/04/05

2005-06-03T11:36:00.000+09:00

Interpol played one of Berlin’s biggest rock venues to a sell-out crowd of German indie kids, 20 to 30-something office workers and the odd Australian tourist.
The poised-for-fame Spoon, who I have been dying to catch live, was first up. But thanks to the super punctual German promoters, they started right on nine O’clock, and were off within half an hour, meaning I only caught the last song. A quick vox pop on the crowd revealed that (a) not many people knew who the hell they were, and (b) they sounded a lot like Interpol, boasting a set of tight rock songs complimented by deadpan vocals.
The venue flooded with a wave of cheers when Interpol took the stage. The quartet has enough big songs to please a crowd and net them a few cheers of recognition. But the roar settled down quickly: the songs barely strayed from the album versions, and even the breaks sounded like the gaps between tracks on a CD. There was no between song banter, not even a ‘Hello Berlin!’
They were nonchalant. But rather than studied cool, it was the disinterested routine of a band getting through the set list and onto the next town.
The New Yorkers wear their influences on their sleeves. That’s no bad thing, just about every band does. But when there’s not much more it can make the music a little hollow. Interpol’s big heroes, like Television’s Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine, were fuelled by fierce on-stage battles for the creative direction of the band. It just seems that Interpol have settled in for the ride.
Music

Nina Gordon is crazy as

2005-06-01T18:24:00.000+09:00

There's a soft folky version of NWA's Straight Outta Compton floating about. Apparently Nina Gordon - formerly of Veruca Salt - knocked it off in downtime recording for her new solo album. She's kinda like a less earthy Beth Orton. It's quite odd to hear her reciting Icecube's gangster verse word for word... Switching from Icecube to a fey girl's voice is pretty cool, the same trick Martine and Tricky employed years ago on their awesome cover of Public Enemy's Black Steel.
Here's a random tangent. Covers are no big thing of course, but in the past they would have been either temporaly limited to a specific gig, or else royalties would be paid on a live record. A cover of NWA on Gordon's album - apparently there won't be - would earn the the hip hop heads a few extra dollars (not that Dr Dre and Icecube are particularly low on funds). But the controversy of recording this track will undoubtedly help raise her profile - the song's even available on her website - so does she owe NWA something?

Look behind the music biz

2005-06-01T16:09:00.000+09:00

I find myself at the Australian Music Online website regularly. It's one of those rare Australian government projects that works. Maybe it's because they're affiliated with the funding bodies that steamroll a lot of the bands or that they aren't dependent on commercial advertising.
The band interviews are pretty similar to the rest of the sites out there. But the music industry pieces are great - they pin down the people who actually run things. And it's fascinating stuff.
They recently had my brother chatting about the workings of his label Elefant Traks, but they have have interviews with A&R, PR, managers, bookers, writers and basically everyone in the industry.

Ban pokies by 2012

2005-06-01T15:19:00.000+09:00

It's a common sight to see someone's grandma guiding the last dollars of her pension into a poker machine at RSLs and pubs in Australia. Supporters - mostly businesses making money from the bright boxes - say that pokies are a rare enjoyment for these people.
But in a country with the biggest per capita gambling losses in the world, most are simply addicted to the possibility of winning big. Designers of the machines say the big challenge is making the odds of winning look like chance, even when they are strictly controlled to ensure profit for the operator.
The cost to the community must be massive. But there has been no admission so far that it's an issue. Maybe that is set to change. The Age quotes Victorian politician Robin Cooper, who has outside of party lines to call for a ban on pokies when the licenses expire in 2012.

Moodymann in Tokyo!

2005-05-31T20:02:00.000+09:00

Kenny Dixon Jnr is one of the handful of househeads really worth checking live, he's militant, soulful, talented. And he's putting on a Mahogani Music night featuring Andres and Pirahna Head, Paul Randolph, Roberta Sweed and Nikki-O at Liquid Rooms at the end of July, the day before I will have to leave.
The translated info on Let's Enjoy Tokyo is worth reading, but to buy tickets you should go to the Liquid Room.
Also Daniel Wang's playing the 26th of June, and July 17 they have DJ Eye from the Boredoms playing for seven hours (!) at Liquid Room 1st Anniversary.

New iPod...

2005-05-31T19:38:00.000+09:00

iPods are a big step forward - as much a hot new technology as a zeitgeist defining change in the way people listen to music - but the manufacture seems pretty average on the recent models.
My 4th gen 40GB model died after only five months. Fortunately I'm in Tokyo, where the super-helpful Mac Geniuses at the Apple Ginza store were happy to replace it, but if it happens again in seven months then I'll just have to throw it away.
Crazy, as friends with early models - one good friend has a happily functioning 1st gen 5GB model - report no problems.

Design Festa, Tokyo

2005-05-30T17:15:00.000+09:00

Hordes of Japanese artists, designers, musicians, video artists, sculpters, rappers, pop stars and some seriously random kids descend on Tokyo every six months to show their wares. The Design Festa was at the massive Tokyo Big Sight festival hall on May 15.

This t-shirt really summed the whole day up. Cute ambitious and DIY. One of the coolest things I saw was the hip hop heads by one of the exits - one guy MCing into a set of headphones plugged into the mic jack. Other stalls that stood out were the badges from Bota Botan, great beats from DJ Better, actually there were loads of great things. But there were so many stalls that my head was really hurting by the end.
Amazing... it'd be wild to see the zine fair at TINA (Newcastle, Australia) get a bit wider in the sorts of creative work people can display.
Tokyo

Recommend me podcasts

2005-05-30T16:30:00.000+09:00

Five months since I left my weekly radio show in Australia. Radio too - it's not that easy to catch radio without a tuner (travelling with an iPod and a laptop) and without knowing the local stations. But I'm dying to hear some good radio... so podcasts?
Any good ones? I'm open to different types of music - indie, electronic, house, hip hop - as long as it's interesting, well-produced and new.
Hit the comments up with some hot shows.
Music, Podcasting, Podcasts

Khalid's new website

2005-05-27T18:00:00.000+09:00

Ben Frost was fantastic at TINA* last year, I got hooked on his band School of Emotional Engineering at the same time. He collaborated with Melbourne video artist Khalid whose beautiful abstract images, simple visuals and understated approach really impressed me. Anyway Khalid has a new website showing some of his work.

* Don't expect a great site from TINA, for the second year running it's fairly average.

Karaoke ala Tokyo

2005-05-27T12:27:00.000+09:00

If you're in Tokyo you have to be doing regular karaoke. Here's a quick primer.
Oasis - Shakermaker
Sonny and Cher - I Got You Babe
Simon & Garfunkel - I Am A Rock
Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself
The Who - Substitute
The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
Billy Joel - Piano Man
Other surefire hits include Downtown, Sweet Child O'Mine, I Will Always Love You, Tide Is High, Heaven Is A Place On Earth and Ghostbusters.
Don't hold back.
Category: Music, Karaoke

Miles Davis is baad

2005-05-27T12:09:00.000+09:00

Listening to jazz is cool, but reading about it is wild.
It’s the only way to cut through the kid-gloves holding-an-antique thing most people have with jazz these days. I’m reading Miles Davis’s autobiography. Sure he was well educated – musically and otherwise – but he will try anything, listening to classical composers, ‘60s rock bands, funk. Chasing his idols around bars in St Louis and New York.
His idols did their own thing too. Dizzy, Bird and others. Most didn’t even go to music school, let alone play the boring academic thing.

Miles’s English is hip to put it mildly. He rants about Juillard music school in New York - for being racist in not being up on music like jazz and blues and being so focused on white classical music.
But you could get most music schools with that sort of complaint. They’re good at teaching the technical stuff. But when it gets down to original composition, you can’t learn that. Jeff Parker from Tortoise said much the same thing when I interviewed him last year for Cyclic Defrost, except he was talking about a jazz school.
I’m listening to the New Thing! compilation. Soul Jazz really have changed the game when it comes to reissues and compilations, they just have so much love for the music and they’ve picked up where Rhino left off.
Other travelling jazz favourites include Albert Ayler’s Love Cry and the Art Ensemble of Chicago – Reese and the Smooth Ones.
Category: Music, Jazz

Band or small business

2005-05-24T17:28:00.000+09:00

"Artists like Linkin Park and Coldplay could be the first of many flare-ups, with more artists starting to view themselves as small business units and not major label adjuncts." Digital Music News.
Bands like Gorillaz, Limp Bizkit or Coldplay are driving the bottom line of their major label sponsors - look at recent problems for EMI and Warner.
It is easy to see why bands are welcoming the changes in the music industry. Legendary producer Steve Albini's summary of the problems for bands signing with major labels makes for pretty depressing reading. Anything that lets bands discard such a huge feeding chain must be great.
So what are large multinational record companies good for? Spending money, long lunches, tricky contracts. Well seriously, they have big back-catalogues, which will be underscore any online music future. And they have good distribution networks, though these are increasingly being made redundant. Their response to the massive changes to the music industry looks like a big marketing blunder.
There are still plenty of kids who want to be stars. And a lot of these don't have access to lawyers or savvy management. But the web is connecting people, and increasingly these people will sidestep the hoops and payola.
Maybe the music industry will split. Already major labels are cutting so many acts. A main industry packed with Pop Stars and Idol contestants. And an alternative powered by P2P, independent labels, netlabels, human relationships. Does this sound a little too utopian? It's becoming a reality in Australia, where the success of a handful of indie labels has shown this can be creatively liberating as well as financially worthwhile.
Category: Music Industry

12 of the best

2005-05-21T18:20:00.000+09:00

1. Various – Sexual Life of Savages: Underground Post Punk from Sao Paolo, Brazil (Soul Jazz LP)
This dark rhythmic punk funk puts most of the white bread stuff currently exciting the NME to shame. Highlights for me are tracks by Fellini and As Mercenarias.

2. Six Vicious - Krunk's Not Dead (Sixtoo 7")
Heavy instrumental hip hop with a dark post punk mood, the sleeve’s cool too.
3. Vex’d – Gunman/Smart Bomb (Planet Mu 12”)
Heavy heavy dubstep . The A-side is all ravey synth stabs that build into a massive ragga dubstep. The B-side is more on the industrial tip. Both bombs.
4. Acetate Zero – Crestfallen (Arbouse CD)
Beautiful Mogwai-ish shoegazer soundscapes, lots of atmosphere, odd French vocals.
5. Jackie Mitoo - Ayatollah/Mash Up Babylon (Basic Replay 12")
Low down dubbed out mixes of the ska-est rude bwoy.
6. Ark – Caliente (Perlon LP)
I loved Ark’s single a couple of years ago, so I’ve been looking forward to this album. It’s as good as I could have hoped. Off the wall electro, little bits of deep house, techno with a real punk do it your own way vibe.
7. Keith Tucker – Detroit Saved My Soul (Seventh Sign 12”)
The title track, It’s A Mood (Detroit Saved My Soul), is a deep groove that could easily cross over in a very big way. The B-sides are heavy Detroit electro funk, equally good.
8. Jay Haze – Love For A Strange World (Kitty Yo LP)
The label boss of Context and Context-terrior drops a solo album for Kitty Yo. The results are glitchy electro pop, reminiscent of Ken Cesar's tracks for Cheap. Very cool.
9. Marco Passarini – Sullen Look (Peacefrog LP)
His cover of I House U last year was excellent and this one keeps the tone. It’s a bit more accessible: extremely funky electro with a sharp techno feel.
10. Various – Cooperation Sessions 1 (Goya LP)
I bought the second in the Co-op broken beat series last year from Picadilly Records. That was essential, this is even more so, I was thrilled to see it in a sale bin at Disk Union in Shibuya. A little more experimental and I guess a little rougher round the edges.
11. Mood II Swing – I Got Love (Bingo 12”)
I love Ciafone and Mood II Swing. I’m not totally excited about what they’ve done with this, instead of the heavy repetition and dub delay of the original, they’ve just thrown a big drum’n’bass break under it. Still it’s a killer break and sure to big for d’n’b heads.
12. Dynarec – Eiso X (Vapourwave 12”)
Former Delsin head drops the first track on, what I assume is, his own new label. Still a little of the broken vibe that colours most Delsin, but much harder. This is dark, hard, distorted electro techno like early New York Nugroove stuff from Joey Beltram and Lenny Dee.

I’ve also picked up old records by Freakwater, Durutti Column, Motherhood, Lisa Shaw, Monochrome Set, Orange Juice and BMX Bandits. The guys from Solo Action sent me their back-catalogue, which I’ll write about before too long (suffice to say it’s killer broken techno).
Category: Music

Google ads?

2005-05-21T18:07:00.000+09:00

I was a little skeptical at first, but so many sites are tacking on Google Ads - loads of blogs, Sydney Morning Herald and Inthemix.com.au - and plenty of people are talking about the profits from doing it. So there's now one on Fortune Grey. What do you think?

Cyclic 11 out

2005-05-19T14:31:00.000+09:00

Every issue seems to run a little bit later than the last. Still Cyclic Defrost is Australia's best electronic music mag. Check out the interviews with Sydney's Feral Media label, the Frequency Lab artist-run space, Melbourne's Velure, Architecture In Helsinki, activist hip hop crew Combat Wombat, and internationally Hrvatski, Autechre, MIA, Chris Cunningham, Sole and McEnroe. Truckloads of reviews, including my report on Budapest-based Chabz & Krizo. Plus, in what is getting to be a highlight of the magazine, a fantastic trip back into Sir Robbo's past in Cyclic Selects.
Category: Media

Fit tight with Tokyo Dawn

2005-05-18T12:57:00.000+09:00

You would have to be an obsessed format fetishist to be still resisting the move from hard copy music (vinyl, CDs, etc) to hard drive storage (MP3 players, etc). It's hard to argue with the logic - music's easy to access, search and play, though hi-fi is still a long reach for most users - and indeed I've been dragged (flailing my arms to grab anything on my way) across to the itunes side by its convenience for travelling.
So what's the potential for a purely online label?
There's no doubt that online releases get rid of some big costs involved with running a label. No need to press up CDs, it side-steps the labyrinth of distribution (especially for international scale releases). It's just about inevitable that labels will move there eventually. But are the consequent losses in immediate revenue to much of a compromise at the moment?
Well there are a few online labels out there. And not all are simply profile raising exercises to get the artists signed to a bigger label.
One of the coolest I've found is Tokyo Dawn Records, who are oddly enough based in Berlin instead of the Japanese capital (I discovered them by accident while searching for Tokyo beatmakers). TDR started in '97 as a net-label, but have branched in the past few years to release the odd CD or LP.
Their releases are broadly similar to people like Goya, Bugz, Delsin, Sonarkollektiv and Madlib. But they're marking their own territory, and from my listening sound good, albeit sometimes with lower production values (which may in any case be more closely linked to the MP3 format I'm listening in). Deep lazy downbeat hip hop with tough cool production, dubby electronic grooves, broken beat that flirts with techno and breakbeat. All in all, extremely listenable.
They're very much into the Open Source ethic too, so most releases are available free P2P or even directly from the site, in a range of media types.
Some of the better known names on board include Alex Cortez and Dharma One. But it's worth delving deeper, as the lower profile acts are equally exciting. Check out label boss Prymer's jazz funk flavoured mix sets or the premo new LP from Comfort Fit that Straight No Chaser described as somewhere between Sa-Ra and Bugz In The Attic. It's a free zipped download.
Category: Music

Torture fine by Deakin Uni

2005-05-17T22:22:00.000+09:00

The head of Deakin Uni's law school has argued that torture is 'morally defensible', even when the subject turns out to be innocent, according to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Mirko Bagaric and Julie Clarke's words, sure to justify future Abu Ghraibs and ensure extra funds for Deakin Uni, were published in a US law journal.

'Epic' end to mainstream media?

2005-05-07T11:48:00.000+09:00

Stateside media commentators The Poynter Institute have been predicting that online media would overtake its mainstream rivals for ages. Epic, a new film by two fellows at the institute, appropriately available online, predicts that newspapers will lose the race for online readers within the next 10 years.
I've often wondered when that change will arrive, because the two media cater to fundamentally different needs in their readers. People tend to 'read' papers, absorbing information about a range of subjects. They're more likely to get to an online news source via a search engine, specifically searching for the answer to a pertinent question. Aren't those quite different? But the superficially sci-fi story forecasts that the new online media will sidestep the traditional outlets (in Epic it's The New York Times), relying instead on new 'freelance editors' (AKA bloggers) and their filtering and reprioritising skills.
The Financial Times said "The film's core message has started looking less fantastical since it began capturing the imagination of figures in the media world."
Whatever your take on the issue, it's pretty crucial stuff and essential viewing.

Another cool site or 2

2005-05-04T13:59:00.000+09:00

There are so many odd little online zines or english magazines about Tokyo. Most set up by ex-pats here for corporate work, some with ear closer to the ground than others. Here are a few I've clocked in the past few days:

Tokyo Q

Japan Zine

Gundakiwi

Lali Puna at O-East

2005-05-04T12:39:00.000+09:00

Straight outta Berlin was the theme for last night's gig at O-East in Shibuya. The Goethe Institut conveniently put together a bunch of acts I missed in Berlin a few weeks ago.
I was down about missing Stephan Betke's (Pole) huge Scape showcase at the Volksbuhne the night after we left Berlin. So the sinuous, heavily layered, musical dub he brewed up last night was great.
The MIA on the bill wasn't the Sri Lanka via London one, instead it was an MIA that despite being dressed in underwear and a pile of tinsel was entirely boring.
With drums, keys, laptops and vocals, Mouse On Mars had the crowd writhing to their loping electronic grooves. The place erupted when the bass player started the intro to Wipe That Sound. They eventually finished with the punk-noise DJs Collapse collab (which was originally recorded with Matthew Herbert), which the Japanese crowd yelled along to.
If anyone's placed to lead the acid house revival it's Atom Heart. His set was a loose warm rhythm that stepped into deep warm house, squiggly acid and crackling detroit drums. Really fantastic, wish I could've seen his Senor Coconut set the night before (along with Monolake and Apparat, but it was just too expensive to go both nights).
Lali Puna create a beguiling, unaffected pop music that takes bits from glitchy experimental electronics and soft indie pop. Cue singing along: "Where do you want to go / You were the last to know / Your future." Fantastic.

Soundz From Germany confirms that for all the talk of crossover indie dance music from the UK, the people creating music that really walks the line between indie and electronic music, in a totally unaffected way, are doing it in Berlin not London.
Category: Music

Karl Bartos

2005-05-04T01:02:00.000+09:00

He's no kid these days, but the dapper keyboard jockey from Kraftwerk played a killer set in Prague recently. Read my review on inthemix.com.au.

Canada Wet

2005-05-03T12:23:00.000+09:00

Broken Social Scene, The Dears, Stars, Metric and Death From Above 1979 play a Canada showcase gig at Tokyo's Liquid Rooms on May 14. It's 5000 yen. I quite like BSS, though they strike me as a DJ group - you know the ones who seem to cover a million different styles on the one album - though that might be just because it's a collective thing.
Is there a Goethe Institut or British Council-like group promoting Canadian culture internationally? If so I guess they're involved in this.

grimey in shibuya

2005-05-01T22:03:00.000+09:00

wiley's mcing over slimzee's beats at unit on may 14, presented by the dbs crew. sounds brilliant, i've been dying to see these guys for ages. i'd love to see wiley doing some of his weirder instro stuff though.

down to the wire

2005-05-01T10:36:00.000+09:00

takkyu ishino has announced this year's lineup for wire05. djs include abe duque, ellen allien, fumiya tanaka, hell, luke slater, renato cohen, westbam and ishino himself. live will be joey beltram, the modernist, reinhard voigt, toktok and 808 state.
it's been described as japan's biggest dance music event, held at the yokohama arena. though at roughly au$130 it's kinda pricey.

punk as the cosmos

2005-04-30T12:42:00.000+09:00

brit dj tom middleton selected 'smells like electro' from sydney boy DSICO's (now deleted) punk as pussy ep. titled cosmosonica, the cd picks up where his previous mix 'the trip' stopped, featuring obscure covers like snow patrol doing beyonce's 'crazy in love'. it's out 16 may on family. good exposure, and undoubtedly more in licensing fees than the tracks ever sold on 12".
dsico has just dropped a debut artist album. no longer messing with the bastard pop of his 12"s on bondi's 12 apostles, he has been messing with a kind of rough electropop. i took a shine to it immediately, and it's getting hyped all over the place, all the sydney mags have given it great reviews, even mark moore (sexpress) gave it a plug! i noticed it on the recommended listening stand in a great little shop in shibuya the other day.

higher frequency

2005-04-29T13:13:00.000+09:00

higher frequency seems like an interesting online zine for house/techno events around tokyo. might meet up with a friend at their michael mayer gig tonight.

hyperdia is good for working out your way round the trains too.

losing it in tokyo

2005-04-29T12:50:00.000+09:00

just arrived in tokyo. still hugely jetlagged. but we've had delicate fresh tofu, lots of gyoza! and startstruck wandering about the city to take up the past three days. went up the government tower, but sadly couldn't see fuji. haven't felt an earthquake yet either, kinda hoping we will, but also hoping it's not 'the big one'.

there's so much happening. like berlin. though gigs and clubs are a lot more expensive here in tokyo. the goethe institute have a showcase happening in may called soundz from germany. it's a pretty amazing lineup of mostly german peeps like senor coconut, monolake, apparat, mouse on mars, mia, lali puna, pole and atom heart.

otherwise i'm looking forward to catching the bug, madlib, hideki kaji, keb darge, luciano... i'll probably miss half these, catch a hundred others and do some entirely random things i currently have no idea about. god i love being caught up in the flood of people around tokyo!

we had our first dose of karaoke last night too!

the australian beck?

2005-04-29T12:35:00.000+09:00

lyin' back in the shade. etc. except that the new album from tzu, set to drop in july, shows the melbourne heads messing with more. country, rock. loads more singing and live beats. looking forward to seeing this one hit radio.

criss cross

2005-04-27T07:45:00.000+09:00

criss cross publishes metropolis and japan today

it means treasure you know?

2005-04-17T23:19:00.000+09:00

we went to the closing night of tresor last night. all i can say is it´s one of the most amazing clubs i´ve ever been to. the music was intense, claustrophobic, amazing. the crowd was like the music headness of frigid or mad racket crossed with the out of control feel of a rave.
villalobos, hawtin, dj hell, james pennington (ur), mike huckaby. though downstairs in tresor was where it was at. i hardly knew anyone playing there, but it was all off the hook. troy mclure was a standout.
i asked a random girl to take a picture of us. she said you´re in luck i´m a professional photographer. and a dj. it was kelli hand, damn, just that sort of night.

solo action

2005-04-17T23:09:00.000+09:00

i was down at hardwax, one of berlin´s best record shops, the other day and discovered a fantastic label. solo-action have only released five 12s so far, no CDs. but what they´ve put out is consistently great. broken techno, like delsin who they seem to be connected to, but without that label´s smooth sheen. the solo action tracks hit that broken tech with hard syncopation, weird sounds and the odd bit of 303. it´s very disappointing that their first party happens on may 15, long after i´ve left.
the tracks that hit me were by stronghold, shed, and egotism. all worth listening to.
other things that i liked were the new albums by venetian snares, autechre and robert henke. henke´s new signal to noise is a beautiful droney-spacey artificial tribute to thunder. probably the best thing i picked up though was omar s´s great ´(and very moodymann influenced) first album just ask the lonely.

auschwitz

2005-04-12T02:48:00.000+09:00

today we went to auschwitz-birkenau.
it was pretty heart rending. looking out at hectares and hectares of barracks and the remains of gas chambers and crematoria that you've seen in so many pictures is
one thing.
the real stab in the heart is seeing the abstract victims turn into real people in front of your eyes. huge rooms filled with locks of human hair that was used in the german textile industry to make blankets and material. there was a small cabinet filled with little children's outfits. a corridor of ss mug shots of people about to be murdered, shaved heads and emaciated, but in every other way just looking like people you might know, people with hopes and aspirations. my age. there was even one that had a little wreath above it left by a younger relative.
all i could do was buy a little candle and leave it on the railway track into birkenau.

4tet strikes back

2005-04-11T01:01:00.000+09:00

fourtet, one of the most consistently fantastic producers working the line between indie and electronics, has a new album out in may. his site says it'll be called everything ecstatic, and there will be a 2 track promo 12” in april.
apparently stones throw are set to release an ep of fourtet remixes of madvillainy too!

division of laura lee

2005-04-09T17:31:00.000+09:00

heard this great new swedish band at the roxy in prague a couple of days ago. kinda on the shoegazer tip - a bit of ride, a bit of my bloody valentine - their site says they'll be playing in berlin on the 17th, brilliant.

karl bartos in prague

2005-04-05T18:47:00.000+09:00

arrived into prague this morning after an overnight train trip in a sleeper carriage - nowhere near as comfy as it sounds - to find that karl bartos of kraftwerk fame is playing here, supported by tata bojs tomorrow night. all happening at roxy, which has a cool vibe, half multimedia art space, half 2nd hand records/clothes, half great club space.

general patton

2005-04-03T22:44:00.000+09:00

canberra dj bec paton moved to sydney recently, so i interviewed her for a couple of mags.
here is a fun favourite tunes type thing for cyclic defrost.
this is a more interviewy thing that i wrote for canberrra times and then passed on to 3D World.

riot police popping balloons at baxter?

2005-03-27T17:45:00.000+09:00

smh says that the federal govt used riot police to quash protesters peacefully demonstrating against the inhuman baxter refugee camps.
"One male protester was punched in the head by a riot squad officer and another, a woman, was grabbed by a policeman by the hair, pulled to the ground and had her face forcibly pushed into the red dirt and scrub."
i guess howard's moves towards a kinder stance on refugees were just a wedge attempt, as crikey said last week.
hilariously enough, vanstone is saying that protests outside her house are making it personal. what does she think she's involved in... a game of bridge?
whether she's right or wrong, she needs to take personal responsibility for her actions as top dog on immigration.

travelling through the balkans shows me just how easy it is to stir up nationalist/racist fervour. and it's not just there. the uk is getting fired up, and right wing parties are gaining power throughout europe.
i guess it makes it clear just how fine the line is: between comfortable friendly relations and bitter enmity and division. there's only so long that the australian government can keep using race as a tool to win elections before it starts to infect the electorate.

music to listen to

2005-03-23T18:21:00.000+09:00

here is a mix i did a while ago. it got played on triple j's club show in australia, as well as fbi in sydney and pbs in melbourne. hope you like.

digging under sofia, any tips?

2005-03-23T17:49:00.000+09:00

there must be some kinda underground, subculture-y thing here in bulgaria. but i've been looking and i'm yet to find anything. not speaking/reading the cyrillic bulgarian can't help. no good record shops so far, which everyone seems to attribute to the heavy local servers - internet is slow, but each town has a local server with very large quantities of music and video, meaning that retailers of those things struggle to sell them. i did go to a cool hip hop party last night at 3 Ushi (the djs used cdjs and burnt cds). these people put on some bigger parties with guys like a guy called gerald, the orb and mike patton, not sure if there's anything while we're here though.

country roads

2005-03-21T22:22:00.000+09:00

the road out of sarajevo winds up past the ski fields and through some wild territory. where else could you look out one window and see a pig hanging by its hind legs being skinned and through the other a wartorn cityscape dominated by the city's rebuilt twin towers. the bus curls through the mountains surrounded, and sometimes covered by snow.
fortunately i seem to have equilibrated to that peculiarly european style of driving, the most notable feature is a tendency to overtake any vehicle (bus, truck, etc) no matter what kind of vehicle you're driving (scooter, bus, land train), or the state of the road. winding mountain roads covered in ice are fine for dare devil overtaking on hair pin turns, even when you can see oncoming traffic.
maybe i'm not totally over it. an old rickety bus that felt like it was unfit for the school round. every time we went over any kind of topography the bus would be overrun by a wheezing that seemed to alternately drift from the front and rear of the bus. looking around i realised it wasn't the geriatrics - they were taking care of the throaty coughs - but the failing hydraulics. we spent most of the trip travelling at 40km/hr or less.
anyway, 24 hours later and things are feeling better.
hard to believe, but michelle grattan in the age has reported howard's softening his line on refugees with plans to release long term detainees... a chink in the armour? who knows, good to hear anyway.

skiing in sarajevo

2005-03-20T03:15:00.000+09:00

my face is red. mostly my forehead, cheeks and nose, though there's a conspicuously unburnt patch around my eyes. we're just back from jahorina, a ski resort 25 km out of sarajevo. the snow was a little slushy, runs short, skis pretty bad. but it was still great. so cool to be on the slopes, stifling a laugh at others, for a change, spending runs on their backs. glad we weren't up there any longer though, there aren't that many runs and i think we pretty much exhausted them.

lowdown beats in bosnia

2005-03-17T00:26:00.000+09:00

no wonder typhonic - the canberran dj with bosnian blood - has such an affinity for heavy breakbeats. i'm in bosnia now, and heavy beats are everywhere you look. in mostar the clubs advertised a combo of ragga, garage and drum'n'bass. here in sarajevo, there are a few house and minimal techno events, but most of the clubs swing between dancehall, dub, ragga, garage and drum'n'bass. even the dodgy western cafe we wandered into the other day was playing heavy dub reggae. looks like the best places to check are access (on marsala tito), the art depot, maybe the bar and bock too. haven't found much sign of experimental music, or jazz (beyond the lounge bar variety).

riots in campbelltown, what?

2005-03-15T01:45:00.000+09:00

woah. riots in campbelltown? that definitely hasn't been reported on cnn. it's pretty much impossible to get any papers here in bosnia, so cnn's all i've got for now. when i'm through posting i think i'll do a little surfing.

reminds me of a story i heard the other day about tension in brisbane during WW2, called 'the battle of brisbane' between stationed us troops and the locals. an aust film director i met in zagreb says he wants to make a short film about it. i might write it all up if i get more computer time.

we had our first sunny days in dubrovnik, a revelation, seriously. life is suddenly looking great. found a great indie club where we saw a local hip hop crew.

caught the bus over to bosnia today, and have spent the afternoon wandering about mostar. it feels like the war between the croats and muslims only finished moments ago. half the buildings are wrecked. it's a pretty stark contrast between shiny outfitted euro kids, begging children and limbless ex-soldiers.

off to sarajevo tomorrow...

brrr. winter wonder, what?

2005-03-08T19:30:00.000+09:00

that leonard cohen tribute at the opera house seems like a whole other world, one that i keep thinking about flying back to. it is very cold here. the coldest it's been in 18 years. though i've been feeling a lot warmer since i picked up a coat from an outlet in vienna yesterday.

we're in croatia now. spent a bus trip from vienna shivering about spending the rest of the night on the streets. the hostel we booked earlier emailed yesterday to say we couldn't stay. to cut a long story short, we went there anyway. and it was all fine.

zagreb is more beautiful than i was expecting. very cool things happening, especially music - ken vandermark, balanescu quartet, jeff mills, jonathan richman. hordes of kids hurtling down slopes in home-made sleds or bits of plastic, couples walking down the lanes, parents dragging the sleds back up the slopes.

have moved on to pula in the istrian top of croatia. we'll be here for a few days, then dubrovnik, then...

i've been listening to new beats by a crew from budapest. check realistic crew's site for some samples. it's a double ep by members of the crew - krizo and chabz. i met krizo (aka christian) at afrofill records in budapest, where he'd arrived with the cds direct from the pressing plant. his side is definitely the most interesting. broken beat and jungle flavoured hip hop beats packed with experimentation. chabz' side is pretty steady boom bap hip hop, with a bit of krush-style melancholy. worth checking out.

otherwise i've been listening to b. fleishman (beautiful electronics from vienna), modern lovers and the care (velvets-influenced off kilter pop), kpt (killer post rock/electronic dirge pop!), and the high llamas (dileep clued me in on a great ep that came free with their album hawaii). unfortunately missed bright eyes in vienna, but looking forward to berlin.

on the road, the first

2005-02-23T22:02:00.000+09:00

itś been a blur since we left canberra - first there was the rush of farewell dinners, breakfasts and parties in sydney, then the rush of actual airport goodbyes. we flew into innsbruck. what an incredible place to start off in europe.
from there, we drove to corvara in the italian dolomiti mountains. the skiing was brilliant. huge imposing mountains, with a faint pink colour.
it was looking a little dry when we arrived, so you can imagine our relief when it snowed about 20cm overnight. and it kept snowing most of the week - not perisher style sleet and blizzards, but beautiful soft snowflakes.
the runs were long and great. the food was fabulous and we spent most days drinking from around 11am.
must say itś quite good to wake up and not have to strap on boots and skis since leaving. we stopped in bolzano for a few days, and now in budapest. the food isn´t so great - all hearty stews and things - but the beer is cheap and very good, and the absinthe is available at the supermarket.
music scene, well weŕe yet to discover one that doesn´t take in joe cocker, queen or anastacia, but i´m sure weĺl find something. i noticed thereś a night on here on friday featuring vienna scientists and some of the pulver people.
weŕe here until sunday. then we might go to slovakia for a couple of days - we were going to go through gyor, but that seems like a fairly boring town and i´d like to get to slovakia. then we head to vienna for a few days, then prague!

if anyone has any good suggestions for things happening in eastern-central europe over the next few weeks, or good english language print or online media to find out about things, feel free to add a comment!

2nd last week at therapy

2005-01-24T20:38:00.000+09:00

it's my last week hosting therapy on 2xx in canberra... here's what was played.

Alex feat Form of Audio & Joelistics – Broken Tears
Terry Callier – Love Theme From Spartacus (4 Hero mix)
Smith & Mighty feat Rudy Lee – No Justice
Adventure Time – Whetting Whistles
Bob Holroyd – Drumming Up A Storm (Dhizan & Kamien remix)
Talib Kweli – Get By (Blackbeard mix)
Mako & Bass Kleph – Like, Abort Juan (Andrew Maher Delta mix)
Boxsaga feat Lyric L & Andrea Clarke – Back Inside (Superbug mix)
Blunted Stylus feat Koolism – Breakin’ Thru
Toni Braxton – Hit The Freeway (Zed Bias & Typhonic mix)
John Foxx – Mr No (Joakim mix)
Flippo Naughty Moscatello – Memorabilia
Chemical Bros – Galvanise (Abe Duque mix)
DJ Krush – Univearth
Soul Central – Strings of Life (Funky Lowlives mix)
Sueno Latino – Sueno Latino
Deepchild – What’s Going Wrong (Mako mix)
Avenue D – 2D2F

Therapy playlists for the past 2 weeks

2005-01-16T20:15:00.000+09:00

life's been a little bit busy for writing up tracklists - as much as i hate to say that! - anyway here are the track nic and i played on therapy the past 2 weeks...

Last friday night:
The Orb vs Meat Beat Manifesto – Matron
Fat Jon – Talk To Me
Flanger – Midnight Served
Mouse On Mars – Wipe That Sound
Syrup – If I Gave You A Party (Version)
Ghislain Poirier feat Beans – Cold As Hell
National Collective – Dia De Desfile
Stereotyp feat Tikiman – My Sound
Midnight Juggernauts – Deadly Venom
Aphex Twin – Bucephalus Bouncing Balls
SJD – Four Door
Nasty Tales – Come On-A-My House (Hook’n’sling mix)
Q And Not U – Wonderful People
Kraak + Smaak – Maputo Express
Mr Bungle – Goodbye Sober Boy
Soul Position – Inhale (Remix)
Beres Hammond + U Roy – Putting Up A Resistance
Avenue D – Do I Look Like a Slut
Boom Bass + Etienne De Crecy – Bit Torrent
Iswhat?! – Cold Hands (DJ Spinna mix)
Flanger – Angel of Love
J Zone feat Celph Titled – Spoiled Rotten
Sequel – Melt with “Big Clap”

The week before:
Headman – Find a Way
Pasobionic – Echoes of Blue
Husky Rescue – Summertime Cowboy (Mocky mix)
Savath & Savalas – Sota L’Aigua
Sholto – The Sleeper
Wagon Christ – Shadows
Daedalus – One Breath To Breathe
Ernie & The Top Incs – Dap Walk
DJ Rels – Broken Soul
Stereotyp – Fling Style
Esquire – Brandy & Xanax
MIA – Sunshowers
Bugz in the Attic – Booty La La (Extended Booty mix)
Mouse On Mars – Wipe That Sound
Material – Reduction
Herman Chin Loy – Heavy Dub
Architecture In Helsinki – Love Is Evil (The Prequel)
Soulwax – E Talking
Grandmaster Flash – Scorpio (Plaid mix)
Swayzak – Then There’s Her
Alter Ego – Rocker (Black Strobe mix)
Soul Strata feat Cesar – Po

orwell on writing

2005-01-14T13:24:00.000+09:00

here's a great piece by orwell on the english language.

the original farewell party

2005-01-12T12:47:00.000+09:00

just to let y'all know... i'm having a farewell party in sydney on february 4. it'll be at the super cool KING HIT (at suzy q's 169 oxford st darlinghurst $5). music will be provided by a bunch of friends including smith, bec paton, levins, the abandonerz, plus me too.

outta here (shortly)

2005-01-11T15:53:00.000+09:00

well things are rounding off... there's still a few weeks til we've actually left canberra, but a lot of the official kind of things have happened (or are in the process). i gave notice at work last week. i quit the aria club chart, which i've contributed to for ages (no real hassle, i've never really noticed my votes having that much of an impact anyway). quit the various vinyl mailing lists i was on (again 90% of the records that get sent out aren't that great).
i just clicked send on an email to canberra and sydney friends telling them about our farewells...

goodbye i love you

2005-01-07T11:27:00.000+09:00

polly and i have been ruthlessly ransacking our rooms in preparation to leave the country in a month.
amongst the letters and random bits of paper polly found a card from a younger cousin, explaining how much the cousin loved polly, and how bitterly she would miss her being around. it's weird, because in the intervening years - i guess getting towards 10 - the two cousins have grown apart, to the point where it's hard to see that fierce love in their otherwise polite and friendly acquaintance.
a sad little memory that at any other time would probably provoke a little sad reflection before being consigned to some dark corner of memory.
but right now it hits a tender spot.
being in canberra has been a weird experience - i'm definitely not going to say it's all been good. but i have learnt a huge amount in the years i've been here. about writing, music, friends and not just external stuff. in the past few years, i think i've grown a lot on a personal level. and friends are an essential part of that. when we don't have that see-them-every-week easiness, will they slowly fade from memory? like polly's cousin.
so i've been pretty bittersweet about it lately...

more amo, for your search engine

2005-01-07T09:48:00.000+09:00

i'm always searching for information on local (australian) acts, and inevitably the best (read most straightforward, yet informative) interviews are on the australian music online site. so here's another link to add to the millions of others on this page.

vote for urthy

2005-01-07T09:19:00.000+09:00

it's almost time for triple j's annual hottest 100. URTHBOY's track 'NO RIDER' has to be one of the best songs of the year*, so you'd have to be crazy not to include it in your 10 faves. go to the triple j site and vote many times**.
now!
*ps urthboy is my brother tim
**vote as many times as you have email addresses ;)

nice place to live, wouldn't want to visit

2005-01-06T09:58:00.000+09:00

that's what one of the guys i work with said when i gave my notice yesterday, and it really does sum canberra up. polly's got a job in tokyo/shanghai, so we're hitting the road in a few weeks. sad to say goodbye to my current job, which i love. but exciting to be going to live os.

popfrenzy/frigid new years party at newtown rsl was a brilliant night... a few gripes were heard about the schizophrenic music, but for these ears it was a great, ultra-eclectic melange! highlights for me were from sir robbo and prince valium, but sub bass snarl, fflloyd quinlan and ollo were all brilliant too. jinx and femineminem were great value too - it's a hard knock life!

i was a bit disappointed about playing a short set, but on the night it was great. i think it would've been a little boring playing longer, having most of my different groups of friends in the one place.

here's what i played...
kid and khan – goo goo muck
mouse on mars – wipe that sound
fannypack – so stylistic
telex – ca plane pour moi
zapp – more bounce to the ounce
cat stevens – was dog a doughnut
john cale – bicycle
radioactive man – fedex to munchen

inna frenzy

2004-12-23T07:52:00.000+09:00

only a week to go til the high-concept low-rent i heart nye. i suspect i won't get much of a chance to post here before then, though i could be wrong.
anyway i heart nye is a popfrenzy/frigid collab at the old newtown rsl (@newtown) from 9pm til 4.
the frigid cats are touting it as a soundclash end-of-year title fight, but i think popfrenzy's description of it as the ultimate blind date is closer to the truth.
music will be from frigid djs sub bass snarl, prince valium, sir robbo and ollo as well as popfrenzy selecters jinx, enari, calico, red peugeot, thepopmanifesto and fflloyd quinlan.
if you don't like the dj, another one comes on in half an hour!

this is the way it'll work in time stylee.
900Enari
9.45thepopmanifesto
1030Ollo
1100Jinx & Femineminem
1130Sir Robbo
1200Thommy
1230Prince Valium
100Fflloyd Quinlan
130Ollo
200Calico
230Sir Robbo vs Prince V
300Sub Bass Snarl

$15 dollars only :) from moshtix

on the subject of i heart, i really loved i heart huckabees. it's a perfect xmas movie - feelgood to the maxx, but not at all cheesy - i recommend.

windows into the soul

2004-12-22T14:43:00.000+09:00

well they're not quite eyes, but blogs are a rare insight into the people you know. i spend most of my blog reading time on words by people i've never met, and probably never will. the ones by people i do know are usually ones they've publicised in their own way.
the other day saw a link to one that was obviously a friend of mine - despite no obvious names (and the best efforts of the writer, apparently). after a quick peruse, my interest turned to a weird sort of humbling reflection when i saw what a small part i play in her life. most references to me were inanimate type comments - eg. 'they' or references to organisations or groups i am part of.
i find myself wondering if my blog could ever create that sort of feeling. i mean there are plenty of great friends of mine who'd never appear in here.
anyway, that's enough self-reflection. that's not what this blog's about.

what's up with 2SER

2004-12-21T12:53:00.000+09:00

107.3 fm was just about the only radio station i listened to going to uni in sydney.
shows like all funked up, paradigm shift, mothership connection, electroplastique and the uber mosaic mix were a window into a world of other music.
the key was not just talking, but also playing. a big part of the problems faced by community radio stations (everywhere) at the moment is the internet. it's so easy to listen to playlists by your favourite djs from around the world, why would you sift through the various ethnic and community programs, when you can just download a set.
anyway, it seems as though 2SER is in trouble at the moment. go here to keep track of what's up with the station.

top twenty...

2004-12-21T11:42:00.000+09:00

it's that time of year when obsessive people start putting together lists. they've been all over the radio and street press in the past few weeks, so i thought i'd do mine. it was mostly inspired by trying to come up with a top 20 for the ARIA dance chart, which i contribute a weekly chart to - this means most of the tracks are dancey type things. but i am reading high fidelity at the moment, so i'm getting back to that high school obsession too.

various - rebtuz ep - bootleg
killer hip hop bootleg with quantic and tru thoughts crew blowing up tracks by g unit, mark ronson, etc.

diplo - rhythm - big dada
diplo gets on a dancehall tip and spreads his rhythm out with the newsflash and vybz vocals.

creative use - rummage through a stack of photos/even stevens - bootleg
dope re-edits of cat stevens and sakamoto

squarepusher - tundra 4 - warp
pure brilliance. twisting turning junglist business.

yotoko - all creation ep - delsin
domu and crew playing detroit the only way they know.

dave clarke feat mr lif - blue on blue - devils
lif is a fantastic mc, but set against this harsh industrial electro beat it was by far the standout on clarke's album. thankfully someone (clarke) bootlegged it.

keepintime - infinity of rhythm - (ammoncontact mix) - up & above
i still haven't heard the entire keepintime session. but this remix from ammoncontact is fresh. sounding like several tracks in one it jumps from hip hop to house in a love hangover stylee.

urthboy - no rider - elefant traks
he's my brother. so i was bound to like it. but i *really* like it. anyone for ska-hop?

fym - moonshine dolphin - boogizm
this is the kind of music that makes me excited. crazy beautiful deep techno that's also free and fucked up. brilliant

abe duque feat blake baxter - what happened? - abe duque
what can i say about this jacking gem that hasn't been said

spymusic - cloak - 2000 black
incredible single from the brooklyn-based duo. i'm hanging out to hear their lp, the start of something big

three kings featuring jaygun & bashy - shake dat booty - (pal joey interpretation) - coco machete
about as great as it gets for deep house. deep hip house. funk runs in their bones.

troubleman - strike hard - far out
another person with funk instead of blood. former jedi knight mark pritchard comes with the heavy drum track.

matthew dear - dog days - spectral
beautiful electro pop from this techno producer who seemed set to blow up, but didn't quite

ollo - the lunatics (have taken over the asylum) - groovescooter
sydney guys take on fun boy 3 and win. this should have been a triple j favourite

daniel merriweather - she’s got me - (calculators remix) - fmr
bizarrely 8bit and the calculators flip nu-soul boy merriweather's track, to make an inspired pairing.

andrew edward brown - growing stronger - people
stuttery soul from people. they started broken beat and damn they're still responsible for some of the best tunes.

bell - black helicopters - soul jazz
dark, basic track, that's totally hypnotic in a similar way to chiapet's westworld (although quite different sounds)

inverse cinematics - detroit jazzin’ - pulver
this is one of the best tracks from one of the cooler labels this year, detroit funked up big beat flavour

tzu - summer days - (mad professor dub) - liberation
the melbourne hip hop crew get dubbed out proper courtesy of the uk master

brooks - mansize - soundslike
when i first picked this up i didn't think anyone could do pj harvey's original justice. they do.

mu - paris hilton - output
mu's album last year was insane, fantastic, electropunk crraziness. this tribute to everyone's favourite is even cooler.

on the album tip. tv on the radio's album desperate youth, bloodthirsty babes is probably my favourite all year. i loved the mf doom albums (madvillain + mm food), plus his conspirator madlib's other releases (dj rells, shades of blue). on a similar tip, i discovered the counterflow label, which trades in brilliant, musical hip hop (check the 'a sides of counterflow' lp). heavy broken beat releases came from horsepower productions (to the rescue), tim wright (thirst) and domu (enter the umod). on the local tip, i was into albums from brisbane's twotone (cinecity) and sydney's decoder ring (the st for somersault).

Toast XMAS Party feat MEEM

2004-12-21T08:49:00.000+09:00

toast closes down for 3 weeks over xmas/ny. so this thursday is your last chance to get some of that goodness. it's my regular thursday haunt, so i'll be djing there (al will be too), and meem is hiking up from sydney for a 5 hour live set. only $5, hard to see any reasons not to attend :) kicks off at 6, so come down early.

did you think i'd forgotten you?

2004-12-21T08:31:00.000+09:00

it's been a busy few weeks. gross motor was really great. i would say that, being the organiser, but i was really impressed - highlights... well, probably the biggest was low ki.
i asked all the djs to play two half hour sets instead of the usual one. this gave everyone the chance to play a late or early set and a peak time one, as well as playing two distinctly different styles.
low ki played a set at about 8 of beautiful ambience and downtempo (later on he rocked it with boompty off kilter house - crazy for a junglist cat!). dot0dot followed him with an equally impressive set of live electronics. shunji dropped esg and got super jacking when he followed stalker later in the night. stalker was brilliant too - deeeep dubby techno that had heads nodding about the room.
it was bec paton's last gig as a canberran, and true to form she played a couple of fantastic sets - she's already locked in for quite a few gigs in sydney. kreme karmel rocked it in his customary style. disco, space jazz and tech rhythms with the help of a drum machine, damn fine.
ollo came up from sydney to play. they had quite a few technical difficulties, meaning they weren't quite up to the level of their set in newcastle, but it was still a great set from the two guys who charmed their way around the room.
the other cool thing about the night was having non-technical djs rocking things. levins came up from sydney, phong from 2xx and the abandonerz (aka polly + leo) all played cool sets that had people just as bubbling over as anywhere.
unfortunately we kinda left the vjs to their own devices for the night. and when paul didn't show and michael had to leave following relationship issues, it ended with scotch fingers and skatter holding the fort all night. sorry guys. though the results were beautiful as always. shunji's sister, hana, made some great stencils for us too - what would we do without them!

NYE Battle! Popfrenzy vs Frigid, who will win?

2004-11-30T13:13:00.000+09:00

i say nye's a night to hang with friends and not get too caught up in hype. but the big parties are mostly heavy on that action, and i'm sure people are super down with that. anyway, i can't say there'll be any dj mag number one djs at the party i'm playing at. but it'll be strictly electro funk indie bling bling battle bizzness.
it's a popfrenzy against frigid crew new years eve.
the frigid corner is representing with sub bass snarl, sir robbo, ollo and prince valium.
pfft. a bunch of nine pound weaklings.
popfrenzy is stepping out with calico, enari, jinx, thepopmanifesto, fflloyd quinlan and deth stare.
tickets available from moshtix.

disco baby

2004-11-24T14:16:00.000+09:00

dsico seems to have a new haunt... go there and listen to him take guy sebastian down to jam with leonard cohen (if he'd done a cover of wordy rappinghood on his album the future).

all ages

2004-11-21T11:12:00.000+09:00

somehow i managed to get up in time to cover the all ages show yesterday on 2xx. i got the call in on friday when the usual host couldn't make it... but after playing a 5 hour dj set at the graphic design grad show, then hanging out with friends for quite a few more hours i only managed to wake up because someone called at 12:30. leaving me 30 minutes to get up, get some records together and race down. glad i did tho, i think i much prefer playing these sets than the regular dance-centric ones. i featured the new mf doom album - mm food - and played quite a few songs from the golden age's great demo (which you can download here).
anyway here's what i played...

jesus + mary chain - rollercoaster
the cramps - god damned rock 'n roll
the golden age - the desert song
iron on - fifty four equals two hundred
camera obscura - i don't do crowds
purdy - on the roof of the world
other people's children - sheffield
mf doom - figleaf bicarbonate
the smallgoods - abraham lincoln
terranova feat mike ladd - heroes
tzu - curse of the word
smart artisans - yeah, but eh
the rezillos - flying saucer attack
mu - chair girl
les savy fav - hello halo, goodbye glands
teenage fanclub - what you do to me
the golden age - daybreak
mf doom - fillet o rapper
blastcorp - 1000 miles away
hykoo + mantra - peacekeeper
atmosphere - gotta lotta walls
the fall - why are people grudgeful?
tv on the radio - poppy
disaster plan - age of consent
mid-state orange - casualties of casual ties
toekeo - john howard is a filthy slut
the golden age - saturday morning

baby wants to motor

2004-11-19T09:14:00.000+09:00

gross motor is taking shape... the only real worry is whether toast will stay open long enough. after playing there last night i think it'll be alright tho. here are the rules for a fun, good music and hanging out with friends kinda night.
A) Cheap to get in - $5. Paying too much to get in detracts from your drinking allowance, and we can’t have that on our heads
B) Early start. Kicking off at 6 pm to fit in all the bomb acts, so come down in your spunky corporate uniform if need be, long as you don’t miss the bomb sets.
C) Would be good to see a few trashy elves and rednosed santas tho.
D) Feel free to buy the acts Beer. We don’t pay them much after all, so if you feel that they have earnt some amber, don’t be shy.
E) It’s the launch of Pencil’s Abandoned Shopping Trolleys in Love zine. Buy one. We might throw in a free CD or 2 as well.
E) Bring loads of People. There is no excuse not to. We have the best live acts and jocks in Canberra throwing down awesome electro funk indie bling bling bizznezz through a large PA with cheap drinks. There really is no reason why you cannot make it down. Plus it’s the super merry xmas edition of gross motor Like I said, no reason not to come down.

the lineup's stabilising too... OLLO, Bec Paton, Stalker, Kreme Karmel, Low Ki, Skatter, Scotch Fingers, Shunji, Dot-0-Dot, Get Well Mary Kate, Beau Nanzha, Calico and The Abandonerz. also hana is going to put together some stencils for the night - she's done stencils for our two people get real nights.

btw dj/rupture has to be one of the most inspirational djs around. he whipped up this mix inna post us election rage. you can really feel it too...

if you're in canberra, head out to bruce for the uc graphic design grad show. lots of great new designers, plus free drinks and i'll be playing from 6 through til 11.

if you're thinking about nye and you'll be in sydney, maybe you should be thinking about an uber indie beats bonanza at the old newtown rsl. popfrenzy and frigid are hooking up for a 4x4 dj mashup.

this is how urthy does it.

2004-11-16T13:16:00.000+09:00

more urthy goodness can be found here (10/11/04) and here (13/6/03.
you can also listen to no rider here.
and vote for it in the triple j net 50 here!

toast + tea

2004-11-09T09:18:00.000+09:00

bread + water can so easily be toast + tea. that's something a friend of mine used to always say. comes back to me at the oddest times.

toast is pretty likely to close for good just before christmas. it's pretty sad, though probably a good move for the owner. 3 years of hard work, but he just can't get his head around the twin management tasks of delegation and promotion. it's such a refreshing place to hang out in canberra - everything else is so sterile in comparison.

fortunately we'll be having a farewell party there on dec 10 - hopefully it stays open long enough! - at the moment it's looking like...

margot's fences and abandoned shopping trolleys in love present the gross motor christmas party, friday december 10 at toast in canberra.

trashy elves, red-nosed santas, blood spattered saviours. come one, come all.

music and pictures from stalker, ollo, the abandonerz, phong, vj skatter, scotch fingers, kreme karmel, calico, low ki, levins, dot-0-dot, bec paton.

bird on the wire

2004-11-08T15:29:00.000+09:00

a leonard cohen tribute show in australia. featuring nick cave, jarvis cocker, the handsome family, kate and anna mcgarrigle, beth orton, linda thompson, teddy thompson, martha wainwright and rufus wainwright.do you think i'm joking?

i wouldn't joke about this.

urthy like a rocket

2004-11-08T13:35:00.000+09:00

no rider entered the net 50 at 46 a few weeks ago... then jumped to 22 and now is at number 7! apparently it's even getting plays on commercial radio in canberra and sydney, as well as channel v, rage, triple j.

here's my original post about this brilliant track. you can vote for it in the triple j net 50 here.

therapy last night

2004-11-06T17:04:00.000+09:00

every friday night on 2xx 98.3 fm. the magic of therapy. this week it consisted of the following.

umod - on the down low - sonar kollektiv
eric b + rakim - microphone fiend - mca
sequel - i've been waiting - sonar kollektiv
primal scream - loaded (weatherall mix) - creation
ty - groovement - big dada
tortoise - in sarah mencken, christ and beethoven there were woman and men (d's winter crazy dub) - thrill jockey
chiapet - westworld (termination mix) - yoshitoshi
the orb - perpetual dawn - island
dot-0-dot - we are well - cdr
upbeats - psyesta - cdr
kelis feat andre 3000 - millionaire - virgin
troubleman - strikehard - far out
i wolf feat cesar - never leave - klein
cinematic orchestra - man with the movie camera (domu mix) - ninja tune
nitin sawhney - rainfall (bugz dirty bruk down mix feat rodney p) - v2
meat beat manifesto - mindstream (orbital's mind the bend the mind mix) - shock
superfoot - tough in the sky - stinky jim's
bass elefant - triple 6ers - inertia
blastcorp - thousand miles away (dub) - cdr

in circles

2004-11-04T13:14:00.000+09:00

finally the latest cyclic defrost is out... interviews with decoder ring, twotone, domu. a couple of event reviews and a huge run of album reviews, plus lovely art from macross matrix (and an interview with him too).
if you're thinking how do i find out about the fresh music that cyclic cover, you're in luck. check out their music club, which runs on similar lines to the book clubs people keep talking about.

elections, what are they good for

2004-11-04T09:19:00.000+09:00

and now bush is in too...
it's hard to imagine what the next few years are going to be like, check coldcut's take.