as for the arias themselves… best not to get me started. i think at one point daniel johns in one of his acceptance speeches made some kind of self-congratulatory statement about how great australian music is right now, about how we are ‘killing it’ or some such. i agree with him, but gee you wouldn’t have known it from watching the arias. i love a lot of australian music right now, and obviously i’m very keen to see it succeed. but the people out there who are making the really great and inspiring music, receive little or no attention from a commercially driven monolith like the arias. so while i guess its great to see “independent” artists so well represented.. i can’t help but be saddened that some more of australia’s truly great music can’t be represented via the arias to such a large audience.

i had to laugh when the point was made during silverchair’s puff piece that they funded the recording of their cd themselves. i don’t doubt this is true, and it probably wasn’t their decision to highlight this particular fact but come on - silverchair as independent self-funded act? please. reserve that particular brand of kudos for the real DIY heroes. (note that i’m not by implication extending this title to myself… i’m one of australia’s fake DIY losers, its a different thing altogether)

i guess me and nick cave can sulk in a corner while the music industry and the majority of music buyers please themselves. excuse me while i get down off my high horse (until next year anyway).

ps spot the difference:

i’m currently going track by track through a mix i recently did for a website called research and development - find out more here.

19. wings - letting go

its no secret that i’ve been on something of a mccartney bender for the past month or two. it all started with, heres that name again, robots in heat posting an old wings throwaway that set off memories deep in my skull. standing on milk crates trying to reach up to the pool table, getting my little hands around the cue, dad and steven drinking beers and laughing, “venus and mars” was always the soundtrack.

“letting go” is, of course, by paul mccartney’s 70s post-beatles project wings, and is from their album “venus and mars”. about two months ago, sitting in a little edit suite next to glenn ridge’s garage, i listened to this song on repeat for about 2 hours and it probably has to be one of the most emotionally visceral experiences of my entire life. now this means a number of things. it means i am prone to hyperbole. it also means that i need to get out more, and i probably need take more drugs, in particular, or less. but honestly. the first time paul mccartney eeks out an “oh” in letting go is likely to make you wince with heart ache and longing - the fiftieth time you hear it, you’ll be in tears. what do you hear? i hear regret, longing. dreams slipping away. loneliness, desperation. the loneliness of pragmatism. i seem to inhabit these modes too often, never more so when this track is on. so i guess in that way “letting go” is very very good for me and also very bad.

and as the “oh” is the sound of longing, those giant new orleans horns are the sound of release. i’m not sure there’s been a more important horn blast in the history of recorded sound. ending my r&d mix with this track was easy - what was hard was resisting the temptation to submit a mix for r&d that was simply this track on repeat for 2 hours.

when my wings urge really kicked in i went on an urgent hunt for venus and mars via p2p networks and accidentally found some bootleg versions and demos, things like that, another version of “letting go” which is pretty damn interesting to hear alongside the original. anyway, thats all for this series of posts. enormous thanks to declan and r&d for letting me put this mix together for them. if you enjoyed these mix notes, please let me know. i don’t often ask for your feedback but if you’ve been into anything you’ve heard here and want to chat, feel free to email me at tim@iamfauxpas.com, i’d love to hear from you.

MP3: Wings - Letting Go

MP3: Wings - Letting Go (demo version)

MP3: Wings - Lunch Box/Odd Sox

i’m currently going track by track through a mix i recently did for a website called research and development - find out more here.

18. augustus pablo - stop them jah

i think its fair to say that i’m criminally uneducated when it comes to augustus pablo, and i think its also fair to say that i’ve come to the works of augustus pablo from perhaps a relatively unlikely direction - like many around melbourne i’ve been enthralled by the dub-meets-shaggs experimentation of melbourne indie duo fabulous diamonds, who list augustus pablo as their first influence on their myspace page (and what greater show of musical indebtitude is there than that)

fabulous diamonds:

MP3: Fabulous Diamonds - 1:53

fabulous diamonds are part of melbourne’s wonderful mistletone family of artists.

i’ve downloaded an augustus pablo more or less at random, and gave it some repeated listens. i want to hear more but don’t know where to start - his catalogue, like so many legends, is overwhelming enough to seem impenetrable. so if anyone wants to let me know where to start.. ? how do you come at the works of a proliferous icon? its easier when you’re introduced by a friend, a fan who knows the ins and outs, where to start.

like, i could probably tell you where to start if you want to be introduced to ween’s vast back catalogue? the answer? anywhere! its all so fucking awesome!

i’m currently going track by track through a mix i recently did for a website called research and development - find out more here.

17. cassetteboy - trippin out

cassette….

BOY!!

bonus beats:

MP3: Curtis Mayfield - Trippin Out

i’m currently going track by track through a mix i recently did for a website called research and development - find out more here.

16. cleptoclectics - interstellar taste lapse

cleptoclectics is tom smith, originally from canberra, now in sydney. his textural take on cut-up instrumental hip hop is really intuitive and immediate, and he is a sampler with respect for the processes he’s employing. i found out about him through a compilation cd put out by australian leftfield music magazine cyclic defrost last year.

“What counts has never been to go along with some related movement, but to make one’s own movement. If no one starts, no one will move.” Gilles Deleuze

i’m exceedingly happy to say that cleptoclectics have turned in the very first remix of a faux pas track ever, and that it sounds great. in fact, he’s turned in two of them, and they are both pretty special. i’m gonna sit on them for a little bit longer, like a hen sits on an egg, like john howard sits on the toilet and excretes shit like so much coalition policy. actually not like john howard.

in the meantime, here are two tracks taken from cleptoclectics’ debut release for feral media which is called “poignancy beats volume two” - you can find out more about that here.

MP3: Cleptoclectics - Bit Rate Blues


MP3: Cleptoclectics - Fahrenheit 4/4

yes this blog has been neglected for a couple of weeks, i’m very sorry. and right in the middle of the r&d series of posts i was doing, it ranks very low in terms of blog professionalism, or blogfessionalism, as those of us in the blog business (blogsiness) call it.

the reason for the delay here is that i am about to release a new ep and have been busy with that. i’m not going to crap on about it right now, there’ll be more than enough of that in the coming month or two. but if you are interested, check out the freshly renovated www.iamfauxpas.com to find out more. i am also now selling t-shirts.

in the meantime - for those of you who aren’t really too fussed about the new ep and maybe just come here for the music: head to http://www.illegalart.net/a/ and download their free 4-track mp3 sampler, previewing their awesome upcoming releases. girl talk, realistic, steinski, and the highlight is oh astro:

MP3: Oh Astro - Hello Fuji Boy

more soon… heady times

i’ll be finishing off the r&d series of posts before the end of this week. in the meantime, please load the cannon in anticipation of mass excitement on the faux pas frontier. us two want to become one unit.

unit unit unit

i’m currently going track by track through a mix i recently did for a website called research and development - find out more here.

15. nino ferrer - looking for you (faux pas edit)

another one from robotsinheat.com, and another track that i felt compelled to fiddle with. i think this track is still mutating, but is fun enough in its current form. i think the more i play with it, the less it becomes a re-edit and the more it becomes its own track. it is exceedingly difficult to work out where this line is drawn, given the kind of music that i make. the agitation free re-edit i posted last week i would never consider that a ‘faux pas’ track.. whereas this one, its heading towards being in the same ballpark as the other stuff i have released as ‘faux pas’, where a debt is owed to the sampled material obviously but the new track has enough of its own distinct identity that i feel comfortable separating it (in name) somewhat from its origins.

at the end of the day i try not to think too much about these kind of things, and just get the music out there. sorry this post is a little introspective and rambling, my head’s a little full of other things at the moment (the reasons why should become apparent soon - lets just say, you can officially start getting excited… now– if faux pas related things get you excited, that is)

nino ferrer was something of a reluctant superstar in his native france. he had some smoky hits in the 60s but it seems he never quite was convinced by this image of himself, a cynical and seductive crooner 10 years senior to the young starlets and hunks coming through the emergent pop machine of the late 60s and 70s. hmmm. there’s a lot you can assume about a guy from a thorough wikipedia entry. he moved to italy and became a cult tv presenter.

Video: Nino Ferrer - Le Telefon (1967)

MP3: Nino Ferrer - Looking for You

MP3: Nino Ferrer - Looking for You (Faux Pas re-edit)