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note to self: don’t send copy of new faux pas album to the age.

“son, we don’t take kindly to your folk around here…. jimmy, pass me the new kings of leon”

the negative review of qua’s new record that appeared in last friday’s age is an absolute shocker: dismissing one of melbourne’s more humble and unassuming musicians as a “3065-postcode hipster“; equating his virtuosic production and composition to that of a “14-year old kid with a Mac“; and more or less saying that his album sucks because it doesn’t sound like Air or Daft Punk.

this is probably the kind of thing that should just be left alone – perhaps it’d be best for this review to simply be something for cornel (qua) and his mates to chuckle about, and then move on and forgetabout it. and don’t get me wrong i like critical reviews, even of my favourite records. but they have to be a lot more thoughtful than this.

the thing is, for me, this review is symptomatic of the australian mainstream music media’s lack of respect for music that actually pushes the boundaries a little. i used to think it was a bad thing that most of the country’s more interesting music gets ignored by the mainstream music press – now i’m beginning to wonder whether its better to be ignored. note to music editors: if your reviewers don’t understand “electronic music”, and if this is how you’re going to write-up one of the more respected electronic producers in the country – then please just leave it well enough alone. we can continue to play amongst ourselves and you guys can keep lauding the fashionable haircut rockers, shallow synth-pop combos, and heartbroken singer-songwriters.

what worries me most is that this might be the first time many age readers have heard of qua – and its a horrible and completely out-of-line (if mercifully brief) representation of him and his music. make your own mind up about qua at http://myspace.com/quamusic

the review can be read over at the to and fro blog, where you can also read an elegant dressing down of the review from my radio cohort dave, along with (more of!) my two cents.

and yes, these are just the personal rants of a couple of emotionally invested dudes who want to stick up for a guy whose music they like. we’re just mouthing off, but hey, thats what blogs are for. perhaps next time a reviewer decides to write a review that basically amounts to a not-so-thinly veiled attack on a kind of music they simply don’t like, they should consider blogging about it instead. we expect more considered responses from professionals.

i’ve just gotten my copy of the new pikelet ep in the post, its really good. it is released on a label called sabbatical recordings that specialises in short-runs of local experimental artists. pikelet makes music by looping her voice, accordian and percussion and et cetera. if you were to make a lazy comparison you could maybe draw a line between pikelet and argentinian lady of the loop juana molina. i’m sure more apt descriptions of pikelet’s sound are out there – oh hey look, here’s one that i ripped off from the sabbatical website -

While the narrative elements of her self-titled debut are largely absent here, vocal harmonies continue to play a key role alongside melodic cycles and deceptively complex rhythms. Pre-Flight Jitters also pursues some unexpected textural qualities and compositional approaches, while maintaining the rich layering typical of Evelyn’s recent work.

check out this track “bryson” from the release and then make sure you head to the sabbatical website to pick up one of only 200 hand-numbered copies of the EP (mine is number 40).

MP3: Pikelet – Bryson

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regular readers of the blog would know that i remixed one of evelyn’s tracks “bug-in-mouth” and that the remix appears on my latest EP. for the sake of having something to talk about i thought i would tell a brief story about how the remix came about. basically i became really obsessed with that song after hearing it late one night on the radio – i managed to track down a free mp3 of the track on last.fm (sorry but you can’t download it any more)… i resolved to get in touch with evelyn and ask her if i could get the original recordings of the track to play with – the separated parts – but for one reason or another it didn’t come together. late one night i was working in the edit suite of the production company of a certain australian ex-tv-game-show-host when i was fiddling around on my laptop with the mp3 of “bug-in-mouth”.. a few hours later the track was more or less finished. it was like 3am or something, and i was working alongside the hum of spooling tapes and buzzing tv screens. but yeah it was such a natural thing to play with, and fun to work with the track as a whole and not with the separate pieces of it, if that makes sense. it made me try some weird and wacky things, and i discovered a couple of oddball techniques (mostly involving the loooping and stretching of vocals) that i’ve been using a lot since, while working on new stuff.

so in conclusion, thankyou evelyn morris, and thankyou glenn ridge

you can hear “bug-in-mouth” at pikelet’s myspace, and you can hear my remix of “bug-in-mouth” at my myspace or on the changes EP or here:

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MP3: Disasteradio – Stairdancer

i saw wellington NZ’s disasteradio at a pretty small venue last night, and it was pretty awesome. if you are in melbourne i recommend you check him out tomorrow – he is defying the laws of time and space by playing two shows in the one day, first at this thing called the applecore backyard festival in thornbury, and then secondly at 2am at roxanne parlour. rock n roll. he’s a one man party. we just did a pretty extended interview with him on our radio show, which you can download here. check his myspace for the playing times tomorrow – or simply catch him when he comes to a town near you.

i gotta say i’m not really a strokes fan but this little clip (taken from camp a low hum 2007) is a pretty good example of the amazing inciting potentiality of the disasteradio performance. i think it might get a little crazy down at roxanne tomorrow night. i think luke is a bit disappointed there hasn’t been some serious stage invading, so if you make it down there tomorrow night then, well, get on that. invade a stage.

speaking of camp a low hum… camp a low hum 2008 took place a few weeks ago over there in new zealand. if you’ve never heard of this (i hadn’t until i read this a week ago) you completely have to check it out:

Camp A Low Hum is pretty small (no more than 700 people), most bands play twice and it’s BYO, but perhaps the key to its success is that it’s not about “what bands are playing”. Blink ensures this by not announcing a line up, but rather pushing the unique vibe of the festival. It’s certainly a difficult thing to sell, and before the first camp in 2007 many people (including myself) felt a bit too sceptical about travelling to a campsite an hour north of Wellington to watch a mystery band line-up. As it turned out, however, Camp 2007 was a total success, with many of my friends coming back raving things like “I can’t explain why it was so good but it was seriously the best weekend of my entire life”. After that I was basically sold on Camp 2008.

the lineup – not officially announced before the camp started – included the brunettes, the phoenix foundation, the ruby suns, liam finn, disasteradio, pikelet, & many many others. i ended up at radio new zealand’s website listening to this great live broadcast that they did from the camp – it opens with a great little candid interview with festival organiser blink and his sister. so choice.

on sunday i’m accidentally going to the laneway festival, melbourne’s “little festival that could”. i’ve not been before and wasn’t really thinking about going until a birdie gave me some tickets. friends who can get you free stuff are the best kind of friends! but seriously… i figured the line-up was just basically not up my alley at all, but it turns out i’ve actually got a lot to look forward to: did you know there’s an electronic stage? i don’t know how much fuss has been made about it, but the schedule for the ‘red bull music academy stage’ includes dan deacon, flying lotus, harmonic 313, plaid, steve spacek, declan kelly, qua..! i know where i’m hanging out all day. though i might have to sneak a peek out to the main stage when a certain belgian gets out there, because from what i hear i’m in for a bit of a thrill…

but yeah this RBMA electronic stage – how is this not news? isn’t it big news to have these kind of dudes all in town at the same time? have i been living under a rock, or is it just that in melbourne people don’t really make a fuss about electronic music? oh hang on, i have been living under a rock. strike that.

i think the RBMA stage is exclusive to melbourne too. so… sucked in, other dudes.

LOSIN IT

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:

this song is insanely catchy and charming. drama for yamaha are currently working on their first album for melbourne’s artist-run indie label brothersister records.

Video: Drama For Yamaha – No More Ease

MP3: Drama for Yamaha – No More Ease

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download drama for yamaha’s entire first EP (and much more) from the brothersister website.