“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.

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

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:

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:

Video: Drama For Yamaha – No More Ease

MP3: Drama for Yamaha – No More Ease

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

i make gotye website new pretty! – based on a poster by this guy, who is from these guys, who based the poster on a film clip by this guy which utilised characters designed by some other guy. its official, half of australia now works for gotye. check out wally’s first post in his brand new blog section. now if only i could do something to make my own website prettier..

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the latest edition of sample wednesdays over at the palms out blog is an mp3 expose of songs sampled by beat conductor turned ben folds fan rjd2, mostly songs sampled in tracks from his first album. i already knew about the elliott smith sample thanks to declan, whose great triple r radio show ‘against the arctic’ can (and should) be downloaded online each week from research and development.

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a history of simian, riddled with mp3s – a great primer despite a glaring inaccuracy in the opening paragraph (simian were/are from the uk not new york). but yeah this is worth reading, particularly if, like me, you mourn simian and are in denial about the ‘mobile disco’. simian fans should head there if only to grab the track “in siam” a weird psychedelic jumble of a track that pre-dates the first simian album but incorporates parts of one of my favourite simian tracks “one dimension”. i miss simian. this blog is so five years ago, hey.

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i remixed local melbourne banjo-doom poptarts aleks & the ramps a couple of months ago (you can listen to and download that remix here). not to be out done, the band themselves has puked out a great cheesy remix of ‘brain’, probably my favourite track from the debut ramps album. its at their myspace. you can also read a couple of great interviews with aleks from the ramps here at mess&noise, and here at wireless bolinger. the mess&noise interview in particular is essential reading for ramp fans.

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and in conclusion: HERBIE HANCOCK AND HIS FAIRLIGHT….

…ON SESAME STREET!!:

… then JAMMING WITH QUINCY JONES!!!!:

“I think Clare’s songs are often domestic, in that they’re not about unicorns and drug experiences… To bring out the ‘domesticity’ I wanted to capture the sound of the place where we record, which is at our home. So I made a concerted effort to get as many sounds from the location onto tape as possible – not only the studio space but also the next-door neighbours dogs, the Greek Orthodox church down the road, our squeaky studio door and the rainbow lorikeets. In fact, the start of the album involves me walking from our house to the studio; unfortunately, it sounds a little like a radio play, but I wanted to have it there because that was the sound at the start of each day’s recording. To me, these features make the album sound just like us playing music in our shed – which is what we do!”

marty goes on to talk about all kinds of interesting stuff – he goes through some of his gear, he talks about the songwriting process, and discusses at length his completely analogue computer-less (gasp!) setup. a bit of trivia: the interviewer in this article is greg walker, who i’m assuming is greg walker aka machine translations. though i could be wrong, it is within the realm of possibility that there is more than one musical greg walker. but here’s a machine translations clip for good measure:

Video: Machine Translations – Amnesia

any regular audiotechnology readers would be familiar with regular columnist stav:

his oddball tips on mixing and engineering are always interesting. after his column on ‘reverse mixing’ i briefly became obsessed to listening to everything i did in reverse. i don’t know if it helps with my mixing any, but it is kind of weird – in reverse it sounds like the same song but different, its definitely strange being able to hear a track that i’ve heard 1000 times, and suddenly feel like i’m hearing it for the first time… and stuff going backwards just sounds cool

MP3: Faux Pas – Angles (backwards)

previously:
011 - Faux Pas – Looking for Nino (demo)
010 - Faux Pas – Dorothy’s Finger (demo)
009 - Faux Pas – Into Trevor Jones
more…

watch nick get dragged around in a couch by a very determined three year-old.
this is a great song too:

Video: Nick Huggins – The Movie We Made

find out more about nick here: http://www.apocketfullofstones.com/

MP3: Zeal – Yumi and the Sky (Faux Pas remix)

this blog is just turning into youtube central, and i’m not gonna stop now – here’s the great film clip for zeal’s song salt, which bob put together himself in his bedroom with an inkjet printer, a pair of scissors, and some time off from uni. its cool and my favourite bit is where the hand comes out and plays the theremin. oops i just spoiled it. i’m now currently trying to convince bob how it would be a great idea to make a faux pas clip that involves cats riding synthesisers through space.

this clip screened at the st kilda film festival earlier this year as part of their music video program:

Video: Zeal – Salt

this is something i posted online a few months ago (before this weekly series started), but its worth posting again now that there are a couple more of you sniffing around this blog… the more i listen to this, the happier i am with how it turned out. it can and will be described as banjo troubadour drama re-interpreted as tribal jam with timbales that shakesdown into sleepy dawn folk. BOOM.

check aleks & the ramps here. you should also check out this article on aleks & the ramps at the mess+noise website, which makes for great reading oooooooh

MP3: Aleks and the Ramps – Pisces vs Aquarius (Faux Pas remix)

previously:
007 - Faux Pas – Coach (demo)
006 - Gotye – Coming Back (Faux Pas Bellheadless remix)
005 - Faux Pas – Wayfare (demo)
more…