Music wise:

laura viers
is a coy princess of pop and should be crown'd suchly.
deft and delectable, isn’t afraid of repetition for an idea to play out. Case in point, the lead track off Year of Meteors, Fire Snakes, which seeps the album into the room… after 1 minute of listening and kind of waiting for a crescendo you’re already tidying the bookshelf distracted and then by the time the track is nearly over 4 minutes later you are wondering how that riff with the strings got so deep under your skin and how you will get it out of your head the whole day…

bebel gilberto remix album
well waking up every morning to these reimagined mantlepieces for such a gorgeous voice feels rather nice. A stunner I think it should be called, another princess for the crowning, although she probably is already crowned. It should feel weird listening to the remix album before hearing the proper album, but these versions feel very natural and infrequently laboured. Her voice is such a great foil for the electronics.

polar bear's mix cd's

my man Cannonball’s gone and renamed hisself but the moniker went out like jay z in style around the time he gave over a wicked double disc of unforgiving quality rock-groove-surprise of (often bass heavy) radio station gold. highlights include star wars cantina by Richard Cheese, soundbites from Better Off Dead and Conan the Barbarian at his sexist best, and and an amazing post hip hop jam by Hymie’s Basement. And that’s only disc one. Magnificannonballbob.

laneway festival

Pivot were playing as I was standing outside, and damn it if they aren’t one of the funnest and smartest bands in Sydney town I’ll eat my pet rock. Faker put in an electric set, the best I have seen them perform since the ol’ lineup I used to love so. New Buffalo was delectable in the Basement, and to be honest only Gersey and a few others captured attention. I think for me all the acts I enjoyed were Australian, it just happened that way, I couldn’t get into the right crowd positions for bands like Broken Social or Les Savy Fav, though they were pumping out amazing music and Tim Harrington did have only underwear on his homely bod.

i did get to see Jens Lekman perform a song with New Buffalo as well as some of Architecture in Helsinki which was special and innocently lovely. Avalanches dj set was weird, maaaaaaan. I have not heard that Springsteen track for years.. AND THERE’S A REASON FOR THAT!!! Oh well, there were some good moments to their set. I could blame it on the detox I had just started a couple of days before. It makes you shitty when all the toxins free up from the nether regions and go floating around the bloodstream. Basically I got a taste of all the toxins my bod couldn’t really get rid of in the last while. Mmmmm… like lots of tiny hangovers all at once. Ranting now, sorry.

womadelaide

so I ended up at womadelaide for 10 hours or so, worshipping at the altar of Eitetsu Hayashi to begin with, under sweltering vertical rays of Adelaide sun… It was worth it for many reasons, what a constant energy that man and his young headbanded protoges have. Taiko drummers drum. And they run. They drum then they run. Then they usually drum. You get the picture. Anyway their set was something Mark E and I enjoyed (he’s the tall one) and to run into my old Taiko teacher, Harold there was a treat. The day was as usual filled with acts unknown which look so much worse on paper…

among friends found and lost and sometimes found again, I was in front of stages of mesmeric Rajastahni Gypsy musicians and also jugglers, and not one but two Classical Indian masters. With Ali and Mark and then Brett, Stuart, Sarit and Celine, L. Subramanian played his pentatonic raga which was his entire set with a happy looking backing band, and I was particularly happy to see he had the Roland Jazz Chorus amp up there behind him (that’s what I use for the Guitar.)

a non-musical highlight for all you bored non-music loving readers was a night time spectacle among the large trees of botanic park. Some clever artiste soul had put in a large projector, sending an image of a sleeping face onto the foliage of a tree. as I focused in on it, it did an Ent on me and opened it’s eyes, and then looked around… (!) fantastic and odd. Next on the listening agenda was an amazing Iraqi band without their lead singer who seemed to have withered in the heat that day.

Evelyn Glennie played some quite unbelievable percussion, particularly a snare pattern which sped up imperceptibly from a snail crawl to a locomotive and back again. Then some lovely double-mallet work on the marimba, and sample laden percussive freakouts, a very strange set. Did I mention she is deaf?

saw a quiet genius from Port Lincoln, a modal gypsy jazz group called Doch, and I drank a lot of fresh and delicious apple juice from an Adelaide café whose name I forget. That was the best juice I have had, possibly ever.

only disappointment for the day was the steel drum big band which really sounded like supermarket music crossed with angry ring tones to me.

Talvin Singh did his thing, played the Indian DJ complete with “you are now flying Air India, please prepare for takeoff” samples through to tabla-infested breakbeats. An enjoyable way to finish the day for me, though I was knackerised and happy to head via taxi home just before a zillion-throng followed.

battles

these guys are to the post modern rock oevre what Sky were to rock in the 80’s. Tasteful but rigidly metallic, of contradictions and dischordant rage within the structure. Drummer from Mark of Cain, guys from math rock I should have known about when they were really mathing it up, and some wicked handclaps in the song IPT2. Truly inspired.

congotronics 2

the weirdest world music in ages – lots of instruments which are usually a bit quiet (thumb pianos, etc) amplified with telephone wire and magnets, and sounding like some really bonkers electronics, but still African very much. Lovely stuff, it came with a dvd too which features some of the happy and oddly dressed native Congo-go-ers bopping around. Yay!

the church

have been reading Steve Kilbey’s amazing blog which there’s a link to on my blog here, The Time Being, and wanted to see the band live. FIRST TIME!!! Yes, I know, it was long overdue. But they proved up to every challenge, and damn isn’t Marty Wilson Piper so happy?! Metropolis and a few others were well known but the meat of the set was all new to me, and was a treat. Sounding like a big Dylan band with harmonica and grand piano thrown in, they played with ease, and I got talking to one of the long time Chrutch fans (Hey Vince!) who filled me in with a few tid-bits about the songs, and recommended I buy “After Everything Now This” after the gig. Apparrently there is a remix album of this, which after the Bebel story I think I will try to dig up and listen to before AENT, actually.

Eggstone

I have re-discovered this talented three piece from somewhere in Europe, who have released some of the unabashedly happipop since the Smiths never did. Thanks to the naughty facilitation of p2p sharing, soulseek actually, I have been showered with an album and ep of their material I never knew existed. As a primer, check out Spanish Slalom (LP) on Matador records. My esteemed fellow Paulus Cummins was responsible for introducing me to them back in the mid 90's and they really should have been huge everywhere. Amazing chops. Funny name though.

earth

Hex etc: Growl. Shiver. Pray.

who said music isn’t what it was?