The End

This blog is over. Find me at under-the-rostrum.blogspot.com

New Ghosts of Television

Here's one of the songs from Ghosts of Television's forthcoming debut LP. The song is called 'Coelancanth'. Along with the forthcoming Castings LP, the new - and at this stage unnamed - GoT album is one of the most highly anticipated albums of the year for me. This song is great, but you should hear some of the other new ones they've been playing live recently. Their music is envenomed, psychadelic, cryptic, danceable, funny: pretty much everything that no one else is at the moment. What's more, this song isn't really indicative of what all their new stuff sounds like - it's all over the place in the best way.*

Also good (though of worse quality sonically) is this next video, a performance of 'Buzzrd' where Nic De Jong seems a bit fired up.



* I originally wrote here "everyone else is shit, comparatively", and while it's fairly close to the truth, there are about three or four exceptions. Just so you know...

Issue 22 of Cyclic Defrost will be out and about sometime in the next fortnight.

It features interviews with Eugene Carchesio (his D.N.E. album 47 Songs Humans Shouldn't Sing has recently been reissued by Room40), Belbury Poly, Knitted Abyss, The Caretaker, Fennesz, Mountains, Wavves and Anonymeye.

There are also features on Sydney's electronic music scene at the moment, as well as a few thoughts on the resurgence of the cassette format by Richard McFarlane.

Oh, and Christos Tsiolkas selects some of his favourite albums and talks about them.

There's awesome cover design by We Buy Your Kids, who also talk a bit about their favourite album sleeve designs as well.

It'll all be online at www.cyclicdefrost.com/blog shortly. Keep an eye out for the magazine too.

Squat

One of my mates is starting his own squat at the moment, inspired by the one he's been living in for a few months now: The Ever Burning Light on Parramatta Road, Leichhardt. Inspiring name you might say, very poetic you might say, but in actual fact The Ever Burning Light was the name of the lighting store that used to be there before the squatters moved in.

Anyway, The Ever Burning Light is gonna be dead fairly soon, with the owner apparently giving the incumbents a few weeks to sort their shit out and leave. So they're having a festival of sorts. Naturally, it's not just a bunch of punk bands - they'll be having workshops as well, which aim to promote the virtues of squatting, as well as provide hints and tips on how to do it without getting busted custard.

Here are the details, you'll probably need to email squatsydney@riseup.net for address details.

Friday (17th April):
Room 1. 8pm: Punkcore feat. Grim Love, Hot Girls, Badlands, Scum System Kill, The Disadvantaged, Upsidedown Ms Jane.

Room 2. 8pm: Noise/Breakcore feat. Turds of Prey, Forming, Freedom Sound, Free Damage, Spin Control, Dj Corporal Leper, Dj Shithouse, Swarm, Dislasystem

Saturday (18th April):
Room 1. 2pm: Squatting workshop featuring sydneys' squatting best. Come find people to squat with!

Room 1. 8pm: Punkcore feat. Walwora, Do Not Resuscitate, Crippled Gyspies (racists), Capacapo, Voting With Bricks, Sticky Fingers, Crux, Jiveass Trio.

Room 2. 8pm: Dodgy disco + Other things feat. Dj Oke, Deadbeat + more tbc

Sunday (19th April):
Room 1. 2pm: Acoustic, folk, hiphhop, spoken words, art, drama afternoon. Performance list coming soon

Room 2. ?pm: Want to put something on?

COST= $ZERO (may have a fund raiser for gecko)

**********

In vaguely related news, I was alerted to a discussion on the Yellow Ghost forums about the Decolonise Festival, an event I reviewed for Mess+Noise (see link down right side) and something for which I've copped a bit of flak over at those forums for. You can't really lurk there, you'll need to sign-up or whatever, but the general thrust was that I was being unfair likening the punks to 'cockroaches'. I can understand why you'd be offended by that if you weren't particularly thick skinned, but what I meant is that the punks in Sydney display an amazing resilience even in spite of most people wanting rid of them (picky neighbours, councils etc). It was, rather perversely, meant to be a compliment.

I was also accused of writing for the M+N audience, which - whoever that may be - I guess I'm definitely guilty of. Thing is, the artists I did cover - Kirin J Callinan and NOTV - aren't better than the other prodominately rock-ensemble punk/hardcore/rock groups per se, but they certainly stand out, which is increasingly important in a city where punk and hardcore pretty much dominate the underground venues. I like most of these bands - particularly Hee Haw, who I loved - but they don't offer much in the way of an alternative. I mean, there are bands like this that do play OAF or the Annandale regularly, so if there really is something different on display it is politics and an ethos only. (Important and noble, but not an end in itself)

Re: Essendon Airport

‘Substance doesn’t matter, when talking to Cleopatra / because she’s been dead for 3000 years’

Let me be honest - Palimpsest carries a certain mythological weight via most would-be fans not having any access to it (Chapter Music has been promising a re-issue for a while now), but honestly speaking, as enjoyable and context-providing as that LP may be, why has that incongruous 7” tacked at the end of the Chapter compendium ‘Sonic Investigations (of the Trivial)’ not been obsessively fawned over already? It stands out like a glowing sore thumb among the pretty circular noodlings that precedes it on this compilation. By contrast it’s horrendously brutal, relentlessly primary-coloured and intense. For Christ’s sake, ‘Lost In Madagascar’ ought to be a fucking anthem!

I’m talking about the Talking To Cleopatra single, which was ES’s first – and last – foray into horrifically disorientating, circular, running-in-circles-and-dropping-to-the-floor pop music, replete with meticulously enunciated English-tinged non-sequiturs courtesy of Anne Cessna. Check out those bass-drops that sound like ‘WRONG’ from Sale of The Century. They run shivers up my too-young-to-know-any-better spine! Why must all perfect things be so fleeting?

...bit of a mess

Being an occasional writer for Mess+Noise, I was pretty embarassed to read this live review of Dan Kelly and the Ukeladies, published on the site yesterday:

But then came the storm. The “shit” storm if you will, and it took the ungodly form of the atonal Ukeladies. Not hot, can’t sing, played the recorder, hardly even touched a ukulele. Look, the Salvo uniforms looked okay, I guess, but weren’t a patch on the side-boob bearing ball gowns they donned last time. Perhaps they just needed to run though a few scales beforehand? Or maybe pitting their voices against Kelly’s was about arty juxtaposition – blackboard fingernails versus sweet warm caramel third base – making Dan appear genius-by-proxy?

Makes you feel a bit sick in the stomach, doesn't it? Not sure what's worse though, the flagrant chauvinism or the fact that - if you read the review in complete here - it's difficult to decide whether the piece is about Dan Kelly, the Ukeladies, or the obvs-charming Nick Hilton, who judging by another of his pieces for Beat Magazine seems to have a writerly fascination with 'side-boob'.

It's important to distinguish yourself from the droves of apathetic street press writers in Australia but this isn't a route I'd advise taking. I hang my head in shame.

Clan Honours Severed Heads

So that Severed Heads tribute album that Clan Analogue announced a little while back (well actually, a little over two years ago) is still gonna happen by the looks of things.

I know this because Telafonica has posted their remix of 'Twister' on their blog.

Aeriae is also contributing to the compilation according to this interview @ Cyclic Defrost.

And while we're vaguely on topic, this post is one of the most entertaining Tom Ellard has ever posted on his blog.