Better…two months late than never. I’ve been absent from these parts because I’ve been busy doing important stuff, like eating beans for 60 days and getting mugged in rural Central America. Prior to dieting on mariachi and Mexican opera for a few months, I got along to the annual SXSW conference/festival in Austin, Texas.

I arrived at SXSW for the first time without an itinerary or a wristband for a week of music and merriment. College orientation shit really. I mean, all I had to do was dodge the kids in Goodwill sweaters handing out sample mixtapes and stomp through to the free kebabs and gigs right? Turns out 6th St was as easy as striding through a trojan warzone, with the addition of Willie Nelson clones riding over my feet with their god damn pedal tuks every two meters.

Everything is bigger in Texas, but Austin is just whack. Any fleeting hobby interest you might have had in people watching gets amplified here; everywhere is teeming with street performers, artists and their convoys, people in neon suits, morph suits, birthday suits, and unabashed locals flaunting rainbow tie dye tshirts with ‘KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD’ emblazoned across their chests. Finding some new obscure band that blows your brains isn’t difficult, as live music happens everywhere from 10am until the early hours of the morning.

While SXSW has a rep for being a goldmine for unsigned acts, I learnt that it WILL quickly turn into a wasteland of terrible free prog-rock gigs if you scribble down 3 out of the 48 free events you’ve RSVP-ed to on a piece of scrap paper that’s covered in boob-sweat. Yes, SXSW is do-able without a $750 pass, and yes, you still can bask in the glory of plenty of new bands, have lots of fun and consume superfluous amounts of free Doritos to your hearts content (see here), but stuff gets tricky when you queue for three hours, then end up climbing iron bars for a scenic view of the back of Doug Martsch’s head.

After a few days of plodding, I was welcomed into the arms of Maggie Mae’s on Saturday for the annual Aussie BBQ. Highlights included free food, familiar accents, chummy people in green attire (it was St Patrick’s Day) and resident Peter Pan aka Nick ‘Paisley Adams’ Allbrook of POND catapulting into the crowd and nearly taking out Brit TV host Alexa Chung’s glory box with his pan flute. Go ‘straya.

Here’s some photos from the Aussie BBQ:

Alpine

Voltaire Twins

Pond

(click below for more photos)

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The once humble music video is never so these days.  You might recall Phondupe two producers out of Sydney whose track ‘Aviary West’ we featured last year. They’ve teamed up with local director/producer Benjamin Zadig, who’s made a pretty spectacular clip, featuring a few colonial dudes getting terrorized by the resident forest ‘bunyip’.

The guys put out their latest release, Dinner Melts yesterday and it’s been on rotation here all day. The four track release is teeming with some interesting ideas, cut and paste beats and all the downtempo quirks you’d find in a Tokyo backalley bar.  It’s available as a free download on their bandcamp, so you’ll probably get to that faster than you can attempt to count the syllables in track four: ‘Hideyoshi’s Seven Skillful Spearmen of Shizugatake’. Yeah, that.

phondupe.bandcamp.com

facebook.com/phondupe

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And here we present to you the debut clip from WONDERBOY/our/my favourite local act – Chet Faker, who’ve I’ve been adequately smothering on here since THAT Blackstreet cover.

The guy can probably count his live shows on one hand, but I’m sure anyone else who’s been to one knows that this guy exists beyond the hype bubble.

If you’re heading along to SXSW in two weeks, he’ll be taking his beard and groove to the Filter Mag party.

But the best news is he’s announced an east coast tour this April. And his debut album Terms and Conditions (Remote Control Records) will be dropping somewhere in between.

Can you handle any more good news? CAN YA CAN YA CAN YA?

SAT 21 APRIL – The Toff, Melbourne
With special guests I’ll’s
Tickets from www.thetoffintown.com

FRI 27 APRIL – Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane
With special guests Outerwaves
Tickets from www.oztix.com.au

SAT 28 APRIL – GoodGod, Sydney
With special guest Flume
Tickets from www.moshtix.com

www.chetfaker.com

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A gorgeous tune from local singer/songwriter Abby Smith featuring some brilliant charcoal animation courtesy of Todd Fuller. The video is doing the rounds on the Australian Council for the Arts site and has also been shortlisted for several film and art festivals.

Abby Smith FB

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Briscoe – ‘Animal’

Bart Denaro spent nine years playing drums for Kid Confucius, a year lamenting the post band split and lesser time trying to refine his love of pop hooks repressed behind all that funk drumming. Briscoe is his first outing since KC and it couldn’t be further away from any of his former pursuits. First impressions first though, this is a great track on the assumption that it sounds like a mash-up of all my favourite Wilco albums in three minutes. Homely hooks laying right through and an epic bridge also makes this tune sweet music to my ears. Briscoe’s debut album Friends Ago is set for release soon, and by the sounds of this it should deserve a solid listen.

Briscoe are playing a free show at The Great Northern in Newcastle on March 3rd with Fearless Vampire Killers + The Owls.

Briscoe FB

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