Photos by Ed Gorwell and Bec Capp
More photos after the jump
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Features
FEATURE: Shedstock 2014
Shedstock is the pretty genius brainchild of Donnie Miller and Innez Tulloch of Roku Music and recording studio Nowhere Audio. For the past few years it’s been running as the DIY festival to end all DIY festivals – a kind of pals-only thing on a family farm with a stage made out of wooden pallets. This year, with the help of some crowd funding, they built a real stage with a roof and walls and everything, and put on the biggest party northern New South Wales has ever seen.
There was music from the truly great Blank Realm, Brisbane’s best sad-band Keep On Dancin’s, the always excellent Roku Music, local badarses Woodboot, cold synth queens and surprise highlight Pleasure Symbols, scrappy legends Cannon, the ‘90s-bush-doof-meets-shady-electro-pop of Multiple Man, and the seriously demented Unpeople and Cobwebbs, to name hardly any, all playing in the obscenely beautiful surroundings of the northern rivers.
A music festival with no dickheads, good music all the time and heaps of rad dogs and chickens to play with during the day? Heaven.
To get into the DIY spirit (and maybe because I don’t own a real camera) I shot some photos on disposable film – and hey, they turned out alright!
MAP June 2014
This month’s Music Alliance Pact features 27 brand new tracks from around the globe – everywhere from India to Ecuador. The Australian contribution for June comes from Perth artist Kucka, whose brilliant single ‘Unconditional’ is out now.
This month we’re also welcoming new blogs from France and Canadia, Your Own Radio and Ride the Tempo.
Keep your eyes peeled for Robbie’s latest Mapcast – due mid-week – over on Soundcloud. While you’re waiting you can check out last month’s MAP Eurovision spectacular and subscribe to Robbie’s monthly podcast on iTunes.
Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song title to download an mp3, or grab a zip file of the full 27-track compilation through Dropbox here.
ARGENTINA: Zonaindie
Temper is an instrumental rock band with influences that encompass tango, jazz, surf-rock, Hindu movie soundtracks and psychedelic music. This catchy track is from their third album, Clitoxismo: 10 Neurotransmisiones En Círculos, released last year by La Boca Se Te Haga Un Lago, a local independent label which specializes in instrumental music.
AUSTRALIA: Who The Bloody Hell Are They?
Perth native Kučka, aka Laura Jane Lowther, makes tinsel-y RnB that falls somewhere between the smooth, subdued sounds of 90s-era Janet Jackson and the cartoonish decadence of K-pop. With her vocals featured on two tracks from A$AP Rocky’s debut album, LONG.LIVE.A$AP, and with a brand new EP due out later this year, Kučka is definitely an artist to keep your eye on.
BRAZIL: Meio Desligado
Russo Passapusso, the lead singer of BaianaSystem, is about to release his first solo album. In single Paraquedas he displays a deep appreciation of Brazil’s musical roots. It’s a mixture of samba rock, funk and hip hop to make you dance.
CANADA: Ride The Tempo
Hayden John Wolf and Jayli Wolf may show some Europe electronica inspiration in Howling but the duo are indeed from Toronto. Each time Once A Tree drop a track on SoundCloud, they deliver with creative vocals and eargasmic production. Howling proves to be their best tune yet, experimenting with trap-like beats and chilling atmosphere.
See the full list after the jump
PART 3: Remission & Other Songs – Interviews with Australian Musicians in Healthcare
Illustration by Geoffrey A Thorsen
ANNA DAVIDSON
When you really think about it, there are so many distractions to forget how limited we really are. On a day-to-day basis, the incentives to participate in or manipulate the environment from which we find ourselves are often fairly daft. Anna Davidson‘s cartoonish drawl is mostly straight to the point and as a sufferer of chronic illness; her perspective as an artist is intertwined with her experiences as a consumer of health services.
“After slitting my wrists and taking lots of drugs my housemate dragged me to the car and drove me to the hospital, where they stitched and bandaged me up. I had to wait in a weird courtyard with some kid who had drunk an entire thing of goon and a whole packet of Panadol. Waiting there for an entire day and did not help my situation at all. Once I got into the hospital 12 hours later, my really crazy roommate was screaming all the time and it was really stressful. I would go and tell the nurses that I felt uncomfortable and they just didn’t give a shit.”
Considering some of the difficulties she has experienced within the health system, Anna’s her artistic output is not terrifying or depressing for the matter.
She recently relocated to Melbourne from Brisbane, where the rest of her primary outfit, Major Leagues still resides. On the day of the interview, Anna and Fergus Miller (Bored Nothing) had just completed their self-titled EP for their outfit Revenge Surgery. A Lennon/Yoko-esque project, the EP was self produced and written and recorded by the pair in six-days.
MS: Have you met any other creative people in hospital?
AD: Definitely. On the day that I was committed for the first time, I had been bandaged up and stuff. You have to go into a waiting room and I was there all day, just waiting for a temporary bed or whatever. I barely remember it, but that day this other guy, who overdosed on purpose, was being committed too and he ended up going to emergency to get his stomach pumped. We were in hospital for probably a month together. He was a really great artist. Mostly graphic stuff. He was extremely talented. There was another guy who was an indigenous painter and he gave me a little canvas.
They have art sessions, once a day usually, so you could do drawing and stuff. They have a guitar but you could only use it with someone watching you for an hour or something. The second hospital I was allowed to use a guitar, but yeah same kind of deal. I didn’t have to have supervision but I had to return it and sign a thing.
Do you think most people who work in mental health have a mental illness? Like they got into it because they were trying to solve their own issues?
I never thought about that. My first psychiatrist was just really clinical and cold and it was stressful. It made me more anxious having to talk to him. Lots of the nurses in the public health system seem not to care about the patients very much. Some of them weren’t very nice at all or understanding. But in the private hospital, the second psychiatrist I had was super lovely.
I guess it depends on the person, but I’ve had both ends, like this person actually cares about my mental health and this person shouldn’t be doing this job.
Do you ever think playing a live rock show is kind of absurd?
Yeah, of course. I feel like that about everything.
How do you deal with that?
I guess I get some kind of enjoyment out of it, which I don’t get from other things in life. Drawing and playing music is all I really enjoy doing and lots of the time I don’t really enjoy either of them.
[The illness] is part of my personality and my personality is obviously a part of what I create. So many of my experiences have just been being really depressed. I’ve thought I just want to stop music so many times, but I just get bored. I guess now its just habit as well. I think I feel pressure from my family to do something with my life and luckily they are very supportive with my music stuff. I question why I continue to do it. So, I guess this is me quitting music right now [laughs].
Who wrote the songs on Revenge Surgery? Did you write them collaboratively?
Fergus wrote two of the songs, but the other four I wrote the skeleton and then Fergus added guitar and wicked cool drums.
How does doing something like Revenge Surgery differ from your other band Major Leagues?
It was definitely more fun. I thought about quitting Major Leagues because everything can be so stressful. We are looking at tour stuff at the moment and we’ve come to point where we are supposed to play with bands that will pull the most people, so we can sell the most tickets but I don’t really want to play with those kinds of bands. I just want to play with bands that I like, who I want to watch play three times on a tour. That side of things is difficult.
(Read the full interview below.)
PART 2: Remission & Other Songs – Interviews with Australian Musicians in Healthcare
(Read Part 1 of the interview series here.)
Illustration by Geoffrey A Thorsen
DJARMBI SUPREME.
Tensions can arise when a young professional also wants to try their hand at art, especially when that art is their “outlet for all the dodgy shit [they] would love to be able to say everyday but they know isn’t politically correct”. Djarmbi Supreme is the pseudonym of a 29 year-old Aboriginal health education officer, who writes lyrics that would make most of his colleagues cringe, or at least reconsider whether this closet “sociopath” should remain in their email network. Although, that’s only because they view Djarmbi Supreme within the hospital that they work in and not from within the parallel universe where the self-described “cage rattler” exists.
“I’m a new-school version of Barry Humphries. Djarmbi Supreme is like Sir Les Patterson. He’s a concentration of all my sleaze-bag, outspoken instincts that I actually have. It’s an extension of me. It’s not me, but just an outlet for me to be able to produce exactly what my instincts are telling me to do and not wonder if it’s somehow going to affect me personally…”
MS: So you do the Djarmbi character so it doesn’t clash with your professional life? DS: Yeah, that’s one of the big reasons I’m fairly anonymous. I try to make it clear that it’s just a stand-alone entity. Because of the work that I do I have to be able to retain a certain amount of respect socially, in the community and professionally. When I’m at work, I’m someone who people are supposed to listen to and trust my words and actions. I’m an educator. If they heard the music that I’m making as Djarmbi it would be really hard to retain any respect. It’s a technique of being able to have this outrageous personality as well as have this sensible professional career at the same time.
Professional wrestlers are not at home in costume smashing their kids over the couch. They are just regular people when they are off duty. That’s what it’s all about. Finding out how you can be an authentic artist or entertainer and just keeping it there. I still dip in and out of it. I’m on Twitter all day as Djarmbi Supreme but I’m still at work doing my stuff. I kind of get a thrill out of thinking I’m getting away with something. It’s an indulgence. I’m pretty vain in that regard.
You seem to want to elicit anger through the character Djarmbi Supreme. Where does your anger come from?
There was a lot hard shit in my youth and teen years. I sort of battled a bit. I suppose I learnt how to express all that through other avenues instead of lashing out. I’ve seen my role models being not very good at doing that, which made me better at it.
Can you tell me about what happened with Andrew Bolt?
[Andrew Bolt] went to court and was found to be negligent in his journalism and was found to be a racist by law. Since then he has been attacking people and perpetuating the Darwinist theory that light-skinned Aboriginal people aren’t authentic and we’re sponges on welfare. Through his careful choice of words, he has basically got a whole army of ignorant people thinking that he is true and everything he says is gospel because it makes so much sense to them because they haven’t got enough education to know any better. He is sort of like Davros or something. He has all these little Daleks running around aiming their lasers at light-skinned Aboriginal people but they don’t have brains of their own to actually stand back and learn. They refuse to learn. So I wrote a fake open letter to him. It was a play on the fact that lots of people in the community were writing open letters to him and feeling like they had to elevate their language to reach his level. I was trying to make a point that we should be lowering our intelligence to communicate with him because he is such a fucking bottom-feeding, shit cunt. I took it down to the street level.
He’s trying to label me as a sponge because the work I do is government funded. Well, fuck. He is funded by Gina Rinehart. What’s worse? How can such extreme conservative thinking be mainstream and accepted? You asked me before about what makes me angry. That’s it. How does that get through the gates? People think they are scared and sitting in danger so they think we need to freeze Australia the way it is.
I’m interested. You are seemingly misanthropic at times but you also work in healthcare.
Well, I don’t hate humans. I’m just a fucking snob.
(Read the full interview below) (more…)
MAP May 2014
Our Aus submission for the Music Alliance Pact this month comes from our boy Yeo, with his seriously catchy track ‘Kobe’. Mapcast Robbie is back with the usual Mapcast podcast this month after returning (almost) unscathed from a ridiculous incident in Thailand where a dog chewed off half his leg (true story.) If you missed it last month, Robbie also recorded a Eurovision spin off featuring MAP tracks. Listen to it HERE.
Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song title to download an mp3, or grab a zip file of the full 27-track compilation through Ge.tt here.
ARGENTINA: Zonaindie
Shaman y Los Pilares De La Creación – Tierna Oscuridad
Tierna Oscuridad is the opening track on Shaman y Los Pilares De La Creación’s second album, released by Concepto Cero, one of La Plata’s finest independent labels. You can hear the whole album via the band’s website. The song is also on the soundtrack for the film Arriba Quemando El Sol, so the sound prevails over the notes, creating a deep atmospheric musical environment.
AUSTRALIA: Who The Bloody Hell Are They?
A little over a year ago, Melbourne’s Yeo gave his acoustic guitar the flick and turned to a new friend, the keytar. He had some success in 2013 with the dark, whirring Girl and now he’s back with Kobe, the second single from his forthcoming EP. It’s a big step up for the producer: a shining, ambitious pop song with brash synth stabs, jittery percussion and confident R’n’B vocals. Yeo played Canadian Music Week and some US shows this month. If he doesn’t break the North American market first time round, we reckon he’s got a promising future penning tunes for Justin Timberlake.
BRAZIL: Meio Desligado
Quarto Negro – Quando o Mar Não Vem
Quarto Negro are about to release their second album and have just brought out a movie about their time in studio, called GRU-PDX. Quando o Mar Não Vem is taken from debut album Desconocidos, released in 2011, and shows the band’s melodic excellence and sensitivity.
CANADA: Quick Before It Melts
[MP.G] My Pet Genius released Might Strike Satellite in 1996 to much critical acclaim. For the past 17 years they have been recording, mixing, switching studios, re-recording, scrapping and re-mixing hundreds of hours of music that will become the colossal double LP, Empire Of Light. A teaser EP called EMP01 reveals what’s to be expected when Empire Of Light finally arrives this fall.
Listen to the full list of tracks below!
PART 1: Remission & Other Songs – Interviews with Australian Musicians in Healthcare
“Djarmbi Supreme is like Sir Les Patterson. He is a concentration of all the sleaze-bag, outspoken instincts that I actually have. It’s not me, but just an outlet for me to be able to produce exactly what my instincts are telling me to do and not wonder if it’s somehow going to affect me personally.”
Living within the health system can be grounding, but it can also derail. I interviewed three musicians, all who’ve had significant exposure to our health system as both practitioners and consumers. Peter Emptage from Paddock spoke to us about about improvising everything – including landing an artist residency in Taiwan, while Aboriginal Health Education officer / rapper Djarmbi Supreme who describes himself as the “new school version of Barry Humphries” recalls the time he took on Andrew Bolt. The final interview in the series comes from Anna Davidson from Major Leagues‘ who had some interesting experiences making friends in the emergency department.
Illustration by Geoffrey A Thorsen
PETER EMPTAGE: PADDOCK.
“I’m really lucky to have a job. I think it’s really good to have your bills covered and not necessarily make a living off music. It’s pretty murky waters when you’re setting out with the sole intention of cashing in on your arts and crafts.”
I’m caught off guard by Pete’s positive aura. He’s worked in disability for 8 years and is delighted by that. Unlike most of the burnt out health professionals I’ve met, he seems spiritually revitalised by living.
On the other hand, Pete’s primary band Paddock is often devastatingly intense and visceral, only interspersed with a big grin when he isn’t delivering lines. In fact, everyone who attends a Paddock concert sits glued to the performance, like they just might learn something. The controlled vocals sound unmistakably ‘Australian’.
MS: So, is the rest of the Paddock improvising a lot of the time?
PE: They mostly make up what they are doing. It’s a largely a go-for-it affair. If it really fucks up, it can often turn out better than what I came up with. They are good at fucking things up, in a pleasant way.
And how do the songs come to life?
For Paddock I write the words, but there is no formula set in stone of where songs go. So far, I’ve come up with the words and things are built around that.
The song writing process is varied, really varied. It’s different depending on where the impetus to write a song came from. It may come from some garbled melody or it could come from some rhythm slapped on your thighs. I feel like that’s the exciting parts of coming up with songs, it’s not necessarily a clear route to anything in particular, so as long as you’ve got the impetus to make something, the end point will. That’s the beauty of it. It’s an infinitely exciting craft. It’s something you can chip away at.
So why do you continue with songwriting?
Something I feel like could be interesting to work on in songwriting is to blow up a little bit of the structures that singer-songwriter material often has embodied in it; verses, choruses and bridges – but the bands are freed up to improvise because people feel more fluent and less inhibited. Outside the form of rapping or spoken word or poetry, I guess you don’t often hear singer songwriter material changing from gig to gig, that’s the one part of the music that is cemented in. I would love to be able to write in a way that words or sounds of the voice could be the same quality dynamic and engaging in the present moment as the music. I’ve also just been getting back into Public Enemy. Chuck D is the king.
I hear your lyrics and think there are sometimes parallels between your work in healthcare and your words?
I guess it’s a part of my lived experience, so there’s definitely influences had on my life. It’s similar to music, there’s a real human element to it. Its a community based job, you get to work closely with people and hear where they’re at.
For words, its nice just hearing how people speak and people’s stories. That’s one part of the craft of writing words I really love – just narrative, abstract writing that plays more with sounds like ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ or something like that. Its got intention but it’s not always clear what it’s driving towards. It’s more working with big picture stuff or a mood. I don’t think you need to always set out knowing where you’re trying to get to….
Read more below.
Latest Comments
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Still trying to purchase!!!ANTHONY J LANGFORD
Cool track. Congrats Joshua. Hope the release is a success.Tristan
Man I love these guys. I can't believe they are not releasing any new music. I've been to so many…sophie
^^ I love Grimes! Banoffee is one of my new favorite music artists! :) I love With Her, Reign Down,…Ace
Read your review then listened to the EP. Fantastic ! Different to most hardcore punk I listen to. Somewhat more…