Many flashbacks here to childhood in surburbia sitting with my face pressed against the TV. Sydney director Alex Ryan created the distortions in this video for Bon Chat, Bon Rat by treating 16mm film and running it through a projector. Cool stuff.

soundcloud.com/bon-chat-bon-rat

bonchatbonrat.com

Read Post →

Jonti – ‘Nightshift In Waltz’ (RAJA Rearrangement)

(mp3)

NY native RAJA recently put Jonti’s ‘Nightshift in Blue’ on the slow burner. This looser version plays out like an astral projection on a Sunday afternoon. Worth a listen.

soundcloud.com/lordraja

lordraja.tumblr.com

jontidanimals.tumblr.com

Read Post →

SPOILER ALERT:

Curious Indian boy discovers golden ticket. Said ticket opens up magic portal. Instead of being greeted by Aslan, David Tennant (or the stuff you usually get when you walk through magic portals) – boy finds Melbourne four piece who refuse to put their shirts back on.

Sodapop EP is available on bandcamp.

citizensex.bandcamp.com

www.facebook.com/citizensex

*Also worth checking out some of the other great work done by the guys from Betty Wants In who made this clip.

Read Post →

Horror My Friend – ‘Leave Me Alone’

(mp3)

The Sunshine State may have earnt its fair share of cultural schtick in the international music press as the place for scuzz and house parties courtesy of DZ and Bleeding Knees Club, but don’t count on these guys from Adelaide to keep suburbia quiet for too long. This track has enough hooks for havoc potential and the right dose of vocal precociousness to make the kids go crazy. A heads up if you dig DZ or Children Collide’s earlier material.

The band’s EP Shivers and Spines is available on bandcamp.

horrormyfriend.bandcamp.com

Facebook

Read Post →

You don’t really need to find much beyond ‘Crave You’ and ‘Foreign Language’ to hear that production pair Flight Facilities have bestowed some unforgivingly catchy tracks on us all.

Here’s the brand new clip for their track ‘With You’ which features Grovesnor aka. former Hot Chip member Rob Smoughton.

This clip took animator Ben Drake and his team four months to complete. I’m frankly over watching band vids with pretty chicks running through forests, so these Daft Punk/Astroboy vibes are so up on my radar right now.

Producer: Samuel Beck
Production Manager: Ben Huxter
Character Designs, Story and Directed: Benjamin Drake
Guest Animators: Alexis Dean-Jones & Xin Li
Compositors: Steven Smith & Xue Sen Wong
Special thanks: Liam Hockins & Seera Rytkölä

www.flightfacilities.com

www.facebook.com/flightfacilities

Read Post →

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)

(more…)

Read Post →