Loud Noise and Pictures

Those who write media releases write newspapers.

“O week in Canberra is a yearly tradition that welcomes first year students to university and gives them a chance to loosen up and socialise in a relaxed environment before plunging head first into the merciless world of tutorials, textbooks and two minute noodles.

Friction & Lexington Music, ACT’s own promoters behind Foreshore & Wareshouse festivals have teamed up with ANU and UC campuses to deliver the ultimate O week celebration!

Across multiple stages you’ll catch some of the hottest headline talent representing indie, rock, hip hop, dance & more!

While we are keeping the venue under wraps just for now, we can tell you it’s a very exciting outdoor space fit for thousands of party mad uni students and all their friends!

O In The Park is set to be the largest social event of O Week that provides the opportunity to meeting and party with your new classmates, friends and other likeminded people from both inside and outside your own campus.

University social and residential groups will be participating on the day, getting involved with a whole host ofdaytime activities and stalls alongside the bands and DJs rocking this major event!

Line up announced early November!”

I’m excited. These guys, whilst being dance-centric, do pull some good headliners, and if they’re doing a crossover festival, sweet. I do have four words though: EDDY. CURRENT. SUPRESSION. RING.

A year or so ago, if not longer, Daniel Boud planted the word ‘bluejuice‘ into my subconcious with his photos and stories of the irreverant Sydney band. Playing some retarded inbred lovechild of a hip hop, electro, rock threesome whereby two musical sperm, one from hip hop and one from electro, fertilised the egg of rock at the exact same time. I don’t believe there is a more medical term for this than ‘Fucked Up’.

After releasing the disturbingly wonderful Problems last year, they’ve been touring, jumping out of planes, breaking themselves, breaking spirits, getting arrested, working day jobs, and touring their arses off some more.

Bass player Jamie took time out of his day to answer a few of our questions…

What have you interrupted to do this interview?

Work! We mostly have music-related jobs when we’re not making music-related albums.

Your video for Vitriol beat out a video by some friends of mine in the finals for the Sunscreen video comp a year or so back. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that they’re really cut up about it. Any advice for them?

I’d suggest that having a walk in the sunshine, or patting a friendly dog, or meeting an old friend for ice-cream; all these things can help one escape the crushing burden of depression. There will always be another Sunscreen video comp, and when that day comes, you can finally leave your darkened room with hope in your hearts.

About your videos, you guys have some pretty different ideas when it comes to concepts. Your video for The Reductionist, for instance, sees Jake and Stav skydiving whilst still singing along. How much planning and co-ordination did that require? Can you give us a rundown of how the whole thing came about?

Well, actually – I can’t. I was the only one in the band who refused to do the jump, so I didn’t have much to do with it. I’m not afraid of skydiving you understand – I’m just frightened of what latent emotions might erupt if I’m strapped to another man in a harness.

Basically though, as I understand it, Jake and Stav did two jumps each, with iPods in their ears, and the iPods played The Reductionist over and over so that they could sing in time. The director of the clip jumped with them, as well as a second cameraman. To finish there was an exhaustive laundry session involving Stav’s pants.

I saw another video on Youtube of Jake being arrested mid set. What exactly happened there?

During a show, Jake was wearing a NSW police shirt, and halfway through the set (which, I might add, was for a tsunami benefit) three cops jumped on-stage and escorted him off. He was charged with impersonating an officer or something, but the charges were later thrown out in court, suggesting that the cops in question were utter imbeciles.

Your live shows are known to be a hotbed of acrobatics, energy, and nudity. Last time I saw you guys was at Transit Bar in Canberra and there was plenty of swinging from lighting rigs and such, and I’ll be there at Trackside when you play. Do you tend to go off more at a small venue or at a festival?

Playing to thousands at a festival is energising every time, though I still think we’re slightly more suited to dank drinking dungeons. Everything is more immediate in a smaller venue, and the crowd gets a better opportunity to cop a faceful of whatever liquid is coming out of our bodies at the time.

You guys supported Tricky when he played The Metro, how did that go? Something about breaking something? Do you think you upstaged the main act? Personally, I’d shit myself if I thought Tricky was worried I’d stolen his thunder. Hell, I feel bad just using his name without permission.

Yeah, Jake was a little frustrated, and he punched the stage hard enough to break his hand (having already broken his leg a month before). There was no real risk of us upstaging Tricky that night – he was great (and must have developed some serious whiplash from all the head-thrashing he does).

He did offer to help us carry my speaker after the show, which was frightening enough.

Obligitory follow-up album question: What’s the plan? How do you top the cover art?

We’ve worked up a pool of pretty good songs for the next album. We’ve also written some really shit ones, which as my girlfriend might point out – is most of them.

As for the cover art, maybe we’ll disembowel some baby hedgehogs on the next cover. That’s the only thing I can think of that would be more disturbing that the last one.

Did you know Micheal Parkinson was possibly going to be called Melbourne Gershwin Parkinson? How would you ridicule that in a playground?

How could you ridicule Parkinson? You’d try to insult him and he’d just smile sweetly, and ask you a gently probing question about your upbringing, followed by some carefully researched questions about your career and in no time you’d be having a laugh and chatting to Hugh Grant about where to find the best pot of tea in Derbyshire.

What are you going to be doing right after this interview?

The powers that be are replacing our PCs with Macs this afternoon. So I’ll probably spend the next 5 hours right-clicking things that should be double-clicked, or whatever the difference is.

bluejuice are playing near you real soon.

Nov 22^nd            – Trackside Festival, Canberra

Nov 23^rd                – VROOM Summer Escape Festival, Perth

Nov 29-30^th      – Queenscliff Music Festival, Queenscliff

Dec 6^th                   – Homebake, Sydney

Dec 30^th            – Peats Ridge Festival, Glenworth Valley

Dec 31^st            – Purple Sneakers NYE Party, Sydney 

Following on from the trend taking over the music industry, or not, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is releasing their 5th full length ‘The Effects of 333′ at 3.33pm PST (Pacific Standard Time ie. California, here we come/rest in peace/they’ve got one in South Patagonia) on their website.

This will be without Nick Jago – King of the Awkward Silence, so they’ve got Leah Shapiro from The Raveonettes touring band onboard.

Apparently it’s an instrumental, if their comments on the website are to be believed. Sweet. Way to copy Nine Inch Nails again, although they did follow you guys at Pepsi Live in Argentina. 

Nonetheless, excitement reigns. New album as of Sunday morning. Yeow.

Wow! these guys are off the hook

First up, check out the video of the band

If your are still with me, Crystal Antlers hail from Long Beach, California and they Merge psych, garage, lo-fi, prog, and countless other influences whilst still holding it together with musicianship beyond their years. There is a fair bit of hype about them in the blogesphere, but it is well deserved when you sound like this. Here’s hoping they tour soon or im going to have to trek to the states and stalk them.

Check out another video Fo shizzle!

Life can be really shit sometimes, but when a band like this comes along that demands you to move your feet, well you just cant help yourself to forget everything and shake your booty.

Friendly Fires hail from St Albans in England, and play something between a glass of DFA produced disco beats, a dash of The Rapture and a slice of Phoenix. Put this all together and you have one refreshing band.

They have a self titled album out that is waiting for you to purchase and ready to take over your feet.

Get on it

Whilst trawling L’Internets for house music and remixes after an epic DJ session on Saturday night where I learnt to fully love 126-132bpm (like I needed help), I came across the very anti-thesis of what I was looking for, and I loved it.

Made Out of Babies are a Brooklyn heavy-noise-post-something-metal-ish-rock band that make some fucking cool tunes. For the past few months I’ve been flirting with punk and metal like the ex lovers we are, and I think I may end up cheating on the more ‘open minded’ (if you want to get all pretentious) indie-dance scene I’ve been going out with. It could be a quarter life crisis, or it could be the impending 4 hours 2 days of Soundwave I’ll be watching whilst waiting for Nine Inch Nails, that I’ll need to love. Mind you, about 45mins-an hour of that will be Face to Face, so I’m sure I’ll survive.

Check their website to stream some MP3’s and if you likey, some blogs around the traps may actually have links to download said tracks…

Also, in case you didn’t get the hint, I DJ at Bar 32 on Saturday nights any time from 2230-0330, so get down there and listen to me try and mix house with dance with post-punk with metal with etc. $5 per request, and I can’t guarantee I’ll play it.

Is it because of the Olympics that Axl decided now would be a good time to release the album? Should have done it 08.08.08 dude…

Clicketh here and relive 1992 in all it’s glory.

Just make sure you make it through the wanky opening, because it gets A-MAZ-ING. I would have said that this album would have sucked, and it probably will, but at least it can get me excited. No, not like that.

Picture with Robin Finck only because of the Nine Inch Nails connection.

Even Nick Cave got an award…

Album of the Year – Presets
Adult Contemporary – Panics (Cruel Guards)
Comedy – Micallef
Rock – The Living End
Dance – Presets
Female – Cilmi
Group – Presets
Indie – Yunipingu
Male – Nick Cave

Yeah. Some good, some typical awards bullshit. Presets? AOTY? I mean, it was good, but any album with filler, ANY filler, shouldn’t get an award like this, no matter how good a song like My People or Aeons is.

Uh. 3 posts in one day! Make sure you read the rest, because it’s been a busy Sunday for us! HOLY FUCK!

Music scenes come and go so fast these days.

By the time you buy your new fluro top for “New Rave” it’s all about new grunge and going back to live in Seattle. Then as soon as you buy your new flannel and ripped jeans its time to go back to the year 2000 and don the suit jacket with all the “The”(Vines, Strokes, Hives, Datsuns, White Stripes) bands.

Even harder to follow are the music scenes that are associated with a place or a city. It seemed every band with a disco beat during the “Eletroclash” movement was coming out of New York City (!!! ,Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, Juan Maclean) and then around the same time every Post Libertines band in England were coming out of shitty towns such as Leeds (Cribs, Kaiser Chiefs, Pigeon Detectives) and Sheffield (Arctic Monkeys, Long Blondes, Milburn). But by the time you go to these places the scene has died out or everyone has moved on to another

We could go on forever on each music scene from each city but that would be boring, so ill quickly leave you with another scene known as “The Smell”

Now this place is predominately a punk venue in downtown Los Angeles, California founded by Ara Shirinyan, Jarrett Silberman, and Jim Smith. It has a strong community and DIY ethic which keeps the place going since opening in 1998. It is also non for profit and volunteer run. The amount of coverage this scene has got is largely due to the high profile indie bands that are known as “regulars”, no matter how popular they have become. This has given the place a sense of community and also a place many bands started out, becoming friends, tour buddies etc.

Some of the acts associated with “The Smell” are Abe Vigoda, No Age, HEALTH, Mika Miko,

Lucky Dragons, Silver Daggers, BARR, The Mai Shi and many more.

Now I’m planning a trip to America next year in October but by the time I get there it will be all about spandex, bike shorts, heroin addiction and Guns n Roses.

Please no!!!!!!

As instrumentals go, it’s very easy for an artist/band to create something that is boring, vapid, and meandering off to nowhere. Much like music journalism.
On occasion, a band can make an instrumental album that is a soundtrack to the best movie you’ll never see. Two albums this year (Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV; Unkle’s End Titles… Stories for Film) have so far tried to do this, and failed somewhat in that task, whilst not being terrible albums by any means.

Mogwai’s The Hawk is Howling is that amazing non-existent-movie soundtrack. The album transitions seamlessly from mellow piano-based tracks, through to the epic hard rock of second track Batcat, right through to the mellow and blissed out Thankyou Space Expert. The standout track for me though is The Sun Smells Too Loud, which is the kind of song I’d like playing in the background if I had to re-graduate high school on a warm Summer day whilst also dealing with unrequited schoolyard love before I leave for overseas forever. Uh, so I guess it has a kind of ambivalence to it.

The second best track on the album is also the closing track The Precipice, which menacingly crescendos to the albums climax, finally dying off ever so quickly into feedback for a few seconds before just stopping. The words you are looking for are: Fucking. Epic.

It’s mid-October, so the words ‘Album of the Year’ start bouncing around for all new releases that you listen to. Is this it? No. Top 5, maybe, Top 10, most likely. I’ve already got a good idea what’s going in at the top spot on my list, and I can assure you that it isn’t what you’ve got going in at number one, and if it is, we should totally make out.

Mogwai – The Hawk is Howling gets a resounding 86 mysterious song titles out of 100.

Also, it looks like WordPress has a poll feature now, so without further ado…