Meredith 2008 Lineup Announced

photo by Snork Maiden

I've missed out on the first round of ticket allocation for one of the best festivals in Australia: Meredith. The good news though (according to them) is that I might be able to buy some in the second round... so fingers crossed! It will be my first year though without a free media ticket and a VIP car pass, which has previously enabled me to get in before most others and snap up a sweet spot in the bush. Needless to say I am a little worried about how I'll go this year, and having been able to experience the wonderful ease of three ATP Festivals in the UK over the last 18 months I also wonder whether I really want to do the camping thing anymore. Hmm.

So, ok, anyway... the lineup is what you came for, here is the first announcement...

TEN EAST. HOLY FUCK. MGMT. SAUL WILLIAMS. TAME IMPALA. MAN MAN. MOUNTAIN GOATS. BEACHES. THE BRONX. GRAND SALVO. FINAL FANTASY. MUSCLES. LITTLE RED. BLACK DIAMOND HEAVIES. THE RUBY SUNS. YACHT CLUB DJS. ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI. REGURGITATOR. THE DATSUNS. COMBO LA REVELACION. ADAM GREEN.

Very promising. Discussion and more details on Mess and Noise if you like.

Even after 14 years

In other Pitchfork related talk i'm getting slightly creamy about the upcoming ATP vs Pitchfork festival in the UK in early May. Sebadoh, Born Ruffians, Girls Against Boys, Caribou, Hot Chip, Bon Iver, Jens Lekman, Yeasayer, Les Savvy Fav, Hold Steady and more. Damn!

Also coming along for the ride and representing for the antipodeans is those dirty uncles of power-pop EVEN. They've been doing their well-respected thang for 14 years, and Ash and the lads have got a new self titled album (reviewed here) which they launch in Melbourne at The East Brunswick Club on the 24th of April. They then zip around Australia before jetting to UK to play ATP in early May. While in London they'll also support Sebadoh at Koko on the 6th of May and do their own shows on the 12th at Old Blue Last and the 15th at the Brixton Windmill.

New tracks from the self titled album up on their myspace and full details and oz dates are on Mess and Noise.

ii tunes

photo by sushipop

Alex and Jon from Melbourne ambi-bleepers (i just made that term up, it sounds better said aloud) ii have been sending me tracks for years now - lush abstract patterns of static, drones, improv-guitars and whispery beats being their speciality. Its good then to at last see them getting immortalised properly for their debut release Landlakes, which they launched this week at the Toff In Town.

The album is out through through the very decent folk at Feral Media and some ii-tunes (hehe, geddit?) can be heard on their myspace... with more info on their website and a video below.

Podcast - Episode 3

I've been procrastinating again, but have finally finished episode three for your downloading pleasure:

everythingatonce_ep003.mp3

It features some of the artists i've been blogging about recently, a mix of internationals and Australians...

ENVELOPES - Party
SLEEPING STATES - I Wonder
SINGLE TWIN - Splinters and Seeds
PORT O'BRIEN - Tree Bones
BORN RUFFIANS - Kurt Vonnegut
THE TIGERS - Beautiful Forest
LAURA JEAN - Anniversary

Enjoy. Comments welcome!

The Genesis of Laura Jean

photo on LJ's Flickr

One of my absolute favourite singer-songwriters LAURA JEAN is about to reveal her brand new album. Its called Eden Land and follows on from her lush, well regarded, but at times frustrating, debut Our Swan Song. For me the slight twinge of disappointment last time was due to my own expectations about what that record might be, and what i hoped it might come to mean to me. Expectations that only partly delivered. It was beautiful, haunting, touching and even challenging... but perhaps familiarity with Laura's live set over the years leading up to it and my fondness for her after we became friends had coloured my experience. I know it went on to mean a lot to the people that heard it, including the guys from Snow Patrol, just one of the international acts she toured with last year.

Now with the imminent UK release of the follow-up her label here, Co-Operative/V2, are repackaging a cut down EP version of Our Swan Song. Worth hunting down if you are looking for your new fave female artist.

The new one Eden Land is a concept record; exploring ideas of self-discovery, sexual awakening and loss of innocence through a suite of nine interconnected songs. Laura says...

"On one level it’s a breakup album, on another level it’s about leaving a safe situation to experience life. And on another level this album is about becoming aware of my sexuality. And that all ties in with the concept of Eden, someone leaving an idyllic place, kind of pre-awareness, to experience life, which is bound by physicality.”

I can't wait to hear the full record, and wonder if her time playing with the Kes Band will have some kind of affect on the sound or tone of the album. The first song from it - "Anniversary" - can be heard on Laura Jean's Myspace.

Eden Land is being launched in Melbourne AUS, on March 2nd at the Corner Hotel with Sly Hats, Luluc and Biddy Connor.

Death with Grand Salvo

GRAND SALVO (aka Paddy Mann) will be finally releasing his album Death, the animal concept record he's been working on for years, on March 15th through rad Australian labelsSpunk and Preservation.

Last time I spoke to him about it he said it was cursed and that it would never be released, and put its recording on hold to make The Temporal Wheel.

Death will feature Zoe from Luluc and hopefully include the song about the little bear who falls through the ice on a frozen river and his animal friends wait for him on the other side until the spring and their bones are all thats left. SADNESS!

Anyway, Paddy describes it thus:

"Death is a fable of rich proportions. A bird, a rabbit, a rat, a bear and a man all tell their own tale, coming together to weave a beautiful fairytale that will resonate with anyone of any age."

There's a great interview with Grand Salvo on Mess and Noise and check out more of him on his myspace and a video here.

Cut Copy vs London

Good news for CUT COPY fans in the UK is they're hitting our shores in a couple of days, playing in London on the 18th for one of NME's Awards Shows with Hadouken! before slipping out of the big smoke to do Brighton, Sheffield and Newcastle then back at Fabric on the 22nd. They last played here in 2006, so hopefully they get a warm return welcome... in fact, they've already sold out their March show in New York. Backslaps all round!

I haven't had a chance to check out their latest album In Ghost Colours but i did download their pre-release "So Cosmic" mix a few weeks ago, and I'm getting excited about the record. They're one of the best festival bands in Australia, able to turn a non-committal audience over to their electro/indie dark side.

More details of dates over at NME or check them on myspace.

Port O'Brien and The Tigers

photo by Daniel Arnold

I've spent the afternoon listening to Californian group Port O'Brien which I found through the excellent alt-country lovin' blog Hear Ya. They're one of many bands heading for SXSW this March, and their album of 2007 The Wind And The Swell might have to move up to the top of my 'must buy' list. They mix up sweet acoustic ditties like Five and Dime with campfire sea-shanties like I Woke Up Today. In fact the latter had me thinking they sound like a cross between Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the DIY-choir aesthetic found on the late-career records from Disaster Plan. The well respected Melbourne group plied their trade in the late 90s/early 2000s, but are sadly no more, with Richard and Mick having hung up their guitars not long after the group's 7th album 'Reality Correctors One Through Twelve' came out through the fab indie label Sensory Projects.


THE TIGERS... photo by Piano Trackiofakis

Speaking of Sensory Projects, they've recently released the new record for The Tigers, a perth outfit who've been fairly quiet since their sublime 2002 release Christmas Album. The latest is called Beautiful Forest and is available in shops or via iTunes through Intertia Distribution. I might try to include something from it in my upcoming podcast.

Its My Disco, Now You Do The Math.

photo by dreadfuldan

Good news on Mess and Noise today with MY DISCO announcing the release of their new record Paradise and an Oz tour in March. Alongside Eddie Current Suppression Ring, they're probably still the most compelling live band in Melbourne, and scrubbed up quite well on their 2006 debut Cancer, which contained songs written while Liam was battling Hodgkins Disease. The new album was recorded and mixed by knob-twiddlin' god and self-confessed poker nut Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago and is out on Feb 25th on CD and vinyl.

2008 Tour dates are now online, and of course swing over to their myspace for the new tunes.

MY DISCO also materialize in an ace DVD called The Super 8 Diaries... a no-budget DIY film featuring a swag of artists from the independent Ausrock community. Here's a taster of My Disco's set:

New Buffalo

Looking over the shoulder of my squeeze tonight I noticed Perez Hilton giving massive props to New Buffalo, aka Melbourne songwriter Sally Seltmann. Nice to see that at last people are catching onto the undervalued charms of this incredible talent. Sally's got two wonderful records and an EP under her belt, and in case you didn't know she wrote Feist's 1234 which has become a bit of a hit courtesy of its use in a recent iTunes campaign, and is nominated for a Grammy! We'll be crossing our fingers for her and Feist tomorrow... And here's a link to the video for 1234 which i couldn't embed: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=d3vIv1EwO5A

On writing 1234 Sally told Songfacts...

"I had been listening to Feist's album Let It Die. I thought my little song about lost love, and the hope to recapture what you once had, sounded too much like a Feist song for me to use for New Buffalo, so I shelved it. Then, in late 2005 I did a tour across Canada supporting Feist, and Broken Social Scene. After meeting Feist, I started to wonder whether she might like to do a cover of "1234," but I was too shy to tell her about it. At the last Broken Social Scene show, I plucked up the courage to tell her that I had written a song which I thought she might like to use. We went onto the tour bus, and I recorded a simple version of the song into her laptop, with guitar and vocals. To my surprise, she loved the song, and started playing it live."

Check out more from NEW BUFFALO online or at myspace.

Sea Scouts

Just found a link on mess and noise to this incredible super8 footage of the Sea Scouts taken from their last ever show at The Corner Hotel on Feb 18th, 2000.



The Sea Scouts were one of my favourite bands in the late 90s and put out two excellent records - the abrasive Pattern Recognition (which they released twice after re-recording with their original drummer) and their masterpiece Beacon of Hope. Tim from the group went on to form The Bird Blobs, while Monika plays with Baseball and Love of Diagrams.

A wiki bio is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Scouts_(band)