The Woods Themselves

Sydney-siders The Woods Themselves have a new album brewing which you can hear on their myspace or download samples from at their official site. Their self titled debut from 2004 was amazing but I can't seem to find anymore details about the new record. I'll keep my ears pealed. In the meantime here's a new video from them:

Triple R Radiothon

Roll up, roll up. Triple R, regarded by many as the finest non-profit community radio station in the world, has kicked off its annual radiothon where it encourages listeners to dig deep and subscribe to keep it on air for another year. There's a tonne of prizes to be won, so get thee to a phone and call +61 3 9388 1027 or have a gander online to find out more about subscribing.

If you are in Melbourne and tune into 102.7FM tonight (Monday) from 9pm (AEST) I'll be on air with Jacinta and Local and/or General - the Australian music program I used to present.

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.

Reformat The Planet

Thanks to Create Digital Music blog comes this link:

The appeal of newer music apps for phones, current-generation mobile game systems, and PDAs is portability first. But for the Game Boy music scene, it’s as much about a distinctive sound, and acquiring Game Boys as a kind of unique synthesizer. Our friend and mobile game musician Peter Swimm points us to the new documentary Reformat the Planet. It’s available for a week free on pitchfork.tv, with screenings to follow. It’s a pretty nice survey of the New York corner of the scene, at least.

It recently screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival but get over to Pitchfork TV to check out this ace doco for one week only.

Little Red

I'm now back at work in Australia, and spent lunch talking about the rise of Little Red, the hot new buzz band from Melbourne. These guys are literally everywhere at the moment, and with not much time to write about them I thought I'd link to some tunes from their debut album which was recored and mixed by my lunch companion Steve Schram.

Check them out on myspace, or listen below.

Land of Talk

photo by Jalapeno

As i watched Ned Collette play last night at Roxanne, i tried desperately to remember who i saw him play with in London last year. "They were awesome" i told my friend Emily. She pressed me for their name and i drew a blank all night. And then just now I was reading Canadian music blog Chrome Waves and saw a little thing on Land of Talk from Montreal. Ah Huh! Yes! They describe themselves as being "fronted by the daughter of North America's first female alligator wrestler. Backed by Montreal's skinniest drummer and fattest bass player." Hmm. Gags.

Anyway, Elizabeth Powell's voice and delivery reminds me a little of Bertie Blackman from Sydney or maybe Ida Maria. Their new album Some Are Lakes comes out on October 9th through Saddle Creek, but I'm not sure if it will have Australian distro. Here's to hoping. Some tunes are on Land of Talk's myspace and official site... or check them on Seeqpod:

Hipsters

The hipster. The punching bag for uncool fat bloggers or jealous and greying Gen Xers? Perhaps the endgame for affluent western youth culture in the late naughties. Do snowed-up rich kids preening for the photoblogger get your blood on the boil? Then Adbusters have an interesting and at times scathing article for you about the hipster (an no, i don't mean those low waist jeans).

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion.

The responses are also worth a read:

Why shouldn't you applaud yourselves while being ashamed at the same time?! This is no revolution, or counter-revolution, or evolution, or devolution, it's a mobius strip of a paradox in a hampster wheel! - Anonymous

In the spirit of un-celebrating the hipster here's some of my fave club photoblogs featuring uber-cool counter-culture revolutionaries:

Australia: Streetparty, Purple Sneakers

OS/US: Last Nights Party, Driven By Boredom, The Cobrasnake

Tunes for Lazy Mornings

One of the benefits of housesitting for a music writer is you can fossick through their CDs and albums, discovering new gems that may have passed you in the slipstream. Two albums that rose to the surface this morning, in perfect lazy Saturday fashion are from Loney, Dear and Nobody & The Mystic Chords of Memory. Both charming, breezy, free wheeling pop records for today's rainy weather or, fingers crossed, next weekend's sunshine.

Since it is a lazy Saturday (and i'm still in my PJs at midday) i'm going to leave the descriptive passages to Last FM...



Multi-instrumentalist and home-recording phenom Emil Svanängen lives in Sweden and he makes records and plays shows under the somewhat inscrutable name of Loney, dear. In either his tiny Stockholm studio apartment or the basement of his parents' house, and with a dedication bordering upon manic, Emil discreetly builds Loney, dear songs using a modest home studio set-up. In this way he has recorded and then released himself on CD-R four albums in the last two or three years. He has managed to sell several thousand of these, pretty much on his own. (Last-Fm)

I'm loving his record Loney Noir which you can hear tracks from on myspace or official site.



Nobody & Mystic Chords of Memory is a collaborative effort between Nobody (Elvin Estella) and Mystic Chords of Memory (Chris Gunst and Jen Cohen). Building off of successful guest appearances on each other's past releases, the trio began collaborating on the project in the spring of 2004. After a year-plus of road trips and mail-order production efforts, the result is a perfectly crafted blend of psychedelic hip-hop and sunshine folk-rock. Nobody proves himself a producer/arranger in the classical sense, using his sample-based tool set to create the foundations for the album. (Last FM)

Listen to more from the album Tree Coloured See on Hype Machine.

I Met The Walrus

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace.

Teenage Fanclub - The Concept

A couple of weeks ago I got Bandwagonesque, the classic Teenage Fanclub album from '91. I can't stop listening to it, especially the astonishing opening track The Concept. I was taught the tune on guitar by a mad welshman in a hot rehearsal room during London's summer '07 and it just brings back all those memories. I wish i'd owned the record before then though, i'm sure i rooted up the solo having never heard it. Anyway, since its stuck in my head, get it stuck into yours:



Unfortunately its not the full album version, you get the MTV fadeout at 3'22. Starsign and What You Do To Me are also standouts on the record. If you're a Big Star, Neil Young, Dinosaur Jr or Byrds fan then its a must-own.

And if yr in Spain in September you can see Teenage Fanclub at the Ebro Vision festival on the 19th. Woo!