BIGGEST WEEK YET!
SPRING BREAK!
BATRIDER

DIY 'til I die, DIY 'til I die...

One of the reasons I've been absent of late is because I've taken up a new job at the University of Newcastle as a research assistant into matters of communication and culture (a very fulfilling occupation I may add). Another reason is visible in the above e-flyer (who am I kidding? I'm just clutching at excuses).

SPRING BREAK!! It's the new style!

A friend and I are currently in the process of establishing a new weekly indie night in Newcastle, and our launch date is set down for Thursday the 14th of February.

Basically the idea is to introduce new/interesting bands to a (relatively) captive audience. Artists will benefit from tapping into a regular crowd, the people will benefit from exposure to otherwise obscure acts. Each week there will be a live band plus regular and guest DJs (including my much awaited return to the decks, yo).

Bands confirmed so far:

14th Feb. - Naked on the Vague [SYD]
21st Feb. - Athol
28th Feb. - Batrider [MELB/NZ]

Bands touring through Newcastle? Write us. Wanna DJ? Hit us up. We are true democracy.

[SPRING BREAK!!]

I'M NOT HERE, THIS ISN'T HAPPENING

Hello new world. It's been a while, I admit, and at the risk of ruining the 2008 love-in, I'd like to post my top 40 albums of that distant time known as 2007.

1. PANDA BEAR – Person Pitch
2. NO AGE – Weirdo Rippers
3. THE FIELD – From Here We Go Sublime
4. DEERHUNTER – Cryptograms / Fluorescent Grey EP
5. THE TWILIGHT SAD – Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
6. RADIOHEAD – In Rainbows
7. SHOCKING PINKS – Shocking Pinks
8. M.I.A. – Kala
9. BLACK DICE – Load Blown
10. SPOON – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
11. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – Strawberry Jam
12. ELECTRELANE – No Shouts, No Calls
13. KES – The Grey Goose Wing
14. STUDIO – Yearbook 1
15. BURIAL – Untrue
16. FUTURE OF THE LEFT – Curses
17. BLACK LIPS – Good Bad Not Evil
18. YEASAYER – All Hour Cymbals
19. SCOUT NIBLETT – This Fool Can Die Now
20. DAN DEACON – Spider Man of the Rings
21. JENS LEKMAN – Night Falls Over Kortedela
22. A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS – A Place To Bury Strangers
23. FABULOUS DIAMONDS – 7” EP
24. OF MONTREAL - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
25. PATRICK WOLF – The Magic Position
26. ANDREW BIRD – Armchair Apocrypha
27. FUCK BUTTONS – Sweet Love For The Planet Earth EP
28. SLY HATS – Liquorice Night
29. JOANNA NEWSOM AND Ys STREET BAND – EP
30. JOHN MAUS – Love Is Real
31. MARNIE STERN – In Advance of the Broken Arm
32. FEIST – The Reminder
33. CARIBOU – Andorra
34. BEIRUT – The Flying Club Cup
35. OKKERVIL RIVER – The Stage Names
36. ALELA DIANE – The Pirate’s Gospel
37. IRON & WINE – The Shephard’s Dog
38. BON IVER – For Emma, Forever Ago
39. DEVASTATIONS – Yes, U
40. !!! – Myth Takes

There you have it. Punctual as ever.

Just to think 2008 has already given us albums (released or leaked) by My Disco, Beach House, Destroyer, British Sea Power, Why?, These New Puritans, Fuck Buttons etcetera. Whoa. You can expect that list late 2010.

Crab Smasher: Impossible Possible

MP3: The Moon Rattled Inside Her

One of this year’s most pleasant surprises for me has been Crab Smasher’s latest 3-inch release, Impossible Monsters, although ‘pleasant’ isn’t a word I’d generally associate with Newcastle’s noisiest duo. However, it was perhaps with good reason that Grant Hunter, the act’s hack of many trades, described this as their ‘top 40’ release.

One of the few genuinely interesting acts around town, Crab Smasher usually specialise in the creation of improvised, often harsh, noise soundscapes with both traditional and non-traditional instrumentation. I’ve likened them previously to ‘Black Dice on a lazy Sunday’ but I’m not sure that really applies here. ‘The Moon Rattled Inside Her’ is the third track off Impossible Monsters and it’s a driving, vaguely Kraut-rock, pop song. It’s one of their more conventional songs, and it’s all the better for it.

It’s coming up to the end of the year, and you know what that means. Lists. Too many, really, but I’m not one to complain (unless it’s about the vapidity of Q Magazine or Mojo Magazine’s Top 50 albums of 2007). I’m partial to making the odd list, I must say. But you can’t rush these things – often I don’t discover my annual favourites until well into the next year! Anyway, I was rushed into conceiving my top 5 list for Reverb Magazine. Deadline and all that.

I’m already having doubts about the list that was published. I mean, it was only mid-November and I’d only just heard Burial’s imperious Untrue. Anyway, this is what I submitted:

1. Panda Bear – Person Pitch [Paw Tracks]
MP3: Good Girl / Carrots

(Do I get extra scene points for having the same number one as Tim Hoey from Cut Copy?)


2. Deerhunter – Cryptograms / Fluorescent Grey EP [Kranky]
MP3: Fluorescent Grey


3. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime [Kompakt]
MP3: Silent


4. M.I.A. – Kala [Interscope]
MP3: Paper Planes


5. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [Merge]
MP3: Finer Feelings

See, small lists are troublesome; I think my verdict was clouded by my notion of the magazine’s readership. This is Newcastle, remember. Pandering to a largely mainstream audience, I perhaps took a conservative line. With so few spots up for grabs, I guess I also wanted to showcase ‘the great expanse of my listening habits’. The top 3 will probably remain, but Kala and Ga x 5, I fear will drop. Both are great albums, no doubt about it, but probably gained their lofty positions for reasons already noted: M.I.A. shows my cultural sophistication, Spoon that I’m still down with your standard indie-rock…etcetera.

So I’m gonna put together a more extensive list. In time, of course. Off the top o’ me noggin, artists likely to feature prominently include: No Age, Shocking Pinks, Kes, Black Dice, Fabulous Diamonds, A Place To Bury Strangers, Future of the Left, Beirut, Electrelane, Feist, Patrick Wolf, Clipse (2006?), Kevin Drew, Jens Lekman, Animal Collective, Black Lips… I should stop ‘cos I’ll probably forget more than what I post.

Think I’ll make a list of my favourite older discoveries too, and maybe even favourite songs of '07.

OH, LISTS!

Party Time! Party Time!

I was at a party the other night, not a particularly cool one. To mask my indifference, to show my disaffection, I spent a lot of time watching futbol on the pub’s big screen. I did eventually get talking to this guy, though, who may or may not be a member of the Hillsong church. Anyway, that detail is just an aside. Speak-shouting, as we were, over the top of some bad DJ – my inner cynic nicely numbed by alcohol, he simply Mr. Nice ‘Teetotaller’ Guy – topic turned to music.

Now, I feel I gave him a pretty good ear-bashing, the type that invariably gets no reply or at best a polite ‘I have to go over hear now’. I don’t know the teachings of Hillsong (is Australian Idol really a subject for preaching?), but it must breed tolerance. Like Jerry Seinfeld attributing his funniness to Scientology, let me just thank Hillsong for this inane blog entry!

Seriously, the guy’s honesty was refreshing. It takes something to sidle up to me, dressed in my finest indie-chic, and proclaim yourself a ‘teeny-bopper’ (his words). A married man, too! ‘S Club 7, Britney, Christina… ,’ he went, on first-name basis no less. Fair ‘nuff. You can like what you like. We then talked about music downloading as a social phenomenon. I pointed out the disparate views from artists. Some, like Radiohead and plenty of indie artists, can encourage the act: to be heard as opposed to simply bought and sold. Not so major labels etcetera, who take the opposing view and shout ‘creative rights! ownership! moneys!’ at all sorts of inopportune moments. This is the only point over which Mr. Nice Guy and me really clashed. What he said was unforgivable but, more importantly, a sign of the black-and-white times we live in.

‘It’s like all the good artists want their music only to be bought, while the bad ones will just give there’s away.’

Oh my. In type, that probably doesn’t look too bad. But the way it was said, with one of those laughs that suggests the speaking of unarguable fact, really grated. Thing is, he doesn’t know better. It’s not his fault. I do wonder whether these ‘good’ artists have no objections to the buying of votes i.e. the buying of cultural capital i.e. Australian Idol.

Here you are, my friend, some super-duper songs redone quite poorly by struggling artists:

Bonnie Prince Billy - The World's Greatest (R. Kelly cover)
Nouvelle Vague - Dancing With Myself (Billy Idol cover)

And when she talked about a fall, I thought she talked about Mark E. Smith

I’ve thought for a while now that The Fall could be my ideal band – if only I could get started on their lengthy back catalogue! And that’s just the problem! From what I can gather, their output is remarkably consistent with something like 26 studio albums spanning three decades. Not that the band’s personnel has been at all stable: vocalist, lyricist and leader Mark E. Smith ('the most hated man in Britain' or angry enigma, take your pick) has been the only constant member, with there having been around 58 line-up changes. Smith, a notorious cynic, once quipped 'If it's me, and your granny on bongos, it's a Fall gig'.

It has always seemed to me that The Fall has no Daydream Nation or I See a Darkness; no definitive introduction album, nothing concrete for which I could test my compatibility with such a prolific artist. But I knew it must be. Being a fan of so many bands influenced by Smith and co. – Art Brut, Pavement, McLusky – as well as contemporaries of a sort, like Wire and Gang of Four, I knew. Plus the Jens Lekman lines featured in the title above have proven handy for name-dropping!

Having read so much about Smith’s unique lyrical style – apparently a heady mix of social realism, brutal criticism, surrealism and absurdism – I really shouldn’t have left it so long. I may be exposing a gaping hole in my indie-cred but it was only last week that I purchased (yes, this was far too important for downloading) my first Fall album. I settled on This Nation’s Saving Grace, which, along with Hex Enduction Hour and Perverted By Language, was one of three that I had narrowed my selection down to. And, whaddya know, I’m hooked-uh (in true Mark E. Smith vocal style).

Please, if you haven’t already, do yourself a favour:

I am Damo Suzuki
Bombast