The Vine festival review: Ric’s Big Backyard Festival, Brisbane, 2011
A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Ric’s Big Backyard Festival #1
Ric’s Bar, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane
Saturday 26 March 2011What makes a good music festival? Let’s make the educated assumption that, for the vast majority, value for money is the key determinant. If a buyer perceives a festival to be worthy of their time – and, more importantly, money – there’s a high likelihood that the festival has a line-up that appeals to them. If not, the buyer refuses to part with their money, and spends their day elsewhere. Such is the dilemma faced by the first Ric’s Big Backyard Festival – ‘#1 Autumn 2011′, according to a note on posters and wristbands, and thus hinting at future events. The value proposition for festival #1 is thus: 20-odd bands for $75, spread across three stages near the Brunswick Street Mall in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. More specifically, the majority of the festival action is contained within Ric’s Bar, a long-standing pillar of this city’s live entertainment scene. Ric’s holds two of the festival’s stages – the main stage is located behind the venue, in the laneway between the Royal George Hotel and X&Y Bar.
From the outset, one problem is apparent: the festival’s value proposition isn’t strong enough. Upon arriving just before 3pm, a trip to the Upstairs stage – where local actVelociraptor are playing – reveals a modestly full room, with a reasonable gap between skittish punters and the band exhibiting their idiosyncratic style of gang-pop. Their eight members include three guitarists, two drummers, a bassist, a keyboardist, and a singer. They play obnoxious, shambolic pop music that could easily come across as contrived, but manage to avoid it, somehow, probably because they don’t seem to give a shit. It’s a fine line between appearing to not give a shit, and actually not giving a shit, and they err on the latter. Still, even this early in the day, it’s clear that the venue’s close confines – or, to put it another way, forced intimacy – is going to work against the festival.
There’s more space at the Outside stage, where Guineafowl are playing, to a crowd consisting mostly of staff from their label, Dew Process, and a handful of half-interested punters. It feels like a high school dance, where everyone’s afraid of making the first move; or, in this case, enjoying themselves. The band are copping the afternoon sun in full force. This six-piece play indie pop which draws heavily from the U2 school of songwriting; lots of needly guitar lines, dramatic choruses, and extreme earnestness. They finish with something of a whimper, having barely elicited applause from the audience throughout their half-hour. I count eight Toohey’s Extra Dry flags positioned near the stage; two banners are plastered behind the drum kit. Also within eyeshot are five Smirnoff banners and a few Red Bull umbrellas and tables. None of the above detracts from the musical performances, but it’s pretty clear how Ric’s have pushed the corporate sponsorship envelope.
At the Downstairs stage, Ben Salter is playing songs from his forthcoming solo album, The Cat. Salter is known – and loved – as the singer/songwriter/guitarist of Brisbane acts The Gin Club and Giants Of Science, among others. Few current performers in Brisbane can match his talent or reputation. Still, this is neither the right time nor place for slow, introspective ballads. No-one’s doubting the quality of the songs, but Salter’s act – accompanied by a guitarist, bassist and drummer – strikes the wrong chord today, and not particularly due to any fault of his own. It’s just that the festival seems stuck in first gear, and it’s not clear what will inspire a shift upwards. “You’ve got your money’s worth, then; those who paid, at least,” announces Salter, in reference to the event’s sluggish ticket sales and resultant freebies.
For the full review, visit The Vine. For some photos of the event, visit Mess+Noise’s photo gallery, taken by Elleni Toumpas (who also shot the image used above).
A Conversation With Yannis Philippakis of Foals, 2010
I interviewed Yannis Philippakis [pictured right], singer/guitarist of the British pop act Foals, for Scene Magazine in late December 2010, ahead of their Australian tour as part of Laneway Festival 2011 (which I reviewed for The Vine).
Our interview originally ran in condensed form as the cover story of Scene Magazine #811. Here’s the full interview transcript.
Andrew: I’ve got a confession to make. [Foals' second album] Total Life Forever is one of my favourite albums of 2010.
Oh, thank you very much.
I discovered [Foals' 2008 debut album] Antidotes a couple of years ago, but Total Life Forever sounds like an entirely different band. I like this band more. Do you?
Yannis: It’s not a different band…
I know it’s not, but the sound definitely has changed quite a lot.
Yeah. I mean, I don’t really like the idea of making albums adversary to each other. I find the whole ranking, hierarchy that happens every year kind of repellent and equally… I don’t really have the same perspective on it, obviously, as an externalist, but to us in the band it’s a very linear progression. It never really felt like we had a break, even after we finished Antidotes. I think the production is a hell of a lot more fully realised on Total Life Forever. At least to me, I still have a fondness for a lot of the songs on Antidotes, but I don’t listen to that record largely because of the production. I think that it’s great that people are acknowledging the progression, but to us it is one linear thing. We want to make a body of work. It’s not us trying to eradicate our past, as such.
Was there any self-doubt within the band, when your style of song writing started shifting after Antidotes?
There’s self-doubt every day. Of course. Not to do with writing new things, but there’s just… most of them comes from a wish to complete something that isn’t whole. Self-doubt is part of the game. It’s been there always and unless we write ‘Symphony No. 3’ by Gorecki – which we can’t, because it’s already been written – I don’t think we’re ever going to feel sated or complete. It’s just part of the fun as well, the masochistic element of it.
The moment we stopped recording Antidotes, we started doing b-sides for Antidotes, it started to change a lot, and there was much more experimentation. We started to implement a lot of the things that we learned from Dave Sitek, and make stuff that I think actually bridges the two albums quite closely. There are some b-sides; one in particular called ‘Gold Gold Gold‘, and another two called ‘Titan Arum‘ and ‘Glaciers‘. That’s what I mean; it felt linear. It didn’t feel like we ever stopped, we just always worked on stuff.
All that really happened was that, at the beginning when we started the band, there was a very definite and conscious process. It was a conscious aesthetic, that we wanted, and it was to do with techno, it was to do with a style of guitar playing, a visual aesthetic. Everything was very conscious and we wanted to have parameters on it. We were in love with the idea of bands like Devo that had a distinct world that they occupied.
Everything since then, once we felt like we attained that, everything now is about undoing that process and getting to a point which is kind of the reverse of that, where nothing is conscious and if I had the choice, I’d have a lobotomy and cut out the conscious part of my mind, so that I could just make music direct from the gut. I don’t know. Did that answer your question?
For sure. You mentioned the style of guitar playing the band has. I’ve always been fascinated by those little needly, palm-muted riffs that you guys come up with. Were there any particular artists that inspired that style of playing?
I think it was just something that we heard. I think there are a lot of bands, a lot of styles of guitar or even just playing strings [instruments], everything from string players in a classical piece, to ['math rock'] bands like OXES and Don Caballero, and African Senegalese guitar. I think the main thing, at least personally for me, there was something about that way of guitar playing that just attracted me. I was never that fascinated by chords, and I actually neglected to learn how to work chord sequences and stuff. Instead, everything became about these ‘guitar tattoos’. It was more I had a lot of different types of music and different types of bands and wanted to cannibalise it and make it our own.
That’s always been a main bit of the band. We start playing stuff lower down the guitar. We play with chords sometimes now, but I think that will always be part of the sound because that is just the way that I play, naturally. It’s become muscle memory, now.
It’s certainly one of the band’s most distinctive elements. Did you always intend that to be the case, or did it arise when you started playing together?
You kind of progress, but yeah, it’s always been there, it predates the band. It’s how I learned how to play the guitar. I used to mimic and ape the guitar lines I liked, and they usually were like staccato, tight little phrases, that’s how I liked it. As I said, I was never really attracted to chords, or distortion pedals. I like the idea of a transparent guitar sound; a guitar sound that’s unashamed to be a clean guitar. I think that you can get as much power out of a clean guitar as you can out of a distorted guitar.
You’ve been touring pretty heavily this year, as we discussed. You’ve played a lot of shows. I’m interested to know how you keep it sounding fresh and feeling fresh night after night.
Just do loads of drugs, basically. That’s pretty much it. [laughs] Do you mean like the shows, or the actual lifestyle, or my body odour? What do you mean?
The music. If you’re playing the same songs each night, does it feel like you’re doing the same thing over and over?
It depends. I definitely think there’s a point at which bands stop touring and sometimes you can’t tell when that point is going to be, and you have to keep on playing for a bit longer. But that rarely happens. Each show is different, and we don’t play exactly the same set every night. Even if we were playing a similar set, we have quite a lot of room to improvise… well not improvisation, exactly, but we have negative space that we’re allowed to do different things. We allow space for chaos in the set, so that it’s not so tightly rehearsed, that it’s mechanical. It’s not choreographed, in that way.
I think that helps keep it fresh. I get tired of touring sometimes, but it’s not really often to do with the shows, more to do with the kind of… I don’t know, I’d probably be able to answer that question later on in the year because we’ve still got two more tours [note: this interview was conducted in mid-December 2010]. At the moment I feel pretty good about playing. I’m starting to feel restless about writing new things. I’ve been writing so many things and I think the more that appetite opens, the more pedestrian touring seems in comparison. The further we get away from the completion of the last record, the more difficult touring becomes, I think. Not because of playing the same stuff, just because there’s a new appetite that emerges, of wanting to do things.
When I was researching for this interview, I was surprised to discover your age. You’re two years older than I am. Was it a challenge to get people to take a bunch of teenagers seriously when the band first started?
How old are you?
22.
What do you mean? For who to take us seriously?
People in the music industry, as you were getting introduced to labels, and so forth.
I don’t know. I think that for a lot of young bands, that’s when the prime is, sometimes. I think people are savvy to that in the music industry. They kind of want to feed off young blood. You have a naivety. You’re not jaded in any sort of way. I think, if anything, it wasn’t an issue of persuading them, it was more like trying to have them not suck our blood. I’m the youngest, but I wasn’t that young. We’ve all been playing in bands for a long time. I don’t know, I didn’t really feel that. I don’t feel as young as I used to, though.
Do you feel that as you get older you’re being taken more seriously?
It depends on what you mean. Are we talking about people that listen to records, are you talking about critics?
All of the above.
Yeah, I think so, in some way. I think the critics, there is something that make critics recoil if you seem like a young, cocky upstart. When we started doing interviews and stuff, I really didn’t have that much of a filter on my brain. A lot of time I really didn’t know where I was, in terms of how things would be relayed in the press. I think that with time comes an understanding. I understand myself better now. I think as you get older – what were you like when you were 19?
I was a dumbass.
[laughs] Things change. I think it’s not just to do with age. It’s to do with the fact that we made the second record, and hopefully it didn’t stink, and the people believe in you that little bit more because you’re not just putting out a hype record that, in theory, is a one-hit wonder, and also a compilation of songs that you spent 10 years to write. I think that we’ve conducted ourselves, at least since the beginning, in a way that we feel proud of, and hopefully people have a belief in a certain type of integrity – or an attempt at integrity – which will mean that we gain some respect in that field.
Yeah, sure. Before we finish up, I wanted to ask you about Oxford briefly. Earlier this year I came across a documentary called Anyone Can Play Guitar, which I note you’re involved with. I’m particularly interested in Oxford because I love both Ride and Swervedriver.
Right.
When you were growing up in the city, was there a sense of wanting to follow in the footsteps of other Oxford bands like those two perhaps?
Yeah, it wasn’t those two, but there were other ones. There was a band that was pretty much our contemporaries, but a little bit older: Youthmovies. Oxford definitely was like a big factor in the way we started to think about music. I obviously knew about Radiohead and Supergrass, but Ride and Swervedriver in particular, I wasn’t that aware of. When I was growing up I paid attention to local fledgling bands. Those bands [Ride and Swervedriver], I don’t think they were really playing Oxford when I was growing up, so I wasn’t that aware of them. A band called Youthmovies had pretty much the biggest influence on Oxford in general and people my age, and it’s still being felt now. I think it’s a very interesting place to live, if you’re not an academic.
Is there a sense of being able to give something back to the scene that helped foster Foals, now that you’ve got some attention?
Yeah, we take bands that we like on tour with us, and I try to talk about them in interviews. But not really out of a sense of… there’s nothing magnanimous about it, it’s just that we like the bands and a lot of them are our friends. I’d rather talk about my friends, because it’s more personal to me.
Last question. A friend asked me to say “pretty please, will you leak the Dave Sitek mix of Antidotes?”
[laughs] Ehh, maybe.
Okay, good. Thanks for your time mate.
A pleasure. Thank you.
++
For more Foals, visit their website. The music video for their song ‘Blue Blood‘‘ is embedded below.
Elsewhere: a review of their 2010 album, Total Life Forever, for The Vine.
The Vine feature: ‘First Three Songs, No Flash – And No Copyright’
A feature article for The Vine. Excerpt below.
First Three Songs, No Flash – And No Copyright
Andrew McMillen inspects the contracts and copyright law related to recent Australian tours by Big Day Out artists Tool and Rammstein.
(Main pic: Slash vs Photographers at Soundwave, Adelade 2011 by Andrew Stace)
As the 2011 Big Day Out tour wound itself across the country this year – it ended in Perth on Sunday, Feb 6 – hundreds of professional photographers snapped portraits of an artist line-up that included Californian hard rock act Tool and German industrial metal troupe Rammstein.
These two bands were the heaviest-hitting acts on the tour. Yet their photo release forms also revealed that they were the bands most protective of their image. “All copyrights and other intellectual property rights shall be entirely Artist’s property,” read a line from Tool’s contract, which photographers wishing to capture the band from the front-of-stage photo pit were required to sign. “[The photographer] is prohibited from placing the photos in the so-called online media, and/or distributing them using these media,” stated Rammstein’s decidedly archaic contract, which concludes with an apparently self-defeating line about being subject to the laws of Germany.
Such rights-grabbing statements are nothing new in the live entertainment business, where artists’ images and ‘trade secrets’ have always been fiercely protected. Eddie Van Halen was known to turn his back to the audience when performing innovative electric guitar solos before Van Halen were signed, so as to prevent both his newly-discovered techniques from being viewed by rival guitarists – or being captured by keen-eyed music photographers.
Recent Australian tours by popular rock acts like The Smashing Pumpkins and Muse have demanded that photographers shoot only from the sound desk; Muse, too, issued a contract which states that photographers “hereby assign full title guarantee the entire worldwide right, title and interest in and to the Photographs, including the copyright therein”. Which means that if Muse (or, more likely, their management or lawyers) happen to be browsing your live photo portfolio and they’re particularly taken by a picture of bassist Christopher Wolstenholme’s fetching red suit, they can request the high resolution image file – or negative – free of charge. You have no power to negotiate because you’re bound by a contract.
Why, then, in an age where the vast majority of gig-goers carry web-ready media devices in their pockets, are bands still so insistent on attempting to shield themselves from the close scrutiny of professional cameras? And are these contracts even legally binding, or simply attempts to scare newbie photographers into surrendering their hard work – with zero additional compensation on top of their publication’s one-time print fees?
For the full article, visit The Vine.
The Vine festival review: Soundwave Festival 2011, Brisbane
A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Soundwave Festival
RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane
Saturday 26 February 20112011 marks Soundwave Festival’s fifth year as a national touring entity; five years old, and already rivaling the Big Day Out in terms of sheer artistic firepower. The most recent BDO was headlined by Tool. This year’s Soundwave features Iron Maiden – one of the biggest bands in the world – closing each night with a two-hour set. What a coup.
Besides that classic British metal act, nearly 70 other acts – mostly internationals – fill out a line-up pregnant with talent. The bookers are clearly doing something right, as several Soundwaves have sold out, Brisbane included (though curiously, today they were still selling tickets at the gate, for $180). Judging by the maps being handed out inside, the festival grounds have nearly doubled compared to last year. For the first time, organisers have placed two stages outside of the RNA Showgrounds, thereby using some of the space that an expanded Laneway Festival trialled last month. More space means more people. Maybe it’s the urban environment messing with my perceptions, but it feels like there could well be more people here than at the Gold Coast Big Day Out. At least on sight, it’s a major achievement for a festival solely focused on rock, metal, punk and hardcore.
Pathways to the new stages – numbered 3 and 6, which makes very little sense – become natural bottlenecks early in the day, as many thousands attempt to see Swedish act Millencolin on stage 3 at 12.30pm. There’s not a skerrick of space anywhere within eyeshot of the band, who’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of their most popular album, Pennybridge Pioneers, by playing it in full today. It’s a winning decision: tracks like ‘No Cigar’ (Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, anyone?), ‘Fox’ and ‘Penguins & Polarbears’ are all classics.
Walking through the main arena – where stages 1 and 2 are positioned adjacent to each other – presents a strange sight: very, very few people watching Welsh rock band Feeder. Poor dudes. Apparently MxPx/The Ataris brought a big crowd immediately beforehand. Outside the arena and across the train tracks that split the venue in two, Sevendust are playing the same heavy, down-tuned breed of metal I remember from high school on stage 4. (Stage 4a is right next to it. Soundwave don’t try too hard with naming stages, clearly.) It appears not much has changed in the interim. They add in a couple of metal cred-seeking song snippets, including ‘Master of Puppets’ and Pantera’s ‘Walk’; a decision which was always going to work in their favour in front of a crowd like this. Singer Lajon Witherspoon makes some strange comments toward the end of the set: “Thank you for making our dreams come true!”, and “Sevendust has arrived!”. Huh? They’ve been around for 17 years. Weird. Still, they’re playing to several thousand people, so… good for them. Monster Magnet are playing over on stage one. The vocals are really high in the mix. The singer’s voice sounds shot. Or maybe he always sounds like that. I sit and idly watch them from the shade of the grandstands for a while – they don’t seem to mean much to many people.
Devildriver, on the other hand, clearly do. Over on stage 4, they’re playing to a field full of young dudes thrashing away in the sun. I opt to explore the wide range of food outlets positioned between stages 4 and 5. The organisers have allowed some non-traditional food stalls to operate in the venue: ‘Punk Rock Burgers’ is doing a roaring trade, and the Iceberg (slushie/slurpee) fan is working in overdrive. $5 for a 600ml Coke is a bit rough, though.
For the full review, visit The Vine. Above photo by Justin Edwards.
The Vine festival review: Good Vibrations 2011, Gold Coast
A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Good Vibrations
Gold Coast Parklands, Gold Coast
Saturday 19 February 2011On show day, wide open spaces are among the last things that festival promoters want to see. So Jam Music, the team behind Good Vibrations, must be pretty bummed by this year’s turnout. Half price tickets were offered to the Sydney show, and there were reports of lacklustre attendance in Melbourne and – to a lesser extent – Sydney, while punters at the Gold Coast leg were informed a few days prior that they could bring a friend to the show for free. One can’t help but wonder just how bare the venue would be, were it not for that last minute face-saving decision; even now, there’s loads of unused space within the Parklands.
Despite running a similar amount of stages to the Big Day Out, the Good Vibes grounds take up perhaps half of the floor space. In recent years, promoters have attempted to distinguish the festival from myriad other doof-fests by booking indie pop and rock acts high up the bill. Evidently, their efforts this year weren’t enough to stand out from a crowded summer schedule. By moving away from the dancefloor in search of the moshpit, Good Vibrations may have lost its core audience.
I am not part of this festival’s core audience. When the first line-up announcement was made back in September last year, two of my most anticipated artists were Cee-Lo Green and Janelle Monae. Both ultimately cancelled in favour of staying Stateside and performing at the 53rd annual Grammy Awards, meaning that some large holes suddenly emerged among the line-up. And so the first artist of real interest isn’t until half three on a disgustingly hot Saturday afternoon. (Although curiously, the $40 festival shirts for sale behind the merch desk still list the names of both Monáe and Green. The perils of printing merchandise months in advance.)
Erykah Badu is a thing of beauty. At the outset, I’m a bit sceptical, due largely to the circumstance in which she takes the stage. For over five minutes, her band are put in a holding pattern playing the same eight bars; a dark jacket is handed to the bassist, whose white check shirt stands out among his fellow black clad musicians. I expect a diva-like performance, fraught with perfectionism and divorced from spontaneity. Thankfully, my doubts are disproven around 10 minutes in, as the American singer smiles for the first time and reveals herself to be wholly engaged with the wide crowd of admirers. “You know why I do this?” she asks us halfway through. “I do this for my sanity.”
Thank fuck that she does. Her hour-plus on stage is a thrilling ride through her eclectic catalogue of soul and R&B stunners. With a wave of her hand, she cuts her band off on the beat time and again; by constantly deconstructing and rebuilding her songs, Badu ensures that she remains the focal point. Indeed, it is impossible to take one’s eyes off the singer, so alluring is her voice and presence. When she walks the length of the front-of-stage barrier toward set’s end, while still singing and holding onto the crowd for support, there’s little doubt that any of us would let such a beautiful creature come to harm. From 1997′s Baduizm to last year’s New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), it’s a wide ranging and powerfully-delivered set. Massive props to the Good Vibrations bookers for bringing her out to Australia for the first time. It’s good enough to take us away from the fact that, under the stifling dark canopy of the Roots Stage, it’s so hot that our bodies constantly ooze sweat, even while stationary. It also sets a very high bar for the rest of today’s acts.
For the full review, visit The Vine. Above photo by Justin Edwards.
The Vine interview: Kim Moyes of The Presets, 2011
An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Alongside labelmates Cut Copy, The Presets have arguably been the most influential Australian band of modern times. After meeting at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1995, Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes quickly ditched the ambient electronica they were fussing about with in instrumental band Prop, in favour of a more playful electronica, tinged with darkness. The duo’s EPs in Blow Up (2003) and Girl and the Sea (2004), gave way to debut album Beams (2005), released via Modular Records, which delivered their first club (and festival) hit, ‘Are You The One?’.
The band’s sound soon found favour with a mainstream shifting away from the tired posturing of guitar rock; one moving towards a more hedonistic, celebratory club-like culture that began pervading everything from festivals to the local pub. Whether it was right-place right-time, or something more intrinsically linked to the band’s quickly growing fanbase, The Presets second LP Apocalypso was released in 2008 right as a newly branded mainstream were feverishly scrolling for new icons. Preceded by the mega-hit ‘My People’, which quickly became a generational anthem, sitting in the ARIA Top 100 singles for over 18 months, the album struck a chord,. That year, Apocalypso was second only to AC/DC’s Black Ice in sales terms. (It’s now gone three times platinum in Australia). The band embarked on a solid two years of touring, packing out halls, accumulating international fans (the Black Eyed Peas will.i.am claimed that ‘My People’ was a “huge influence” on that bands album ‘The E.N.D’) and making mockeries of festivals “dance” tents. Apocalypso cleaned up at the 2008 ARIA Awards, winning Best Dance Release and Album Of The Year, as well the Artisan Awards for Best Cover Art and Producer of the Year, a sweep which brought an intense, bizarre period for the band to a neat close. After five years of touring and recording, they retired for a much-needed break.
With a third album to be released sometime this year, and ahead of their re-emergence on the live scene as part of the Future Music Festival touring across Australia next month, Andrew McMillen connected with drummer and keyboardist Kim Moyes to discuss his change in addressing music, the weight of expectations and the ugly side of Australian culture.
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Hey, Kim. Besides a few shows in January, you spent most of last year out of the public eye. Was that a good year for you?
Yeah, it was a great year. The whole last five years – up until the end of the last few shows of Apocalypso – we were touring non-stop. If we weren’t touring, we were making a record, and then we were touring again. It was great. It was a huge experience in my life and career, but at the end of that I think we needed to have a few months off to defrag, enjoy some home time with our partners. We both became fathers in that year. We started working again about a year ago, and it’s been a steady, long slog since then. Right now we’re getting to a point where we have an album starting to take shape and just trying to put the final touches on it. We’re ready to go back out there and face that public eye again.
Was it a bit of a shock to the system to live through five years of non-stop creativity and touring, and then come home and adjust to the everyday pace of life?
Not really, because – without going into it too much – having a kid is kind of like a whole other pace of life [laughs]. There were a few moments where we got to really unwind and enjoy nothingness, and that was not unusual at all. It was bloody awesome. The rest just kind of…I feel like fulfilling the next bit of our lives, that we felt needed to be fulfilled.
You’re playing MS Fest in Tasmania in a couple of weeks, which will mark your return to live shows. What made you say yes to that gig?
We’ve done it a couple of times and always have a really good time there. We really like working with the guy who puts it on. We have a really good relationship with those guys and we thought that’s probably a really good, nice way to start things again. We’re doing the MS Fest, and then the Future Music Festival. It’s an isolated run around the country and a reinvigoration for us. Even being in rehearsals this week – getting ready for it, trying out the new songs and seeing how they fit, tweaking them and all that sort of stuff; it’s really taking the creative juices to another level.
I think there’s only so much… I was talking to Jules [bandmate Julian Hamilton] about this yesterday. I remember when we wrote Beams, and I remember when we wrote Apocalypso, and both those situations we were [playing in other] bands (both Kim and Julian have worked as touring musicians for other bands, most notably Hamilton with Silverchair – Ed) and recording with other bands, and we really felt this urgency to go and work at our [own] music. So we’d be working all day at rehearsal studios with a different band and then at nighttime we’d go to the studio and write songs. We’d done that at fever pitch, and then the same with Apocalypso; we came back after three years of touring and we were so highly attuned to what we were doing and what we needed to do in the next record, that we went in and did it in a short time.
I guess the drawbacks of taking a break from it all is that those things start to fade a bit in your mind; they’re not at the forefront and you start to forget. In a way it’s really great for your creativity to take on new ideas, new concepts, and try things you normally wouldn’t do, and that’s what we’ve done a lot of. But getting back into rehearsal this week and having this run of shows to look forward to, this reality check is really starting to complete the picture. As a result, we’re going to have a really interesting record. But nothing that’s too far away from what we normally do. It’s an exciting time.
For the full interview, visit The Vine. And I highly recommend that you do, if you’ve already read this far: while the above questions/responses are quite standard, the interview took a real left turn once we began discussing how Kim thinks Australians view The Presets, and how they’ve influenced Australian culture in unexpected ways.
For more of The Presets, visit their website. The music video for their song ‘If I Know You‘ is embedded below.
The Vine festival review: Laneway Festival 2011, Brisbane
A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Laneway Festival 2011
Alexandria Street, Brisbane
Friday February 5 2011Having missed Laneway 2010, it’s something of a shock to take in the size of the festival site at first. The space on offer has grown considerably since 2009, thanks largely to a bigger stage (New Alexandria Street) that’d be more suited to a grassy field somewhere than a slab of bitumen baking under the relentless sun.
As the festival begins, we’re subject to weather that seems so uncharacteristically Queensland of late: pure, unfiltered sunshine, which infiltrates the skin and immediately begins cooking. Thankfully there’s shade over where Rat Vs Possum are opening the Car Park Stage. Today, they’re a band defined by board shorts, an abundance of floor toms, synths and vocal harmonies (four each). Their sound regularly dissolves into tribal drumming sessions that include the whole band, and while auxiliary percussion was among 2010’s most overdone musical trait, they do it better than any other band I’ve seen rack extra floor toms. They end with a cover of My Disco’s ‘You Came To Me Like A Cancer Lain Dormant Until It Blossomed Like A Rose’, which sounds totally weird with calypso-style keyboards cutting between the song’s pounding rhythm. They more than do it justice, though, ensuring that the set ends on a high.
Inside at the Inner Sanctum stage, PVT look tired. Unshaven. Like they’ve been on the road for an eternity and could probably do with a break. This is reflected in today’s performance, which at times teeters toward inertia. Why they front-load their set with slower tracks, I’m unsure. After the title track from their 2010 release Church With No Magicm they meander to the energy-sapping ‘Timeless’ from the same release, and later, another slow track in ‘Crimson Swan’. Audience attention wanes considerably. The couple from O Soundtrack My Heart they air (the epic title track, and the scorching ‘Didn’t I Furious’) sound more at place in a festival setting, despite singer Richard Pike’s insistence that the “new songs” are “every bit as good as the old songs” (yes, he says this while introducing ‘Light Up Bright Fires’). It’s difficult to agree when the sonics of that song, in particular, sound hollow in comparison to the O Soundtrack pair. Still, as one of the most consistently innovative drummers, it’s always a pleasure to watch Laurence Pike in action behind the kit. They close with ‘Window’, whose singalongs are met with enthusiasm.
Adjacent to the Inner Sanctum is the Red Bull/Nine Lives stage, which is a large warehouse-type space that acts as a thoroughfare between the Alexandria and the Car Park stage. There’s a rotating lineup of DJs and DJ-like acts housed high above the ground in a booth; underneath, a bar serves Red Bull- related drinks. All day long, the soundsystem pumps out tunes at around one million decibels, which makes this room repellent to most punters. The ears of the bar staff will be ringing for days.
For the full review and photo gallery, visit The Vine. Above photo by Justin Edwards.
Scene Magazine cover story: Foals
The cover story for issue 881 of Brisbane street press Scene Magazine – an interview with Yannis Phillippakis of Foals. Click the below image for a closer look, or read the article text underneath.
Foals – Lobotimising Consciousness
Oxford-born quintet Foals had a spectacular 2010. In May, they released their second album, ‘Total Life Forever’, which followed their 2008 debut, ‘Antidotes’. They toured the world, including extensive treks through North American and Europe, before playing Australia for the first time as part of the mammoth Splendour In The Grass line-up. Anyone who witnessed their set that weekend would testify it was one of the festival’s best sets.
Over the years, the band’s sound has morphed from a danceable form of math rock, to a more refined style of indie pop best exemplified on ‘Spanish Sahara‘, ‘Total Life Forever’s beautiful centrepiece. Ahead of their appearance at the 2011 Laneway Festival, Scene connected with Foals’ singer, guitarist and lyricist, Yannis Philippakis.
When I compare ‘Total Life Forever’ to what I first heard on ‘Antidotes’ a couple of years ago, the two sound like entirely different bands.
I don’t really like the idea of making albums adversary to each other. I find the whole ranking, hierarchy thing that happens every year repellent. I don’t really have the same perspective on it, obviously, as an externalist, but to us in the band, it’s been a very linear progression. It never really felt like we had a break, even after we finished ‘Antidotes’. I think the production is a hell of a lot more fully realised on ‘Total Life Forever’. I still have a fondness for a lot of the songs on ‘Antidotes’, but I don’t listen to that record largely because of the production. I think that it’s great that people are acknowledging the progression, but to us it is one linear thing. We want to make a body of work. It’s not us trying to eradicate our past, as such.
Was there any self doubt within the band when the band’s style of songwriting started shifting, after ‘Antidotes’?
There’s self doubt every day; it’s part of the game. It’s been there always and unless we write ‘Symphony No. 3′ by Gorecki – which we can’t, because it’s already been written – I don’t think we’re ever going to feel sated or complete. It’s just part of the fun as well, the masochistic element of it. The moment we stopped recording ‘Antidotes’, we started doing b-sides for ‘Antidotes’, it started to change a lot, and there was much more experimentation. We started to implement a lot of the things that we learned from [TV On The Radio guitarist/’Antidotes’ producer] Dave Sitek, and make stuff that I think actually bridges the two albums quite closely.There are some b-sides; one in particular called ‘Gold Gold Gold‘, and another two called ‘Titan Arum‘ and ‘Glaciers‘. That’s what I mean; it felt linear. It didn’t feel like we ever stopped.
When we started the band, it was a very definite and conscious process. We wanted a conscious aesthetic: it was to do with techno, with a style of guitar playing, and with a visual aesthetic. Everything was very conscious, and we wanted to have parameters on it. We were in love with the idea of bands like Devo, who occupied a distinct world. Once we felt like we attained that, everything is now about undoing that process, and getting to a point that’s almost the reverse of that: where nothing is conscious. If I had the choice, I’d have a lobotomy and cut out the conscious part of my mind, so that I could just make music direct from the gut.
You mentioned your style of guitar playing. I’ve always been fascinated by Foals’ needly, palm-muted riffs. Were there any particular artists that inspired that style of playing?
It was just something that we heard. There are a lot of styles of playing stringed instruments; everything from string players in a classical piece, to [math rock] bands like OXES and Don Caballero, and African Senegalese guitar. I think the main thing, at least personally for me, there was something about that way of guitar playing that just attracted me. I was never that fascinated by chords, and I actually neglected to learn how to work chord sequences and stuff. Instead, everything became about these ‘guitar tattoos’. I heard a lot of different types of music and different types of bands; I wanted to cannibalise [them] and make it our own. We start playing stuff lower down the guitar. We play with chords sometimes now, but I think that will always be part of the sound because that is just the way that I play, naturally. It’s become muscle memory, now.
It’s certainly one of the band’s most distinctive elements. Did you always intend that to be the case, or did it arise when you started playing together?
Yeah, it’s always been there, it pre-dates the band. It’s how I learned how to play the guitar. I used to mimic and ape the guitar lines I liked, and they usually were like staccato, tight little phrases. That’s how I liked it. As I said, I was never really attracted to chords, or distortion pedals. I like the idea of a transparent guitar sound; a guitar sound that’s unashamed to be a clean guitar. I think that you can get as much power out of a clean guitar as you can out of a distorted guitar.
Foals play Laneway Festival, at Alexandria St off St Paul’s Terrace, this Friday February 4.
For more Foals, visit their website. For the full transcript of my conversation with Yannis, click here.. The music video for Foals’ song ‘Miami‘ is embedded below.
Elsewhere: a review of their 2010 album, Total Life Forever, for The Vine.
The Vine festival review: Big Day Out 2011
A festival review for The Vine. Excerpt below.
Big Day Out 2011
Gold Coast Parklands
Sunday 23 January 2011It’s with no small amount of disappointment that the time we should have spent watching Gold Coast indie punk duo Bleeding Knees Club open the Boiler Room, and New Zealand electro-rock act The Naked and Famous open the Converse Essential Stage, is instead spent sitting on a bus. We’re just one vehicle amongst thousands caught in a tedious traffic jam caused by a two-car accident somewhere between Brisbane and the Gold Coast Parklands; call it a downside of Queensland’s reliance upon two- and three-lane thoroughfares between major cities. (I do get to hear the latter band’s final chorus in ‘Young Blood’ ring out from a distance, though, for what it’s worth.)
Brisbane five-piece Blonde On Blonde are playing fairly by-the-numbers blues-rock on the Hot Produce stage when we do arrive at noon, but they’re interesting enough to avoid sounding too formulaic. Put it down to frontman Jack Bratt, who charismatically lords over the crowd – which barely passes triple figures – like they’re headlining the festival. Ongoing sound problems threaten to crush whatever momentum and kudos they gain, but it’s a solid cover of the ace Queens Of The Stone Age tune ‘Regular John’ that wins me over. Doesn’t matter that the bass amp is emitting a low whine instead of what the bassist is actually playing. Bratt then closes the set by lashing his guitar into the stage in frustration.
Brisbane local Sampology mixes up a storm under the shade of the Boiler Room. His adept turntable skills are usually augmented by cleverly-edited videos of famous films, but they’re curiously absent today. Instead, cameramen film his fuzzy mop and sleight-of-hand; a couple of times he glances over his shoulder at the screen, sees himself, and looks momentarily flustered. His mixing and musical taste is impeccable; his set pacing, not so much. While the first 25 minutes are wall-to-wall with killer mash-ups – Outkast’s ‘B.O.B.’ rhymes laid over Sleigh Bells’ ‘Infinity Guitars’ is my fave; I swear he throws in the theme from the ABC TV kids show Ship To Shore for a few bars, too – there’s a definite drop-off as he approaches the end of his set. It’s great to watch Sampology in action, though. The crowd’s with him from the outset, and it appears he’s building a decent fanbase.
From the shelter of giant tents, to absorbing the sun’s unrelenting heat; weather-wise, it’s as near to a perfect day that this region has experienced in some months. As Airbourne thrash about in front of 24 stacked Marshall amps on the Blue Stage – I’m serious, I counted – I watch the Motorola motocross exhibit from up in the pavilion, and think about where else in the world I could be watching three riders backflip across a ten-metre gap while shit Aussie pub rock plays in the background. From this distance, all I can see is the shirtless Joel O’Keefe’s leg stomping to the beat, while the band plays the same handful of power chords in different combinations. The crowd paying attention to the band isn’t particularly impressive; when Lupe Fiasco begins on the Orange Stage, the numbers triple. Except that Lupe’s not happy with the sound, or the band, or something, and directs them all to stop. With his back to the crowd, he stands for several minutes while his entourage attempt to fix – or at least ascertain – the problem. He’s not having it; eventually, he walks over to his DJ’s table, rips out an expensive-looking piece of equipment, throws it to the stage floor, and walks off. A stagehand replaces it, and incredibly, Lupe returns to stage, throws it to the floor again, and disappears. Then the ten-nine-eight-etc countdown begins again, the band strikes up, the MC returns, and the song is played in full. It’s a very entertaining spectacle to eat a steak sandwich to. ‘The Instrumental’ from Food & Liquor is played within the first few songs, before I relocate to the Green Stage.
For the full review, visit The Vine. Above photo by Justin Edwards.
The Vine festival review: Sunset Sounds 2011
The two-day festival Sunset Sounds 2011, reviewed for The Vine. Excerpt from day 1 below.
Sunset Sounds – Day 1
Botanical Gardens, Brisbane
Wednesday January 5 2011Queensland’s version of The Falls Festival, Sunset Sounds, runs for two days. Both events share similar line-ups, but here, the curfew is 10pm and there’s no camping. Held at Brisbane’s Botanical Gardens, three stages run concurrently in a space roughly half the size of the Parklife Festival held in September.
I arrive as gates open at 3pm, and there’s a few hundred metres-long queue snaking toward the main entrance. I’m about to detour to the second entrance when, amid dozens of people streaming through the gardens’ gates, I’m stopped by a man in his mid-20s, wearing board shorts and looking not too unlike the typical festivalgoer. I immediately expect him to either sell me drugs, or ask me if I’m selling any. Turns out he’s an undercover cop; the same one who stopped me outside Parklife last year, I think. He asks if I’m carrying any drugs. At this particular moment, I’m carrying a couple of sushi rolls, so it’s a bit awkward when they ask me to empty my pockets. “Is that sushi legal?”, his colleague jokes. I tell them I’m a journalist and we bullshit about live music for about ten seconds before they let me go. I sit nearby, finish my sushi, and wonder how successful this anti-drugs tactic is, before picking up my wristband and entering through the much shorter VIP line.
Clouds loom overhead. Walking up toward the top of the venue, I note the six portaloos located between the main stage (Riverstage) and the other two (Gardens and Hibiscus). Six shitters sure ain’t enough for tens of thousands of people; there are more located on the far side of the Riverstage, but it’s a bit of a dead end, with far less traffic. I get the feeling that this situation will be a problem for many people later on. But for now, I watch local act Ball Park Music for about thirty seconds as they attempt to win over the small early crowd. It doesn’t seem to be going well for them. Good band, with strong songs, but only a couple dozen are feeling it. I head toward the Gardens Stage, where Cloud Control are the day’s first drawcard. I’ve seen them play a similar set of songs at venues around the country over the last year-plus, but they still make me smile. I’m standing under a tree some fifty metres away, paying equal attention to the band and crowd surrounding me, yet when they hit particular melodies in their singles, chills run down my spine. I’m a sucker for their mash-up of ‘Gold Canary’ and the Butthole Surfers track ‘Pepper’, too. Though it feels like singer/guitarist Al Wright is cheating a little by soliciting Hottest 100 votes from the thousands-strong crowd.
For the full review of day 1, visit The Vine. Excerpt from day 2 below.
Sunset Sounds – Day 2
Botanical Gardens, Brisbane
Thursday January 6 2011We left the first day of this two-day festival wondering how they were going to remedy the state of the grounds. The answer, it appears, is sand. Within 15 minutes of the gates opening, a fine layer of topsoil is already being ground into mush by the hordes venturing up and down the hill, thereby rendering the groundskeepers’ hasty decisions fairly moot. By the time gates shut tonight, pretty much every square inch of grass within the venue is gone. Woodchips were in short supply? Beforehand, we’d checked BOM’s weather radar online; when your city is surrounded by a violent swirl of greens, blues and yellows, it’s generally not a good sign. Even worse if you’re going to be spending all day outside. At least today, we know what to expect. Yesterday’s prolonged downpour caught most people off guard. Poncho sales rose 5000%. As soon as I’m on site, taking in the sand-into-mud routine, I’m kicking myself for choosing shitty old joggers over gumboots. I’m not sure what was going through the minds of the thousands who still opted for thongs, though.
A cursory glance across the enlarged timetables posted across the venue – yesterday’s rain soaked my own through my pockets – reveals that Wednesday’s line-up looks superior in pretty much every aspect. Could be a long day of so-so music. This fear is made all the more real as we stop by Laneous and the Family Yah for the day’s first performance at the Hibiscus Stage. The mood is sombre. They play an extremely eclectic mix of hip-hop, roots, soul, rock and pop. It’s too much – too confronting – for right now. When I last saw them, they were great, but that was inside a dry auditorium. Today, none of them look thrilled to be here. Their upbeat numbers maintain interest, but when they detour into ballad territory, it’s time to move on. Ash Grunwald and his three-piece band are playing at the Gardens Stage. I’ve read his name and I’ve seen his dreadlocked press photos over the years, but I think this is the first time I’ve actually heard his music. It’s pretty cool. It’s certainly inducing a greater response than Laneous were. Grunwald plays chunky, bluesy riffs through his electric guitar, while two percussionists lay down rhythms. The phrase ‘bush doof’ comes to mind during some of the more obvious breakdowns. Dude has the most Australian accent I’ve heard in a long time. I like the cut of his jib. One of the drummers has something resembling a steel bin lid attached to his kit. It hurts my brain when he connects with it.
I’m a bit nervous to see The Middle East. It’s been over a year since I last saw them, and they’ve been touring the States and Europe for most of that time. For a band who broke up after releasing their first album in 2008, they’ve sure changed their tune when it comes to the concept of music as a career. I’m glad they have. Their Riverstage performance is captivating. They seem to have latched onto this touring-band-of-ragged-musicians mentality. It reminds me of The Band, and of Neil Young and Crazy Horse. It’s a good look, because no-one else in Australia is doing that at the moment.
For the full review of day 2, visit The Vine, where you can also view photo galleries from both days. Above photos taken by Elleni Toumpas for The Vine.
