September 2011
2 posts
9 tags
11 tags
August 2011
6 posts
7 tags
6 tags
7 tags
5 tags
2 tags
8 tags
July 2011
37 posts
11 tags
8 tags
5 tags
A TO Z OF PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE
K IS FOR KRAKOW
Not many corners of the world have experienced as much rapid change in the past 20 years as Eastern Europe.
What you’ll find is far from the Borat-esque villages and decrepit Commie cities where you fear your jeans might be ripped from your backside and sold on the black market, scenarios often imagined by our parents’ generation (or by that God-awful American film, Euro...
5 tags
FEATURE: PNAU
“Music is a form of therapy and what kind of therapist would I be if I told my patients to jump in the lake…”
They say things come in threes and this certainly applies to Nick Littlemore’s life right now.
He has just moved to New York City, has a new girlfriend, and this week his long-term dance-pop project, Pnau, drop their fourth album, Soft Universe.
“It’s all coming up...
4 tags
FEATURE: Funeral Party
“(The stabbing) just happened because LA is such a melting pot of different people.”
“I know it’s all been done before, and it will all be done again,” sings Chad Elliott on the Funeral Party single, New York City Moves to the Sounds of LA.
Given a lot of artists seem to constantly proclaim their work as original no matter how derivative it may actually be, conceding to the recycled...
2 tags
FEATURE: James Blake
“I don’t want to be in a two-year album cycle; I don’t think it’s necessary and it doesn’t suit me…”
If you care for top album lists — and let’s be frank, the music world is obsessed with them right now — one album topping all 2011 album lists so far is James Blake’s self-titled debut.
Praised for adding real emotion and soul to dubstep and rising above the genre with gospel...
3 tags
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: 22.07.11
SBTRKT SBTRKT Young Turks/ Remote Control 5 STARS
The debut album from SBTRKT is first and foremost compellingly beautiful and moving. Genre classification comes as an afterthought.
There’s a strong portrayal of the human condition that flows through, with all but one of the tracks featuring vocals.
The primary contributor is Sampha, who imbues the lyrics with an honesty in his delivery and...
8 tags
6 tags
TAKE ME OUT
THE SEARCH FOR PERTH’S BEST TAKE-OUT CONTINUES… WHERE: McDonald’s WHAT: NYC Benedict Bagel + 2 Hash Browns + Espresso Pronto flat white (LRG) PRICE: $11.05
Fast food giant McDonald’s wants you to feel better about eating food out of a brown paper bag by suggesting their fare is a cut above the rest - it’s a little bit fancy.
This is, of course, a nonsense. It...
11 tags
4 tags
7 tags
5 tags
A TO Z OF PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE
J IS FOR JODHPUR
No, not the pants. Before it became synonymous with horse-riding trousers, Jodhpur was a historically significant city in the Indian state of Rajasthan – you know, the one Warnie played for in the Indian Premier League.
Considered the “second city” of Rajasthan after capital Jaipur, Jodhpur’s origins stretch back to 1100AD; although the city’s founding is credited to Rao Jodha...
5 tags
FEATURES: The Kills
“People that are scared of doing what they want look at you and say, ‘Oh, you just don’t give a shit, do you?’ And it’s not true.”
Ike and Tina Turner. Sonny and Cher. Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. Jack and Meg White. Just a few famous male-female collaborations that have struck gold when they combined their talents but all sadly came to an end.
Not true for the Kills, which...
3 tags
FEATURE: Yuksek
“I wanted this album to be timeless, not something specific like electronic music from 2011 or whatever.”
Life on the road can get lonely. It’s a sentiment French electronic artist Yuksek, aka Pierre-Alexandre Busson, is familiar with.
Following the release of his debut album Away from the Sea, in early 2009 he spent two years playing club shows and festivals around the world. He visited...
4 tags
FEATURES: Explosions in the Sky
“I have been so affected and moved by music in my life it’s really rewarding to do it for other people.”
American instrumental quartet Explosions in the Sky rely on a warm and fuzzy post-rock camaraderie to get their message across.
For these Texans, making music is all about electric guitars and other stringed instruments to capture their introspective sound, not unlike the Dirty...
3 tags
FEATURE: Handsome Furs
“I’d be lying if I said having a day off in Bowling Green, Ohio, was more exciting than having a day off in Bangkok or Sarajevo.”
When Canadian husband-and-wife indie rock duo Handsome Furs say they’re going on a world tour, they really mean it.
Tomorrow Dan Boeckner and Alexei Perry leave their home in Montreal for a jaunt that includes three laps of North America, a couple of tours across...
3 tags
IN BED WITH SASHA
THE SPICE TRADE
The receptionist at my work recently asked me, “It’s not fair. Why is it always up to the girl to spice things up? Why can’t the guy spice it up?”
It’s true – generally, we are the ones that have to wear the slutty costumes, wear the sexy lingerie, purchase the massage oils, come up with the role plays, find an appropriate girl for the threesome…
I’m of the opinion that...
8 tags
7 tags
10 tags
4 tags
IN BED WITH SASHA
Everything’s great when you’re downtown
Browsing the net the other day, I stumbled upon an advice column that read something like this:
Dear Relationship Expert, My boyfriend Rod won’t go down on me, when I do it for him all the time. This has been happening for almost a year now. How do I convince him to do this for me? It’s really starting to upset me. Sally.
And the...
9 tags
5 tags
NEW SOUNDS: City Riots
NAME: City Riots ORIGIN: Adelaide, Australia
For City Riots founders Ricky and Dan Kradolfer, it’s been a long road from their parents formal dining room to SXSW national airplay on Triple J.
Picking up bandmates Matt Edge and Matt Stadler along the way, the group has been building momentum recently touring the country with the likes of Boy & Bear and Papa Vs Pretty.
The...
7 tags
7 tags
11 tags
5 tags
4 tags
ALBUM OF THE WEEK: 06.07.11
KAISER CHIEFS The Future is Medieval Liberator Music 3.5 STARS
Kaiser Chiefs once claimed that they never missed a beat. On 2008’s Off With their Heads, however, the Leeds lads lost the momentum created by rabble-rousing rippers Oh My God, I Predict a Riot and Na Na Na Na Naa on their Mercury Prize-nominated 2005 debut Employment. They now predict that the future is medieval, pre-empting our...
4 tags
NEW SOUNDS: Zomby
NAME: Zomby ORIGIN: UK
Few genres are as popular and maligned as dubstep is right now. Everyone wants a taste and as a result there are a lot of pretenders out there.
Zomby ain’t one of those.
This producer extraordinaire has done his time knocking out rave, garage, jungle or dubstep since he exploded on the scene with his rave-centric debut a couple of years ago, Where Were U in 92?
...
6 tags
6 tags
4 tags
FEATURE: City and Colour
“I was kind of doing this since before Alexisonfire, it’s just nobody really knew about it.”
Dallas Green’s family could be forgiven for being a tad nervous when they first heard his latest solo album, Little Hell.
On the third full-length released under his City and Colour pseudonym, the Alexisonfire singer/guitarist regularly uses his family for lyrical inspiration, and, on occasions,...
5 tags
FEATURE: Sons & Daughters
“We had six, seven, eight months of writers’ block when it felt like nothing was coming out . . . ”
Mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s the darkest album of them all?
Why ’tis none other than Sons and Daughters’ fourth album, Mirror Mirror — a collection of unsettlingly brooding post-punk songs about such cheery topics as suicide (The Model), discovering dead bodies (The Beach) and the...
4 tags
FEATURE: Battles
“There was lack of chemistry and we weren’t on the same page for the most part . . . ”
A band member calling it quits during the making of the all-important second album is certainly a challenge but US experimental rockers Battles pulled through to create the entrancing album, Gloss Drop.
The story, according to guitarist/bassist Dave Konopka, goes something like this. They went into the...
5 tags
FEATURE: Abbe May
“I’ve always felt there was a strong connection between sex and death … ”
The Cure’s Robert Smith cut to the chase when he suggested Let’s Go to Bed, it was hard to miss the invite to get between the sheets when Cheetah sang “I just want to Spend the Night with you” and Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor was arguably too forward when he barked “I want to f… you like an animal” in...
4 tags
IN BED WITH SASHA
THE ROAD LESS TAKEN I remember the first time a boyfriend asked me for Road Head. I was 16, and shocked.
Me: “What?! Right now?!” Him: “Well, it’s a long drive to Geraldton…” Me: “I’m not blowing you for six hours!” Him: “Just try it. It’ll be fun. If you don’t like it, you can stop.”
Like many insecure teenage girls who find themselves in such a position, I did it. But we had a few...
June 2011
101 posts
8 tags
5 tags
NEW SOUNDS: The Laurels
NAME: The Laurels ORIGIN: Sydney, Australia
You know a band with great ambition when their press releases say comparing them to the Beatles, Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine is lazy.
Perhaps it’s because the Laurels, who hail from Sydney’s inner west, want to blaze their own trail and not be pigeonholed - we can respect that.
With a nod to shoegaze and the psychadelic rockers...
5 tags
TAKE ME OUT
THE SEARCH FOR PERTH’S BEST TAKE-OUT CONTINUES… WHERE: Pasta Cup, North Perth WHAT: 3 Cheese Ravioli Carbonara (Sml) + Garlic Bread PRICE: $16.90
I don’t know what you have to do to win a Nobel Prize these days, but the person who thought of combining homemade pasta with Styrofoam cups as a takeaway food item deserves one - genius.
For starters, it ticks a lot of boxes: a...
9 tags
4 tags
FEATURE: Metronomy
“… you really have to have variety if you want to stay sane.”
If you’re a fan of Metronomy, you’re a fan for life.
Who knows the exact formula that induces the kind of loyalty one has for creator Joseph Mount and his continually transforming live band since the project commenced in Devon, England, in 1999, but with the release of their third studio album, The English Riviera, they...
