Ollo‘s cover of The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum (by Fun Boy Three) is one of my favourites. Anyway, the dastardly duo are skint, so they’re entering the song in a talent quest at the Newtown Hotel on King Street in Newtown, Sydney. If you’re in that vicinity, you must go, it’s bound to be better than a hundred Khe Sanh and My Way covers, though if they’re pushed they might go in for some A-Ha. P.S. they’re on after about 10:30pm.

Fat Planet has fast become an essential filter on the world of music. Run by Stuart Buchanan, 35, of Marrickville, Sydney, the MP3 blog grew out of his weekly radio show on Sydney’s FBI 94.5 FM. The radio show (and site) aspire to a wider definition of ‘world music’. Hence the name. Typical of the best MP3 blogs, Stuart has an individual take on music, an elegant way with words and a workaholic’s list of RSS feeds, blogs, artist and label websites. Stuart and his wife run a web design shop – they’ve done sites for Depeche Mode, Gronland Records and Goldfrapp, and won the MTV Europe web award – so the simple effective website comes as no surprise. His background in writing – he edited the local student rag at uni – and a huge record collection fire the site with the passion of a music fan. He was kind enough to answer a few bounced questions on MP3 blogs and the state of music.

Why did you start your blog and what did you hope to get out of it?

The blog started as a natural extension of the radio show that I do on Sydney’s FBi 94.5FM. The idea of the show is to feature new alternative & contemporary music from around the world, to give an alternative view of what ‘world music’ is. That might be baile funk from Brazil, dancehall from Jamaica, hip-hop from Senegal, psych rock from Japan, electronica from Iceland etc. The show’s been running for two years, the blog started not long after that, basically as a recognition that much of the music I was playing were MP3s sourced from artist and label web sites and not from CDs.

Do you source your own music? Do you find it a challenge to keep your own musical vision/taste intact while filtering through so much music?

Labels send a few promos, but not as many as you might think – many labels are still nervous about allowing even one of their tracks to be posted as a free MP3. I respect that decision, but it’s becoming abundantly clear that a blog visitor hearing one MP3 can lead directly to an album sale – I hear it all the time from comments on the blog. Most of the music I source however comes via my own research, I have a long list of RSS feeds that I visit daily and make connections via articles, reviews and – of course – other members of the blog community. I never tire of hearing new music, but the long list of sites, CDs and mp3s can sometimes start to morph into a large elephant shitting in the corner of the room.

What decisions do you make when you’re thinking of hosting a song?

There’s a few – how easy is it to find this music elsewhere (if it’s readily available or well known, I may not post it); does it offer anything new or original; where is it from? Generally, I don’t post Anglo-American (also true of the radio show), but occasionally I like to post a few Australian tracks as the majority of readers are actually from overseas.

What sort of feedback do you get?

All very positive, people seem to appreciate the time and effort that goes into it and even a little ‘nice post!’ comment can work wonders on a Monday morning. I’ve yet to have any negative comments from any corner of the industry. I cover my ass by only posting mp3s from artist or label sites, or from other legitimate sources – i.e. that which is legally available for free elsewhere.

How many unique visitors do you get to the site? How many return?

I’m around 50,000 page impressions a month, and approx 12,000 users

What are bandwidth costs like? Do you host your own music or just link to others?

That’s where third party linking comes in handy – I’m conscious though of not just posting a link to an MP3 on a label site, but also posting links to the artist page, artist site or (as I’m sometimes asked to do) to online stores or to iTunes store too.

What do you think about file-sharing, p2p and so on?

I’ve used P2P to source music, yes – but generally for music that is no longer available for sale (out of print etc). It can definitely enhance and broaden your appreciation of music, however I think every P2P user will know when they’ve crossed the line. If you consciously use P2P to download an entire new album, then I’m absolutely opposed to that.

What do you think of the recent case in Australia, where mp3s4free.net went down for linking to music hosted elsewhere? Do you see any precedent for MP3 blogs in general?

Think of MP3 blogs like a combination of radio and music press – they work as a sampler for new music in exactly the same way as radio, and come bundled with the kind of critical appraisal that you’d expect from your favourite music magazine. Smarter labels and artists recognise that and work with blogs to promote their artists. It’s only a matter a time before the practice becomes more wide-spread, by which point the music industry itself may well be supporting the blog movement, rather than trying to attack at it as the bogeyman. Perhaps blogs will start to ‘licence’ free MP3s from artists and labels, I know this is starting to happen with some of the more successful American blogs, although it could potentially limit your posting options. The vast majority of blog editors do it because they love music and they want to spread the word about the artists they love – what does it say about the commercial end of the music industry that they want to stop this practice, and cut off this avenue for breaking new music?

What do you think of the impact of technology on the music industry? Do you think it is set for a shakeup? Or will the current players get everything under control?

I don’t have any faith in the major players to get it under control. For example, many of the majors use Windows as their download format, thus ensuring that iPod owners – who essentially kick-started the market for downloadable music – cannot buy the files. I can’t fathom that decision at all – it’s like trying to flog cassettes to owners of CD players. It’s the independent sector and the smaller operators who have grasped technology well. With digitial technology, means of distribution is now feasibly back in the hands of the artists, which surely has to be a good thing.

What do you think are the biggest issues at the moment?

Convincing people that digital distribution is here to stay, and not to be nervous or anxious about the implications.

Are there any really radical options being put forward? Eg. MP3 blogs, netlabels, vinyl, pay per download, free downloads, cottage industry. Do you think the music industry needs a shakeup and what do you think are good ideas or workable new models for the industry?

I think we’re already in the middle of that shake-up. There’s a lot of old school industry people sitting around talking, thinking about the future – while on the ground, the revolution has already happened. Crucially, an artist having their own means of distribution could alter the agreements that they enter into with their labels, management etc. It’s back to the ‘balance of power’ again.

So I know it’s not the 12th of August today, so this is nowhere near live blogging, but I’m bringing this thing up to date with my carry around pen and paper diary. After the insane first day at Oya, Zan, Chris and I were pretty damaged and the second day ended up being a chance to recuperate. It was no forgettable day, though we passed on the afterparties in order to regain some semblance of control for the next day.

My whole rant about Oya this year is up at Stylus by the way.

Playing the early sets at the festival doesn’t faze anyone, least of all Don Juan Dracula, who touch down in a chopper, setting off fireworks and kicking out the early afternoon jams with a set of Spinal Tap via Pop Will Eat Itself rock-n-roll. You can almost hear them say, “We’re not playing last, but goddamn it, we’re gonna headline.” Pretty much every band that plays early gets a huge crowd, but Don Juan Dracula take Willy Wonka’s lift straight through the roof.

The Thing don’t hold a candle to Don Juan’s dramatics, but they do rip through their set with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’s ‘Art Star’ kicking off proceedings. Mats Gustafsson leans back on one foot for each primal blast of his sax, his face contorted violently. He pummels away at our skulls, but surf guitars, a drummer that’s got rhythm and a double bass player who’s attempting an exorcism through his instrument – plus, with Sonic Youth attempting the record for most spontaneous festival collabs, Thurston Moore on stage with them late in the set – it’s literally something else.

Pete Doherty’s in London, apparently due to a strike at the airport, though we hear later that’s a pretty transparent excuse. After waiting around for him to show, we join almost 10000 hot and sweaty Norwegians trying to squash in around the smallest stage, people are up to their knees in the water as Rick Froberg jackhammers us with uncompromising hardcore vocals over the band’s beautifully nuanced guitar melodies. It’s a powerful straight-ahead rock gig, but I find the brute force of his voice tiring.

The antidote arrives quickly. Sure, the Magic Numbers can be a little adult-oriented, but the songs are gorgeous and filled with warm melancholy rather than self-obsessed pathos. They’ve been described as a modern Mamas and the Papas and it holds true live when they hit feelgood singalongs like ‘Mornings Eleven’. Plus they are the first band that’s bothered to learn any Norwegian, singer Romeo Stodart beams his way through a set bursting with beautiful harmonies, country twangs and gorgeous melodies. They are my new favourite band.

A haze of smoke hangs around the stage – is there anything Norwegians love more than an enthusiastic smoke machine? – local pop starlet Annie bounds on and, like Kings of Convenience, there is a huge equally blonde and attractive crowd waiting for her. Having done Ibiza this year, she prowls the stage with the conviction of an Idol contestant. Her sugary St Etienne via Madonna works best on singles ‘Greatest Hit’ and ‘Chewing Gum’, but when the hooks aren’t so strong, lyrics like “If we all come together / Life is going to be much better” sound a little trite.

Saul Williams is like a bomb exploding on stage, a man possessed. Out of Rick Rubin’s shadow, Williams is awesome and his MCing is far closer to hip hop than the spoken word he’s usually associated with. MPC-manipulator Adlib (aka Thavius Beck) tears out Brooklyn/Wordsound-style junglist breakbeats and broken beats, it’s a fiery concoction that prods Williams into one of the best hip hop performances I’ve seen this year. It’s threatening, empowering music, with subject matter ranging from black power and Sierra Leone to diamond mining.

Watching the Sonic Youth kids dancing backstage attempting to get their parents’ attention is cute, but musically the set is similar to last year’s shows. Across the festival, Babyshambles finally climb into a postponed rescheduled timeslot and somehow make it through 30 minutes worth of songs before Doherty vomits over the stage.

I haven’t heard the man’s new record – he should definitely stop using vocalists or at least think long and hard before just lumping any old vocal into the mix – but I loved and love his Enter the Umod album for Sonarkollektiv.

Anyway, he’s touring Australia at the moment, so if you’re there you should definitely go. But before you do, check my interview from last year in Cyclic Defrost and being a lovely guy and DJ, he often uploads the solid broken goodness to his website:

Domu’s August mixup
Domu going through his old Reinforced crates

Two new albums out this week and both from acts involved in the new dub scene, for want of a better word. South African township born and raised and long-since London-based Alan Abrahams has dropped a killer LP as Portable for the mostly great ~scape. It’s retro-futuristic in much the same way as a lot of the great early releases on Warp were – bleepy electro and techno – but filled out with the warm production that ~scape have locked down, I guess thanks to the studio skills of Stephan Betke (aka Pole). Having previously released records on Sutekh’s label Context and minimal home Background, he seems to have really gelled on this one. I think I’ll do a proper write-up on this one for Stylus on the weekend, there’s plenty to latch on to, middle-eastern melodies, slow breakbeats a little reminiscent of Stereotyp and a pretty, warm take on Warp’s take on techno.

The other one is the new record from Andrew Pekler. He’s left ~scape for this record for much more indie Staubgold – that’s the European home of Australian bands like Sun and Rand & Holland, plus shelves full of enticing indie/electronics, I spent quite a few hours listening to records at the linked Dense record shop (Danziger Str. 16) when I was last in Berlin. And the record is appropriately different. I supported Pekler at the annual Skylounge party in Canberra a couple of years ago, around the time of his Station to Station release, the sound was awful, but he still managed to craft stark, beautiful dubscapes in the National Museum of Australia’s angular space. I haven’t quite settled my thoughts on the new album, it’s definitely an even more stripped back sound, very synth-based somewhere between sound art and indie electronics. Pretty and the kinda thing I want to explore further.

Stylus has a blow by blow breakdown of the nominees for this year’s Mercury. I wrote the bits about the Magic Numbers and the Go! Team, both are great, but after seeing the Numbers in Oslo a few weeks ago I’m in love and hoping they win.

“There is no award as pilloried and maligned as the Mercury Music Prize. Check the UK Singles Jukebox: nary a week goes by without one of our panel castings mocking aspersions on a record by suggesting that it seems to be aiming for the Mercury judges. Check the lyrics to “Paintball’s Coming Home,” Half Man Half Biscuit’s “j’accuse” of the British middle classes, containing a whole verse noting how they “treat the Mercury Music Prize with awe.” And remember that 11 years ago, M People won it. The Brits, the Mobos, the Kerrang and NME awards… these all have brickbats thrown at them. But the Mercury? The critical establishment lobs half of the building site at it.”

BBC has it locked down, as does Technorati.

The Australian-based file-sharing hub, Kazaa, has been ordered to pay 90 percent of record companies costs and make sure future versions of their software include filters to prevent the trading of copyrighted music. The record companies are celebrating a victory and Kazaa may well be too. As with the Grokster case, the courts have mostly penalised Kazaa for promoting the illegal file-sharing component of their business, dismissing the more serious allegations of copyright infringement. And as with Grokster it’s virtually a blueprint for future filesharing co’s wanting to keep out of trouble.

It was cool to see a lot of bloggers and online writers invited to Oya Festival – including old hands like Nick Sylvester from Pitchfork/Village Voice, the charming Chris Porter from Jazz Times and the Suburbs are Killing Us, and the lovely Luke Turner from Playlouder.

There were loads of others. Zan Rowe from Triple J was there doing interviews and taking great pics, the Fader have a cool rundown of the festival at their blog and Norwegian music head Chris Monsen, gives the local’s rundown at his Perfect Sounds blog.

Stay tuned for my interview with Beijing punk band Subs, in the meantime check out their site.

Oslo-based Sondre Bjordal gives a more brutal regular’s assessment of the festival at Objects & Ceremonies.

It’s not exactly live blogging, I know, but I’d given up on my old blogspot-housed journal when I was in Oslo. So here it is, straight from my notebook, the real carry around and write in variety.

The festival grounds feel like a Viking encampment, complete with marquees, roasting food, wild music and drunken (but polite) Norwegians everywhere. Local shoegazers Serena Maneesh are the first surprise. Fronted by a Nico lookalike, they not only play music that actually moves the shoegazer template forward, they rock out too. I’m hanging out for their debut, recently recorded in Steve Albini’s studio.

I’ve been looking forward to Cloroform’s set, they play a stripped down, entirely deconstructed metal that references jazz, cabaret and even ‘80s pop. Mike Patton was so impressed by earlier shows he collaborated on an album with frontman John Erik Kaada last year. Live I can see why. Kaada is a ball of energy; I can imagine him doing the same ADD moves for his schoolmates 20 years ago.

After reading Rolling Stone’s feature on the Children of God cult last night, I find Polyphonic Spree’s cult, half musical show a little eerie. They tempt critics of their cult-like affectations by bringing their kids up on stage (a small boy on drums and two girls in the choir), blathering on about the sun coming through (it keeps raining) and walking on water. It’s unsettling, but spectacular. Fischerspooner aspire to the same level of theatrics, but Spooner’s voice isn’t up to the festival space, it’s weak and their Human League action would have suited a club space much better. “Hello Oslo, this is our first time in Oslo,” he says, but the crowd is bored and many drift away. The band looks good in matching baseball outfits and Spooner’s Ned Flanders-esque devil outfit, and ‘Emerge’ and new song ‘Just Let Go’ hit a better note. But pissed off at the bored crowd, Spooner whines “Hello Oslo, this is our first time in Oslo,” four more times, before finally giving in and leaving the stage.

It’s only the first day and Dinosaur Jr is already, unquestionably, the festival highlight. Although I’ve seen both J. Mascis and Lou Barlow on their own, it is incredible to see them together on stage, even sharing the odd grin. They were always masters of contrast, pitching perfect pop melodies against seering noise long before My Bloody Valentine and co, but seeing them on stage it’s so easy to understand why they couldn’t stay together as a band. Barlow looks like a middle-aged computer programmer, but he is a seething presence on stage, constantly moving, screaming into the microphone or twisting about to blow out his bass sound with distortion. Mascis could be Barlow’s father, he sports a tie-dyed dolphin t-shirt, long grey locks and is appropriately restrained on stage, but musically he’s anything but. He’s the kind of guitar god that I have never been into, but he does it, sparkling, screeching, soaring lines that run counter to his flat vocals. Amazing.

At least half the festival crowds in to see the Kings of Convenience play. It shouldn’t come as a surprise – they are local heroes – still it is bizarre struggling to hear their intimate, quiet pop because there are thousands of people between you and them. A smaller crowd is gathered in front of the small stage for Wolf Parade. There should be more, the Canadians tear through a set of post-punk pop that’s musically interesting, lyrically incisive and bloody great to hear. With a new record on Sub Pop, they are set for great things, no doubt.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we wind up at the afterparty. Smalltown Supersound’s Lasse Marhaug is raising a noise storm, but Maximo Park is playing upstairs. I’ve never been into their records, but I love so many of the bands they are influenced by that I need to see if I’m missing something. Turns out I’m not. The songs are taut, they have hooks and Paul Smith can do a mean rock’n’roll kick, but the room’s half full and the music is boring. Everyone is downstairs, where Lee Ranaldo is channelling a storm into a teacup on stage; bringing a series of Sonic Youth produced Super 8 film to life with cold fronts of distortion.

Wandering around Oslo we get lost, but stop after noticing the singer from Norwegian band Madrugada passed out in a gutter, it’s the P3 Radio afterparty. The singer’s girlfriend and all round champ, Kristin from P3, plies us with drink cards and plays a killer set of indie and hip hop beats. How the hell can we follow this up tomorrow?

I first came across Dave in late 2003 at the This Is Not Art festival, Australia. He was playing an early set at the weekend’s finale, filling the large Newcastle Panthers ballroom with heavy dub soundscapes, syncopated minimal house rhythms and layers and layers of glitch.

Jump forward almost two years and Dave has finally released a debut album, Mitchell’s Racolta. Its feel is set from the first track. And even though it moves around dramatically, it is extremely cohesive. It’s been more than two years since his first EPs, but he’s back on the musical wagon. He’s finished albums with fellow West Australian Fiam (to be released on UK label Expanding), another with Laurence Pike (Triosk/Pivot) and Phil Slater (Band of Five Names); and he’s moved to London for a while – so if you’re interested in catching him in Europe, do. Here’s Dave answering a few bounced email questions.

What are you up to in London now?

Just making a penny, and making some music as well. Enjoying the wealth of live music here, and the four weeks of summer before the 11 months of winter kicks in, hah. I just needed a change of scenery for a while, I don’t know how long it will last, we’ll see. It’s also handy in regards to live shows – if people want to book me for a show in Europe now they can anytime they want, rather than me having to organize a tour around certain dates.

What sort of music inspires you to make music?

Music that inspires my music? Er, well I guess most things I buy have some sort of influence. You can’t deny that – even if it’s on a subconscious level, it still does to some degree. I listen to a reasonably broad range of music – ambient, hip-hop, house, dub, folk-esque things, electronica, instrumental rock stuff, jazz, noise, dancehall, pop, and all the sub-genres that meld that stuff.

As far as the most inspiring things goes, I think that can be split into two for me – live shows and records. At the moment the live shows that I have dug the most have been those that are dynamic that you can see and hear flow throughout the set/song. Acts that I have seen over the past year like The Necks, Battles, Radian, Jamie Lidell and Greg Davis have all done this really well. Inspiring albums for me I think are harder to pin down, I guess I would say they are the ones that I feel are the most innovative and emotive – that is the combination that always makes me go ‘wow’.

You’re not musically trained, are you? How do you navigate your way through the kind of sounds you record?

No, not musically trained at all. It’s all sample-based music, so it’s just a matter of relying on your ear. I make a bunch of sounds that a feel work together, and work on them for a while. Sometimes it happens, sometimes they get trashed…

How do you find working with people like Laurence Pike?

You mean working with people who play acoustic instruments really well? It’s great. It makes sense to me as most of my source sounds through some way or another came from acoustic instruments. Whenever I have worked with instrumentalists it’s been in an improvised manner, so we kind of just feed off each other in a musical sense to try to create something fresh and cohesive. I also tend to include as much live sampling of their instruments as I can as well – I find that really exciting to digitally mess with live acoustics.

Your press release bills Mitchell’s Racolta as ‘minimal broken beat’. Is that how you see the album?

For some tracks, yeh, I think it uses similar rhythms that broken-beat music is known for. And the fact that it is essentially minimal music people can put the terms together, it makes sense. And yes, I did create it with that aim – I was really getting tired of the minimal house-tempo four-to-the-floor stuff, so I wanted to challenge myself into creating different rhythm structures. I think it worked reasonably well – I got a few drummers tell me they dug it, so that’s a compliment. There was also a number of ‘I only listen to minimal dance music’ people who were so used to hearing just straight-ahead-beats that found it difficult to understand.

Do you feel that the minimal thing has lost steam?

In some ways, yes. The number of house-tempo minimal dancefloor records has dropped significantly, so I guess that’s a pretty good sign that things have ‘lost steam’. That said, the faster, more techno-orientated records seem to have had a resurgence. For me, I am digging a lot of minimal beatless records that have come out over the past year more than anything.

How important has the broken beat scene been to you musically, do you listen to much of the West London stuff (Domu, Bugz, IG, etc)? There’s not much of a scene for broken beat in Australia, as far as I know, how did you come across it?

In Perth, broken beat stuff doesn’t get played out much by DJs – they are too scared people will stop dancing. People buy it, they might play it on radio or in bars, but never to a dancefloor. I don’t really buy much of the stuff – even though I dig the beats, I have found that so many these days have vocals/lyrics that I don’t feel, hence wrecking the track for me.

I was mainly introduced to the sound by friends and radio. At the time, Perth was getting all of that stuff into the import record store there so you could hear/buy pretty fresh stuff which was cool – we may have at the other side of the world from the scene that was developing, but at least we could hear/buy the output.

What’s it like making music like you do in Australia, especially in the most isolated city there (and anywhere)?

It has its pros and cons. It good in that you don’t get influenced by the new hype genre that comes and goes from big cities in a matter of months. The fact that we don’t get a great deal of good live music there also means that you spend more time making your own beats as opposed to listening to others. This has a bit of a downside as well because you don’t get to see a broad range of acts perform, which of course is a bummer.

Is that why you ended up with an overseas label?

There really weren’t any labels that were into the music that I was making at the time, so I was forced to go overseas. Not a great deal of Australian labels have very good European distribution, so it would have been silly of me to put it on a label that doesn’t reach the audience that seems to appreciate it the most.

That said, I am releasing a EP later in 2005 on a very promising label out of Perth – Meupe. It features 4 remixes by Perth producers of tracks from Mitchells Raccolta. I am very happy with the way the artists have freaked with the sounds. It’s a limited edition thing, so it’s a bit of a collectable.

Have you found a receptive audience in Australia?

A small, but receptive audience, yes.

Track down new releases, streams and downloads from Meupe, Expanding and Background. For more information, check out Dave’s site the Bodyraft for streams, gig details and so on. Read my review of Mitchell’s Racolta at Stylusmagazine.com.

Dave Miller – Live at Dachkantine in Zurich, May 2005 (Streamed by Anti-Matter Plant).