Wayne Marshall gives Aussie hip hop and the elefants a going over at wayneandwax. He uses lots of big words and I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with the meaning of all of them, but I’ll have to give it at least one more read before I’m sure.

Sample quote:

“when i think of australian hip-hop in the abstract i think of a certain playfulness that comes with the distance of being on the other side of the world. for instance, one hears a generally ecumenical approach to sample sources (as exemplified by the avalanches), though one could see such an openness as simply consistent with an underground or “true school” ethos. at the same time, though, austalian hip-hop also seems to be saddled by a degree of mimesis that suggests a struggle to find its own voice. this especially emerges in the rapping, where, perhaps in attempts to sound absolutely nothing at all like some crocodile dundees, too many MCs still resemble aussie stand-ins for stateside favorites. (if you like aesop rock, you’ll love aussop rock!)”

It’s good to see he rates Pasobionic and Unkle Ho, I love both too.

The Popfrenzy & Frigid NYE at @Newtown on the weekend is almost sold out. Get tickets from Moshtix or Gifted now.

LEVEL ONE POPFRENZY ROOM

800-910 Fflloyd Quinlan
910-1010 Calico
1010-1110 Bazooka DJs
1110-1145 The Brunettes (live)
1145-12.50 Red Peugeot
1250-150 Enari
150-250 Sleater Brockman
250-350 Hello Sailor!
350-445 Popfrenzy Sound Unit

LEVEL TWO FRIGID ROOM

930-1100 Ollo
1100-1230 Gemma & Seymour Butz
1230-100 Pivot (live)
100-215 Sub Bass Snarl
215-315 Bec Paton
315-430 Sir Robbo

LEVEL TWO CHILL ROOM

800-1000 Sinclair
1000-1130 Von Boyage
1130-1230 Clark Nova
1230-130 Australian Rozie
130-230 Eli
230-330 Lyndon
330-430 Some Freak

After getting dissed by Annie far too many times to mention – she blew off our first interview in Norway when I was there in August, cancelled a phoner back in Sydney, twice – the editor at 3D World gave me a stapled wad of A4 dodgy Q&A action with the pop star.

It’s in 3D this week. She even got a pull-out poster. Annie’s touring mid-Jan to Australia, doing a DJ set on Saturday January 14 at the Basement.

For more Annie reading try Chris Porter’s short piece for Harp or Nick Sylvester’s great interview for Pitchfork, they actually got to meet her.

John Peel’s dead, long live, etc.

Sydney duo Ollo cracked the John Peel festive 50 list for BBC’s Radio One in the UK. At number eight. Alongside Camera Obscura, DJ Riko, Antony, The Fall and Architecture in Helsinki. It’s great to see the guys responsible for one of my favourite covers getting credit for their remixes, with a new album due any month now, the next level approaches. I’m sure. More info here.

The inspiration for intelligent designers everywhere was supposedly born in a couple of days time a coupla 1000 years ago and to celebrate the ingenious Wayne Marshall, no not that one, the one over at Wayne and Wax and Riddim Method put his talents to work on some carolling ditties.

Wayne and Wax vs Chipmunks – Christmas Don’t Be Slow

Wayne and Wax – Remix-mas

Meanwhile a bunch of Detroit characters worked their yuletide magic at Suburban Sprawl, thanks to Nick Catchdubs for the link (he’s got a bunch of christmassy missives aboard too).

Have a great xmas/ny everyone.

Pivot – Make Me Love You (Sensory Projects)
Breathtaking, lush, tricky, melancholy. In short everything you could want from their long awaited debut. I was immediately hit by Incidental Backcloth, which I first heard on the Cyclic Defrost sampler and still love. But tracks like Kirsten Dunst and Montecore drill into your brain very quickly. Live they’re better. I hope the second album doesn’t take as long – apparently they’re going into the studio with Dave Miller early 2006, so maybe not. Check the Fortune Grey interview.

Remote Viewer – Let Your Heart Draw a Line (City Centre Offices)
Two of Hood get small and achingly melancholy with their indie electronics. Just one of a half dozen great releases on City Centre Offices this year – I loved Cyne, Marsen Jules, Boy Robot and Studio Pankow too.

Francis Plagne – Idle Bones (Synaesthesia)
I love records falling about themselves with ideas. And this is one. Shamelessly inspired by the ’60s, it’s nonetheless totally individual, fun and cerebral. Plenty of people complained that the album is sequenced wrong, bizarre noise and dark musique concrete ambience smooshed alongside dallying pop melodies. But it seems completely right to me.

The Herd – The Sun Never Sets (Elefant Traks)
Like every record from The Herd this is a huge step from the previous one. Everything’s tighter – it’s the first one that feels like a band rather than a loose collective – and they’re confident enough to face their own spotlight without sacrificing the party tracks. Plus it’s my brother’s band.

Omar S – Just Ask The Lonely (FXHE)
When I bought this at Hardwax in Berlin I was desperate to hear something new; for such a fantastic record shop it really is a museum. Fortunately I found this. Brilliantly DIY, house, techno and broken beat deep repetitive underground soul music.

Five Dollar Day – Black Bears (Ill & Alice)
Favourite albums aren’t always the ‘best’ ones. It’s tempting to choose top 10s on originality, innovation, success, influence and so on. But when it comes down to it, music should be about what it does to you, how much it affects you, all that kind of thing. And on the latter judgement, this one’s been a favourite of mine. I love listening to this. And the previous 2 CDs are great too – Shine Like Justice and Damaged Goods. Go on, check out his myspace thing and the Fortune Grey interview.

Khonnor – Handwriting (Type)
So many shoegazer electronic bands are perfectly hazy and reference all the right acts, but make polite forgettable music. Like that other teen indie kid, Francis Plagne from Melbourne, Khonnor’s made a truly affecting album.

Pasobionic – Empty Beats for Lonely Rappers (Elefant Traks)
Curse Ov Dialect and Tzu’s studio operator released this early in the year, but it took a while to hit me. Now it’s a firm favourite. The sparse beat programming may be too niche for Australia, please international beat diggers, find this.

Roll Deep – In At The Deep End (Radioclit’s chopped and screwed version) (Radioclit.com)
I can’t believe I still haven’t heard the proper record yet, DJ/Rupture put me onto this remix through his blog, I downloaded it and all I can remember listening to it now is the first time walking, jumping singing around Ebisu listening to this on my headphones and even the shoutouts “w w w w w w dot radioclit dot com” don’t dull the vitality of this narcoleptic flip to Roll Deep’s first record.

The Chap – Ham (Lo Recordings)
Clever, fantastically catchy pop. Art funk? Who knows, all I know is these songs get stuck in my head and I actually like it. Maybe it’ll actually get a release in Australia one of these days, Popfrenzy?

Tunng – Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs (Static Caravan)
Another album that could easily be thrown into folktronica or whatever silly bracket is being used nowadays. I love those names as much as the next music geek, but really for something as delicious as this it’s just irrelevant. Beautiful warm folky and cut up disjointed rhythms make for an album that’s just really well developed, musically advanced and lovely to listen to.

favourite records, more than 10
Dave Miller – Mitchell’s Racolta (Background)
Isolee – We Are Monster (Playhouse)
Sam Prekop – Who’s Your New Professor (Thrill Jockey)
The Zillions – Play Zig Zag Millionaire (679)
Architecture In Helsinki – In Case We Die (Bar None)
Broken Social Scene – Broken Social Scene (Arts & Crafts)
Roots Manuva – Awfully Deep (Ninja Tune)
Mu – Out of Breach (Output)
Serena Maneesh – Serena Maneesh (Honeymilk)
Various – Tea For Two (Meupe)
Various – Symbiotic Sound System II: Everything Takes Forever (Sensory)
Masha Qrella – Unsolved Remained (Morr Music)

These are not brand new, great though:
Essendon Airport – Sonic Investigations of the Trivial (Chapter)
Durutti Column – Domo Arigato (live in Tokyo, 1985) (Factory)
Masha Qrella – Luck (Monika)

It hasn’t been a singles year for me, but these ones were good:
!!! – Get Up – (Touch & Go)
Six Vicious – Krunk’s Not Dead (Sixtoo)
Vex’d – Gunman/Smart Bomb (Planet Mu)
Shed – everything on his label Solo Action
Lindstrom – I Feel Space (Playhouse)
Damien Marley – Welcome to Jamrock (Universal)

These gigs shook the foundations of greatness:
Autechre & LFO at Cinecitta, Tokyo
Sam Prekop, Chicago Underground Duo, Archer Prewitt & The Cocktails at O-Est, Tokyo
The Herd album launch at The Metro, Sydney
Oya Festival in Oslo, Norway
Pivot at the Abercrombie Hotel, Broadway
Jens Lekman at Mudd Club, Berlin
Closing night at Tresor, Berlin
Sodastream at Toast, Canberra
Came So Far For Beauty, the Leonard Cohen tribute at the Opera House featuring Nick Cave, Antony, Jarvis Cocker, the Wainwrights, Beth Orton, etc.
Lali Puna, Mouse on Mars, Pole, Atom Heart, etc at O-Est, Tokyo

“The ‘ethnic’ group of indigenous Australians is just completely invisible. When the election campaigns are running now, we just don’t rate a mention,” says Hetti Perkins.

Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of NSW, Perkins is also daughter of Charlie Perkins, who started the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra and led Australia’s freedom rides in the ’60s.

I interviewed her for a story on the way the city affects Koori identity in the arts, and as an aside asked her thoughts on the racist riots and tensions in Sydney.

A friendly woman, her whole demeanour changed within seconds at the mention of the Cronulla race riots. Her blood seemed to boil and a quaver appeared in her otherwise confident voice. Listening back to my tape of the interview it was hard not to be affected by her obvious emotion.

“Well it’s kind of ironic, because these sort of territorial wars, if you want to call them such – territorial as opposed to terrorist,” she laughs. “Apart from absolutely abhorring it and seeing it as a direct result of our government’s aggressive pro-American, bloody, sycophantic, bullshit is….” she growls her way through the word ‘sycophantic’. “The thing is you find Aboriginal people now or Aboriginal issues are just not even on the political agenda. It doesn’t even occur to anyone that Aboriginal people may have a greater claim on all of this country than Middle Eastern or the surfies or whoever these different gangs are. The ‘ethnic’ group of indigenous Australians is just completely invisible. When the election campaigns are running now, we just don’t rate a mention.”

“I think our Prime Minister saying he doesn’t accept that there’s underlying racism in Australia is just an absolute nonsense and these conflicts well demonstrate that. In a very insidious way, they’re covertly endorsed by the current government, that it’s okay to be kind of vigilante-like and attack people of other cultural traditions.”

“It’s ironic, because when you go around Australia, when you go into sort of remote areas or traditional communities and you talk to aboriginal artists and their families about the things that have happened to them personally and their lands, they’re very generous. We want to share our culture, we’re all living here now we’ve all got to get along. It’s not about wanting to kick everyone out and have Australia back to themselves, people are not like that, they say there’s good and bad in everyone.”

“Rusty Peters, who’s a fantastic artist, just said ‘You know, there’s good black fellas, there’s good white fellas, there’s bad black fellas, there’s bad white fellas’. If we could see that sort of spirit generate throughout Australia, I think that’d be a wonderful thing and I don’t think we’d see these sorts of terrible conflicts and so on.”

Mega-hyped, but does he live up to it? Yeah no in the Aussie colloquial. I interviewed Jackson a month or so ago and the resulting Q&A discourse on subverting the dominant paradigm through a rigourous program of prickly beats is up now at the wonderful Speakers Push The Air.

In my review of Norway’s Oya Festival I said: “A whole other crowd of Norwegian bands – Shining, the Thing, Cloroform – trained in jazz, but grew up with metal and electronic music. On stage, at various points over the weekend, they flip jazz on its head, tearing through sets that have as much to do with the Sonics, Pantera, and Squarepusher as Ornette Coleman. The ex-Jaga Jazzist members of Shining play something that’s equally jazz and metal, with a bit of electronics, but if I’m to be honest, it’s really progressive rock. There I’ve said it, they play the much maligned sound, but it doesn’t sound fatty or over the top, when it connects, it is hot. Frontman Jorgen Munkeby says to the crowd: ‘This is our last show in Norway for a while, we’ll be touring Europe. And looking out at all you pretty girls, we’re sad, because it’ll just be nerdy guys in Europe.’”

Read my (very long) interview with the Norwegian band at Cyclic Defrost. Like their music, it jumps around from idea to idea, and goes on for a hell of a lot of words, but that’s part of the beauty of a Q&A and the band had a lot to say. If you’re not down for that however, I’ll be writing it up as a shorter feature interview for the next Cyclic Defrost print magazine.

If you have no idea what/who they are, go to your local good record shop or download hub and have a listen, or go to Shining’s website and have a listen.

…That aren’t related to racism and the clampdown on civil liberties in Sydney.

Triosk were fantastic on Friday night at the Mandarin Club in the city. Disappointing turnout – hard to believe a band like Triosk, that so many people say they’re into, could have such a lacklustre crowd, but it happens to the best I guess. Triosk were incredible nonetheless. It was interesting to sit there, soak up the music and see the role that they play in the band. Laurence was amazing as always, but it was cool to see how much Adrian Klumpe’s phrasing on the piano contributed to the sound. Tony Buck from the Necks played before – my friend came in as Buck started and thought he was doing a soundcheck! It was heavy on the distortion/noise factor, with the odd vocal and a bunch of crazed drumming at the end.

Levins’s mind works in evil ways. The crowd cleared out after Triosk and Levins took to the decks, or should I say the laptop sitting on the decks, and proceeded to program a set so dark and viciously lacking in redeeming qualities it began to mess with our minds. People were screaming, falling over chairs in order to escape. Some (me) even resorted to violence, throwing the vile creature onto his back. Unfortunately, nothing stopped him.

Suffice to say it was one of the best nights out in ages.

Watch viking rockers battling to Jason Forrest’s War Photographer

The Herd – We Can’t Hear You

The Herd – Under Pressure