I rocked, or at least sedately soundtracked Valentine’s Day with a selection of fine songs last Tuesday on FBI FM – sorry, I forgot to load up the tracklist. So here it is. I’ve got a new job and therefore not doing the lunchtime attack on Tuesdays henceforth. I may be back on the waves before you can say Join The Dots though.

Lylas – Sprinkle
Robert Pollard – Dancing Girls & Dancing Men
Koolism – All of the Above
Electric President – Insomnia
Youth Group – Forever Young
Karsh Kale – Beautiful
Winslow – Missy Beat Oven
Restream – Somepeopleownideas
Sodastream – West 45th
Bright Eyes – At The Bottom of Everything
Jens Lekman – Be Good
Department of Eagles – 40 Dollar Rug
The Ramelzee – Cheesy Lipstick
Need New Body – South Street Rocks
Dappled Cities Fly – States (Wolfmother mix)
Holidays on Ice – Get Up and Fall Down
The Knife – From Off To On
Diplo – Diplo Rhythm
The Valentinos – Sell Yourself
Blue King Brown – Water
Lalotoa – Don’t Get It
Dirty Three – Great Waves feat Chan Marshall
Snog – Corporate Slave
Mahjongg – Vaxination
Stacs of Stamina – Stay Beautiful

I’m not usually one for multiple reviews, but I’d written one and then got asked to do another one, so there it is.

One of my favourites from last year, and lots of other people’s too, now-18-year-old Plagne’s debut album Idle Bones is a whimsical bit of post-musique concrete ’60s pop. In a good way. Concise review at Cyclic Defrost, longer one at Stylus.

Listen up!
Francis Plagne – Clouds Collect
Francis Plagne – The Subsequent Fire
Francis Plagne – One Day I Woke Up Quay

In its 14 or so years the Big Day Out in Sydney has become an Australia Day institution. And from interviewing loads of bands, it’s turned into a high point on the international touring band schedule too. Seeing the Teenage Fanclub, Violent Femmes, Tricky, Elastica, Ministry, Primal Scream, Aphex Twin and so many others was a highlight of my end of high school/early uni days.

It’s been a while since I last went to a BDO, the last one was at the showgrounds in the city. Since then it’s moved out to Homebush and mirroring that move out to the suburbs, it’s moved a long way in ethos too. Courting a mainstream audience that while inevitable with so many festivals falling by the wayside makes the festival less interesting to me. That move to the metaphorical and literal ‘burbs is also probably behind the issue that’s been bothering me since the last BDO in January this year.

(picture from the Sydney Morning Herald)

In his BDO review, Nick Gunn at Pop Matters said there was an “An issue that had troubled me throughout the day. A considerable portion of the attendees had worn the Australian flag draped on them like a cape. Since the event is traditionally held in Sydney on Australia Day, this might not have been such an issue, but in the wake of the xenophobic Cronulla riots, where many participants were similarly attired, the gesture raises some questions.”

My brother, who played the festival with his band, said a lot of punters went dressed in Aussie flag clothing and even draped in entire flags. That sounds awful – last refuge of the scoundrel and all that, especially in light of the Cronulla race riot last year – but even worse, meatheads wandered around asking people to kiss the sweaty flag they were wrapped in, and beat up those who refused.

I caught last night’s recording of the new Chaser show War Against Everything (it screens tonight) and it makes an explicit link between 20-somethings getting dolled up in the Aussie flag and Pauline Hanson doing the same many years ago.

I think it’s amazing that there wasn’t more of an outcry or even write-ups in music media, is everyone so worried about offending these whitebread ‘alternative music’ fans?

Sanity is bringing in digital music kiosks, reports Bernard Zuel in the SMH.

I posted about it at Morph. It seems like a stop-gap, targeted at late-adopters. But companies such as Starbucks have been experimenting with them for the past couple of years, it’s a huge market, and a big portion of that is in the extremely late adopter section.

The first beat maker of Detroit hip hop, James Yancey, aka Jay Dee, aka J Dilla, died of kidney failure yesterday. At 32, the founding member of Slum Village, producer for Stones Throw, A Tribe Called Quest, Common, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo and even Janet Jackson, had crafted an impressive musical legacy for someone so young.

The Detroit Free Press‘s tribute to the man, who’d only just released his second solo record Donuts, said his kidney problems were first reported in an interview with XXL magazine last year. That’s been joined by tributes from Stones Throw and Stylusmagazine.com.

The new Koolism album is out, well not exactly, but review copies are out and about. At 15 tracks, it could have done with about a two-thirds chop, but the rest is typically hot. Check my review at Cyclic Defrost.

Datarock’s Ketil Mosnes is on his hands and knees grasping at a pair of indigo jeans. Their owner, and the Norwegian duo’s other half, Fredrik Saroea is crawling under a backstage trailer at Norway’s Øya Festival. Watching the sun set on Oslo, it’s turning into that kind of night.

(Datarock at Oya Festival, Norway, 2005)

Earlier they played to 5,000 Norwegian music fans – their biggest audience ever – a crowd who arrived early to hear Datarock’s crayon-scrawled funky grooves. They didn’t disappoint. Along with eight musicians from Oslo hardcore and punk bands, apparently a few on stage just to get free tickets to the festival, as well as their own choir the New Traditionalists, Datarock prowled the stage.

“I have problems expressing myself because I’m drunk and I’m not that good in English, but this festival is quite special,” says Mosnes. Shy and self-effacing, he is the antithesis of hipster party boy Saroea. “You know it’s a festival for people who are into underground stuff, but I was shocked that so many people turned up to see us play.”

Saroea is back on his feet and racing across the road to a grassy embankment. Kristin Winsents, a DJ from P3 (Norway’s equivalent to Triple J), is urging the twosome to dive head first, like a human ten pin bowling ball, into a beer bottle-laden table. It’s not a new stunt either; Mosnes broke bones doing it at last year’s festival.

It’s been a great year for Datarock, whose debut album was memorably described by Nick Sylvester at Pitchforkmedia.com as a shot for instant pleasure that accidentally ended up being much more than that, ‘sorta how mom and dad ended up with five kids’. Norwegian pop princess Annie included them on her new DJ Kicks CD describing them as her favourite band from hometown Bergen.

Dressed in red and white striped tracksuits, their smart casual imagery brings to mind Manchester’s Happy Mondays, a band regularly invoked in Datarock reviews. The comparison had seemed generous for the record, which is closer in spirit to contemporaries LCD Soundsystem or !!!. But live it makes perfect, gloriously messy sense.

“I played in some really stupid punk rock bands here and Fredrik played in this trash metal band,” says Mosnes, who grew up on a soundtrack of Dinosaur Jr, Built to Spill and Pavement. He says it was a natural reaction to the jazz his music journalist father played around the house, but his musical palette broadened on moving to west coast university town Bergen. “It’s a small city and you can’t choose between that many clubs when you go out, so sometimes we just ended up in disco clubs.”

The tension between punk and funk that fires the duo has sent a factory load of other groups up the indie charts. But instead of reducing that potential to a pop formula, Datarock embrace the messy fun of disco punk. It’s philandery that winks at indie kids, electronic geeks and the Bee Gees. Wedged into a patch behind the public toilets, Mosnes and I suddenly realise that Norwegian psych group Madrugada are about to finish and the bustling queue for the toilets has gone quiet. We both have another drink ticket to cash in. Racing for the bar seems like the right way to end the interview.

(originally published in Nylon magazine, Australia)

Datarock – The New Song

Datarock tour Australia this month, gig details at their site.

Just announced, Datarock play the Mandarin club this Sunday (Feb 19).

Here’s the deal, another day’s radio, another day’s list of songs. However, there should be more activity around here before too long as I picked my laptop up this morning. Thank god.

Skullsquadron – Again & Again
The Chap – I Am Oozing Emotion
The Cribs – Hey Scenesters
Daniel Wang – Rings of Saturn
Mia Doi Todd – The Way
Ava Gardner – Waiting Wonder
Gerling – Turning The Screws
VHS or Beta – Night On Fire (Cut Copy mix)
Billie Space – Slow
Spoonbill – Sneaker
Gang of Four – Damaged Goods (Hot Hot Heat remx)
DJ Dolores – De Dar Do
Sounds Like Sunset – It’s My Star
Koolism – Something Special
Ellen Allien & Apparat – Way Out
Ninjas With Attitude – War on Mediocrity
Pink Mountaintops – New Drug Queens
Chicken Lips – Aim Fire
Rocky Votolato – Streetlights
Window – Your Wave
Bakelite – Allure
The Narcotics – Laughing Over Nothing
Electric President – Good Morning Hypocrate
Noze – Les Cour Des Miracles
Alien Digit – Latah
Restream – Somepeopleownideas
The Lemonheads – Outdoor Type
The Morning After Girls – Shadows Evolve
Velvet Underground – I’ll Be Your Mirror

The last sampler from the Cyclic Defrost crew was a fantastic introduction to the underground indie/electronic music scene in Australia (review at Stylus) and I hear they’ve just set about creating a new one, this time in collaboration with the crew at Noise and Tim Ritchie’s Radio National show Sound Quality.

Titled Emergent, the focus is still on the Aussie underground – the release says ‘Electronic, experimental, out-rock, noise and leftfield beats’ – but it’ll be a bigger pressing (4000 copies). Because it’s with Noise, the CD is only open to submissions from Australian residents up to 25 years of age.

Submissions close April 1, it’s not a joke, at least I don’t think it is – all details at Noise.