Having made it through the challenging first couple of years, the Australian publishers of Dazed & Confused magazine have apparently called it quits on the the UK title’s local version. The website seems to have disappeared, though the Paper Tiger home page still brandishes old Dazed covers.

I’m playing records at the Tilbury hotel in Wooloomooloo (Nicholson St) tomorrow night. It’s a Future Classic thing, Nathan McLay’s playing from three until six, then I’m playing ’til 9pm. Free entry, etc. You should come.

Thanks to everyone who’s rung up, emailed, sent records and listened to Join the Dots over the past couple of years.

Thanks to my occasionally regular guests: Emmy Hennings and Andrew P. Street.

Thanks to my other guests: Adrian Klumpes, Alex Jarvis, Alex Vivian, Andrew Mueller, the Beautiful Few, Ben Eltham, Camera Obscura, Cameron Macdonald, Chris Abrahams, Drop the Lime, Fujiya Miyagi, Gotye, Kharkov, Kid 606, King Curly, Mark Mordue, Matt Cousins, Milkrun, Oren Ambarchi, Plaid, Post, Richard MacFarlane, Scissor Lock, Simon Reynolds and Tooth.

It’s been great. Here’s my last Join the Dots playlist. Stay tuned for a reshuffle at FBI soon.

Grandpa Jones – Turn Your Radio On
Link Wray – 5-10-15-20
Link Wray and His Wray Men – Run Chicken Run
Carlos and The Bandidos – Fever
Der Tobende Luftkampf – Fieber
Mania D – Track Four
Barbara Morgenstern – Das Schone Einheitsbild
Masha Qrella – I Don’t Like Her
Pole – Maedchen (Gudrun Gut version)
Gudrun Gut – Pleasuretrain (with Manon P. Duursma)
Einstuerzende Neubauten – Fuer den Untergang
Ash Wednesday – Love By Numbers
Sacred Cowboys – Down to the Lord
JAB – Blonde and Bombed
The Brunettes – Small Town Crew
The Ruby Suns – Look Out SOS!
Animal Collective – Fireworks
Panda Bear – Comfy in Nautica (XXXChange Remix)
Panda Bear – Search for Delicious
Mike Devellis – Funkalicious (Onur Engin remix)
Onur Engin – Brisk (Quincy Jointz remix)
Colin Stetson – Quincy Had a Glandular Problem
Quincy Jones – Smackwater Jack (feat Bill Cosby)
Badfoot Brown and the Bunions Bradford Funeral and Marching Band – Martin’s Funeral

I’ve been doing Join The Dots since March 2006, which makes it just over two years, but I’m finishing this week to make room for program reshuffle at the station. Listen for a Berliner smorgasbord from Gudrun Gut’s various projects, new tracks from Melbourne label Straight Up, Bill Cosby and a bit of rockabilly. 94.5 in Sydney, 9-11pm.

This hot and heavy EP has the manic air of a tropical city; it just about throbs with the heat, humidity and isolation of Brisbane’s cabin fever local scene. A lunatic roller coaster ride, it’s quite unlike the usually purist sounds from this country (capital-d dubstep, etc). Tracking its way through pressure-loaded dubstep and rap, the clattering roller coaster seat tops the curve and explodes through a gate of staccato grime, accompanied by flashes of Bhangra, rave and Afro-beat.

Jesse Sullivan’s a video and sound artist who was on the board of Brisbane art-space White House. You get the sense he has bigger ambitions than just making a track that gets picked up by scene DJs.

In just under half an hour – what a relief, a debut record not padded out to album length – Sullivan delivers a mix of vocal and instrumental tracks, with the balance tipped to the former.

Once upon a time Australian rappers worked to a North American template, which inevitably left their art school or suburban rhymes sounding comparatively weak, but the resurgence of dancehall, the appearance of local scenes in places like Paris and Baltimore, and the rise of British grime has given local MCs a few alternative reference points.

Sullivan’s rapping gets close to novelty kitsch – he admits as much in ‘Cold Sweat’ (“Not a lyricist or a real MC / You’ll never see me rapping live on MTV”) – but his manic lyrics and delivery keep it focussed. It’s the high pitch delivery of grime, with a hint of Eminem. The effect’s underpinned by a tough production aesthetic that’s most audible on the instrumentals: ‘Sludge Factory Riddim’ takes Geeneus and Dump Valve style grime as its base, all ravey synths, sirens, time stretched vocal samples and perpetual forward motion; ‘Straight Outta the Garage’ on the other hand is closer to dubstep, its ravey bleepery adorned by references to the mid-90s fave, Itch-E and Scratch-E’s ‘Sweetness and Light’.

Mr Cloak and Dagger is a hilarious, at times irritating, rushing, and hysterical listen. It’s far from timeless. But chances are you’ll be getting up for another ride before long.

Mad Dr X – Show Me (2 Dogs remix)
Resin Dogs – Coming With the Sound (feat Haiku D’Etat)
Aceyalone and RJD2 – Mooore
Kenny Segal – Last Words (feat Abstract Rude and Hermitude)
Hermitude – Imaginary Friends
The Tongue – Animal Crackers (feat Dudley Perkins and Georgia Anne Muldrow)
Georgia Anne Muldrow – Lo Mein
Jay Dee – Reckless Driving
Slum Village – Can I Be Me?
Lootpack – Attack of the Tupperware Puppets (feat Oh No, Declaime and God’s Gift)
Connie Price and the Keystones – Tell Me (feat Aloe Blacc)
Ohmega Watts – The Platypus Strut
4 Days in Geneve – 4 Days in Geneva
Pavement – Zurich Is Stained
Skeletal Explosive – Little Bird
Skeletons and the Kings of All Cities – What They Said
TV On The Radio – Dumb Animal
Subtle – Deathful (feat Tunde Adebimpe)
Ned Collette – Hours
Robert Wyatt – Just As You Are
Tooth – Dawn of the Duck
The Bites – Adelaide
School of Two – Adelaide Matters
Robert Luke – But It Ain’t Through With Us

Cyclic Defrost #19 guest cover designer, maker of lovely music, and little beknown to me DJ of some repute Dylan Martorell played this set at a Melbourne night called Collectors Set.

It’s a musical free for all as you’d imagine from the Snawklor/Hi God People music maker.

Michael Cera & Ellen Page – Anyone Else But You
Kimya Dawson – France
The Moldy Peaches – Jorge Regula
Adam Green – Eating Noddemix
Young Marble Giants – Ode to Booker T
Pants Yell! – Tried to be Good
The Go Betweens – Draining the Pool For You
Robert Forster – Pandanus
The Blackeyed Susans – Who’s Loving You
The Triffids – Lonely Stretch
The Paradise Motel – Raining Pleasure
David McComb & Adam Peters – Don’t Go Home With Your Hard On
The Jackson Code – Strange Cargo
Kaye Louise Patterson – Astronaut
Beach House – Astronaut
Francis Plagne – Astronomy Fountain
Chris Abrahams/Mike Cooper – Oceanic Feeling – Like Part One
Tom Hall – Reflection
Lullatone – Goodnight Train
Tomasz Bednarczyk – Sad Man On the Train
Suckafish P. Jones – Totally Debase
Underlapper – Left Wing Guardian
Broken Chip – Summer Stars
The Cassettes – Sweet Virginia
Guns Are For Kids – 1865
Zombie Ghost Train – Black White and Dead

I drove out to Auburn last night to a soundtrack of new songs from the Herd. First cut ‘The King Is Dead’ really resonates, with the refrain: “We danced like New Year’s Eve”.

I may never forget wandering into the Bat & Ball, Surry Hills, to hear Underlapper playing as the election tally turned against Howard last year. Here’s what I wrote the day after:

The prospect of those guys in power for another term had left me on edge all Saturday afternoon. It didn’t help that I was hanging out with Howard lovers as the Liberals took an early lead. I was starting to rant about indigenous rights, asylum seekers and the like, so I said my goodbyes – “Guys, I’ve just gotta go” – and headed to the 2SER party at the Bat & Ball, Surry Hills.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever been happier to arrive at a venue. Underlapper were playing – gorgeous spine-tingling stuff – and a bunch of close friends were hanging out by the bar. The ALP and Greens started their ascent, Maxine McKew and Bob Brown gave stirring speeches, and the Liberals were out. And I won the Oz politics/economy board game Poleconomy – a Monopoly-esque game featuring loads of companies that no longer exist.

I haven’t played Poleconomy yet, can’t even think where it is. But the sense of exhausted joie de vivre that night: dancing, drinking champagne, making new friends. There was a sense of a weight being lifted off our shoulders, the possibility of another way forward. And for all the criticisms of the Rudd Government’s first few months, they’ve made some very significant steps.

Dancing like new year’s eve – so apt – and those things come through in the song. Another Herd record that promises to continue their career growth. It’s out in May, and (thanks to Ryan from Everything at Once for connecting the dots on this) Jane Tyrrell has another thing on the go, with her group Firekites newly signed to Spunk.

I was blown away by when I saw Fiona Lowry’s self portrait What I Assume You Shall Assume at MOP Projects on Abercrombie St a while ago. The SMH reports Lowry’s won the $100k Doug Moran portrait prize for the painting.

Part of a series, the painting’s set in the Belanglo State Forest where the backpacker murders took place in the 1990s. The ABC has Lowry:

I’m more interested in just exploring that kind of paranoia that sits within the landscape, specifically the Belanglo State Forest.

The typically wowserish press coverage reached a haiku-like poetry with this headline from the Adelaide Advertiser: “Artist strips, wins $100,000″.