Daivd Page, composer from Bangarra Dance Company came in to talk about the latest work from the company, ‘Mathinna‘. On at The Opera House until 23rd August.

‘The Bland Project‘ presented by Performance Space - Director Alan Schacher, Video Artist Sean Bacon and Composer Boris Baberkoff. Playing from 7-9th August at Carriageworks.

Psychic Man - Rocket Science
Mic of the Year - Rustie
Australian Story - Rainman
Gold, Tan, Peach and Grey - Bodies of Water
Ishmael Dwight - Trible
Don’t Wear Too Many Hats - Kes Band
Sandshoe - Peret Mako
Bossa Per Due (Thievery Corporation Remix) - Nicola Conte
Shadows - Greyhound Lane
The Ball - David Page - Bangarra
The Minotaur - The Drones
The King Is Dead - The Herd
Honey Steels Gold (live) - Ed Kuepper
Love, Love, Love (Reprise) - Akron/Family
Lost In Low Cloud - Flying Foxes
Transatlantic Homesick Blues - Birth Glow
Shopping - Hit The Jackpot
Another Easy Piece - Craig Leighton
Now I Love Someone - Holly Throsby
Music - Beats Working
Rabbit - The Maple Trail

How do you know if you’re a ‘dance person’?

Not the TV show, mind you, I’m thinking of broader contemporary dance. I like dancing out at clubs - admittedly not as often nowadays. But I would have considered myself pretty much not a dance person before seeing Bangarra’s Mathinna last week.

Intense and harrowing at times, extremely beautiful at others. Abstracted, yes, but never obtuse or indistinct. The story was perfectly clear. The effect mesmerising.

A terrifically researched, frequently tangential, yet terribly interesting spiel - basically, the perfect accompaniment to a long bus ride. This American Life.

This week on our show on FBI 94.5. Sound artist, music maker, film maker and writer Jason Sweeney, in town for Liquid Architecture, came in to talk about his upcoming residency at CIA, Perth, and his new record Panoptique Electrical record on Sensory Projects.

Tessa Rapaport, Karl Logge and Diego Bonetto, the guys behind an installation at Underbelly called Hanging Gardens and Other Tales, also visited.

Musically:

Channel Two - 2562
Take Care of Business (Pilooski remix) - Nina Simone
Long Time Fish Pie - Seekae
Bad Blood - Ernest Ellis
Something Special - The Darling Downs
Episode II - The Small Hours
Girls - Walter Meego
Impossible (Studio remake) - Shout Out Louds
In The Garden - Leila
Wearing My Rolex - Wiley
Like It Or Not - Architecture In Helsinki
Action Figures The Cool Kids
Toe Jam (feat David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal) - The BPA
Different Handwriting - Prettyboy Crossover
Bobby, Mark and Carter - Panoptique Electrical
Blood On My Hands - Shackleton
On Any Wednesday - Nic Dalton
Make It So (feat Michael Johnson) - Daedelus
Scene of the Crime - Hot Little Hands
500 (Shake Baby Shake) - Lush

If all else fails try a list. That’s the normal thing, and usually radio shows fit the bill. This time though it’s the set I played last night at Glamour Pour Le Hammer.

Christine Harwood - Never Knew What Love Was
Junior Delgado - Fort Augustus
Velvet Underground - Ride Into The Sun
Bronski Beat and Marc Almond - Signs (and Wonders)
Imagination - Flashback
Winnie Runnells - The Letter E
Bus feat MC Soom T - Middle of the Road (Disco Dub Mix)
Jean Jacques Perrey - EVA (Fat Boy Slim Dub Mix)
Tom Ze - Gloria
Vampyros Lesbos - The Lion and the Cucumber (Dr Rockit Version)
Foxy Brown - Big Bad Mamma
Domino - Physical Funk (Instrumental)
Jon E Cash - Battle
Archive - Sun That I Know
UTD - My Kung Fu
Panda One - She Knows Not (feat Dena)
Bush Tetras - Too Many Creeps
Brooks - Man-size
Dr Israel - Above & Beyond
Pressure feat Warrior Queen - Money Honey
Soft Cell - Tainted Dub
The Mills Brothers with Sy Silver & His Orchestra - Opus One
Junior Wells - Hoodoo Man
Kid & Khan - Goo Goo Muck
Bootleg - Secretary Blues (Roman BNO Bump Ride Edit)
Todd Osborn - Nightfall
Steve Reich - It’s Gonna Rain
Hallucinator - Red Angel
Geiom - Zalim Maar Daala (feat Khalid)
Cesaria Evora - Angola (Get Down Dub by Pepe Braddock)

I’m playing records next Thursday night, July 10, at the Colombian (corner of Oxford and Crown Streets).

Upstairs, that is, where FBI’s Jack Shit runs a weekly night of no-holds-barred music love, called Glamour Pour Le Hammer. I get the impression it’s like a Club Kooky that’s not so rooted in electronic music. I’m choosing records from 10pm. Jack Shit’s on after that. Plus avant garde and eccentric performances. It’s free.

A new site for all things poetic, When Pressed, launched last night at the tiny Serial Space warehouse (the old Jellyheads site) in inner city Waterloo.

Tom Lee reads at Serial Space.

Tom Lee and Amanda Stewart performed, while Nick Keys, Tim Wright and Pat Gordon basked in the glow of success. I really was quite busy last night - the headline’s not just a useful pun - and had to leave early, but it was obvious how excited people were from the buzz around the new site, the gang of writers and readers, and the generally great feeling of getting together for a mid-week dose of literary goods.

Homelessness is such a huge problem that it’s abstract, feels a long way away, just stats. An ABC doco called The Oasis (originally screened in April) brought it home in a gripping 75 minutes, built on several years of filming in and around the Crown Street homeless refuge of the movie’s title.

It’s an exceptional film that should be essential viewing.

Popcorn Taxi screens an uncut version of the doco on Monday July 7 at Greater Union Bondi, with the film’s teenage subjects available for a Q&A afterwards.

Producer and co-director of The Oasis Ian Darling joins me on FBI 94.5’s Canvas this Sunday morning (10-12noon) to talk about the project.

This will soon be a thing of the past.

I lose my records room soon - a luxury I built up to with a lot of dreaming - and in the process of preparing for that seismic shift, I’ve been culling CDs (and the odd record). Where do you go to sell CDs these days? Does anyone pay?

The line between art and architecture, and what makes urban spaces sing is something close to my heart, so I jumped at the chance to cover Concrete Culture - a show at COFA-UNSW’s Ivan Dougherty Gallery - on my show on FBI.

Richard Goodwin, one of the featured artists, is known as a sculptor, including a long run of public art on freeways. But a lot of his work, and definitely the work on show at IDG was hugely inspired by NYC artist Gordon Matta-Clark, and in some ways it is pretty subversive. With an ARC grant from the Howard Government, Goodwin mapped public spaces throughout the city: lift spaces, stairs, even the public toilets on the 37th floor of an investment bank.

Richard Goodwin at FBI

Film producer and distributor John L. Simpson was in later to talk about his film, Men’s Group - out in September - but also found time to discuss the balancing act of being in the business of art making, and making art.

Selling the show: John L. Simpson at FBI

I went to Firstdraft gallery on Wednesday night to check some emerging artists: Emma White, Tully Arnot (a student of Richard Goodwin’s, strangely enough) and The Elastic Band (Jo Cuzzi, Patsy Black and Amanda Cole).

We found time to fit in some music too:

Jungle Fever - Charlie Feathers
Thing Called Love - The Kahn Brothers
Cold Son - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
Serious Times - Gyptian
Tip My Canoe - Dengue Fever
Beef in a Box - Architecture In Helsinki
Hurry Up - Roman Revutski
A Love Supreme - Alice Coltrane
Make it So (feat. Michael Johnson) - Daedelus
The Suspense is Killing Me - Box 8 Bit
Karaoking - Plastic Palace Alice
Dancing on a Knife - Tennis
Ludey-do-dah - Mr Johnson’s Marching Boys
Bird - Grand Salvo
Dragonslayer - James Pants
Engine No. 999 - Western Synthetics
Lost in Low Cloud - Flying Foxes
What is a Life? - Youth Group