Release your inner greenie at the Green Earth Festival on Saturday March 13, when the Brisbane City Botanic Garden opens its gates to a celebration of all things green and environmentally stimulating. The festival’s organiser, Green Earth Group Inc. is a non-for-profit environmental awareness group spreading its wings in Brisbane’s environmental circles. The group’s founder, Leigh-Chantelle Koch identified a need for green advocacy groups and animal rights groups to unite forces to spread the message that ‘it’s easy being green’. The festival will celebrate caring for the environment with live bands, ‘green’ cuisine, speakers, workshops, roving entertainment, art and fashion displays, and information stalls from companies promoting environmental awareness. The festival will help the wider community learn more about environmentalism, grass roots activism and how to promote greener ways of living.
Archive for the 'Music' Category
“it’s eargasmic!”
Here is an orchestra that specifically states “no snobs allowed”. Deep Blue Orchestra last night unleashed upon ears and eyes their latest show “The Dream”. If you go in expecting a traditional classical performance, you’re in for a sizzling surprise. You won’t need to turn your phone off during the performance; in fact, they want you to keep mobiles on, and sms them your thoughts and dreams during the show! One such sms from their opening night was: “it’s eargasmic!”. Watch ABC’s Stateline at 7:30pm today for a story on these revolutionary musicians. “The Dream” will be showing at La Boite Roundhouse Theatre, Kelvin Grove until 17 October 2009.
This is a short clip from composer Jarbas Agnelli who saw a photo in the newspaper of birds sitting on power lines. He then translated their positions into notes on a music scale. A Simple but brilliant idea!
I’m always intrigued by the winners of the Mercury Prize – the UK’s most coveted music award. The judges of this prize have a reputation for awarding the prize to outsiders rather than the favourites. Past winners include Primal Scream, M People (’Movin’ On Up’), Pulp, Roni Size/Reprazent, PJ Harvey, Klaxons and Arctic Monkeys. This year’s recently announced prize went to female hip-hop artist Speech Debelle, a 26 year-old South Londoner whose debut album Speech Therapy proved very popular amongst judges. Other nominees for the this year’s prize included Kasabian, Bat For Lashes, La Roux, Friendly Fires, Florence and the Machine and Lisa Hannigan. I’ve been listening to the music on her MySpace site all morning now – it’s raw, pretty and unlike ‘rap’ as we know it; it’s more like poetry with a backdrop of clarinets, violins and jembes. Congratulations to Speech Debelle and her independent record label Ninja Tune for a great album and for winning the Mercury Prize.
Once referred to as the “Australian Bob Dylan”, Kev Carmody has been soothing the aching souls of the oppressed and the suffering through his music for the past 24 years. As one of the most respected singer/songwriters in the country, Carmody has well and truly earned a spot in history as a revolutionary voice for Aboriginal rights in Australia and social issues that have shaped this country. On August 1, some of our most celebrated musicians will salute Carmody with a tribute concert to be held at the Brisbane Riverstage. Carmody will be performing along with the likes of Paul Kelly, Bernard Fanning, Missy Higgins, John Butler Trio and Tex Perkins to showcase the songs and events that have formed his career. A role-call of the best Australian talent will be performing at the twilight concert, honouring the contribution that one man has made not only to the music industry, but to the community.
If you haven’t given this innovative site by Brisbane’s Native Digital and Wotnews a spin, give it a whirl and allow the grid to deliver music to your ears you would otherwise never have heard. While an online music chart is nothing new, Hunted’s offering seamlessly blends a unique social media content aggregation functionality, behind one of the most attractive, and easiest to use interfaces. Having recently launched a Hunted Twitter chart, hearing what other people are hearing, is never more than a few clicks away.
DJ Derek describes himself as a late-night person. He also a fan of real ale and is renowned for having visited every Weatherspoons pub in the UK. Although he is 68, Derek does not feel out of place when he takes the stage to mix reggae music in front of thousands of young revellers at gigs such as Glastonbury Festival and The Big Chill. His love for reggae and music evolved out of spending much of his adulthood soaked in the culture of the West Indian immigrants that arrived in England in the late 1950s and 1960s and his rise to fame in underground British music circles hasn’t always been easy. This charismatic senior has more ‘street cred’ than most British DJs and he has an encyclopaedic appreciation of music to keep him level with current music trends and infusing them with those of yesteryear. The world would be dull without interesting characters like Derek, and when you stumble across one you can’t help but smile. 
This short documentary about DJ Derek was compiled by Jamie Foord and Russell Smith.
Josh Pyke and Andrew Denton think Joy Division’s ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ will be number one in Triple J’s Hottest 100 of All Time. Rosie Beaton thinks Muse’s ‘Invincible’ will top the charts. And Missy Higgins thinks Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Go Your Own Way’ will perform well. Just what is the best song of all time? It’s really hard to decide, but surely the songs that have defined generations will be front-runners. Those that come to mind include Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – the winner of the Hottest 100 of All Time from 1998, ‘Alive’ by Pearl Jam, ‘Paranoid Android’ by Radiohead and hot favourite ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Joy Division. You’re allowed to vote up to 10 times for your favourite song, so at least you don’t have to narrow it down to one song. If you vote, you go into the running to in a trip to the Reading Festival in the UK. And remember you can vote for anything from iconic Beatles songs to Peter Combe classics, it’s up to you!
Spunk Records have certainly outdone themselves in recent years, picking up a myriad of outstanding breakthrough Australian acts like Leader Cheetah, Firekites and most recently The Middle East. All six members of The Middle East reside in regional Townsville, and together produce lush songs that are warm enough to wrap around you and keep you toasty on brisk Autumn evenings. The lyrics are devastatingly beautiful, conveying themes of death and identity, framed by a euphoric cohesion of acoustic guitars, percussion and angelic harmonies. The Middle East release their debut EP at The Old Museum on Thursday June 4, a body of work that includes the triple j-supported single ‘Blood.’
new additions
the beez kneez
The stylish yet haphazard composition of The Beez band (wild outfits, toylike instruments and a seemingly random and wacky repertoire) may indicate a lackadaisical approach to music-making. But to the contrary, their skill and creativity as musicians is obvious from the moment they swarm to the stage, producing tightly crafted, imaginative takes on old and new songs. And this impression was echoed in the hive of activity and buzz of excitement of my fellow audience members. Continue reading ‘the beez kneez’
One album that should be on high rotation this month is M.Ward’s Hold Time. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, M.Ward (or Matt Ward to his friends) is a singer/songwriter who has an impressive history in the music industry and yet is only just starting to blink on the consciousness of music lovers outside the U.S. He has most notably worked with Jim James of My Morning Jacket and Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. He also recently linked up with actress Zooey Deschanel to put out an album titled Volume One as She & Him. Hold Time is M.Ward’s seventh album, in which he effortlessly mixes tone-tapping indie tunes, chilled out harmonies and acoustic guitars.
Daft Punk’s tune, Harder Better Faster Stronger, has inspired many offshoots. We’ve seen the Kanye West remix and the Daft Hands YouTube video, which is ranked as one of the most popular videos of all time and has inspired its own offshoots, including Daft Bodies and even Daft Scrabble. Now fans can have a go at keyboard karaoke with Najle’s iDaft Daft Punk Console. Plug in your headphones and test your co-ordination by tapping along to the song. Touch typists will do well!
We live in an era of extraordinary creative opportunities thanks to the internet and the rise of amateur content. Some could argue, however, that this also leads to a rise in mediocrity. Mediocrity aside, the maker of Kutiman Mixes YouTube defies creative boundaries by crafting music using bits and pieces of YouTube videos. Kutiman searches and searches through video after video finding the weird, wonderful and talented people who have posted their homemade music videos online. Examples include a kid learning the trumpet, a guy who has hooked up a hose to his mouth via his keyboard, an organ player, talented lounge-room singers and guitar wailers. Kutiman then samples them, mixes them and produces great music. He’s got a whole album’s worth of material online, and it’s pretty good.
In one way or another, murmurs about the Ten Days on the Island festival in Tassie from 27 March keep reverberating around me and inspiring me in different ways so I thought I’d share the chatter. I was one of the lucky ones to be in the audience at Metro Arts’ forum last week where Scott Rankin, director of big hART, and Donna Jackson of hubcap productions spoke under the banner, “Artists as Social Entrepreneurs”. Both Scott and Donna do AMAZING things to instigate social change through high quality art across all forms, guiding receptive communities to tell their stories for the benefit of healing social angst and forging new futures. There isn’t space here to explain the immense scope, intimate research and deep intuition with which they approach their respective projects so check out their websites if you’re intrigued to learn more. big hART’s Junk Theory is just one example of the work they do in social change and it will kick-start the Ten Days festival on 27 March, which is apparently the country’s largest state-wide biennial international arts festival with more than 200 ticketed art, theatre, literature, film, music and the art of conversation events. Through Junk Theory , big hART worked with Cronulla’s Sutherland Shire after the riots in 2005 when the community was thrown onto the national map, looking all grubby and scuffed. big hART encouraged the young people to share their stories and listen to others as a progressive response to the shock and hurt in the community that aimed to prove it’s harder to hurt someone when you know their story. The young people were linked with photographers, composers, filmmakers, older residents, seafarers, local businesses and 35 local community organisations to create Junk Theory. Continue reading ‘‘junk theory’ in ten days on the island’
Sir Mixalot’s ‘Baby Got Back’ liberated women and their butts. Calvin Harris professed his love for all girls in ‘The Girls’. Beth Ditto is simply fantastic. And Carson Daly and Gok Wan show women ‘how to look good naked’. Miss Platnum , however, has her own way of telling it how it is. Miss Platnum is the flamboyant persona of singer/songwriter Ruth Renner. Romanian born but now residing in Berlin, Ruth started off her career, like most singers, singing in the school choir and then later working as a backup singer. Her song ‘Give Me The Food’ has been doing the rounds on YouTube and blogs, and has developed quite the following. Her rhythm and blues parody about women who want to be left alone to eat is not because she wants to be left to fill her face, but she just wants people to accept her for who she is. She has an exceptional voice and a quirky and mischievous nature. She’s not for everyone – but I like her work.
As a young man, Mike Skinner knew he wanted to make records. Born in Birmingham and growing up in working-class London, he learnt to improvise with the materials he had, recording his first album in a make-do studio at his mum’s house. Going by the stage name of The Streets, Mike Skinner’s debut album, Original Pirate Material, was released in 2002 and told the story of a young man growing up in England and dealing with birds, booze and staying positive. Continue reading ‘the streets’
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