Aoki + some other stuff.

Y'all may remember a couple months back when I was getting excited about some crazy new stuff being produced by Steve Aoki, that Japanese/American dude who runs Dim Mak and released work by The Bloody Beetroots, Bloc Party, and heaps more. Well, last weekend, I was lucky enough to snag some tix to his Melbourne show at Roxanne Parlour.

Fucking craziest show I've ever been to, bar none. Nick Foley, Dangerous Dan, and finally Aoki rocked the main room, and the mosh was intense. I fell over just as Steve leapt into the crowd, during the opening track of his set, Warp 1.9. I open my eyes to see the man's acid wash ripped as fuck jeans passing over my head. It's his arse. He rolls over. For one crazy second, we lock eyes, and then he's gone. The set is stopped, the crowd's knocked the DJ desk over. The mixers have gone down, the speakers wobbling on their stands. He starts again, that ticking clock driving everyone mental all over again. A second wave ripples through the crowd, everyone surging forward to support this crazy longhair's weight, screaming as he is. My friends are gone, I don't know where they are. I don't care where they are. For the next 3 minutes, until the crowd knock the desk over again, all my brain does is scream 1, 2, WHOOP WHOOP! The set is stopped for the second time. They move him to the back room. All my hard fought jostling to the front is in vain as those as the back simply turn around and become the front row. Lost cameras, wrecked shoes, broken glasses, people drenched in sweat roll through my vision like a dream. I'm floating on a memory, dazed by the sheer volume and intensity of this one dude.

And then we went outside.
Photo from hobogestapo.com (NOT MY OWN, I WAS UNDER HIM)

And now the other stuff:


HYYYYPE

A-Trak remix of Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Heads Will Roll


Due to a mix up between DJ's (I think) (I bet Dangerous was bummed when Nick Foley played it first..), I heard this twice in the one night at Roxanne's. No complaints whatsoever.

Later,

Gala Mill

I'm sure I'm supposed to be doing something else right now but I haven't given you kids anything new to sink your teeth into for a while; so, priorities are in order.

This shall be another of my 'favourite albums of all time' rants, so strap yourself in for the long haul or nick off, I suppose. Gala Mill, the second album released by The Drones in 2006, was nominated for the Australian Music Prize, the year that Augie March won with Moo, You Bloody Choir. In my opinion, Gala Mill is the better album, but then again I'm a rabid Drones fanboy and probably won't be convinced otherwise.

It's a distinctly Australian sounding album. Recorded in a mill on an isolated farm in the wild north eastern reaches of Tasmania, the sense of time and place in the record is palpable. Dogs bark and birds crow in between tracks, cicadas hum and the mill creaks and groans on its foundations. However, far from sounding like it was recorded with a 4-track and a laptop mic, the raucous distortion of Liddiard's guitar and his languid drawl of a voice are clear as a bell.

The record spawned one of the best Drones tracks of their career, I Don't Ever Want To Change, a fast-paced catchy racehorse-straining-at-the-gate of a song. Liddiard's distinct, strongly Australian accented voice half-sings, half-injects itself directly into your ears, his whooping yells and high-pitched squawks during the high-energy section of his performance reminiscent of some crazed country songsmith. The song builds and builds, all wrenching guitars and thumping drums and raw uncontrolled power as he intones I don't ever want to change, I don't ever want to change / I know my limits well, because they're never far away.

Liddiard's not afraid to shred his vocal chords, and the energy and passion he injects into each song makes melancholy more melancholy, viciousness more biting, and emotion more emotive.

Gareth Liddiard's voice is probably one of the most distinctive features of the band's sound, but so is his guitar playing, and the playing of the rhythm man, Rui Pereira. On songs like Jezebel, they rip and tear, like pulling teeth, and  but like on their previous record (Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By) and follow-up effort Havilah, they do slow brilliantly. Tracks like Words From The Executioner To Alexander Pearce, Dog Eared, or Sixteen Straws are slow dirges, where the band shows off a dark, brooding side where shallow dreams of violence, hunger, drunkeness, suicide and despair float through the lyrics. The haunting backing vocals on Words From The Executioner are especially spine-tingling.

Mike Noga keeps the throbbing, aching rhythms of the band, his heavy, thick kit accentuating the somewhat violent manner in which he thrashes and beats at the skins. Not known for simple rhythms, his playing is heaving with toms and almost disjointed.

Put simply, this is one of those albums I can't wait to show my kids. You know, when CD falls out of favour and everyone has mp3 players built into their ear canals, and I stumble across a dusty box of my old CDs in an attic somewhere, drag it downstairs and proceed to bore the kids to death with rants about Nick Cave, You Am I, Sonic Youth, all those crazy dudes who'll be dead or getting high-rotation airplay on Gold FM.

Later,

deadtime

can't fucking sleep
think i'm getting more and more insomaniacal (?)
threw up again today. thought i was done with all that.
guess not.
weirdest songs are coming on shuffle - think this is what happens when i leave it on all night and wake up in the morning to the tunes of super furry animals.
oh god morning won't be fun.
school again. thought i was done with all that
guess not...

I'm In Miami Bitch

Last night I went to Dorothy, the Thursday night at Tramp Basement, to see Miami Horror, with Pop A Cap and Airwolf supporting. Miami Horror are about to drop an album in 2010, and they tore that basement apart. Kids tripping on the $25 gypsy jugs or 20 wet pussies (cough) trying not to look like they're trying too hard to look like they're not having a good time.

I like Dorothy. I like it a lot. The venue just looks fucking cool. The drinks are reasonable, and the people less pretentious than its indie rep would suggest. The silent disco was a kick, too. On channel one: One More Time by Daft Punk. On channel two: All Along The Watchtower. Yeah. Hendrix. But what's missing is just one or two strobes. I love strobe lights. Maybe it's just me, but I enjoy only being able to see when the bass drum hits. It adds to that all encompassing feeling of the music surrounding you, getting lost in the rhythm and totally forgetting yourself.

Gloriously 80's disco-house throwback.


Miami Horror are playing the Corner Hotel on November 20.

NOWWW.
LMFAO. Not even kidding, that's their name. Fucked if I know whether they're taking the piss, but it's catchy and electro and hip hop. In short, it's goooood.



Maybe you've been hearing this around the traps and didn't know who it was, I certainly didn't till I started looking these guys up.



Anyway, so there you have it. A fair bit of electric loving. I highly recommend these two artists.

Later,

some kind of crazy blinding bowling alley

I had a bit of an epiphany whilst listening to Jay Reatard's new track, It Ain't Gonna Save Me the other day. It happened so quickly, between a breath, and now it's completely gone. But it was an incredibly vivid flash of something, occurring underneath the jangling fuzz and frenetic drums, as I drove home from school. It had been raining but the sun was out and the road stretched out in front of me like some kind of crazy blinding bowling alley. And as Reatard repeated the phrase "all is lost, there is no hope for me", I had some kind of paradox of emotions, the same feeling I get when I listen to the chorus lick of It Ain't Funny How We Don't Talk Anymore by You Am I, or Always Love by Nada Surf. It's something about the perfect harmony between lead and rhythm, or vocals and melody that makes me feel every single dearly beloved memory and each painfully repressed yet wistfully recalled moment of despair condensed into 3 minutes of time.




Watch Me Fall is out now on Matador.

Later,