You know, it really is getting way too complicated when it comes to choosing a pair of headphones. Just like some sort of turf war you’ve got the purists on one side bearing witness with impressively spec’d faux aluminium cans by Bose and Beyerdynamic. Over the back fence, spitting, are the boys from Beats and Sennheiser. They are the ASBOs. The nair do wells. Full of colour and one bearing the three stripes of a footwear company. Then there’s House of Marley.
Whereas their opposition spruik street cred or frequency response curves, House of Marley has chosen to create something unique. Their push appears to have been to make a range of audio equipment that stirs both your creative side but also your social sensibilities. Read the rest of this entry →
For those uninitiated GITs among us – the internet is a remarkable place to find amazing musical talent. Instead of living your musical life through the auspices of top 40 charts and the Saturday morning music video shows on the eediot box, you should be heading online for your fix.
Sites like Last.fm and Grooveshark are amazing ways to peruse before you purchase.
Type an artist’s name into the Last.fm search box and you get presented with the artist’s bio and a list of artists that are “similar”. It soon becomes a fascinating game of 6 degrees of separation. See how many clicks it takes to move from Britney Spears to Slayer.
Anyways, as an example, I punched in Radiohead and out popped a batch of other artists that tickled the proverbial fancy – Muse and Sigur Ros – both of which I love. Point proven. New music search 101. Done.
To listen to these “new finds” you can do it through Last.fm, for a bit, until they want you to subscribe. It’s a fantastic service and well worth the sub. Alternatively you could use a great service like the aforementioned Grooveshark. Plug in the artist, album, or song and click your finds off the list. You can then stream high quality audio straight from their site. Sweet.
Then go buy the album. Sorted.
So getting back to the aim of this post – listing 4 Remarkable Australian Music Artists – be they old or geriatric.
Sia Furler is an Adelaidian singer-songwriter who came to mainstream ears after the release of her single Breathe Me. This garnered airplay as part of a Six Feet Under season finale and showcased an awesome talent for songwriting. This has since been recognised by Christina Aguilera who has had Sia co-write some of the songs on her new album. Don’t hold this against Sia – she’s well worth a listen.
As a bit of an aside – Hummingbird beer (beer apparently for the lasses) held their own “hottest 100” songs by females of all time. Sia was one of the few Aussie girls to make it. Breathe Me made it in at number 81. Nice.
Our second selection is some classic Oz from a great band called Karma County. This one’s more of a suggestion – a bit of a “get this album or else” kind of suggestion. The album in question is their first full lengther – Last Stop Heavenly Heights.
In my very, very humble opinion this is in the top 5 Australian albums of all time.Nutshell wise, this album is all about an amazing rhythm section (including the smoothest of all instruments – the double bass) combined with sparingly used guitar all melded together with a velvet toned voice. Unique and unforgettable.
It really is too hard to pick highlights off the album because of the sheer brilliance of all of the tracks – but if I had to choose I’d be downloading “Too many foxes” and the phenomenal “Postcards”. Grab the album off iTunes here.
I saw our third pick many moons ago when she was a “crew cutted” bass player in her sister’s band, The Mercy Bell. I though that they were the bees knees at the time and for the greater part it was due to the lunacy of the bassist on stage.
I looked Butterfly Boucher up quite a few years later and found her to have grown up and moved to the USA to make her musical way. And it appears she has. With songs appearing in Grey’s Anatomy, Shrek 2 and many other shows.
Now with 2 solo albums to her name (Flutterby and Scary Fragile) she’s been largely ignored by Australia. Such a shame. This should change – she’s a great talent.
And finally we reach our last recommendation: Tumbleweed. Well not so much a recommendation as a bit of an indulgence.
We were tossing up whether to pick groups like: Lovers Electric (whose vocalist is Butterfly Boucher’s little sister), The Church, Midnight Oil, Magic Dirt, The Mark of Cain, or any number of amazing Australian bands – but then I found my copy of Tumbleweed’s Theatre of Gnomes EP. Seminal.
Seminal Oz rock and so many memorable tracks.
Big hair, grinding riffs, more hair and so much soul.
Hit the bargain bins and find yourself any of their gems – they might just be worth something now that they’ve reformed.
If you’ve got any ideas about who you reckon should have been plugged let us know – comment – don’t be shy.
Truth be told, the majority of new-folks/newbies/GITs surfing the interweb these days think that what they do online will go by unnoticed. Just a small fish in a large ocean. Not so. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) knows it only too well.
The EFF are a donor funded non-profit organisation aiming to protect all of our “digital rights”. According to themselves they fight on behalf of consumers and the general public against the US government and large corporations. They also try to advise and educate the press, public and policymakers.
Yeah I know they’re US centric – but when it comes down to it, if the USA sneezes the rest of the world gets a green shirt.
On their site they’ve plugged court wins on behalf of bloggers who have had their privacy threatened via the courts as well as picking up companies who’ve been spying on their listeners. Naughty, naughty.
One of the latest battles that they’re fighting, on our behalf, are the “Three Strikes” treaties. In a nutshell, this is where an internet user could be accused (not necessarily proven) of downloading copyrighted content, like films and music over peer-to-peer networks (e.g. bittorrent) and the like. If they get accused three times (3 strikes) the person gets their internet connection terminated and they may be placed on a blacklist preventing the user from ever regaining their connection with any provider. Eeesh.
So what should you do?
Definitely have a peruse of their site. Know your rights and which rights you’ll lose if one of these treaties affects your country (yes – apparently Australia is involved in talks).
Alternatively you could hide in your cave and go back to cave drawings because blanket laws like this one are too dangerous.
Let’s begin with a proviso. This is not going to be pretty. This will be loud. This list will have a distinct lack of Miley Cyrus.
This is “my” top five tracks to motivate you at the gym*. And let’s face it – this could substitute for my best modern rock song top 5.
So why rock tracks and no doof-doof? Well it’s a know fizzamythiological fact that rock rocks and never the twain shall pass through the eye of a needle. Need I say more? It begins with…
5. In the Meantime by Helmet off the album Meantime. With a thundering intro, this song is the perfect primer for punching the living suitcase out of a suitcase. I vividly remember skiving of from my educational institution and heading on into Missing Link Records to snaffle this gem of an album.
4. Propaganda by Sepultura off the album Chaos AD. I still get chills when listening to this song. At 2:42 and 3:07 the guitars are so heavy they could easily inspire you to crush the last hill on any ride. As Molly says, “Do yourself a favour”, get this album. An amazing song from an album so laden in conscience that, if released a few months ago, would have made the Copenhagen Conference a success.
3. Christmas Steps by Mogwai off the album Come on Die Young. Pessimistic album title I agree but this song is an amazing, slo-burning, wall of sounding, tension-building, crushing, and did-I-say-amazing-yes-I-did, song. The perfect, perfect, perfect warm up song. 10 minutes that begin softly – like a 5km/hr stroll. The incline slowly ramps up. Before you know it you’re jogging then sprinting. Crescendo abates. Incline starts declining. You’re back to a jog. And stop. Time to hit the weights. I’ve added the shortened live version below – watch for the reaction of Stuart Braithwaite (guitarist) when his amp kicks in – a Mastercard moment.
2. Club Foot by Kasabian off their self-titled album…err…Kasabian. Ooosh. True Brit grit. Awesome rhythm section, sing out loud lyrics and finally a spiritual successor to our shoe-gazer favourites the Stone Roses.
1. New Born/Stockholm Syndrome/Knights of Cydonia by Muse. 3 songs I couldn’t split. Camp-tastic spaghetti westernised rock tracks that make working out a bearable experience. Beware singing in “man falsetto”, this could get you banned from your local. Off their albums Origin of Symmetry/Absolution/Black Holes and Revelations. Probably the best frontman and best live band going around at the moment.
Whereas their opposition spruik street cred or frequency response curves, House of Marley has chosen to create something unique. Their push appears to have been to make a range of audio equipment that stirs both your creative side but also your social sensibilities. Read the rest of this entry →
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