Virgin

I never knew that there were places (homes, institutions or whatever you want to call them) for people who were deaf. Daniel Marando from the diabolically bluesy Maladies sits across from me, staring out the window. Something seems to catch his eye as he turns and waves to an older lady sitting across the room, intently watching the Bold and the Beautiful with closed captions blaring.

“HI  MARGARET, HOW ARE YOU?”

He bellows at the small woman, turns to me and in the same breath informs me that “she’s a lovely lady when you get to know her. Her husband died in the war.”

I wonder how hard it is to get to know someone who can’t hear a word you’re saying. “You’ve got to have a bit of time for these people. It can’t be easy for them either.” Daniel’s words are kind, understanding. My voice seems to echo around the room several times as I ask him how the album is going.

“It’s all been recorded and mixed and mastered and pretty much ready to go. We’re sending it out this week to some labels to see if we can find someone to put it out for us.”

Two young men sit behind us, quietly playing cards, oblivious to our unnecessarily loud voices and happy to be left to their own devices. Daniel tells me more about the motivation behind the album. “It was totally self funded, we just did it ourselves. Musically, it’s ready to go.”

A monstrous sound rips the room apart as a patient begins hammering on the keys of the baby grand piano that until recently had sat disregarded in a corner of the room, her head pressed to the ground in an awkward dance with the chaotic noise. Raising his voice over the din, Daniel explains that “recording to analogue tape made things a bit rough for a first recording. You have to be a lot more accurate.”

The piercing sounds of the tortured piano slowly begin to subside. The random batterings start to resemble a somewhat pleasant sounding melody. “It also limits you to twenty four tracks maximum so you can’t do five hundred vocal takes and take a second from each one. I think doing it to tape worked out well because of things like that.” Daniel starts to talk softer, slowly approaching an average level.

The piano fades into the background noise and I suddenly realise just how hard that is. There are no other sounds in the room but for the subtle flip of cards or the occasional unacknowledged fart. There really isn’t much going on here. It seems like a quiet vacation more than an institution. “It limited our opportunities for editing and we had to have parts more exactly as we wanted them.”

Daniel is hesitant to take any credit for his own actions. He admits that he comes here to help out the less fortunate, but maintains that it is a team effort to keep the place going. “We got a girl choir that we’re calling the Don Walker Appreciation Choir to sing on a few songs.”

“It’s most prominent on one song which is a cover of a song called Silos, which is a Don Walker song.”  A tall young woman with a ponytail enters the room. Daniel stands and gives her a warm hug.

“There’s horns and all sorts of percussion too. We wanted to give it a bit of a community vibe and we also liked what those things added and we wanted to do something fairly different to what we do live.”

Hellos and goodbyes are shared. Daniel and I head towards the revolving doors and the outside world. I ask him if The Maladies will be touring soon. “We’re doing quite a few shows in Sydney in December, basically just trying to get a bit of a vibe around the album.”

Passing the visitor registry, Daniel pauses to sign up for another visit next week. “We’ve been trying to write songs really since recording, we’ve been rehearsing a lot, getting together a lot and just nutting out some new material which is coming along as slow as ever but it’s all been rewarding.”

We stop and turn to face each other as we reach the kerb. I decide to ask Daniel straight up how he thinks he’ll manage, trying to balance all these different sides of his personality.

“I imagine it’s gonna be difficult. Especially with writing songs, it’s time consuming and it’s pretty hard to balance it all but you’ve just got to find a way to do it I guess.”

Musicfeeds - Spanish For Awesome!

“I think it’s a bit of a junkie mentality in a way. You’re constantly chasing a high.”

That’s not really as incriminating as it sounds. King Farook are toying with metaphors as they attempt to describe their enthusiasm for touring.

“Man you know what it’s all about? This is our dream, what we’re doing right now is our dream. We all work day jobs and to be able to just get on the road and play to a whole bunch of new people who have never heard us before is what I live for. I love it.”

Chasing the highs from gig to gig has even left these musical junkies unaffected by the inevitable lows that accompany them.

“You’re in a van with three other smelly guys for ten hours, but it all disappears the minute you hit the stage and you rock it. It’s about constantly trying to feel that way. It keeps you going. So far so good. Hopefully that’s what keeps happening.”

Besides touring manically, King Farook recently released the Four Piece Feed Ep.

“It’s available in all record stores actually. If they don’t have it they’ll order it in. We’ve got distribution through MGM. We’re selling it at gigs as well and just pumping it. A couple of stations have given it a bit of a run so it’s been alright, slowly but surely.”

While only out for five months, it seems this release is already starting to show its age as the band develops.

“Kinda looking forward to some new stuff but the Four Piece Feed is our thing for a little bit. To be honest, it’s not really the sound we’re going for at the moment because we’ve changed members again.”

Line up changes in the band have seen them shift from a five piece to a four, losing and gaining different members along the way. The Four Piece Feed even includes some guitar tracks, when no one in the band plays one any more.

“The reason it was a bit of a dead end is because we actually included guitar. I played guitar on there as well as the bass but tried to keep the guitar to a minimum so it wouldn’t be missed live and it’s something that I’m trying to produce on the bass as well as guitar.”

“So we kind of sound like that, but I think in the future it’s not gonna sound like that because we’re gonna steer away from that kind of sound. We’re gonna write more in terms of what we do on stage. We wanna try to get what we do on stage on to a record. That’s obviously become the forte of what we do as a band. The more people tell us that the more it makes it obvious that’s what we should do on the next album. Not necessarily a live album, but cater the album more to the dynamic of what we do.”

Translating the raw energy of a live show to record successfully is not without its difficulties.

“It is really hard to capture that in the studio. That energy level isn’t necessarily there that you get from a crowd being in front of you all dancing and losing their fuckin’ minds. That’s the challenge for us: to get that energy, that liveness while still having the polish of a nice studio recording.”

With this challenging new direction, King Farook have a positive outlook on their next release.

“We feel pretty confident that the next batch of songs, the next batch of Farookness is gonna be the real shit. Not that the other stuff wasn’t, but we feel a lot more comfortable now.”

“In saying that, I don’t think we’ve hit our stride yet. It’s gonna get harder and we’re gonna be harder working in time to come.”

The next couple of months will see the band working hard on finishing their tour before taking some time off to write and record. There’s no question as to their most anticipated gig in Sydney.

“Romp is the big one for the Sydney market. It’s the 5th December at the Factory theatre. It’s a mini-festival with nine bands on two stages. We’re gonna headline that.”

For more info, check out http://www.myspace.com/kingfarook

Words: Dan Clarke, Interview: Mikey Carr. Musicfeeds - Spanish for awesome!

Twelve years playing together has given Perth band Gyroscope a lot of time to grow as musicians. Guitarist Rob reflects on how they have developed.

“We’ve grown as songwriters and arrangers and as players, you know.”

Things aren’t always perfect, but Rob explains that this is all part of the process.

“If you’re serious about what you do you pick up little mistakes. It might not be noticeable, it might just be you but you pick them up and iron them out and promise yourself you won’t do them next time.”

“You learn, that’s the best thing. All your mistakes you learn from.”

And one thing they have learned is that touring is an integral part of being in a successful band.

“Coming this far, eleven or twelve years with the band we know that’s how it works.”

“Without that touring formula there’s nothing. We started as a touring band and we’ll end as a touring band. The studio and all the other stuff is kinda the fun stuff in between.”

Getting older has made it more difficult to head out on the road for long periods, but Rob maintains that it’s still a necessary part of the job.

“It gets harder with age ‘cause you get older and get more attached to home, your family and friends, but fundamentally it’s the same thing as when you started touring that first time, when you were bright eyed and bushy tailed. You really wanted to get out there and you know that you have to do it because it’s promoting the songs you’re writing.”

The band cut their teeth negotiating the vibrant music scene in Perth. The “sort of mentality where it’s very eager and keen and competitive but healthy at the same time” and an environment that pushed the band to work harder.

“There’s a whole bunch of quality bands that are gigging week in and week out over here. You don’t have an industry type that’s breathing down your neck. We tend to just go hard until we’re ready to show the rest of the country or the rest of our peers what we’re about.”

“There’s not a lot of venues. Everyone’s competing for that dream to get over east. The eastern state bands might take that a bit for granted because that’s something they can do easily. That’s essentially what it is. We know we’ve got it hard so we go harder.”

For the next couple of months Rob says Gyroscope will be busy working on new material and keeping the touring to a minimum.

“Just a few festivals here and there on the weekends but apart from that we’re doing some writing.”

“We’ve got about ten demos at the moment. That’s where we’re sitting at the moment and that’s where we’ll be for the next few months until we get in there next year and record the album.”

Any new album brings with it new ideas, but Rob is unsure how it will all sound when they’re done.

“I don’t know yet man. It’s hard to say. It’s all sounding good though, very happy with it all.”

For more info, check out http://www.myspace.com/gyroscope

Words: Dan Clarke, Interview: Mikey Carr. Musicfeeds - Spanish for awesome!

Mark Ronson, can the man do any wrong? He may not even know a thing about CMJ, the infamous NY indie rock festival that hosts more than 1600 bands, but it didn’t matter. On Tuesday, Oct 21st, he got together a roomful of friends, as part of his Allido Record Label showcase, and it topped 90 % of the other showcases that week.

To kick off the party, Rhymefest pulled onstage Rahzel from The Roots for some shared rapping… and some serious Obama endorsing. Needless to say, the crowd got hyped on his energy. Then Ronson’s new rock acquisition The Rumble Strips showed off their slap-happy Brit rock rock. Daniel Merriweather performed with Sharon Jones’ usual accomplices, The Dap Kings… and mid-way through the set, Ronson ditched the DJ booth and played a soulful song or two.

Lastly, Wale brought DC go-go to NYC to finish off the night. If you don’t know much about DC go-go, it’s a funk-based movement that’s infectiously dance friendly- heavy on bass, snare and congo drums. And by dance-friendly, I mean grind friendly. Give the crowd drinks and go-go, and it’s bound to be merry, sloppy, and lascivious. Hence, as the new rap ingénue representing go-go with a stage full of drums, U.B.C. band members and miscellaneous rapper friends wearing heavy shades, Wale was at an advantage- beasting through tracks like “Nike Boots”, “Back In The Go-Go,” and “The Mixtape About Nothing.” To finish it off, Daniel Merriweather got back onstage and acted like old buddies with Wale and kicked off a spontaneous version of “Stop Me” (in fact, Wale almost had to grab the mic back from him). Encouraging a full-on dance-a-thon sing-along, they brought the house down.

Sierra Fin’s favourite Eastern European language is Estonian. Not a particularly enlightening piece of information in and of itself, but after listening to the song ‘Blue Day Sun’ from their soon-to-be-released debut EP Shake Stare Sleep I’m quite lost for words. Fortunately, the band had a bit to say as they prepare to make their presence felt on record for the first time.

“Shake Stare Sleep is the first foray into the record world for us as Sierra Fin. Though we’ve each individually released music, it is a giant leap forward musically from our past projects. With each track, as in everything we do, we’ve tried to bring something new to the table, from sonic cacophony to sparse soundscapes all nestled around our simple melodies. We’ve explored lyrically the themes of love, death and society and how the three intermingle.”

Their simple melodies belie a rich tapestry of sound that is more than a little unique, reminding me quietly of the grander moments of Jeff Buckley, or Travis before they started getting all pretentious. Even the explanation of their name has a sublime quality to it.

“It came to me in a dream where I was falling off a mountain that looked like jagged teeth.”

To say Sierra Fin are unique is not to suggest their music is inaccessible, although they do admit initial reactions might be a little confused.

“Confused like an Estonian fisherman who’s just misinterpreted directions, but by serendipitous fortune, they lead him to the catch of the day.”

So what’s the key to building a following while you’re still an up and coming band?

“Play music you enjoy, ignore what the latest hipster tight jeans wearing trend is, and play every gig like you are on the main stage at Glastonbury.”

Their philosophy on music sounds as honest as their songs. I hadn’t even heard of Sierra Fin before last week, but now I’m starting to think their EP launch could be something quite special. The band assures me they have some surprises in store for others thinking of attending.

“This launch is the culmination of more than a years worth of work. Aside from our set, which we will be stepping up by our own standards, we’re making the entire evening a spectacle. From the moment you step through the door you will know this isn’t your average EP Launch.”

“In saying that we have involved an amazing classical guitarist, a quartet of lovely Saxophone ladies plus artists Heidi Elva and Kent Eastwood. All will be intermingling to present a memorable night. And at the perfect setting: The Vanguard sucks you into it’s deep red walls making you feel right at home.”

And then?

“It’ll be a busy time as we ride the promotional roller coaster on the back of Shake Stare Sleep. Our main focus will be organising an EP tour early in the new year. Thoughts of shows at regional schools are on the cards and then we plan to tour Estonia to study the intricacies of the Finno-Ugric languages.”

Catch Sierra Fin for their Shake Stare Sleep EP launch at the Vanguard, Newtown on 12th November. For more info (on the band, not Estonia) point your browser to www.myspace.com/sierrafin

Words: Dan Clarke, Interview: Mikey Carr.

Musicfeeds - It’s Spanish for awesome!

There must be something about the seclusion of a remote location that brings out explosive inspiration in some people. The Unabomber lived in a remote cabin in the wilderness of Montana, and Melbourne band The Drones adopted a similar dwelling to write and record their latest studio release, Havilah. Guitarist Dan Luscombe explains how it all came about;“Havilah. Yeah, it’s the name of the tiny little town we made the album in. We brought a whole bunch of equipment up from Melbourne and Burke who produced the album brought a whole bunch of equipment from where he works in Big Jesus Burger studio in Sydney. So we set up what turned out to be a rather state of the art studio in this house that runs off a generator where the nearest neighbours are several kilometres away, this big mud brick open plan four bedroom house.”

“We got a hold of some great mics and preamps, spent two days setting up the house and for the next two weeks we were there. Cooking meals in the drum room, which was also the kitchen, sitting around eating together and being very very free from distraction, at times almost too much really.”

Whereas the Unabomber embraced the seclusion of his log cabin for destructive purposes, The Drones have channeled their energies towards more constructive ends.

“It’s a great way to record because you can make that thing that you’re doing all that you think about. It’s great waking up in the morning and wondering about what you’re gonna do on a certain song, what kind of sound you want to get as opposed to all the other things you worry about in regular life.”

Never ones to do things conventionally (their last album was recorded in an old mill in Tasmania), the prospect of laying down new material in a tradtional studio didn’t really appeal.

“I don’t have anything against them as such, I mean they’re expensive for a start, but there’s this clock on clock off factor you know. You show up for work around 11, or well twelve and once you’ve sort of had enough you tend to go home. In the house we could wake up at any time and get straight to work, and if something dawns on you at some ridiculous hour you’re not too far away.”

With a busy touring schedule last year, singer Gareth Liddiard and bassist Fiona Kitschin took some time off to concentrate on writing new material before bringing in Dan and drummer Michael to rehearse and record the album.

“We didn’t start work on any new stuff when we were touring last year, it just doesn’t lend itself to that. We travel pretty frequently when we’re on tour, driving in the van, like on the European tour we did 52 dates in 63 days. You don’t really have time to rehearse and when you do have any free time the last thing you feel like doing is picking up the guitar, you’re just trying to get through the day and to get away from music for a second.”

The new album was written over two months and after four weeks of rehearsing the band was ready to lay it all down.

“The whole process really, from the writing to the mastering was done very quickly but with a lot of intent and a lot of excitement. It actually happened really smoothly, we didn’t get stuck on any tracks for too long and we kept up a good work rate, mind you Paul Burke who recorded and mixed it was up to 9 o’clock in the morning on the last day of mixing.”

“What’s the saying? Art is never finished it’s only ever abandoned. You don’t look back and say I’ve finished but I’ve still got a week of studio time, maybe my friends want to use it.”

If their earlier releases are anything to go by, Havilah will be a brooding mix of noisy guitars, howling vocals and ever so subtle melancholy that latches on to your eardrums and demands attention.

“If you’re taking a lot of different influences you’ll inevitably end up doing something different each time. There’ll always be common threads through your playing and approach. There’s always going to be a linear thing going through there.”

“I think the idea is just to enjoy yourself, and if you like a whole bunch of different music, you’re bound to try a bunch of different things. At the end of the day it comes down to what the song is, and if it’s a good song you can spend a lot of time and have a lot of fun dressing it up in different ways. “

With a new album plucked from the foothills of Mt. Buffalo, Victoria, The Drones are excited about presenting their newest creation to the world with another round of touring.

“It’s always great to have a new record out, it’s wonderful to go on stage with a whole bunch of new songs, and it’s been a while since we’ve done a show where we could do that. We’re really keen to see how the record is received because it’s a bit different for us.”

For this and much more on the live music scene in Sydney check out musicfeeds.com.au. And you thought Drum Media was the be all and end all of local independent street press… (btw It isn’t, check out the site and you’ll know what I mean…)

Words: Dan Clarke, Interview: Michael Carr

If you wanted proof that Australia was founded as a convict colony, look no further than The Mischief. If Ned Kelly were alive today he’d be listening to these guys.

They describe their sound as ‘electrofuzzcountrypop.’ That’s a bit of a mouthful, so let’s just say this; their sophomore EP release will leave you wanting to down a quart of whiskey, grow a beard, don some oversized novelty armour and rob a string of banks up and down the frontier lines.

When they let loose, on tracks like ‘Hollow Gold’ and ‘Tony Wilson’ you can’t help but get your head nodding along to their catchy riffs and unpretentious arrangements. ‘Self Made Sir’ is so almost a pirate ditty that I dare anyone to listen to it and not want to swig rum and force traitors to walk the plank.

There are some more tender moments on tracks ‘Let It Ride’ and ‘If I Weren’t Here’ that conjure images of frontier farms dotted on a landscape of eucalypts, but it all adds to the impression that they’re here to steal from the limy British overlords and give at least some of it back to struggling settlers on the way. The Mischief never seem to take themselves too seriously, but that’s exactly what makes this record worth a listen. Escapism at its best.

I had the pleasure of catching these guys live recently, and as new recruits to the MTV kickstart campaign you can expect to hear a lot more from them soon. For gig details head over to their myspace page @ www.myspace.com/themischiefmusic

For this and plenty more on the live music scene in Sydney, head on over to musicfeeds.com.au.

The most interesting music is often the most diverse. Some bands might be content to pigeonhole themselves in one genre, one style of music but that only really works if they can pull it off well. The true virtue of much music is the ability for it to be created and shaped as artists adopt, assimilate and experiment with different ideas to create something they can truly call their own.The vocal harmonies of New Zealand band Kora bring a uniquely Pacific feel to their music, but as lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Laughton Kora explains, it’s not easy to attempt to classify their sound.

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you. It doesn’t really matter what genre it is as long as it’s sick, and heavy. We haven’t tried to fuse them together, we just try out an idea and we go ‘oy yeah man, that sounds fat.”

“We’ve got five heads bouncing ideas together and I think that’s what makes the sound of Kora, you got five guys who all like different genres of music but at the same time we know what sounds fat and what sounds heavy and we just pick that out.”

It’s that kind of fluidity, that free-form thinking that has seen the guys try some pretty ballsy moves on stage.

“What we used to do was come up with a riff before we started playing. Never even rehearsed it before and we’d just get on stage and do it. If the audience moved to it, we’d go’ oh yeah it works’, and if it didn’t we’d go through and change things add new parts and stuff and try it again. An audience is a great way to sort of reference if something is working or not.”

Their traditional reggae influences flow through notably sometimes, while other times they scream more of a modern rock sound fused with spacey samples and a harsher, experimental edge. On stage, they have an eclectic mix of instruments and musicians.

“We got, a synth, a keyboard and MPC sample, drums, two guitars and bass and our drummer has sampling stuff as well, and yeah five vocals. There are so many instruments in certain songs we just swap. Just mix it around a bit and make it entertaining for ourselves you know.”

Two of the four related members of the band, Laughton and brother Brad began playing together in the early 1990s in a band called Aunty Beatrice.

“It was my dads fault, we didn’t really have a choice you know. He’d just crack the whip. We started playing pubs when we were really young you know, hiding behind the speakers and stuff, those were the real young days.”

It wasn’t until 2001 that Laughton began collaborating with the ‘token white guy’ in the band, Dan McGruer. By the next year, remaining brothers Francis and Stu were recruited to form the band proper but Laughton credits his performing origins as a strong influence on the bands sound.

“My dad was a real driving force about that, the way he saw it he didn’t want to limit us by just playing one genre. And growing up, getting work playing we had to play in a bunch of different venues. So you’d have to play at weddings, you’d have to play at pubs and every different venue had a different genre.”

The boys have had a pretty successful touring schedule as of late, travelling as far afield as the UK, although the first time around they had some trouble getting the locals to attend.

“The last trip we did our goal was to play to as many English people, people not from New Zealand as possible. It’s really easy to go over there and just play to a bunch of Kiwis. You know in London 80 – 90 percent of the audiences is from New Zealand. You know you don’t want to travel all that way and not play to English people.”

“But this trip was really good, we played to like crowds that were 80-85 percent English. And they’d never seen us before so that was a really good reason for us to go back in November and do the same thing all through Europe again.”

Their eclectic sound seems to have taken off with their newly found European fans.

“It’s been a really good response over there. The sound is so versatile you know, there’s something in it for a whole bunch of different people you know, people can just pick and choose what they like best.”

“I think it was the show itself that really blew a lot of people away. And these were people who’d never seen us before and by the end of the show they were sold.”

Their debut album shot straight to the top of the New Zealand charts upon its release in October last year, and the boys show no signs of slowing down.

“We’re going over to Bali on Monday for a little surf trip over there and then we’re coming over to see you guys [in Australia].”

For more info on the band, head over to their official site @ Kora.co.nz (where the band has been re-invented as Superheroes for the cover of their new album, among other things…)

For this and plenty more on the live music scene in Sydney, head on over to musicfeeds.com.au. Just when you thought Drum Media was the be all and end all of the independent street press in Sydney… (btw it isn’t… check the link, you’ll see what I mean)

Words: Dan Clarke, Interview: Michael Carr

With the X-Files franchise riding a revival of sorts it re-awakens the speculation of life on other planets and little green martians with big elbows. I can’t help being suckered into the idea of extra-terrestrial life, but I refuse to entertain the thought of bogey-coloured midgets with enlarged arm joints. If there are indeed folk out there I reckon they’re exactly like you and I, living on an identikit Earth, and dosed to the tits on a popular culture parallel to ours. However, what passes for popular there is - like themselves - out of this world.

In space, their Metallica have been the one to beat for the past decade. ‘Load’, ‘ReLoad’ and ‘S&M’ courted brand new critical highs, and the band’s meteoric rise in importance was celebrated by the free dissemination of their work on the internet - much to Lars Ulrich’s pleasure. ‘St. Anger’ went platinum a billion times and the ‘Some Kind of Monster’ flick did anything but display Metallica as whinging wotsits. Outer space domination was theirs, though that all went arse over tit this year when they decided to return to a pre-’Load’ era. Thankfully for our own Metallica this translates to a turn in good fortune.

So the word is out: Metallica have returned to their hairier roots. The shredding solos, the proper drums, the big instrumentals and the heavy thrashings stain ‘Death Magnetic’ as it did the first four records. However, this is less a case of money for old rope (which was no bad thing, hairy metallers love a good piece of old rope) and more a break for freedom. Be it the southern blues, Bob Rock or whatever it was holding them back, they’ve absolutely bloody legged it and made a lot of old skool racket on the way.

A heartbeat opens the album, mimicking the chest activity of your frantically hopeful Metallica fan, before blowing like Apocalypse Now all the way til the appropriately-titled closer ‘My Apocalypse’. Sufficed to say, the fan worry gets doused in petrol and set aflame - right along with your eardrums. You’ll walk away from this record wanting to buy yourself new decibels; ‘The Judas Kiss’ alludes to a severe aural battering by dragging in ‘Suicide & Redemption’ at such a low volume you’re checking your ears for blood.

There are a couple of links to ‘The Black Album’ littered around - the most obvious being ‘The Unforgiven III’. Sequels are often unnecessary (don’t get me started on that X-Files film) but trilogies always have the eyes rolling back to the wrong parts of the skull. In print ‘The Unforgiven III’ does just that, but the song itself lends new levels of mood, calm and darkness to both the track’s series and ‘Death Magnetic’. A pretty essential addition, also for those ears.

‘Death Magnetic’ has Metallica riding the lightning once again, however the outer space Metallica don’t have Scotland’s Glasvegas pulling the plug on things. The palms at Mercury Records got a bit sweaty this week and pushed the UK release date of ‘Death Magnetic’ ahead of today’s worldwide release, creating a near-comical battle of indie versus metal in the musical blogosphere. In all dramatic-ness, both bands are out to prove a heck of a lot this week - Glasvegas are making a mark, whereas Metallica are trying to reclaim theirs. Metallica arguably need this more, and to win would really be justice for all.

If ever there was an event awash with ropey media perceptions, surely it’s the spiffy festival we call V.

Last weekend played host to my first ever V, arriving to Chelmsford expecting to dodge cartoon-sized hampers, happy-go-lucky families, tee-total teenagers, and a sickly plethora of pop, all thanks to an indie rag’s festival guide.

However, within minutes of kicking off a tent-pitching session I discovered the V crowd were a leery, cheery, beery bunch not a million miles away from some of my beloved festival crowds.

From then on it was a sure-footed leap into the arena for a live line-up apropos of today’s top notch music offerings. Next year’s diary will undoubtedly have mid-August marked with a big, red, tick-shaped V.

The weekend’s stories and encounters were appropriately caught on film, but the upcoming Reading Festival throws a proverbial spanner in the editorial works. In the meantime nurse the painful wait with this video postcard, which also delineates my V discoveries.

Do check back soon for more of this sort of thing.

Friday 1st August saw electro-rockers Hyrule Mafia tear it up at Kings Cross, Sydney venue Candy’s Apartment, sharing the stage with another local band The Mischief (stay tuned for a review of them soon.)

I was urged by a friend to check these guys out, and I was well impressed by their solid, unrelenting performance. There’s a lot more I want to find out about the band before I take a closer look, so for now here’s a short clip of one of their songs from the night. Enjoy!

(Hyrule Mafia have another gig this Saturday night, details of which can be found on their myspace @ http://www.myspace.com/hyrulemafia)