NEXT SPECTACLES SHOW

9 October 2009

Well it's been a while between posts, but we've been busy.

The gig on the 9th of October can only be described as a roaring success, with a showcase of Sydney's best electro-visual acts.

Manky Cranks is one of the best djs I've had the pleasure to get down to. Effortlessly adapting to using CD-Rs (she usually uses vinyl, old-skool), Lil Mankily Cranked out some deep tech and glitched-out goodness. Words don't really do justice, she was utterly awesome.

Yellowbird as usual, were totally out of their minds. Ty climbed on speakers, collapsed, and generally stalked around the stage like an enraged prophet fortelling the end of the world through the medium of punktronica.

Cut Assemble Insert rocked our eye sockets with an incredible blend of eye and ear candy. Props to Tom and Myles for a monumental montage of sound and image, from traffic, to superheroes, to porn.

Finally, we've adjusted the Spex set to take advantage of some of our technology so we can play a seamless, DJ-style show, with no stops. We played for 45 minutes without a break from start to finish, which I think was a bit harder on Jez who has to bash the drums the whole time.

Ben Garden from Grafton Primary was at the gig and said some nice things about our set, at which point we ran to the bathroom before we wet ourselves.

But anyway, to the photographic evidence. Thanks again to Shane who always does a bang-up job behind the lens.

Monday to Thursday

Monday 29th of July

We hit the stage with One Flew East and Trilling Robotics Orchestra.

Due to illness, One Flew East had to play the show sans-drummer, and it clearly showed - their set was less "acoustic" and more "our drummer isn't here".

It looked like they would have to get a ring-in drummer for the Jaeger Uprising final, but at the end of the day he pulled through, and a good thing too. One Flew East's straight up rock is totally held down by the drums at the centre. It was great to see them in full flight on Thursday at the Annandale rather than clearly uncomfortable on the Monday.

Trilling Robotics Orchestra are a conceptual clan who wear animal face masks, blindfolds and make strange dischordant, improvised noise. They're clearly inspired by the new sounds of bands like Animal Collective and maybe even Sigur Ros (one guitarist used a cello bow), but while I can see what they're trying to achieve, I have little patience for the unrehearsed experimentation that was their performance.

They might be capable of great things if they gave their tracks some structure and rehearsed. Unless you're immensely talented, pure improvisation belongs in a garage, not on a stage.

Thursday 2nd July

Winter People put on a stellar performance, and took out the Jaeger Uprising. I proceeded to get wasted and ignore the other bands, except One Flew East - none made a great impression on me, but it probably wasn't their fault. The night and prize belonged to the Winter Peeps.

Congrats to the lot of them, and keep an eye out for the live video I'm editing together of them performing an acoustic version of "My Town" out at Cockatoo Island.

Bands to watch

Well well, according to the Jaeger Uprising Blog, we didn't make it through the second round of the Jaeger Uprising, though neither did Rapids, who I'd describe as a more accomplished act.

We did however, make the Uprising's "bands to watch" list, which for our first real gig is a bit of a boon.

Caught the Paper Scissors at Q bar, who put on a great show, though I was a bit too far off my rocker to really appreciate - it was my lovely lady's birthday after all.

Reggie Watts at the Opera House

Reggie Watts is one of my favourite performers. Ever. I missed out on tickets to his sold-out Sydney Festival run, and was overjoyed when I got my shit together and grabbed some seats for his Opera House show.

If you haven't heard of Reggie, his act combines beatbox, an incredible vocal range, looping and improvisation in a variety of musical styles. As if being an amazing musician isn't enough, he also works in hilarious monologues from an astounding variety of characters and plenty of physical comedy.

Working with just a few loopers, a piano and his voice, Reggie put on the most entertaining solo performance I've seen in both the realms of music and comedy. He effortlessly surpassed my favourite Boosh or Conchords tunes with songs he just made up on the spot.

For example, in a single heartfelt ballad, Reggie sang about a self-satisfied plumber, ladies carrying handbags and drinks onto the dancefloor, existential observations about the universe and the meaning of love. It might be hard to believe just reading that random list, but it was unbelievably funny.

Long story short - Reggie Watts is borderline indescribable, utterly entertaining and fiercely strange. Words can't do him justice, nor can the many videos of his performances.

You just have to see him for yourself.

Battles at the Opera House

Battles are one of the most beloved experimental, instrumental, and just plain mental bands in the big old modern world.

I picked up Mirrored as soon as I heard ear-bender Atlas, and I've categorically failed to translate my fandom of that album into seeing them live, until last Sunday.

Seated at the Opera House wouldn't be my first choice of venues to see them - I would have been happy with the Enmore - but a Sydney Opera House flooded with light art as part of Brian Eno's Luminous festival?  Perfect.

However, the Battles lads got off to a slow start with Race: Out - it's my favourite track, and the guitars just sounded muddy.  But afterwards everything seemed to fall into place, and the thick bass loops, the demented carnival of keyboards, the stabbing guitars and the ferocious drumming that make Battles the unique freaks they are coalesced into their glorious cacophony.  

The set was over all too quickly, though they played pretty much all of Mirrored, extended their tracks, and played a few I didn't recognise.

We were high in the loft, which fortunately afforded a great top-down view of Battle's pedal array, and the sound was generally stunning after the brief initial sludgery.

Unfortunately the finale wasn't the ecstatic climax the rest of the show had been.  The first song after the encore, which I think was new, was absolutely epic, but the final track was more of a pretentious wank than the rest of the set.

Openers Palace of Fire, aka the original two thirds of Wolfmother were really quite good, apparently scoring the gig by sending in a demo to Brian Eno himself.  It was only their fourth show, and although the singer isn't really the greatest, for their fourth ever performance they roared with some truly heavy and credible rock and roll, which they should do really, given their pedigree.  Definitely will be interesting to hear what develops from Palace of Fire as opposed to the reconstituted Wolfmother.

Spectacles live: fBi studios and The Annandale

On the 18th of May we went into the fBi studios to guest program and perform live.

Here's the video of Ghost Town performed acoustically - it's a bit different to the recorded version...




A few days later on the 20th we played the Annandale. Here's the full band version of Ghost Town.