Boys Noize

Photo credit: Yvan Rodic, Jak & Jil.

Goodbye Melbourne

Photo taken yesterday in Rye, about 2 hours out of Melbourne on the Mornington Penninsula. Look at that blue sky! Note it was warm enough to go without stockings, but not sleeveless.

This weekend is my last weekend in Australia for a while, I'm heading back to my hometown of Wellington, NZ to save some money for next year. I'll be back in Melbourne in January, in time to catch the last of the summer sun and hopefully find a flat and a job before uni starts again.

I will miss Melbourne a lot, I freakin' love this city.

SYN

My friend Emily and I are doing the graveyard shift on Melbourne's SYN radio station tomorrow night, you should tune in! We're on from 2-6am so you can listen in (if you're in the Melbourne region) on 90.7 fm or you can stream it online on SYN's website.

We'll be playing a bunch of our favourite tunes; some new ones, some old ones and generally just having a really good time and hopefully you'll like the music we play too, or maybe discover some new music to fall in love with? I must warn you though, this is our first time doing it so we may be a bit rubbish, but hey, who's really going to be listening other than insomniacs? If you're listening while we're on air, give us a call.

P.S. How fantastic is The Boat that Rocked? It's one of my favourite films to be released this year.

Parklife by the Numbers

So my first Parklife festival is over. I'd love to go again but right now I'm content on recovering from yesterday. I have a thumping headache and my neck and my knees are sore from dancing for 10 hours straight. But I'm not complaining, the whole experience was well worth the $120, so essentially I paid 12 dollars for each hour I was there. $12 to see the Rapture? Bargain. The weather was perfect and I miraculously managed to avoid getting sunburnt. I loved that everyone was in such a good mood, it was a whole day of good vibes and friendly people. I always had room to dance and I never really felt annoyed at anyone for being a douchebag, as always tends to happen at Big Day Out.

Here are some of the things I saw yesterday, by the numbers:

1 x sniffer dog who went straight up to a group of guys who were waiting outside the venue. They had to empty their pockets.

Knightlife

4 x people who were watching Knightlife's set when I arrived at 12.20. They were security guards. It sucks to play first. He played a good set though, it definitely would have been better suited to later in the day.

300 x People who somehow managed to either break down a barrier or jump the fence at the same time and came stampeding through the festival, trying to immerse themselves in the crowd.

1 x Security guard who was chasing after the fence-jumpers.

Countless x people who were escorted from Parklife for not having a wristband. Throughout the day I saw people sprinting away from security guards who had asked to see wristbands.

2 x DJs I heard who played Pon de Floor. Is it this year's Day N Nite?

3 x people wearing Indian headdresses

1 x Drag queen spotted side-of-stage at Mink Engine.

Mimes onstage at Art vs. Science

2 x People from the audience dressed as mimes invited onstage to dance with Art vs Science when they played Parlez-vous Francais? I'm not a fan of their music, but the whole crowd was loving it and the mimes were great at getting the crowd hyped up.

1 x proposition to lick a guy's nipple.

1 x Girl who had a fantastic haircut, she had white blonde hair and it was shaved on one side and was a bob on the other, with the hair length getting longer as it got closer to the front of her face, so the front strands of her hair came down to just past her shoulders. The tips looked like they had been dipped in dye. She had the attitude to pull it off too, as only her and Kate Lanphear could.

Joakim

3 x Bang Gang Deejays watching Joakim's killer mid-afternoon set.

4 x Cut Copy t shirts.

0 x Cut Copy remixes played.

Busy P: so French, so cool.

3 x remixes of Yeah Yeah Yeah's Heads Will Roll were played by various DJs: Purple Sneaker DJs, MSTRKRFT and one other I've forgotten. Busy P also played a remix of Zero in his set.

MSTRKRFT

5 x New friends made after their lovely comments about my new Docs.

1 million x undercuts, on both males and females.

1 x Girl wearing a Christopher Kane gorilla t shirt.

The lighting at Crystal Castles was really good, Alice Glass came onstage carrying a strobe light.

0 x Lyrics I could hear at Crystal Castles, even though I was quite close to the front. It was hard to distinguish the vocoder from the synth. Only the occasional screech. If someone had told me she was just mewing into the microphone, I would have believed it. I really had no idea what she was saying. But Alice Glass has a crazy amount of energy, her performance made up for it. I don't know how she does it night after night, it looks so exhausting throwing herself around for a 45-minute set.

Alice Glass enters the Matrix/just about to jump into the audience.

1 x Full moon, which came out just as Empire of the Sun were starting, it was rather fitting. A bit cult-ish too, with the synchronised dancers on stage.

5 x Girls wearing fur coats or vests. Really? Yesterday was boiling hot!

0 x Fireworks I could see just before the Rapture started their set. I was right up the front and the fireworks were being let off by the river, behind the stage.

The Rapture

2 x Crowd surfs by the singer of the Rapture

1 x Ending the night with the Rapture's No Sex for Ben. Soooo good.

1 x dusty pair of Docs from dancing up a (dust) storm.

How was your Parklife? Any numbers of your own you want to add?

Parklife 09

The lineup for Parklife is for me (the girl who is crazy about dance music) one of the best I have ever seen. It's so good, that I knew there would be some clashes and I would have to pick favourites. My only non-negotiable is seeing the Rapture. It was their song House of Jealous Lovers that lured me into dance music in the first place. It's also because of that song that I have such a fondness for the cowbell.

12pm: Knightlife

Song I need to hear: Crusader and one or two of their Cut Copy remixes

3.30: Joakim

Songs I need to hear: His remixes of Metronomy, Cut Copy, Royskopp and Simian Mobile Disco...

3.45: Shazam

Song I need to hear: His remix of Shooting Stars by Bag Raiders

3.50: The Cool Kids

Song I need to hear: Gold and a Pager

4pm: Busy P

Song I need to hear: Nothing specific, he was great at Rhythm and Vines so I expect he will be again. Any Ed Banger tunes would be good.

4.40: Lady Sovereign

Song I need to hear: Love Me or Hate Me, of course.

4.45: Junior Boys

5.15: MSTRKRFT

Songs I need to hear: Work on You, Street Justice and just about all of his remixes.

5.30: Aeroplane (DJ Set)

Song I need to hear: His remix of Paris by the Friendly Fires featuring Au Revoir Simone. And his Hearts on Fire remix. (So many people on the Parklife lineup have done a Cut Copy remix, I suppose hearing all the remixes will almost make up for the lack of live Cut Copy on Saturday)

6pm: Metronomy

Songs I need to hear: Radio Ladio, Heartbreaker.

6pm: La Roux

Songs I need to hear: Bulletproof, Colourless Colour.

6.30: Crystal Castles

Songs I need to hear: Crimewave, Vanished, Alice Practice.

6.45: Yacht Club DJs

Songs I need to hear: I've seen them a few times since I moved here and they're always lots of fun.

7.15: Erol Alkan

Songs I need to hear: His remixes of Diplo, Justice, Franz Ferdinand, Digitalism, Bloc Party...

7.30: Metric

Songs I need to hear: I dunno, apparently they're good and I'm so out of the loop for not having heard them before?

8pm: Empire of the Sun

Songs I need to hear: Standing on the Shore, Walking on a Dream, We are the People, Half Mast. The rest of the album is rubbish.

8.30: Tiga

Songs I need to hear: Pretty much everything on his album 'Ciao!'

9pm: The Rapture

Songs I need to hear: House of Jealous Lovers, Whoo! Alright, Yeah... Uh Huh

So, yes, timetable dilemmas. But I've learnt to not plan out your day too thoroughly otherwise you worry too much about what you're missing out on, rather than enjoying the day and the music that you do get a chance to see.

For now all I am hoping for is that the weather stays this good for the rest of the week and I can get all of my assignments in before then so I can enjoy the day guilt-free! I'm so looking forward to dancing all day.

Have you seen any of these acts before? Are there any you think that I absolutely must go see? Others that are lame and not worth my time? Did you go to the Perth or Brisbane Parklife this past weekend?

too erotic for the bus!

L-R: Sean, Ash, Eammon, Ellen. Photo by Liam.

This is my favourite photo from last summer, taken at Camp A Low Hum. It reminds me of beers in the sun, watching good music with good friends, warm summer breezes and mid-afternoon naps (a.k.a. The Power Nap) under a tree. You can tell it's summer because my legs have some semblance of a tan (my face doesn't because I always put sunblock on my face, though my nose is a bit pink in this photo). When the polaroid developed, we realised how much it looks like a band photo. Thus, too erotic for the bus! was born. I can't remember who came up with the name, but I have a sneaking suspicion it was Eammon.

Though I've learnt a bunch of instruments throughout the years, I can't play anything more than 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' on any of them. I can't sing for peanuts either, so I think I was given tambourine duties. The other three are all talented musicians in their own right, and they clearly have more experience with band photos than I do. I look like a loon, grinning away in the corner there. They've got the 'cool' thing down better than I do. Each of them have a couple of musical projects on the go, and they're all so lovely and modest about it you wouldn't really know it unless you happened to stumble across one of their gigs.

Sean and Eammon (along with another one of our friends, Chris) join forces to make sweet music in Seth & Merle (download here), Sean's solo project is Seth Frightening, Eammon also plays under the moniker Basketball Nightmare (download here) and Ash plays bass for Over the Atlantic (easily one of my favourite bands to come out of NZ these last few years) as well as creating music as Secret Knives (download here).

As I understand it, Ash has only played a couple of gigs (the first of which was at Rhythm and Vines last year) because he's so shy about it. There's a funny story that I've heard about Ash, I'm not sure exactly how accurate it is, since I wasn't actually there and this might be a case of Chinese Whispers, but apparently at a party his friends put on a Secret Knives song, which Ash didn't recognise at first and said something along the lines of "Is this Interpol? I like it." and it was only when he heard his own voice coming through the speakers that he realised his mistake. I wouldn't really say that Secret Knives sounds like Interpol, but I can maybe hear some elements of them in there, in some of the guitar parts.

Every time I see Sean, Eammon and Ash I bug them to come play a gig in Melbourne. Maybe if I nag them enough it'll happen.

One song I can see myself trashing this summer is 'The Community Service Announcement' by Jonathan Boulet, Modular's latest signing. You can download the song here. I'd heard the song a lot on Triple J, but it was only when Modular announced the new signing that I was able to figure out who the song was by. I love the whimsical feeling of it. There's something about the song that reminds me of all those wonderful things about summer that I mentioned at the top of this post. Do you have any songs that you like to listen to because they remind you of summer?

A friend and I are doing the graveyard shift on Melbourne's SYN, the place where I did the radio course last month. We're doing it on Thursday 8 October 2-6am. I'll be playing a lot of the music I have mentioned on this here blog, including Jonathan Boulet, and some other sweet tunes that I'm loving at the moment. I have no idea how we're going to stay awake, any tips?

What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

CUT COPY - "HEARTS ON FIRE" from Diaspro on Vimeo.