Hey guess what, you guys!? We made up a game! It’s called, "Get A Local Comedian To Interview Another And In Two Weeks Time Get The Latter To Choose Another To Interview, And So On And So Forth Until Someone Gets Bored Or The Whole Thing Disappears Up Its Own Arse Like So Many Attempted Regular Columns." The interviews can take whatever form the interviewer chooses; a straight up feature, a Q&A, a parent-teacher conference, a hypothetical cooking show, aaannnnd cetera.

Last time we watched on in a confused kind of puzzlement as Ryan Withers threw some suggestive phrases at Shane Matheson. This week Shane was charged to pass-it-on, and he picked fellow Sydney comedian Nick Capper. Nick's been doing stand-up for only a year and a half, but has quickly become a crowd favourite. According to his bio, his style is unique, sometimes confusing and always funny as hell. His answers to Shane's questions don't disprove this allegation...

Posted by steph in Gatecrashers, Words

Tags: Adelaide Fringe Festival, comedy, comedy gatecrash, melbourne international comedy festival, Nick Capper, Rodney Todd, Ryan Withers, Shane Matheson, the comedy store, white blood cells

So maybe by now you’ve heard about this Secret Garden Festival, right? If anything you’ve heard that it involves camping on a farm a few hours from Sydney, that it’s a fundraiser, and that the ticket cost covers free booze all night… As it stands right now, the lineup features Deep Sea Arcade, the Thundamentals, Emma Davis, Matt Corby and 104 Collective (ft. Seekae, Ghoul, etc etc…) – those guys we told you all about before.

We got the lowdown from co-founder Matt Emsell in the only interview they’ll be giving. You can find it after the jump, which you can find after this important documentary that went up on their site last week.

Posted by steph in Causes, Music

Tags: 104 beat collective, Deep Sea Arcade, emma davis, Ghoul, Matt Corby, Sarah Hilt Foundation, Secret Garden Festival, Seekae

Today marks the official beginnings of Tiny Stadiums Festival, a mecca of experimental art and performances that takes place in small-ish settings through Erskineville for two weeks of each year. It’s a PACT Theatre production curated by Quarterbred which focuses on “live and site-specific art projects” by a bunch of local emerging artists, whose variegated happenings range from symposiums to installations, from photosohots to film projects, from music to an entire exhibition devoted to the art of the up-do hairstyle.

Our favourites include the Sexy New Urban Design Team, where Applespiel will be constructing their own version of Erskineville, pointing out the suburb's faults and attempting to fix them; This Waste Land by Hoof and Antler, who mix music and live art scores with ‘the Wasteland’ by T.S. Elliot; Nature League Inner West - a performance in a greenhouse inspired by tiny inner-city parks, pot-plant covered balconies and jungle themed lounge rooms"; and the Hipster-Doofus Party where you get to dress up as an idiot hipster in fluro hats and stupid glasses and retro geometric prints but with even more irony this time. Actually, that last one sounds horrible and we probably won’t go near it.

But do head along to Tiny Stadiums - it's open now but launches officially with a party on February 23 from 6:30pm at Erskineville Town Hall, and you can click here for more on that.

Posted by steph in Art, Festivals, Uncategorized

Tags: amy spiers, applespiel, bababa international, emma ramsay, hoof & antler, keith pettigrow, Luke Tipene, pact theatre, quarterbred, tiny stadiums festival, zoe meagher

Remember that night you and your friends decided to start an experimental DJ collective? That pub dinner that seemed to never end? The growing excitement as the plan fleshed out, with forks jabbed in the air at one another in exclaimed punctuation? "Yes!" The slammed closed fists on the hard oak table that made the now-forgotten chips bounce worryingly close to the side of the plate? "YES!" Slapping the closest member of your revolutionary new 'Algonquin Round Turn-Table' -  you had named the collective in a moment of what you would refer to from then on as Clarity Hilarity - until he spluttered up his schnitzel in appreciative laughter? "This is it! This will be what makes us! WE HAVE ARRIVED!"

And then remember the deafening silence that ensued? That horrifying blank vacuum response of Nobody Caring? You didn't know what went wrong - but we do. What went wrong is that your thing didn't include members from Seekae, Ghoul, Cleptoclectics and 48/4.

Oneofour Beat Collective "provides a locus of activity, and a context in which to explore the intricacies of beatmaking - everything from swing to bounce, from compression to synthesis." I found this mixtape download through the New Weird Australia facebook page; it was mixed and compiled by Hamish Dixon of 48/4, and it appears to be Volume 2?

Download Oneofour Beat Collective Mixtape Vol.2

They're all set to play a similarly mysterious festival - stay tuned please...

Posted by steph in Daily, Music

Tags: 104 beat collective, 48/4, cleptoclectics, Collectives, Ghoul, new weird australia, Seekae

Only five more sleeps until Pecha Kucha for Haiti goes down, the first globally synchronised event the PK peeps have attempted. It’ll be a 24 hour extravaganza in over 100 cities, involving 2000 seven minute slideshows by people from every creative corner conceivable - artists, architects, designers, writers, engineers, but this time with a special focus on those with experience in disaster areas. 100% of all profits raised will be going to Architecture for Humanity, helping to rebuild Haiti. For more on the cause, and for an example of how the teeny TED-type slideshows work, you can click right here.

Each city involved will be connected by a presentation ‘WAVE’ which will be starting where Pecha Kucha was born, at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo. It'll then move West from city to city, dropping in to each group for ten minutes for a video link-up and live presentation which will be streamed online for 24 hours. You'll also be able to view (and donate to) individual presentations online.

Phew, okay, the local angle - the Sydney event is being held at the MCA on February 20 from 7:30pm. It usually takes them months to organise these things but this time they had just two weeks - they confirmed the full presentation lineup on Friday, and you can find it right after that there jump. Tickets are only $20, but if you're poor (and/or lazy and/or agoraphobic) you can watch the live streaming on the main site and donate through FirstGiving from the comfort of your very own lazy fat agoraphobic chair. TECHNOLOGY!

Posted by steph in Causes, Events

Tags: architecture for humanity, Haiti, MCA, Pecha Kucha, pecha kucha sydney

Not being a straight up music blog, unfortunately we don't ever have enough time to do justice to all the music we're sent. So we've come up with an idea called Do It All At Once And Get It Over With. This actually might be the start of a regular column where we go through everything we've been sent over the past two weeks, pick out our favourites, and offer them up incase you missed them... YOUR MOVE, GOOGLE.

Jonathan Boulet :: North To South East To You - Latest track from the Modu-hyped Jonathan Boulet. It's hard to see Kanye getting as excited about this one, but actually it's kind of stunning regardless.

The Small Hours :: Sleeping Through Alarms - "Wonder pop lords the Small Hours are back with their latest single, 'Sleeping Through Alarms'. It's [make it sound good]." Purveyors of Sydney's most hilarious press releases, the smallest Hours deliver again - a little bit Dappled, a little John Steel and a little Youth Group.

Last Dinosaurs :: As Far As You're Concerned - Harks back to the start of the Red Riders/Van She era, no? With a bit of frenetic Brooklyn pop thrown in? Sort of like what would happen if someone from Lost Valentinos produced a track by someone who supported Matt & Kim? ...Well GUESS WHAT! THAT HAPPENED!

Frightened Rabbit :: Swim Until You Can't See Land - Frightened Rabbit. Nuff said. Happy Friday!

Posted by steph in Music, giveaway

Tags: #beingamusicblog, frightened rabbit, google, Jonathan Boulet, Kanye West, Last Dinosaurs, the small hours

I couldn't find anything about Debra "HARRY" Barry except what was in the press release, which told me she’s a former pro soccer player from NSW who has her first solo exhibition coming up. Now that would be interesting enough (an artist who can SPORT??!), if it weren’t slightly overshadowed by the fact that she only started making art around two years ago in prison, after being falsely accused of the kidnapping and attempted murder of her ex-partner. So there's that.

There’s also this: the exhibition is the result of 12 months and two million individual marks of ink on paper, with her's an attention to detail so compulsive the curator had to tell her to settle down and rest the wrist and eyes before she did lasting damage to both. Only now that the exhibition is complete has she recovered from the strain.

Her art training is limited to her time in prison, where she was given pens, paper and nine months to somehow fill. The artwork itself is astounding, fatiguing and above all, troubling. Being accused of attempted murder; the death of a long-term partner; having guns held to her head; substance addiction; witnessing an inmate set on fire – her past has required an escapism so complete that she’s immersed herself fanatically to dots and lines from the nib of a pen that realise form in fairytales, dragons and magic.

'Sasquatch’s Perceptions' features fifty works, and opens at Enmore's Hardware Gallery on February 18. It runs until

Posted by steph in Art, Events

Tags: Debra Barry, enmore, hardware gallery, Harry