Tag Archives: music
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
The soundscape of spectacle
It started with Inception. Or, more accurately, it started with Inception’s third trailer. The music, ‘Mind Heist’, by trailer music specialist Zack Hemsey (yes, such a profession exists), was the world’s first glimpse of a sound that has since dominated our aural landscape. It was an inarticulate, … Read more
Music
John Peel’s carcass: Grindcore at the BBC
Of any figure in music broadcasting no shadow looms larger than that of controversial DJ, John Peel. For over 35 years the late BBC radio DJ’s well-heeled drone, eclectic taste and unwavering commitment to championing new music guaranteed him a dedicated following and he became the benchmark … Read more
Music, Reviews
Claustrophobic and Bittersweet: Tristesse Contemporaine and The Music From the Balconies Nearby Was Overlaid by the Noise of Sporadic Acts of Violence
The Parisian DJ-collective-cum-record label Dirty Sound System – DJs Guillaume Sorge and Clovis Goux, alongside a roster of associated producers and curators – have always been somewhat out of sync with their contemporaries, and this characteristic has usually served them well. In 2003, at the fag end … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
LCD Soundsystem’s discography of a friendship
LCD Soundsystem (2005) 2007. It’s two years since I slouched back to Brisbane from a stint overseas. Luke is the last of my best friends to remain here, in this oversized country town that shaped our university days. I’m surprised he hasn’t yet taken flight: he emerged … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Conceptualised: making albums indivisible
With the trend continuing in the music industry for album sales to drop while singles sales rise, bands are forced to work harder to entice fans to part with an album’s worth of cash. Three recent releases are notable examples of loose concept albums that come matched … Read more
Music, Reviews
Rendering unto Caesar: Dirty Projectors’ Swing Lo Magellan
Until recently, Dirty Projectors traded in a highly idiosyncratic and instantly identifiable form of indie rock. The band’s sole songwriter and explicit leader, Dave Longstreth, is a Yale-trained musician whose songs contain passages as fiendishly convoluted and baroquely formalist as anything in the classical music canon. At … Read more
Issue Ten
KYD No. 10 Teaser: Julia Tulloh’s ‘Lana or Lizzy? Vintage Videos and the Del Rey Debate’
In our second Issue Ten sampler, Julia Tulloh looks at the resounding discussion about Internet-starlet and songstress, Lana Del Rey. Our final instalment of KYD No.10 teasers is just around the corner, so watch this space! It all started when a couple of music videos went viral. … Read more
Column: Art / Music / Theatre
Breaking the first and second rules: talking about Music Club
Image credit: Big Mind Zen Center I recently started Music Club with a few friends. Yes, it sounds nerdy, but hear me out. It’s a monthly meeting, to which each club member brings the new songs that have been dominating their airwaves in the previous few weeks. … Read more
Music
Little Prince, big performance: a message from the cheap seats
For a long time I wasn’t sure that I was a stadium show person. I often found myself let down by costly international acts and blockbusters at Rod Laver Arena, attending shows by definitive artists more for the sense of ‘being there’ than for enjoying their exhausted … Read more
Music, Reviews
Unreal Love: The Magnetic Fields’ Love at the Bottom of the Sea
Stephin Merritt, the musical arch-contrarian behind American pop fabulists The Magnetic Fields, knows a thing or two about artifice. More specifically he understands that, at its most fundamental level, all music is artifice – what separates music (even musique concrète, music created from recordings of natural noise) … Read more
