The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
NEWS
X-Press and The Music Perth have merged. The July 1 issue from this last Wednesday was the last print edition of The Music’s Perth arm, and will now be fully digital going forward while becoming X-Press’ print portal. X-Press will continue to be published fortnightly. The Music Perth’s editor Dan Cribb penned a farewell to the publication speaking with past editors and eulogizing its nine-year run which you can read here.
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Headline acts are getting old. Or at least so says the data assembled by The Economist amidst the deluge of Glastonbury talk over the last week. The average age of a festival headliner (using the age of the solo artist or the lead of a band) was just over 30 in 1996; now, it’s over 40. Glastonbury’s three headliners ran the spectrum of generations; Florence Welch is only 28, Kanye West is 38 and Roger Daltery of The Who is 71. It comes as no surprise seeing as fewer artists capture the zeitgeist in their salad days, and the demand for headliners to top the bills of the absurd number of festivals, combined with dwindling royalty figures and the lucrative allure of the touring market has brought about the reunion culture of legacy acts that dominates today.
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Speaking of reunion culture, English comedian / writer Stewart Lee has been announced to curate next year’s ATP 2.0 Festival in North Wales next April. The event will follow ATP Festival’s return to the UK — and the first under this nebulous 2.0 banner — Nightmare Before Christmas, which takes place at the end of November. Though given that line-up is largely free of the usual reunion types — Courtney Barnett, Built to Spill, The Album Leaf and Lightning Bolt are all towards the top — perhaps ATP’s all about the salad days.
READ
Where Have All the Music Message Boards Gone? | Noisey
“Mess+Noise, “A Local Music Magazine dedicated to showing Australian music in a different and evocative light,” hasn’t updated for a month, but its messageboard, nicknamed the Shame Cauldron for its boarders’ uncompromising attitudes, is still simmering. It’s the most visible example in Australia of the decline of music messageboards. Anybody could tell you why they’re dying — the people entering the music industry now came up on Tumblr and Twitter, reblogging and retweeting each other endlessly with additions to the discourse, or on Facebook with private groups sharing bangers and turning over festival lineups, or on subreddits like /r/music, listentothis, hiphopheads etc., upvoting quips about Kanye West – but why does it matter?”
“Is it fair to poke fun at Murphy for cashing in on his cred? As an indie-label impresario, you never go Full Brand, right? Or do we just accept that this is the music industry and culture we live in now? “This is an industry that makes zero sense. It made zero sense ten years ago and somehow we’re [DFA Records] still chugging along, doing the weird thing that we do,” Murphy said in a 2013 interview with Billboard. “As long as we just hang out and don’t do terrible things that seem gross I’m happy.””
How Video Games Changed Popular Music | The New Yorker
“It’s hard to listen to some of these decades-old sounds and not feel a sense of giddy nostalgia. This fall, Data Discs will reissue the soundtrack for 1992’s beat-’em-up classic Streets of Rage 2 as a deluxe vinyl edition. It’s a spellbinding document of its time, full of the composer Yuzo Koshiro’s chirpy interpretations of the era’s bleeding-edge sounds: scaled-down club tracks, a nod to Public Enemy’s “Rebel Without a Pause,” an almost note-perfect interpolation of Inner City’s “Good Life.” It’s the sound of a familiar, age-old musical story: cherished genres translated into new idioms, young visionaries butting up against someone else’s constraints. It was the first time some heard techno, and it was the music they had been waiting for all along.”
The Last Ramone: Marky Carries the Punk Rock Banner | Observer
“All four original Ramones are dead. But the drummer for most of their records, Marky Ramone, who replaced Tommy from 1978–1983, was booted for alcohol abuse and band dysfunction for a few years and then rejoined in 1987 and remained until the end, including induction into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. Marc Bell was also a founding member of Dust, played with Wayne County and was an original Voidoid while Richard Hell invented the punk rock look. Born in Brooklyn, lord of the East Village, King of New York. We ate at DBGB’s.”
LISTEN
Caspian — Sad Heart of Mine
Caspian have always played the kind of post-rock that requires patience. Yes, there are build-ups and crescendoes and tremolo picking and pretty pianos, but where your standard fare Mogwai emulator would throw those elements around willy nilly, Caspian experts at moderation. When those tools are wielded well as on Sad Heart of Mine, the result is an exalting moment of serenity. This is the way great music is supposed to feel.
Hope Drone — The Chords That Thrum Beneath The Earth
The latest cut from Cloak of Ash certainly doesn’t feel ten minutes long, which is a credit to the maturation of Hope Drone’s songwriting between their last record and their upcoming Relapse debut. The opening three minutes of brooding guitars make for some of the most ominous music released this year, and the explosion of blackened fury that follows is so compelling and nuanced it both embody and transcend that genre’s tropes. I’ve got a feeling Cloak of Ash is going to be one of the best albums of the year.
WATCH
Dumbsaint — Cold Call
DUMBSAINT — Cold Call — 2015 Short Film from Dumbsaint — Music & Film on Vimeo.
In a culture where effort is uncool, Dumbsaint’s ambition is admirable. Cold Call is the first track from from the Sydney outfit’s forthcoming long-player, Panorama, in ten pieces, and with the song’s debut comes an accompanying short film, a small portion of the 60 minute film that will accompany the full record. It’s beautifully shot, albeit a little student-feeling, and the song itself is a nervous and frenetic whirlwind of clashing guitars. Remarkably, the effort was self-funded; it’s reassuring to know that in a culture as small, insular and unprofitable as Australia, there are artists like Dumbsaint dreaming big ideas and following through. Panorama, in ten pieces. out August 7 and available for pre-order now through Bandcamp.
