GiggySound

TO THE POINT

It was a big year for independent music at the 2011 ARIA Awards, with Boy & Bear and Gotye walking away with five and three awards, respectively. Boy & Bear snagged the coveted awards of Best Adult Alternative Artist, Breakthrough Artist – Single, Breakthrough Artist – Album, Best Group and Album Of The Year. Probably due in part to their insanely popular hit Somebody That I Used To Know (which also won Single Of The Year and Best Pop Release), Gotye and Kimbra were announced as Best Male and Female Artist. And doing Perth proud, Drapht picked up his first ARIA Award for Best Urban Album for The Life of Riley, while Birds Of Tokyo were voted Australia’s Most Popular Artist. Nice work guys!

LET IT FLO

The flame-haired Florence And The Machine are coming back to Australia to celebrate the release of their sophomore album Ceremonials. After the release of their multi-award winning debut album Lungs, fans have been eagerly anticipating her new songs and Florence has certainly delivered. Ceremonials is a stunningly accomplished album that debuted at #1 on the ARIA charts upon its release and its set to reignite the world’s love affair with Florence And The Machine. They’ll be playing at the Burswood on Thursday, May 17; tickets go on sale Wednesday, December 7, from Ticketek.

DOCUMENT THIS DATE

Matt King and Joe Froud are coming to town. Who? Document One, that’s who! The producer duo are quickly becoming a serious force to be reckoned with in the dubstep scene. They’ve received shitloads of praise from the likes of Borgore, Bar 9, Excision and Datsik just to name a few. Document One play Big Ape this Saturday, November 26, at Shape. $15 on the door. It’s gonna be huge.

COOL SHJIT

Space-rock San Franciscans Wooden Shjips are bringing their sonic explorations to town oh so soon. They’re all about the smatterings of kraut-rock, psych, fuzzed out guitars, feedback blasts and rock-solid driving drums. Listening to Wooden Shjips has been likened to “maboroshi”, the Japanese phenomenon similar to seeing a mirage of hallucinating in time. The lads hit Perth on Friday, March 30, at The Bakery. Mental Powers and French Rockets will be on supporting duties. Tickets are available from lifeisnoise.com, nowbaking.com.au, Heatseeker, 78 Records, Mills and Planet. Expect some mind-shredding beats from their latest record West.

CHRISTMAS WITH ROCKWIZ

Everyone loves a bit of RocKwiz on Saturday nights on SBS and now you’ll be able to have RocKwiz come with you everywhere! The RocKwiz family have teamed up with Liberation Music to wish you a very merry Christmas by putting out RocKwiz The Christmas Album. You can get your mittens on the CD or the red vinyl edition which is full of Julia and Brian along with the RocKwiz Orkestra and more from this Friday, November 25. If you’re a die-hard fan, you can check out Julia Zemiro and Brian Nankervis and the expanded RocKwiz Orkestra when the they hit town on Saturday, December 17, at Perth Zoo, for the RocKwiz Christmas Tour 2011. Tickets are selling out at a mighty speed so hit up Ticketek quick smart.

BODY TALK

Perth, are you ready to get physical? Well, you better bloody be because the fitness freak herself Olivia Newton-John is bound for our town and she wants to hear your body talk! On Friday, February 24, fans will pull on their neon lycra best and boogie on down to the Burswood Theatre for A Summer Night With Olivia Newton-John, a celebration of the star’s illustrious four decade career. With support from Jon English, Newton-John will take to the stage to perform some of her biggest hits, including Hopelessly Devoted and Xanadu, promising a great night of classic sing-alongs. Tickets are on sale now from Ticketek.

GEORGIE PORGIE

George Michael may have been in the news for all of the wrong reasons of late, but in good news he is headed down under! Set to take centre stage at Sandalford Estate in The Swan Valley on Saturday, March 31, next year, Michael promises to rock Perth’s socks off on his Symphonica tour. Featuring a 40 piece orchestra, the Symphonica tour will see Michael revisit his most popular tracks, which are sure to get punters up and dancing. Tickets go on-sale on Friday, December 2, via Ticketek.

NEEDS MORE SOUND

Festivals are being cancelled and down-sized all over Australia of late, but obviously Soundwave is not feeling the pinch as they’ve just added another swag of bands to take their line-up to almost 90 acts. Add reformed ‘90s rockers Bush to headliners list, as well as In Flames, The Black Dahlia Murder, Holy Grail, Hyro Da Hero, These Kids Wear Crowns, In This Moment, Black Tide, Kids In Glass Houses, Fireworks, Conditions and Cherri Bomb. Head to soundwavefestival.com, Oztix and Ticketek for tickets.

A SWINGING CHRISTMAS

On Wednesday December 21, the modern French restaurant Bouchon Bistro in Wembley will host the dinner show A Swinging Christmas.

Stars of the show Earl Cole, Chelsea Gibson and the Earl Cole dancers will provide the entertainment. They’ll be playing some of the Christmas classics including Winter Wonderland, White Christmas, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.

$110 will get you a ticket to the show, which also includes a 3 course dinner. Alternatively, book a table of six or more and the price drops to $100 per person.

Seating is strictly limited so get in quickly to enjoy your ‘Swinging Christmas’ with a touch or Parisian charm.

For more details visit Earl Cole’s website.

BIG-ISH DAY OUT

As most festival fans in Perth are fully aware by now, the 2012 Big Day Out has been completely shaken up. Still set to take place on Sunday, February 5, the event has instead moved to Brownes Stadium in Lathlain, and headline act Kanye West has been cut from the event, while Mariachi El Bronx and Hilltop Hoods will also be skipping the Perth leg of the tour. Joining remaining headliners Soundgarden and Kasabian are the newly announced Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Nero Live, The Vaccines, Bassnectar, Cavalera Conspiracy, Regurgitator, Drapht, Kimbra, Bluejuice, Tonite Only, Abbe May, ShockOne and the Triple J Unearthed winners The Growl.
Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk’s BDO Vert Jam has also been revealed with The Kings Of Vert featuring Elliot Sloan, Alex Perelson, Renton Millar, Juergon Horwarth and Sam Beckett taking on the Legends Of Vert in Trevor Ward, Mick Mullhall, RJ Barbaro, Nathan Beck and Adam Luxford. The Perth Big Day Out will now be held across one main stage without a D barricade, a Boiler Room stage, green stage, skating stage, a giant water slide and more. As such the price has dropped to $165 (+bf).
Big Day Out’s Perth promoter Ken Knight called the X-Press office last week to explain the changes. Citing long-term issues with the Town Of Claremont over noise restrictions at their showgrounds, Knight says Brownes Stadium is a great venue since it’s only five kilometres out of the city, surrounded by trees and has excellent infrastructure such as nearby train station and Orrong Road. He says the shutting down of the Boiler Room stage this year while M.I.A. was still performing was one of the decisions that led to the change of venue. “Basically there was no way we could put on an event where someone was going to hand you a noise abatement notice and say ‘that’s it folks, you can’t see Soundgarden’ – how do you explain that to 40,000 people and what’s their reaction going to be? If people want to get the full event back and shake the Dullsville tag, they should be writing letters to stop festivals from getting run out of venues.”