Archive for November, 2014

A Minute With Lower Spectrum

Monday, November 3rd, 2014

We spend a minute with Lower Spectrum before he kicks off RTRFM’s Courtyard Club series this Friday and find out what’s new…

Describe your music in five words or less.
Raw, honest and deep.

What’s going on in the world of Lower Spectrum?
Remixes, live shows, contracts, hustling and working on a new release.

What motivates you to make music?
Friends, different environments, time, limitations and making something from nothing.

What have been the high and low points of your musical experiences so far?
Highs: Being given the opportunities to play with and support acts I look up to like Andy Stott, Jon Hopkins, Nightmares On Wax, Tim Shiel, Pantha Du Prince, Colin Stetson…

Lows: Having my laptop bounce off stage during my show at BIGSOUND in Brisbane….

What music are you listening to at the moment?
A lot of gospel music– Marion Williams, The Wright Specials and Mo Town

If you were stranded on a desert island, which member of the band would get eaten first?
It would have to be my manager, because there is only me in the band and that could be his cut.

Here’s an opportunity to bitch about something, whether music related or not. What really pisses you off?
The end bits of bananas. That little sneaky stalky bit that is disguised in the bottom of the banana. Gets me every time. What’s with that?

You’re putting together your perfect gig featuring Australian artists. Who would you get to play and where? Feel free to include acts/DJs/bands/venues that no longer exist.
I would make it at the little secret Booyembarra Park auditorium in Fremantle and have a mix of acts like D.D Dumbo, Cosmo Gets, Lewis Cancut, Seekae, Because Of Ghosts, Dizz1, Qua, etc.

Lower Spectrum plays the first of RTRFM’s free 8-week gig series Courtyard Club this Friday November 7 with DJ Craig Hollywood at the State Theatre Courtyard. Head over to the RTRFM website for more details.

Antennas to Heaven: Tinariwen

Monday, November 3rd, 2014

Your weekly submersion into new and experimental music.

Tinariwen play the same brand of scorched earth blues rock that Neil Young and Jimi Hendrix etched their name into throughout the 60s & 70s. This time around though imagine effigies of downtrodden blues emanating not from the high plains of America or the Delta bluesmen of the south, but instead the bone-dry regions of the Sahara desert, an area not unfamiliar with the turmoil of political crisis.

As to be expected Tinariwen sing the language of their country and thankfully so, as these soulful gems would lose something in the English tongue. The unfamiliar vocals take on an interpretive form, combined with the ensemble of guitars a real sense of age in the dust-covered music of their Sahara surrounds.

‘Chaghaybou’ is a barnstorming swirl of sunburnt blues with a consistently driven pulse, a mood enhanced by the exotic delivery of its vocalist and an introduction to the blues of a different origin, one no less compelling than its western counterparts.