Blog — Page 223 of 279

You Am I & Hoodoo Gurus

Enmore Theatre

Sydney, AU

August 31, 2017

If you paid an iota of attention over the last couple of years, it would not have gone unnoticed that when it comes to artists on terra australis, Tex Perkins and his various incarnations are held in high esteem by yours truly.

There are not many unikums like him but Tim Rogers, frontman of You Am I, is a somewhat more flamboyant equivalent.

Having taking a page of two from The Kinks’ Ray Davies in terms of observing everyday occurrences and channeling them through his idiosyncratic reflective and nostalgic lens, You Am I has created a solid back catalogue of audacious and incisive rock’n roll albums that somehow managed to be appealing to both the Australian mainstream and the underground. Credibility is the keyword.

Being the charismatic rock’n roll existentialist he is, Rogers lead his comrades through a loose yet sonically tight and powerful set, embodying and paying homage to the spirit of the cooler parts of the 1970ies without getting caught in retro trappings – dirty glamour paired with a humble attitude on a solid foundation of punk.

A 50-minute tour de force paved with their hits and peppered with a Deep Purple and Cheap Trick cover.

Compared to You Am I, the Hoodoo Gurus are the more refined and polished elder statesmen of Aussie rock. Decked out in their trademark psychedelic shirts, Dave Faulkner and gang mixed hits with b-sides and lesser known gems, executing their set with precision and prompting sing-a-longs galore.

What makes the Hoodoo Gurus remarkable in 2017, and always has, is that each and every one of their offerings sounds fresh and timeless, which speaks volumes about the craftsmanship that informs their songwriting.

A great evening with two iconic Australian bands that complemented each other perfectly and culminated with all protagonists sharing the stage to celebrate Sweet’s Ballroom Blitz.

Stone Sour

Hordern Pavillion

Sydney, AU

August 26, 2017

Touring in support of their latest album, the groove-heavy Hydrograd, Stone Sour descended upon Australia via a stint in New Zealand to an enthusiastic crowd in Sydney.

For the uninitiated: Stone Sour was Corey Taylor’s original band, predating his Slipknot incarnation, and has been his vehicle on and off since 1992, resulting in a back catalogue of six albums each of which was revisited in tonight’s performance.

While one could argue that bands in masks try to deliberately create another layer of distance between the audiences and them, it is refreshing to see how engaging Taylor is with his original band: Working the stage, heavy on banter and both effortlessly and passionately playing the emotional claviature of Stone Sour’s diverse offerings seamlessly shifting from screaming to singing and back, from stripped down acoustic numbers to their heavier songs that give a nod to thrash metal with double bass drum patterns.

Backed by a band of solid musicians comprised of Roy Mayorga, (ex-Soulfly), Christian Martucci, knows for his collaboration with Dee Dee Ramone and the duo Johnny Chow and Josh Rand, the show culminated in the band being joined by brightly coloured air dancers, known from their recent video "Fabuless" with a streamer / confetti gun being made use of extensively.

Stone Sour’s show was an ambitious display that proved that the band has always at times been considered to be a mere side-project, is a powerful entity in its own right that is still evolving and pushing forward with their sound, not being stuck with reaching for the tested, lower hanging fruit.

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Photo courtesy of Live Nation

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
by Mark Manson
Pan Macmillan Australia

It is only after you have lost everything that you are free to do anything.
Nothing is static.
Everything is appalling.
Everything is falling apart.
You have to realize that some day you will die, until you know that you are useless.
Quintessentially, Mark Manson could have joined Tyler Durden’s campaign, adding the inscriptive of Charles Bukowski’s tombstone “Don’t try.”
Manson’s oeuvre is based on the truism that some things in life are just awful and we have to deal with it, no matter what positive thinking mantra is being propagated as the latest fad for the spoiled generations of millenials that are being rewarded for trying.
Despite the profane lingo – one cannot help but think that the crude language is used as a tool to trick to engage an ADHD riddled audience to engage with actual values - the book is inspiring as it is grounded on academic research and a fundamental acceptance of some truths, i.e. that you are not a unique snowflake with unlimited abilities.

It is about embracing your shortcomings, fears and limitations – about acceptance, lessons learned and confronting unpleasant truths to enable yourself to move on to figure out what truly matters and what needs to be disregarded and let go, limiting concern over things that have little to
no meaning or value in your life.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F is both a reality check and a mirror for self-confrontation, devoid of any positive airy-fairy fluff that mainstream media spoon-feeds us to believe in self-help gurus.
As per Manson, life is essentially an endless series of problems, no matter what your approach is.
Instead of wasting time avoiding those problems, Manson encourages the reader to make a deliberate choice to decide for which problems you are willing to sacrifice for.

“The path to happiness is a path full of shit heaps and shame,” Manson quips.

While the book does not reveal a world changing epiphany, it is an at times painfully honest, refreshing and fulfilling read that succeeds at kärchering the grime of denial and delusion off our pneumas to ultimately find the courage and confidence we desperately seek.

While abandoning hope, the book actually is hopeful and does leave you feeling elated.

The nourishing effect of Manson Trojan horsing some unfiltered truths past our filters to inspire thoughts that count.

Psychosis 4:48

Old Fitz Theatre

Sydney, AU

August 19, 2017

Sarah Kane’s 4:48 Psychosis is essentially a 60 minute long stare into the abyss of darkness and struggle of mental illness, walking the thin line between life and death detailing states en route to suicide.

Succinctly distilling the imprisoning and isolating nature of clinical depression. Containing no characters, stage directions or specified settings, the 24 section of Psychosis 4:48 are a theatrical response to the pain of living.

Kane, who established herself an a playwright known for her poetic intensity and pared down language, herself dealt with issues of serious mental illness and committed suicide at 28 shortly after completing this work. In her final note to her agent, she wrote “Do with it what you will, just remember – writing it killed me”. It is not further wondrous that the themes of anger, desperation, humour of the darker kind, redemptive love, sexual desire, pain, torture – both physical and psychological – and death are conveyed in an authentic manner and pervade the bitter and lyrical meditation on the nature of clinical depression.

Director Anthony Skuse approaches the play like a musical score, with Workhorse Theatre Company’s incarnation of Psychosis 4:48 relying heavily on precise rhythmic, cyclic thematic patterning.

The extensive and expert use is made of lighting, which is employed to effectively change the dynamic of the space, helps amplify the formless nature of the dialogues and blurs the line between reality and illusion, actual and internal exchanges and thereby blends it into a single dissolving consciousness carried by a triumvirate of performers, i.e. Lucy Heernan, Ella Prince and Zoe Trilsbach-Harrison, who are able to convey a credible shared view into the mental and emotional environment of the play, reducing unnecessary movements and eliminating boundaries.

Another play in the canon of Red Line Production’s, which aligns with their simple mission statement to bring brave, fearless and dangerously real shows to an audience with simplicity and honesty.

If you ever find yourself in Sydney, you would want to make sure to pay a visit to the Old Fitz Theatre – a place that has been integral to many generations of Australian theatre makers.

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Photos courtesy of Red Line Productions

Vin Diemen “Best of Tassie”

National Art School, Cell Block Theatre

Sydney, AU

August 12, 2017

I sure hope that my recent features on Tasmania and MONA have tickled your interest in one of Australia’s most underrated territories, its wine, outstanding produce and boutique beverages.

If you have not yet planned your trip to Launceston for the 2018 incarnation of MONA FOMA, let me bring a little taste of Tasmania to you. 

Now in its third year, the two-day series “Best of Tassie” in Sydney and Melbourne showcased the unparalleled quality of Tasmania’s food and wine industry with an extended line-up of the island’s leading vintners and providores.

The grapes wines from Tasmania are made from are of a certain elegance and not dissimilar to those informing the renowned European wines, for which the local climate is particularly conducive and suitable to elicit the intense flavours particularly of such wines as Pinot Noir, sparkling wines, Riesling, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Gris.

It is not for nothing that Tassie is held in high esteem for being at the forefront of Australian wine production in terms of quality, specifically its sparkling wines and Pinot Noirs, which is being rewarded on international terrain with accolades.

Tasmania’s first experiment with grapevines resulted in a wine that was shown at a Paris exhibition in 1848.

However, after this early start, the island’s wine production all but disappeared until the 1950s.

The early migrants from Europe recognised the similarities in Tasmania of the soils and climate with the great grape growing regions of their homelands, and began to challenge and disprove the theory that Tasmania was too far south for grapes to ripen.

Today, Tasmania enjoys a global reputation as a leading producer of premium cool climate wines, winning high praise and accolades from wine judges and critics alike – and rightly so.

Dolerite-capped mountains provide the perfect sanctuary to protect Tasmania’s wine growing regions from the harsher elements.  The soil itself is informed by an unique composition of mud- and ancient sandstones and the sediments of local rivers, stream and rocks of volcanic origin.

The fact that Tassie’s climate is one rooted in a moderate maritime one and by prevailing westerly winds off the Southern Ocean adds to the region being not unlike European terrain when it comes to being almost devoid of big temperature fluctuations, ultimately providing the ideal circumstances for the development of varietal flavours, helping to maintain the wine’s freshness and acidity.

Vin Diemen’s 2017’s “Best of Tassie” extravaganza incarnated at the Cell Block Theatre of the National Art School in the heart of Sydney’s Darlinghurst district – an ideal location for the collective of winery representatives, farmers and makers, as it offered the perfects backdrop of festival-goers grazing on distinctly Tasmanian cheeses from Bruny Island Cheese Co.

Bruny Island Cheese Co. is an artisan cheese maker in southern Tasmania, founded by Nick Haddow and their cheeses are all made and matured using traditional techniques and are some of the finest artisan cheeses made in Australia.

The cheeses Bruny Island Cheese Co. makes are very much the product of Nick and head cheesemakers Halsey's travels and training throughout the great cheese producing regions of France, Italy, Spain and the UK.

While inspired by the artisan cheeses from their travels, they do not seek to copy them.

Instead, they make cheeses that are connected to their environment -cheeses with a distinctly Tasmanian character, which served as the foundation of this year’s master classes that offered deeper insights into Bruny Island Cheese Co.’s philosophy and its approach to cheese making, specifically with it comes to working with raw mild, along with recommendations of wine pairings.

More exotic flavours and spices were offered by Shima Wasabi

Specializing in one of the trickiest crops around, the semi-aquatic herb is grown in climate-controlled "cool houses".

Shima Wasabi has researched and perfected the art of growing authentic Japanese wasabi (Wasabia japonica) in Australia and are now the largest producer of fresh wasabi in the Southern Hemisphere. Devoid of colours and preservatives that most horseradish based “wasabi” pastes and powders contain to imitate the real deal, Shima Wasabi offered freshly squeezed wasabi, which was the ideal accompaniment to Huon Aquaculture’s delicious offerings of Tasmanian salmon.

Check out our recent feature “Always Going Upstream Against the Current,” which sheds light on Huon and its delicious ray-finned emissions.

Over hundred wines were on offer for sampling and our favourites included the following drops in the categories:

Sparkling

• Jansz Tasmania Vintage Cuvée 2011
• Moorilla Cloth Label Late Disgorged Sparkling 2006

Riesling

• Bay of Fires Riesling 2016
• Sharmans Riesling 2014

Pinot Gris / Grigio

• Josef Chromy Pinot Gris 2016

Whites

• Moorilla Muse Chardonnay 2015  
• Pipers Brook Chardonnay 2016

Rosé

• Delamere ‘Hurlo’s’ Rosé 2015

Pinot Noir

• Holm Oak “The Wizard” Pinot Noir 2015
• Sharmans Pinot Noir 2013 

Cabernet & Blends

• Moorilla Muse Cabernet Sauvignon Cabernet Franc 2014

Other Reds

• Beautiful Isle Syrah 2016 
• Moorilla Muse Syrah 2013 

Non-wine drinks were proffered courtesy of:

Hartshorn Distillery, a new micro distillery making boutique batches of Vodka and Gin from their own sheep whey.

The Tamar Valley-based producer of international award winning spirits, Strait Brands, with its interesting Tasmanian Pepperberry Vodka.

The Abel Gin Co. with its excellent take on traditional gin,  turning it on its head with a blast of citrus over base notes of the Tasmanian wilderness, and Willie Smith’s Organic apple cider, whose range we have recently covered in a feature and who had a bottle of their fine Willie Smith’s Whisky Aged Cider on offer:

Following maturation times ranging from six to twelve months, individual barrels were selected and blended to achieve a complex, balanced cider that expresses both soft apple cider characteristics and persistent whisky and oak notes. Soft carbonation and no filtration results in a structured cider with textured mouthfeel and lingering warmth.

Another excellent collaboration with Tasmania’s Lark Distillery, which shall be the focus of an upcoming feature.

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Photos by KAVV