Blog — Page 236 of 283

Tash Sultana

Ivy Courtyard

Sydney, AU

April 16, 2017

Courtyard’s annual Easter party at Sydney’s Ivy stepped it up this year with easily one of the biggest lineups in the history of the event.

Leading the charge is one of the hottest artists in Australia right now:

Tash Sultana.

Following a breakthrough in 2016, Sultana has continuously sold out her national shows and continues to do so internationally.

Tash Sultana is a DIY one-woman live show, singer / songwriter, who defies categorization.

Yes, there is reggae, hip hop, indie pop, not quite alternative rock – all rolled up and served as a well-calibrated, seemingly improvised multi-layered mélange with her intricate vocal arrangements and sophisticated pronunciation and intonation as the cherries on top. 

Loose, mellow psychedelic harmonizing with unlikely instrumentals weaves through her songs, yet there is an underlying structure and her radiating presence make the songs come alive and serve as the red thread to the narrative of her very own world.

We are talking vibes.

As in – once you let loose, commit to tumbling down the rabbit hole, do not be afraid to be faced with manic and darker shades and it will be fine.

An ultimately empowering experience.

Sultana began her career in Melbourne, Australia, “busking,” or performing on city streets, which informs her authentic, intense and immersive live performances where she shines and seems totally at ease and peace with herself, no matter if she is beat boxing, singing, playing flute, guitar, trumpet or what have you, all delicately orchestrated and looped together in real time.

She is fearless and it translates in the connection she strikes with the audience.

She self-released her debut Notion on her own label, Lonely Lands Records, which I recommend you to check out for yourself.

For more information, tour dates of her upcoming North American tour and samples of her songs, peep:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn8phH0k5HI 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQN1piSqAmk

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Photos by KAVV

Peking Duk

Enmore Theatre

Sydney, AU

April 22, 2017

Formed in Australia’s capital Canberra, Peking Duk are an electronic music duo made up of disc jockeys and music producers Adam Hyde and Reuben Styles, formerly of Rubycon. 

Armed with a string of platinum-minted singles, such as 'High', 'Take Me Over', 'Say My Name', and the Elliphant featuring 'Stranger', the Clowntown tour saw Peking Duk’s epic audio-visual spectacular descend upon the sold out Enmore Theatre.

Having just returned from successfully headlining festivals overseas, a video message from Shane Warne opened the proceedings to herald their homecoming followed by Wu Tang’s “I like it raw”, before Peking Duk unleash their trademark mélange of house blended with bass-heavy down beats on a solid foundation of key live show ingredients, i.e. animated visuals, drops and an elaborate light show, which sees them appearing behind their DJ desks as silhouettes.

What makes Peking Duk in a live environment a more enjoyable experience is the combination of their showmanship, an absence of ego and the fact that the main protagonists are busy having fun themselves, which translates seamlessly to the audience, whose enthusiastic responses fuel their antics, thereby creating a party perpetuum mobile of sorts.

Peppering their set with extracts from well known, tested and tried mainstream hits and appearances of special guests Ian Ooze and Mallrat, the due works a broad field of diversity and experiments with different sounds while always keeping an eye on big hooks. Their Andrew Wk-esque crowd interaction in tandem with epic drops, textures and grooving melodies go a long way, which effortlessly elicits enthused reactions from the dazzled crowd and creates a frenzied atmosphere and rollicking good time that does not let up until the last confetti cannon and stream of smoke have been fired and the last strobe light has shut off.

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Photos by KAVV

The Tea Party

Star City

Sydney, AU

April 21, 2017

Since the Canadian three piece’s inception in the early-‘90s, the Tea Party has pursued a singular epic sound melding middle-eastern influences with cacophonous power for what has become widely dubbed as ‘Moroccan roll’.

Their eight album spanning catalogue defiant of categorizations, balanced psychedelic and a myriad of other influences as they evolved from a heavy and bluesy band taking pages from the books of Led Zeppelin and Jim Morrison to incorporating electronica, psychedelic tones and noises, thereby becoming a progressive boundary pushing band while not losing appeal for their core audience.

Their latest guise saw the Tea Party perform with Sydney’s Youth Orchestras at the Star Events Centre Sydney, an Orchestral Show that has not been performed outside of Canada since 2002.

The show has been updated from its Canadian origins to incorporate a broad range of their bombastic songs and fan favourites from across the band’s career.

Under the directorate of conductor Marc Quellette, and the incorporation of instruments such as Oud, Sitar, Qanoun, Hurdy Gurdy, Theremin, Rabob, Tabla and many unusual and rarely seen percussive instruments, the symphonic treatment re-examined the songs in a different light and shaped a new story for each song, making the two-hour set flow and embedding the trio’s velvety and at times dark and mystical sonic arrangements in different contexts for each song.

With Sydney Youth Orchestras having honed their craft as part of Vivid Sydney (Intel, Ignite Dance Anthems), Carols in the Domain and the BBC Proms Festival and with the SYO musicians thriving on music and arts collaborations, the symphonic treatment seamlessly fused with the Tea Party’s DNA and lent their performance a dramatic and epic proportion, that made the evening a sensual experience which was further enhanced by Star City’s integrated audio-visual, lighting, production and its bombastic state-of-the-art sound system, one that is revered as one of the best in Australia.

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Photos by KAVV

Suggs: My Life Story in Words and Music

Enmore Theatre

Sydney, AU

April 19, 2017

In Suggs: My Life Story in Words and Music, Graham McPherson, the frontman of the seven-piece ska pop ensemble Madness and sometime DJ and television host, takes to the stage in an amusing, and a times moving, theatrical solo show that combines elements of comedy, a play and music hall.

Suggs’ performance feeds of his willingness to open up and his no-holds, tongue-in-cheek approach to story telling, whose starting point is the demise of his father, a man he hardly knew.

We are catapulted back to the grime of the streets of 1970ies Soho, his acent to rockstardom and entertained by insider stories that shed light on what really happened behind the surface.
Underlined and accentuated with the musical emissions and uncalled for interjections by his sidekick Deano, Suggs reminisces, tells funny anecdotes and performs cover versions and stripped down renditions of his own emissions.

McPherson’s charisma along with his experience as a performer and raconteur carries the autobiographical monologue along and makes it an engaging show, which is in essence an intimate memoir with an emphasis on personal revelations.

McPherson’s reflective, self-deprecating, often ironic yet never sarcastic take on things and his cheeky swagger lend the stories authenticity.

His anecdotes are well-paced / phrased, calibrated to circumvent nostalgia and sentimentality and his punchlines are delivered with the timing of a seasoned standup.

Suggs: My Life Story is a theatrical companion piece to the Madness shows, who are currently touring Australia, and while ample references are made to the constituents of his outfit, being a connoisseur of the band is not a prerequisite for having an enjoyable evening with the insights of Suggs.

My Life Story in Words and Music will be in Perth at the Astor Theatre on Saturday April 22 and in Melbourne at the Comedy Theatre on Monday April 24.

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Image from Suggs McPherson website

Cool for Summer Festival

Olympic Park Sports Centre

Sydney, AU

April 15, 2017

Ah, social media.

Rooted in the broader Web 2.0 landscape, it helped engineers, entrepreneurs, and everyday people reimagine the role that technology could play in information dissemination, community development, and communication.

While the technologies invoked by the phrase social media have a long history, what unfolded after the dot-com crash pretty much reconfigured socio-technical practices in significant ways and opened doorways to new worlds of interactivity, reflecting values and norms of the network and users who embrace the tools.

Cool For Summer is a festival for what is euphemistically referred to as  “connected generation”, i.e. the youngster who cannot put away their mobiles. 

Featured performances included American violinist, dancer, performance artist and composer Lindsey Stirling, BBC presenters Dan & Phil, internet personality Nash Grier & Friends, Australian YouTuber Tyde Levi and In Stereo, electronic music act Mashd N Kutcher, Vine alumni Hayes Grier, musical artist Mahogany LOX, vocalist and Viner Alec Bailey, composer and Emblem3 frontman Wesley Stromberg, YouTuber Tana Mongeau, Marcelo, teen boy band Kid Zr0 & Take Two plus local influencers.

Each artist had their own full set and it was an interesting spectacle especially since literally all protagonists had been unbeknownst to your humble narrator, which after exchanges with some of which did not prove to be a massive loss.

However, the target audience of the event, that being underaged enthusiasts most of which under the careful watch of their parents, were thrilled to meet their heroes in the third dimension, with reactions ranging from uncontrolled shrill screaming to their parasympathetic receptors being activated by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and resulting in their lachrymal glands welling up, i.e. tears of joy were commonplace.

The event was both a celebration and testament to digital life having become an alternate universe with real life implications in everyday life and the reach blogebritiies and status internet personalities and their social media emissions have.