Blog — Page 238 of 283

Tash Sultana

Metro Theatre

Sydney, AU

April 1, 2017

Let me introduce you to Natasha, known professionally as Tash Sultana, a Australian one-woman band that takes multitasking to the next level with her seemingly endless musical range of guitar playing, looping, percussion via a range of means, mandolin, piano, flute, trumpet, beat boxing, electronic arrangements and her exquisite vocal delivery, which runs the gamut from throaty to fairy-esque.

The solid foundation of her songs is reggae-folk and independent electronica with a myriad of sophistically arranged and orchestrated layers of dreamy soundscapes that weave in and out of and permeate the DNA of her songs.

Fully immersed in her performance both physically and metaphysically, the self-taught twenty-one old channels something ethereal that transfixes herself and sends the audience in a trance-like state.

Petite in statue, Tash performs with a warm, unpretentious confidence, self-evidence and ease that suggests a priori that she was born to do create her very own lane.

What sent goosebumps to your humble narrator is when Tash delved into psychedelic and incendiary guitar based-funk territory and solo arrangements that seem reminiscent of Funkadelic, John Frusciante, The Parliament: Mind-melting, culminating in an emotional apocalypse of sound with a heavy emphasis on melody, tone and structure that suggests that her doors of perception are wide open as her emissions stimulate synaesthesia and transcendence.

In a previous life during an exercise aimed at spiritual development and generating the divine within, Björk delivered the appropriate soundtrack, navigated and grounded the mental excursion when the going got rough. I am confident that Tash Sultana’s music would do an equally expert job as the fact that she seems to find peace of mind in what she is doing transpires to the listener.

You want to catch Tash before she becomes the global success she is bound to become.

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Photos by KAVV

Brian Greene: A Time Traveller's Tale

International Convention Centre

Sydney, AU

March 30, 2017

Cosmologist, string theorist, professor of science and mathematics Brian Greene is an academic rock star whose mass appeal, which might be partly owed to his upbringing as the son of a vaudevillian showman, and ability to present complex theories from the realm of theoretical physics to a mainstream audience put him in league with leading science communicators like Neil deGrasse Tyson and prominent presenters like Bill Nye. A path that not unlike that of Dr Lisa Randall, whose Sydney appearance we covered last year, culminated in a guest appearance on the sitcom The Big Bang Theory and the science-fiction flic Frequency as well as his children book Icarus at the Edge of Time being adapted to film.

Attending Harvard University from 1980, and in 1987 receiving his PhD in Physics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, Dr Brian Greene has dedicated the majority of his career to the concept of string theory, which not only reimagines the very structure of our universe but extends its ambition by attempting to combine understanding the interaction of all four fundamental forces of the universe (gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) into one simple equation: a unified ‘theory of everything’.

Still with me?

Good – just checking.

For his current multi-media show "A Time Traveller’s Tale" he is flanked by scientifically-grounded Melbourne-based spoken word artist Hugo The Poet.

The subject matter of his show is based on the concept, definition and source of time – the fundamental question being if time is a humanly invented device to order our mundane existence of if it is something inherent to the uni- or rather multiverses, as it was discovered in 2016 that our universe has ten times more galaxies than previously thought.

Dr Greene’s show is an entertaining departure from Think Inc.’s usual Q&A format:  A performance experience that marries art (multi-media performances as well as a hip hop inspired elaboration by Hugo the Poet) and science in a similar manner that Greene’s specialist field (the superstring theory) reconciles the differences between quantum theory and classical physics.

Greene manages to explain the near inexplicable by bridging the divide between academia and the horizons of mere mortals in an engaging manner and thereby proves that science is inherent in our day-to-day operations and not a mere theoretical construct. A plaidoyer that is based on his claim that science should not just be experienced cognitively but also emotionally.

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Photos by KAVV

Adman: Warhol before Pop

Art Galley of NSW

Sydney, AU

Feb 25-May 28, 2017

Soon after graduating having earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Pictorial Design, a young chap who still went under his original name Andrew Warhola, moved to New York City to pursue a career as a commercial artist with the goal to become an illustrator.

His work debuted via an illustration as part of an article about what was back in the day perceived to be the phenomenon of “career women” in Glamour magazine in September 1949, tagged with the headline “Success is a job in New York,” which in essence could have also be used for his arrival and work in the Big Apple: Warhol became one of the most successful illustrators of the 1950s, winning numerous awards and went on to produce hundreds of illustrations for print advertisements and elaborate window displays.   

The Art Gallery of NSW’s exhibition Adman: Warhol before Pop has the aforementioned era of Warhol as subject and shows that Warhol expertly understood and grasped the concept of branding and what is needed to go past the mere advertising of a product and go with how the product is meant to make the recipient feel instead.

After having hosted an elaborate Popart exhibition in 2015 and with Ai Weiwei vs Andy Warhol having been made subject of an exhibition of the National Gallery of Victoria, this exhibition documents how Warhol evolved to become the artist that many somehow think suddenly emerged fully formed out of the blue in the 1960s and sheds light on a widely unexamined era long before Warhol felt comfortable in the limelight and learned how to project himself and make its mechanism work in his favour.

The exhibition includes prints highlighting the “blotted line” staccato technique he pioneered, naïve yet charming fluid line drawings (of ladies’ accessories and also early intimate portraits of young men), shop window display installations, record cover artworks and examples of Warhol’s art intended for gallery shows.

What is interesting to see is that Warhol seems to have always been driven by the dualism between his hands-on DIY approach with unique personal touch versus soulless mechanical reproductions – a dualism that would eventually lead to a democratization of what art was supposed to be at large, challenging the status quo and conventions while reinforcing their core values.

A dualism that he ultimately took to the logical next level, which resulted in him becoming a commodity of sorts and a product himself.

Adman: Warhol before Pop is about the becoming of what the accomplished artist Warhol came to be.

What pervades even his earliest emissions is the confidence, which is also mirrored in the fact that contrary to a lot of his artistic contemporaries, he was firmly in touch with himself and did not feel the need to use an alter ego or deny that he derived from the path trodden by the high horse of art and dabbled in the dark side of commercial art instead.

The Adman exhibition with more than 300 objects on display, many of which have never been publically displayed, sheds light on the formative years of Warhol, which became the foundation and fertile ground that would eventually spawn the Campbell Soup Cans and depictions of his beloved celebrities, before he became a trademarked name himself which impacted on American popular culture In a manner that can still be seen and felt today.

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Photos by KAVV

Hang Massive

Max Watts

Melbourne, AU

March 22, 2017

Shaped much like a spaceship, the Hang’s ( a musical instrument of the idiophone class)  equally ethereal sounds created by Danny Cudd (UK) and Markus Offbeat (Sweden) delighted the audience at Melbourne’s Max Watts, where the due was promoting their latest studio release, Distant Light. Given the sounds the two seasoned travelers produce with their hangs, it is not surprising to learn that their paths first crossed in Goa, India.

While one hang does not produce sufficient notes for a full scale, it works in well in unison with a second one as collectively chords and varying tones can be created, i.e. one hang providing the beat while the other one is in charge of the actual melody.

Cudd and Offbeat, the due comprising Hang Massive, have mastered the art of work the hang from various angles and thereby eliciting an impressively deep and rich sound spectrum reminiscent of a mélange of an array of xylophones, psychedelic electronic sounds and bell sounds and percussion instruments.

With vocals added here and there, courtesy of  Victoria Grebezs, it gives the performance the aura of a “regular show” with the enhanced vibe of with outer- and otherworldly sounds.

Violent Femmes

Factory Theatre

Sydney, AU

March 20, 2017

In its heyday, the Folk rock band, or shall we go with “Midwestern acoustic punk gateway drug to experimental music,” Violent Femmes have captured the zeitgeist and existential dilemmas coming with the burden of the need to be – not only speaking the angst ridden, existentialist language of an adolescent independent scene, but with their triumvirate of albums Why Do Birds Sing?, the more somber Gothic Hallowed Ground, and 3, which have become classics and having withstood the test of time over and over again, becoming spokesmen for a generation that lacked definition and one of the most successful alternative rock bands of the 1980s.

Over the last decade, with VF’s bassist Brian Ritchie moving to Hobart, Tasmania where among other projects he is curating the Mona Foma Festivals and thereby transforming the cultural and economic life of the whole of Tasmania as a result, Australia has become a second home for the band and it was not further wondrous that their Sydney show was sold out almost immediately.

The demographic of the evening ranged from old folks coming out of the woodworks via families introducing their offspring to “real music”, to the hipster bloc and even younger hopefuls exploring the roots of many of their favourite contemporary artists’ favourite band.

One might argue that the essence of Violent Femmes’ music is trapped in amber, but tonight’s performance proved that it is more than a stale re-enactment of their youth.

The show included both the band’s highlights along with new(er) material and despite the trio’s deliberate minimalist and stripped down presentation, did not fail to enthuse the sold out crowd and eliciting more than ethereal swaying: Gordon Gano’s nasal, nuanceful, twangy and defeatist vocal delivery had the songs echoing in the genuinely excited audience not just for the gems of their back catalogue.

A solid mix of the tested and tried, infused with the musical aptitude they have acquired over the years was the foundation for a vibrant performance. Newer material was well represented with its more robust sound backed by Ritchie’s sophisticated bass arrangements and Brian Viglione sandwiched in between the two founding fathers, manning the Spartan, trademarked Violent Femmes drum set-up and framing the songs with his at times jazzy arrangements.

With this energized performance and newer material having become a fundamental and well-received component of the show, Violent Femmes have proved again that they are far from becoming a nostalgia act.

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Photos by T