The Formative Years

Tocotronic 

Founded in 1993 and signed by the genre pushing avantgarde label L’Age D’Or a year later, there are few bands that embodied what was labelled “Hamburger Schule” than Tocotronic, not just musically but also visually with their much copied idiosyncratic band uniform comprised of corduroy pants, thrift store shirts with advertising slogans and track suit jackets from the 1980s. 
Tocotronic’s observations of everyday situations and frustrations with Teutonic middle-class conservatism resonated with coming off age youth looking for German music that strayed away from the mainstream.

First starting out with an easily accessible melange of low-fi grungy punk sound paired with disillusioned, personal, headstrong diary-like ironic lyrics, which became integral to their trademark style that dominated the first three albums, the band started to evolve with their fourth release, adding more complex facets to their sonic emissions complemented by lyrics entering more metaphorically subtle territory.

Having recently revisited Tocotronic’s oeuvre, I was particularly taken by their recent albums, which showcase the evolution of a band that has carved its own lane and has refined its sound to incorporate complex and atmospherics arrangements, which are meticulously produced and incorporate a raft of new instruments, e.g. synchs and chamber music, thereby refraining from delving into the chaotically raw and noisy approach they first became popular for.

Lyrically, the recent releases have become much more abstract, aphorism laden and seem to be centred around themes like dissolution and the fantastical to the extent where some might dismiss them as being merely a convoluted array of seemingly unrelated ramblings.

Tocotronic is a band that has successfully reinvented itself and while they have grown in every aspect, at the inner core there is still Tocotronic’s very recognizable DNA, which is informed by an inherent unwillingness to unite with what they despise.

What’s Sumatra with You?

Toby’s Estate

Toby's Estate is one of the more prominent and fabled about coffee roasters in Sydney and goes back to the caffeine aficionado legal professional Toby Smith, who inspired by an aversion to mass produced alternatives, decided twenty-four years ago to channel his alchemy in travelling to coffee-producing communities to learn everything about coffee from scratch in a bid to get the beans from crop to cafés.

Upon his return to terra australis, he set up his own modest roastery to hone his craft before he formally launched what became known as Toby's Estate in 2001, i.e. a café, espresso school and roastery.

Fast forward twenty years and Toby’s Estate has evolved to a veritable heavyweight on the forefront of a one-stop shop for everything remotely related to quality coffee, consistently pushing the boundaries exploring and experimenting, learning, sourcing and developing new speciality flavours, blends and beans.

With its focus firmly set on the creation of a fair and sustainable supply chain that supports each constituent and dealing with them directly, prices are worked out in a collaborative manner, taking into account market and other fluctuations to ensure transparency and fair trade. A more than merely positive side-effect is that Toby’s Estate pro-actively invests in local social and environmental projects that are chosen by its producers in a bid to support grass-roots.

What attracted me to Toby’s Estate ever since I first encountered their emissions fifteen years ago, is the meticulous attention that is paid by a dedicated and passionate team of experts to the roasting process, which is individually calibrated for all the different types of beans they blend and brew.

Toby’s core expressions are comprised of the berry and peach informed Espresso Rico and Woolloomooloo expressions, the latter of which is nuanced with hints of cocoa and spicy highlights. 

What should intrigue anyone remotely into great coffee is Toby Estate’s Flavour Savour series, which this month’s incarnation land with an idiosyncratic Australian twist: The combination of coffees that constitute Lamington is, as the name would suggest, a tour de force into multi-layered chocolate territory, meandering from milky to dark and interweaved with hints of strawberry marmalade. 

Juicy Fruit is an expression whose telling name does not leave a lot of guesswork to work out as this brew is all about a well-balanced melange of vibrant berry nuances.

Toby’s Ahuachapán El Salvador San Jose expression is one of my recent favourite as it ticks all the boxes in terms of what I am looking for in an expresso, with its raspberry flavour that rest against a solid backbone of toffee flavours.

Jagged Little Pill

Theatre Royal

Sydney, Australia

December 9, 2021

After having been heralded in the US and accolade decorate with Grammy and Tony Award winning Broadway musical, inspired Alanis Morissette’s ground-breaking albums, the musical Jagged Little Pill finally carved its way down under to incarnate with an all-Australian cast under the guidance of Associate Director Leah Howard at the beautiful, recently restored and refurbished Theatre Royal.

Inspired by the themes of the seminal rock album of the same name by Wesley Willis’ favourite, i.e. Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill proves to be the visceral stage adaptation of a story centred around the imperfections of a suburban American family, which is invigorated by a vibrant choreography.
 
Musically embracing an array of different societal voices that are at the very core of Jagged Little Pill and not merely being a carbon copy of Alanis Morissette’s story, it follows the narrative of hope springing eternally and healing being facilitate at the core of where people convene and open their hearts to break down barriers.

What I found refreshingly charming is that Jagged Little Pill does not pretend to be more than it is – which is essentially a contrived, and hyperemotional yet great evening of engaging entertainment with a cast that is bound to excite both Alanis Morissette aficionados and fans of the respective album as well as musical buffs with a weak spot for histrionics, touching on a comprehensive portfolio of topics such as drug addictions, sexual assault and the resulting trauma, chauvinism, burn out, misogyny, gender identity, the implications of social media and everything in between.

Fast paced in nature, adolescent and immediate in tone, flanked by shifting video screens and devoid of subtleties, Jagged Little Pill is punctuated with snarky one-liners that fit in perfectly with performances that are painted with broad brush strokes to convey the angsty dispositions of the protagonists.

In essence, deepening pop into drama, Jagged Little Pill is an exquisite, joyfully sincere and character rich mood piece that exemplifies that commercial pop and musical theatre can come together as a melange that finds itself perfectly calibrated story, positioned between the furious intellect that informed the original songs of discontent and Broadway sensitivities.

Friendly Fire: The Audio Experience

The Station Museum of Contemporary Arts

Having hosted a wide ranging array of comprehensive exhibitions from all corners of this earthround and informed by their mission statement and commitment to free speech and freedom of expression, The activist Station Museum of Contemporary Arts has established itself as the preeminent haven in Texas for exhibiting local, national, and international artists, with an emphasis on fine arts that reflects cultural diversity and supports civil society issues by offering a forum for Texan artists to collaborate with their international equivalents.

Friendly Fire was an exhibition that anticipated the implications of the Trump-era and grouped artists together to raise questions about survival in a new dystopian post-factual era by disseminating critical thought.

Amongst others, the exhibition featured art by Forrest Prince whose contribution questioned if turning the back to society’s woes caused by the government in favour of another institution is the way to go. 

Jesse Lott’s figurines raised questions about how the history of a culture shifts and changes through gentrification and how it impacts on the DNA of a place as a result to the extent that the texture of a location is affected.

Robert Hodge’s installation Few of My Favorite Things shed light on the exploitation of black angst and racism.

As with Station Museum’s previous incarnations, curation played a vital and active role in that it helped to give birth to previous unnoticed content by the way individual seemingly unrelated artworks communicated with one another, thereby creating new meaning and encouraging the public to become actively aware of the lives of others to better question our society’s morality and ethics. 

The catalogue of the Friendly Fire exhibition came with a beautifully genre-bending Audio Experience vinyl record. 

Curated by Robert Hodge, the record compiles the music of the exhibition centred around themes like how black civilians are handled without care and with military precision and showcasing the fact that most of the participating visual artists are also gifted musicians in their own right.

Friendly Fire adds another interesting facet to Station Museum’s diverse offerings, which includes e.g. multi-medium collaborations like the operatic film and installation that was created in collaboration with the Democracia collective to give birth to their Gesamtkunstwerk ORDER, which resulted in a tour de force response to unjust capitalism and oppression by engineering interventions in public spaces paired with the subversive disruption of the cultural grammar of opera in a bid to not merely preach to the converted to portray the omnipresent narrative of profit and exploitation in our society.

Oceania Burger Special

Belly Bao

This instalment of our burger specific series will zero in on the combination of two of my favourite cuisines, i.e. burgers and Asian.
It was during my stint in China that I first developed a weak spot and appreciation for steamed buns or baozi (包子), which essentially is a complete meal conveniently stowed away in a white, warm, soft bun and which at least in mainland China is traditionally based on a pork base. 

The continuous process of creating a bao has always appealed to me, starting with the meticulously timed mixing of the yeast-leavened dough via the steaming process to the idiosyncratic smell the bamboo baskets imbue on the final product. 

Paired with vinegar, chili and garlic pastes, it constitutes a fantastic take away treat that I frequently helped myself to after letting a long day culminate with a visit to the local markets.

During travels to other Asian countries, I discovered local variants, e.g. the Malaysian halal ones filled with your choice of curry and quail eggs or the ones in Indonesia, which curiously enough at times also include chocolate, sweet mung bean paste or marmalade, or the Philippine meatball and flaked tuna filled variant, at times containing cheese, not dissimilar to what is proffered in Thailand. Needless to say, Japan has perfectioned its own version on the bao, adding its own twist.

Given my appreciation for the humble bao, I was intrigued when I learned about Belly Bao, i.e. an eatery specialised in fusing the DNA of original Taiwanese baos with the concept of burgers (resulting in the portmanteau “baogers”, i.e. a cheeseburger napping between toasted bao buns) to Sydney.

What might sound like novelty territory could not be further from it, as every single item off Belly Bao’s menu I have sampled proved to be on point and a culinary delight: Having originally emerged out of the context of Sydney’s mythical and much fabled about Good God Small Club, Belly Bao’s team has refined alchemy over the years and established itself as a veritable insider tip for both sophisticated and fussy foodies as well as aficionados of substantial savoury fair.

Located in Sydney’s suburb Newtown, Belly Bao’s expansive menu features a range of burgers, baos in their original form as well as noodles, fried chicken, desserts and much to my delight, amongst other offerings, Japanese whiskey and one of the better IPAs Australian’s craft beer scene has to offer – what better accompaniment could there be than an OZ-Japanese boilermaker.

The texturally fantastic baogers are soft, squishy and fluffy and as dangerously moreish as the soft shell crab filled baos and the soft bao / slow braised beef short rib baos. One is well advised to exert some moderation as those beauties go down too easily, 
Needless to say, ordering dessert was way too much, however, it proved hard to say no to what is being announced as “two cheesecake spring rolls served with vanilla ice-cream and house made berry sauce”, which tasted exactly as indulgent as what it sounds like – an exorbitantly decadent culmination of a great meal.

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image from company website