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Vogue X Music

Vogue Magazine

To say it with the words of the ever so eloquently Marge: “…Greta Garbo and Monroe, Dietrich and DiMaggio, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean on the cover of a magazine. Grace Kelly, Harlow, Jean. Picture of a beauty queen. Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, dance on air. They had style, they had grace, Rita Hayworth gave good face, Lauren, Katherine, Lana too - Bette Davis, we love you. Ladies with an attitude. Fellas that were in the mood Don't just stand there, let's get to it - strike a pose, there's nothing to it…Vogue, vogue!”

You’d find yourself hard pressed claiming that throughout the last four decades, Vogue has not been at the forefront of popular mainstream culture, at times making or breaking artists with their features and trademark photography.

After the Vogue book series has zeroed in on fashion, accessories and shoes before, it was about high time for a tome like Vogue x Music to emerge, which, as the title suggests focusses not only on the iconic portraits of the who-is-who of mainstream music culture from Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Madonna via Patti Smith to Debbie Harry, David Bowie, Kendrick Lama and everyone in between, but substantiates them with extracts from interviews with musicians with the selection being defined by quality and significance and refreshingly agnostic of genres.

Drawing on a history of close to one hundred and thirty years, Vogue X Music focusses on the last century and  it should not come as a surprise that Vogue X Music effortlessly showcases both the timelessness and evolution of glamour and captures the X factor, i.e., the “je ne sais quoi” that makes some artists bigger than others.

Apart from the well-known musical personalities, what I like most about the book is the non-hierarchical, non-chronological arrangement, which helps to put the art of photography front and centre and offers the opportunity to closely inspect how e.g. Richard Avedon, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot captured the essence of musicians through their unique lenses.

Summa summarum, an exercise par excellence and tour de force in the eye candy department and a beautifully curated coffee table book, recommended for any music lover.

Thus Let Us Drink Beer – Hops to Home

Subscription services can be hit and miss – specifically when it comes to libations. However, beer clubs with subscription models are mushrooming, with the obvious advantage for the customer being about time and convenience whereby you are receiving something you need on a regular basis to your door, i.e. one does not have to place an order and it just turns up.

Now, the better ones have an element of curation, personalisation and exclusivity, ideally with products that you cannot easily get elsewhere and different each time. Subscription services that make an effort avoid becoming boring by offering more than dull commodity items and treat their clients like true VIPs with money-cannot by-treats, special access to new products and collaborations are rare.

Enter Hops to Home.

Acknowledging that taste preferences are individually different and ever changing along with the credo that every fruit in the ever increasing variety of the beer garden should be tasted at least once, Hops to Home offers the opportunity to explore fresh new beer expression on a monthly basis.

Hops to Home’s  Fresh Can Beer Club offers five different beers every four weeks, ranging from India Pale Ales, Pale Ales, Session IPAs, Porters, Sours, NEIPAs and Stouts with the guarantee that all of their limited release beers have been specifically canned and sourced directly from the respective Australian independent brewery.

Each delivery is accompanied by detailed tasting notes shedding light on both the beers as well as the breweries and subsequently, mid-month backed up by reviews of the beers in each pack by Quarantinnies and Aussie Beer Explorers.

The April pack won me over instantaneously with an exclusive collaboration with Hop Nation (an exquisitely piney, red IPA, a tour de force of hops with stone fruity citrus highlight); a West Coast IPA courtesy of Ocean Beach Brewery with Chinook hops taking the centre stage as well as my fist exposure to Bondi Beach brewery with their IPA marrying an array of seven hop varieties. The offering is flanked by an American style Pale Ale by Boomerang Beach Brewery and the Australian styl, sessional  Newy Pacific Ale.

Word around the campfire has that Hops to Home next offering will feature exclusive collaboration with Bodriggy Brewing as well as Tallboy and Moose, both of which we have covered as part of this series.

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image from company website

Mike Parr: Performances 1971 - 2008

Black Inc. Publishing

Mike Parr’s shadow looms large, both on international terrain but specifically on terra australis. Having emerged on his artistic mission in the early 1970s, his oeuvre encompasses not merely a vast array of media but specifically performances, which not only work on different levels but more often than not have a political message at their core.

Over the years, I have had the fortune to not only visit Parr’s exhibitions but been lucky enough to witness some of his performances very close to the action, specifically the ones we have documented via our features of the Dark Mofo festivals, which Mike Parr has created monumental events for.

Being a self-taught artist who has always been marching to the beat of his own drum, Mike Parr very early own carved his own lane and developed what can be described as a signature language and visual aesthetic with the common denominator being his complete physical and intellectual commitment to his art – a commitment that often transcends boundaries and uses his body as a medium to deal with traumata and other experiences.

Challenging societal norms , the notion of identity as a fixed concept and conventions of what is perceived to be “normal”, Parr champions imperfection and has established these themes as consistent components of his body of work.

To do justice to an artist of Mike Parr’s calibre is challenging at best and I have long sought for a book comprising a comprehensive overview of her performances. Fortunately, there is Black Inc. Publishing, an accomplished publishing house focussing on quality non-fiction, fiction and poetry, based in Melbourne. 

While there is a myriad of publishers dabbling in the arts, it is Black Inc’s passionate approach, careful curation, tailored editing and a sense for relevant new works within the confines of art, history, politics, biography, criticism and current affairs, which gives their publications an omnipresent sense of relevance and substance.

Black Inc’s tome on Mike Parr, i.e. Performances 1971 – 2008 is an homage par excellence, both paying tribute and simultaneously examining Mike Parr’s artistic endeavours and by having Mike Parr himself at the helm of the operation, it offers unparalleled access to his unique world and views.

With its pared back yet stylish and elegant packaging, Mike Parr Performances 1971 – 2008 is essential for anyone harbouring an interest for artists who have dedicated their life to pushing boundaries in every sense of the word.

Water of Life – Souwester Spirits

Souwester Spirits intrigued me from the moment I learned about both – the fact that it is located in the Southern corner of Western Australia as well as its founder, i.e. Danielle Costley, being a luminary in the realm of winemaking before she started to channel her alchemy in distilling barrel-aged spirits.

For the uninitiated, Western Australia is overflowing with versatile local produce and native botanicals, which are predestined to imbue Souwester Spirits’ gin with idiosyncratic flavour nuances.

Given her pedigree and expertise in winemaking, Danielle’s focus is set on the experimentation with barrel-aged spirits, matured in specifically procured Ice Chardonnay barrels sourced from Fraser Gallop Estate in the heart of the Margaret River Wine Region, which adds another unique terroir based facet to Souwester with ice wines being on the rare end of the dessert wine spectrum.

Souwester’s Ice gin is based on a foundation of a melange of juniper berries and coriander seed to create a blend that is further refined with local finer limes and saltbush, botanicals that are emblematic for the South West coastal environment, which are then distilled in rainwater before being aged in French Oak barrels.

The result is a rich and complex array of flavour nuances, resting on a backbone of toast oak, vanilla-ey and citrussy highlights and culminating in a reverberating, lingering moreish crescendo. A gin that lends itself well for sipping it neat with its elegant textures.

Given the quality of the gin, I could not wait to sample the Ice Whisky, which as the name suggests, has also undergone maturation in the iced wine French Oak barrels.

What tickles the nostrils is a complex exercise in smoky peat, pervaded by the aforementioned oaky and vanilla aromas derived from the barrel. On the top of the roof, flavours take a detour via fruity, grassy, floral and sweet territory courtesy of the residue of the sweet grapes. The finish is bookended with spicy and slightly salty notes, which remind one in the most subtle manner of the maritime climate this drop has matured in.

Given that Souwester’s first whiskey has only matured for four years, I cannot wait to experience the future emissions from this artisanal distiller.

The Formative Years - Muzak 

Experimental, EDM, music that evokes a bodily reaction and noise music along with the underground cultures and aesthetics have always fascinated me – an interest that sparked curiosity as to what music can achieve beyond the realms of what is perceived and enjoyed when one actively listens.

Needless to say, when the ATF used meditative Tibetan chants in a bid to execute a psychological assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas to mess with the mind of David Koresh and his followers in the mid-90ies, I was intrigued.

After a stint of exploring how music is used by government agencies and police to sonically attack demonstrators or unwanted loiterers, an interest emerged in what other ways music is used to achieve desired subliminal effects, e.g. like the ubiquitous serenading of shoppers in retail stores with subtle background music – a style of music that to this day remains popular in Japan.

What eventually became a collective term to refer to background music at large, i.e. “muzak”, is a derivate from Muzak Holdings, an entity, whose name is a portmanteau of music and the made-up word “kodAK”, that since the 1950s has had its focus firmly set on creating the sounds that were have since become omnipresent in elevators and mercantile environments alike.

After a period of trial and error and a calibration of style, pace, and instrumentation, Muzak’s emissions were finetuned to the extent that they were deemed suitable to exert a stimulus to boost productivity, so it could be used in workplaces. In order to achieve their outcomes, Muzak eventually started to employ the services of dedicated orchestras musicians to further manipulate behaviours, which resulted in Muzak accumulating an impressive archive of original recordings.

With the advent of youth cultures spanning the decades from the 1960s onwards, background music started to loose its appeal as foreground music with original artist p[programming becoming prominent in public spaces – a development that eventually saw Muzak merge with Yesco, a company that licensed original recordings and a step which saw Muzak drop their stimulus progression program to evolve to creating their audio architecture program, along with offering the management of performance royalties, targeting specific audiences with pre-fabricated algorithm based playlists.

While Muzak eventually went bankrupt, its legacy and objectives still loom large, with entities like Mood Media following in its footsteps to focus on on-hold messaging and video programming.

While the concept of muzak might sound antiquated, the piping in of soothingly bland music in public spaces has never ceased and no matter if I frequent a restaurant or visit a bank, it has become an interesting activity to consciously listen to what non-threatening music is being played, question what it means to achieve and assess if it yields any results.