Perth Music

V Festival Australia proudly announces the return of the mighty V Festival in 2008 – now touring nationally and once again staunchly supported by our pals at Virgin Mobile.

Building on the success of 2007 V Festival will not only revisit Sydney and the Gold Coast but will leap and bound further across the country, launching new events in both Melbourne and Perth for 2008.

Since its inception 12 years ago in the UK, V Festival has prided itself on creating line-ups that combine an intangible, eclectic hand-picked mix of the absolute iconic with the new and the cutting-edge, and in true V style you’ll witness first time visitors popping their Antipodean musical cherries alongside star-spangled and seasoned tour veterans.

This year V Festival has pulled a remarkable swag of rabbits out of their musical hat.

Leading the charge as headline acts for 2008 are THE SMASHING PUMPKINS (who last graced Oz with their sizeable talents some ten years ago) and perennial UK pop chameleons DURAN DURAN, returning to Australia to showcase their sensational new album ‘Red Carpet Massacre’ (gold dusted with the Timbaland and Timberlake Midas touch).

Joining them on V Festival’s two main stages, audiences will be wowed by QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, the freshly reformed THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN in their original incarnation, UK sensation MIKA* (east coast only), French electronic-ists AIR* (playing Australia for the first time - east coast only), love-from-above disco indie party people CSS, and the newest Modular sensations PLUG-IN CITY. V Festival will kick off in every city with the national winner of Virgin Mobile’s Garage to V competition, at the conclusion of it’s national search for the best new talent.

Aussie dance heroes THE PRESETS will take to the stage once again programmed by Modular, the wunderkinds of cool, along with THE TOUGH ALLIANCE, and many more uber hip acts from around the globe… more to be announced later!

The addition of Melbourne and Perth sites means V Festival is now Australia’s newest, most sophisticated national touring festival.

V Festival 2008 will be easy as pie to buy tickets for, with online buyers choosing between printing out tickets at home (ahem, recycled paper please!), getting the real deal in the mail, or even getting it SMS-ed direct to any Virgin Mobile phone!

Folk digging the traditional face-to-face approach will also be able to buy tickets at all Ticketmaster & Virgin Mobile outlets, as well as Virgin Megastores, Sanity and HMV. Take note that every single ticket is carbon neutral – with a big sloppy kiss to Ticketmaster, who have carbon offset the energy burned in getting everyone’s tickets
into their hot hands!

In 2007, V Festival raised more than $54,000 for charitable causes around Australia, and in 2008 we plan to allow you to luxuriate in the warm fuzzy feeling of doing good by default by once again donating $1 from every ticket sold. The kind souls at Virgin Unite (the charitable arm of the Virgin Group) will manage the distribution of your generosity, and if you’d like to see how they shared your collective love last year, check out the details at vfestival.com.au.

* Mika & Air not appearing at V Festival in Perth

Saturday March 29th - Sydney Centennial Park
Sunday March 30th - Gold Coast Avica Resort
Saturday April 5th - Melbourne Showgrounds
Sunday April 6th - Perth The Esplanade (City)

Tickets go on sale Thursday December 6th - Check VFestival.com.au for details

Jack Johnson will be returning to Australian shores with a new album under his belt, and a back catalogue of hits spanning his multi-platinum selling albums “Brushfire Fairytales“, “On and On“, and “In Between Dreams“. The shows promise Australian audiences the extraordinary live experience they have come to know and love over the past 8 years, as he performs such classics as “Inaudible Melodies“, “Sitting Waiting Wishing“, “Flake“, “Taylor“, “Times Like These” and many more.

As a precursor to the forthcoming tour, the brand new single “If I Had Eyes” is set to be released here on Boxing Day, with the album due to hit stores Feb 2nd 2008. Titled “Sleep Through The Static“, Jack’s fourth studio album is yet another hypnotic blend of Jack Johnson penned treasures that will enthrall his longtime fans, and capture new ones as Jack and his band mates shake things up a little, cranking electric guitars and adding darker themes to his songs. Recording for the first time outside Hawaii, the forthcoming album is the first to be recorded at L.A.’s Solar Powered Plastic Plant, and is co-produced by JP Plunier who worked with Jack on his first album.

Touring once again with long time band members Adam Topol (drums), Merlo Podlewski (bass) and relative newcomer Zach Gill (keys), Australian fans can look forward to being the first audiences in the world to hear his forthcoming album “Sleeping Through the Static” brought to life, as Jack Johnson kicks off his world tour in Australia & New Zealand next year.

Special guest for the tour will be Brushfire Records Label mate Matt Costa. It’s Costa’s sophomore release “Unfamiliar Faces” with its appealing melodies reminiscent of the Shins, Spoon and Ben Folds that sees him return to Australia for his second visit. While the two fellow musicians have toured together several times internationally and collaborated on numerous soundtrack projects, this will be their first time in Australia together.

Picking up the opening slot is local Byron talent Will Conner. With a reputation for making music with a pure and unwavering sound, Conner along with special guest 21st century soul surfer Dave “Rasta” Rastovich, will open proceedings performing tracks from his debut album “Southern Hemisphere”.

In an effort to acknowledge and support the important work that non-profit groups are doing in communities across the planet, Jack Johnson’s 2008 world tour is reaching out to groups who are activating positive change in the realms of water quality, community & school gardens, land preservation, environmental education and more. With his World Tour kicking off in Australia / NZ Jack has engaged a number of these organizations to be present at the shows to raise awareness of their objectives.

With tickets selling out on Jack’s last Australian tour in record time, fans should get in early to avoid missing out on what’s shaping up to be the must see tour of 2008.

Further ticketing, general tour and additional environmental information available on the dedicated tour website www.brushfirerecords.com.au

Thursday March 13th - WIN Entertainment Centre, Wollongong
Saturday March 15th - Centennial Park, Sydney
Sunday March 16th - Avica Resort, Gold Coast
Tuesday March 25th - Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne
Thursday March 27th - Memorial Drive, Adelaide
Saturday March 29th - Members Equity Stadium, Perth

Several members of legendary local swing-roots act Zydecats will hit the stage with special guests in a fundraising first for a local charity dedicated to skin cancer research.

The long-time swingers will be joined by front man Bill Rogers’ three daughters and renowned blues keyboard player Bob Patient for this special night of live music and dancing in Cottesloe.

The super-group will combine on Thursday December 13 to raise vital funds for the Scott Kirkbride Melanoma Research Centre, founded by the Kirkbride family after Scott lost his battle with melanoma at the age of 27.

Mr Rogers said his family had been close friends with the Kirkbride family for decades and wanted to help the Centre continue its important work.

Mr Rogers said with the help of their special guests, the band would serve up three sets of good time music – hits that people know and love to sing along and dance to.

Scott’s mother Yvonne Kirkbride said she was extremely thankful for Bill Rogers support and to the band for putting the event together, and was looking forward to a fantastic night.

Brothers and Sisters Rock n Soul Show will take to the stage at the Cottesloe Golf Club for the Scott Kirkbride Melanoma Research Centre on Thursday December 13 at 7.00pm.

All proceeds go to melanoma research.

Tickets are limited. For further information and bookings, please contact Yvonne Kirkbride on (08) 9224 0324 or by email to yvonnek@waimr.uwa.edu.au.

New additions to Big Day Out 2008: silverchair, Spoon, Augie March, Brand New, Regurgitator, Anti-Flag, Karnivool, Carl Cox, Pnau, Kate Nash, Josh Pyke, beXta, Shy Child, Gyroscope, Enter Shikari, Operator Please, Unkle (live), Goodwill, Krafty Kuts & MC Dynamite, The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello acoustic), British India, Aceyalone, Krill

These acts join the already announced: Rage Against the Machine, Bjork, Grinspoon, Arcade Fire, Hilltop Hoods, Billy Bragg, Paul Kelly, LCD Soundsystem, Sarah Blasko, Faker, Midnight Juggernauts, Dizzee Rascal, Something With Numbers, Battles, Cut Off Your Hands.

Since announcing the first round of Big Day Out artists for the 2008 series, tickets have been snapped up at lightning speed with the Gold Coast, Sydney and Melbourne events selling out in less than 24hrs. Adelaide and Perth fans wait no longer or you could well miss out! For now you’ll find the next round of International and Antipodean touring artists who will be rocking the stage at each Big Day Out.

Stirring harmonies, crashing guitars, bursting brass flourishes, killer choruses. We’re talking about three lads from Newcastle and one of the most acclaimed and successful bands in Australian music history, SILVERCHAIR. Having sold over six million albums worldwide, every album released by the band to date has spawned at least one #1 single and debuted at the #1 position on Australian charts.

There’s no way around it, folks love SPOON. The cult of SPOON has built up over fourteen years, six albums, and countless show-stealing festival appearances. From small beginnings in Austin, Texas, singer Britt Daniel, drummer Jim Eno, keys man Eric Harvey and bassist Rob Pope have made a big impact with minimalist style.

Festival ready, AUGIE MARCH have spent most of 2007 touring both in the US and here in Oz, and for special shows on our shores they’ve even had a Symphony Orchestra in tow. Their live shows are beautiful and brimming with emotion, compelling and mesmerizing.

Long Island’s BRAND NEW – singer/guitarist Jesse Lacey, drummer Brian Lane, guitarist Vinnie Accardi, bassist Garrett Tierney – were born and raised in the basements of the New York hardcore scene. After their second album, 2003’s Deja Entendu, was hailed as a masterpiece, the band dug even deeper for 2006’s The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me.

After playing shows the world over and being firm favourites in Japan, REGURGITATOR are still serving up loads of rambunctious rock-pop in the form of their sixth studio album Love and Paranoia. Recorded in Brazil, it’s busting with the fun, 80s sounds of classic ‘GURG goodness.

Four old school Pittsburgh punks for whom the word “outspoken” is a mission statement, ANTI-FLAG have been loud, proud and abrasive since 1993. Justin Sane (guitar, vocals), Chris #2 (bass, vocals), Chris Head (guitar) and Pat Thetic (drums) made the major-label leap with their seventh album, 2006’s For Blood and Empire.

Fresh from touring the US as part of the Great American Rampage Tour, KARNIVOOL bring their heavy swagger to the Big Day Out touring party for the first time. Rest assured it’s not quiet on Western front!

CARL COX will become an official Big Day Out lifetime membership holder this summer, when the UK DJ returns for his third Big Day Out season. After stints in 2001 and 2005, COX is back in the team in 2008 as an honorary Aussie – he now owns a house in Frankston, on the south-east fringe of Melbourne.

ARIA award winning and in great demand for their live performances both overseas and at home, PNAU are constantly challenging themselves to remain at the top of their musical game. Their hotly anticipated third album, self-titled Pnau is no exception, it’s a killer - fun, serious, energetic, chilled, beautiful, relentless and addictive and will be banging through your speakers all summer.

KATE NASH’s tales of unrequited love and unworthy exes – over indie pop, fragile folk and broken blues – are captured on her debut, Made of Bricks, a UK No.1. Once heard, makes perfect sense that among her influences NASH lists everything from Regina Spektor to Roald Dahl, Jurassic 5 to The Young Ones, poetry and politics to “being confused”.

JOSH PYKE is the young Aussie ballad king of the moment. His melodies and narratives seamlessly combine diverse elements of life to form the fabric of songs that are timeless, full of emotion and emphatically honest. His debut melodic memoir Memories & Dust (which entered the ARIA charts at #4) picked up 3 ARIAs at this year’s Awards and showcases the strength of his heart felt and idiosyncratic song-writing.

Queen of the decks and one of the most-loved DJ/producers in Australia, BEXTA will return to the Big Day Out in 2008. A musician first and DJ second, BEXTA never fails to set the dance floor alight with her trancy style and substance. With productions and remixes that have been released all over the world, BEXTA is proud to be releasing her tenth installment – a triple CD – Mixology 10.

Masters of the unexpected, SHY CHILD are mentally perplexing, and likely to get your body flexing. Prepare for mad movement and glorious confusion.

After taking to the stage alongside the likes of Dashboard Confessional and Blink 182 whilst kickin’ it with audiences at Rockit and Homebake, GYROSCOPE followed up in 2005 with their sophomore album Are You Involved? Recent times have seen the band putting the finishing touches on their brand new record Breed Obsession, recorded in the UK and due out March 2008.

Hardcore and trance? Punk and jungle? Strobe lights and human pyramids? That’s the ENTER SHIKARI arsenal, the thrilling mix that sent the band’s independent debut, Take to the Skies, to No.4 on the UK charts. Grab your glowsticks and prepare to rock.

Through word of mouth and the revelation of their EP Cement Cement on triple j, OPERATOR PLEASE have set the music scene abuzz both here and overseas. Initially dubbed the ‘coolest band ever’ to ‘the next big thing’, NME added to the fervour, naming them one of year’s ‘bands to watch’.

Rock: progressive. Electronica: leftfield. Beats: edgy. All this and more dwells within the one amazing act: UNKLE (live). And now Big Day Out 2008 brings you UNKLE as you’ve never seen UNKLE before: a fully-fledged live band, able to leap multiple musical genres in a single bound.

The Big Day Out dims the lights and turns the spot on GOODWILL, Sydney’s finest DJ, whose career reads like the history of the last decade of Australian dance music. As an ever popular musical guest, DJ GOODWILL is the DJ in demand at festivals around Australia and has performed at Good Vibes, Summerdayze and has supported the likes of Jamiroquai.

KRAFTY KUTS has won pretty much every international DJ award going, and paved new ground with his album Freakshow. DYNAMITE is best known as one of Roni Size’s Reprazent crew, and as the slick voice on KRAFTY’s latest banger There They Go. Both are regular visitors to Australia. But KRAFTY KUTS & MC DYNAMITE together? That’s a rarity you’ll only get at Big Day Out this summer.

In 2008, Big Day Out will unveil a different side to a superstar. On one stage, he’ll be the Rage Against the Machine guitar hero you know and love. On another stage, Tom Morello will transform into his alter ego, the folk hero known as THE NIGHTWATCHMAN (Tom Morello acoustic).

Energy with attitude, poise and posture is what characterizes Melbourne indie-pop band, BRITISH INDIA. From their first appearance on the Melbourne live scene, critical interest has swept up over the band like a raging monsoon.

The 2008 Big Day Out welcomes our first uncharTED winner, KRILL. Hailing from the central coast of Queensland, these five younglings (four girls and a guy) are now based in Sydney and are delivering impressive slices of shiny, new-wave influenced power pop.

As one of Australia’s favourite live bands, Grinspoon have consistently wowed crowds around the country for thirteen years. Just as they are about to release their new single ‘Minute By Minute‘ and get set to play on the Big Day Out stage in 2008, guitarist Pat Davern spoke to Justin Middleton for this interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (12:08 - 1.4Mb)

“The reception for (Alibis & Other Lies) has been good, it went Gold and is streaming towards Platinum, which is great. We can’t complain, we have to be one of the luckiest bands going around. We have a loyal audience and the live shows have been really, really good and everything has been going really well” explains Davern, in regards to the bands fifth studio album. “In a lot of ways our record is a bit of a slow burner. I think the longer it’s out, the more people have been kinda going ‘Hey! This album sounds like it could be OK” and I think they are going to be getting a little bit more with the next couple of singles as well”.

Asked about whether there were any trials and tribulations during the making of the record, given a hectic 2006 with front man Phil Jamieson admitting his addiction to Ice, Pat answered “We did (the record) in a studio in Sydney and it was good, we actually used a guy named Ramesh Sathiah, who was the producer on our first EP. He called himself ‘Mesh’…and this time we co-produced it, we had a little bit more say as far as song selection and the way the album kinda finished up. It was a positive experience.”

One of the few bands around that have the same line-up they did when they started over a decade ago, Pat jokes “We’ve been trying to sack our drummer for years, he just won’t fuck off. What are you gonna do? He still lugs my gear and we just can’t get rid of him. Nah we’re all good mate. It’s easy to stay together when there’s not too much conflict. We all know each other pretty well and 12 years down the track, you know the ins and outs of your band mates.”

“Before this album Phil, myself and Kristian all lived in Sydney but (now) Kristian has moved to Brisbane to be closer to his partners family and Phil has moved to Port Macquarie because he has two young girls and that’s where his family is from. So I figure it makes it easier on the touring when he’s got those people around. But everything seems to be functioning and when we do our next record, it will be the first time that we’ve recorded a record where we’ve all lived in different cities so it will be interesting to see how it all pans out” Davern explains.

You can catch Grinspoon playing at the Perth Big Day Out on Sunday February 3 and for more info visit www.grinspoon.com.au

Minute By Minute (Live And Acoustic on Enough Rope)

Multi-platinum Grammy Award winning international music superstar Celine Dion returns to Australia in March / April 2008, bringing her incredible talent and charisma to arena stages in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.

After releasing her latest French-language album D’elles earlier this year, November 10 sees the release of Celine Dion’s long-awaited new studio album Taking Chances, her first English-language release since 2003’s multi-platinum One Heart.

On December 15 the curtain will fall on Celine Dion’s remarkable record-breaking run of sold-out performances at Caesars Palace. The Las Vegas show - ‘A New Day’ – will have run for 5 years, racking up in excess of 3 million ticket sales.

Celine’s first world tour in 10 years will begin on February 14 2008 in Johannesburg with a benefit concert for the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, followed by a further 7 shows in South Africa, her first visit to the country.

From there the tour heads to the Middle East, Asia, Europe, North America, and of course Australia, playing stadiums and arenas. The year-long tour will take in 5 continents, over 25 countries, and more than 100 cities.

Promising a lavish and spectacular stage show to rival “A New Day”, Celine Dion will be performing at:
Perth - Members Equity Stadium - Friday April 4

Tickets On Sale Tuesday December 4 through Ticketmaster 136 100 www.ticketmaster.com.au

We have 5 copies of Taking Chances to giveaway.  To enter simply email your details to perthmusic@gmail.com with Celine Dion in the subject field.

Wednesday 14th November, 2007
The Foundry, Cannington
Regurgitator
New Pants
I Heart Hiroshima

The Foundry isn’t my favourite live music venue with all of the pillars that block just about every angle of the stage and the bar that takes up half of the entire venue space, but tonight they were host to a fantastic gig that had just about everything. It was great to see Regurgitator back on the live stage after releasing their sixth album, Love & Paranoia and they brought two great bands along to join the fun.

I Heart Hiroshima were on nice and early to a smallish crowd but showed plenty of enthusiasm within their poppy songs. The band definitely have a unique sound with a drummer singer, two guitarists and no bass and this can sometimes confuse the audience with a sound that they are not used to. Drummer Susie Patten kept up the friendly banter between songs but the crowd just seemed like they just weren’t ready for the sounds of I Heart Hiroshima besides their valiant efforts.

Next up were Chinese rock/pop/disco band New Pants, and just their presence on stage increased the crowd interest ten-fold. It only took one or two songs for the dance floor to start to get filled and for smiles to appear on many faces. While the band is a threesome with no drummer, each song they played had a solid drum beat thanks to sampling done by all members. Sometimes it was hard to understand exactly what was being said during or in between songs but when you could, it was a lot of fun (a couple of examples are lead singer Peng Lei asking the crowd “You Like China?” and the band and audience singing in unison “D-I-S-C-O” over and over).

The band everybody was revved up to see were on next and it had seemed like a lifetime ago The Gurge had last played in Perth. As they came on stage to a thunderous reception, Ben Ely proudly announced that this was the first time the band had ever played at a Westfield shopping center and that it was great to see everybody at the gig after finishing their shopping. Ben, Quan, Peter and newcomer on keyboards Seja Vogel launched directly into new single Blood & Spunk and they sounded just as they did ten years ago. A few other new songs were played including Romance Of The Damned, a duet with Vogel that, with synchronized dance moves, just stopped short of being cheezy. A whole lot of older songs were also played as well including I Sucked A Lot Of Cock To Get Where I Am, FSO, Track 1, Everyday Formula, Song Formerly Known As, a rocking version of I Will Lick Your Asshole, Modern Life, I Wanna Be A Nudist, Hullabaloo, The Drop, Black Bugs (that started to lead into Sweet Child O Mine), The Drop and crowd favourite Kung Foo Sing. The night may have sounded like the eighties and felt like the nineties but one thing was for sure: after a night like tonight everybody went home with a smile on their face.

For more info on Regurgitator visit www.regurgitator.net
For more info on New Pants visit www.myspace.com/beijingnewpants
For more info on I Heart Hiroshima visit www.ihearthiroshima.com

Love & Paranoia is out now.

After gaining a huge following with their debut album, Addicted Romantic, touring nationally and gaining a reputation as one of Australia’s best live bands, Faker return with their follow-up album Be The Twilight. Faker front man Nathan Hudson spoke to Justin Middleton for this interview.

Click here to download the podcast of the entire interview. (16:48 - 3.9Mb)

“You kind of spend a lot of time putting all the things you’ve ever experienced into the first record…and it’s kina actually liberating to get that out of the way and be able to make a record a bit more in the moment. In that respect it was really kinda exciting to make this album, it was really fantastic as far as experiences go.”

Hudson explains the experience of recording overseas in LA “We figured out that we would be making the album in Los Angeles and when we got there we had to whittle 45 songs down to 12. It was daunting but exciting too. I found LA a little bit different to what I expected. I met a lot of good people there that were doing a lot of really creative stuff - putting art shows on in deli’s and warehouses and having bands play. ”

I asked Nathan if there was any feeling or theme that was planned for Be The Twilight. “One of the things that really excited me about going there was the film noir (feel) and just the wide open space where there’s the idea that there’s a lot bubbling underneath the surface. It’s a kinda romantic thing to get caught up into as well as the thought of what could happen…and you can’t necessarily see what is happening. With the first record there were demons and ghosts and werewolves and all things you can touch and…..literal.”

This Heart Attack is the first single off Be The Twilight and has already received plenty of airplay on radio. “It is the song I probably played the most in sound check with the acoustic guitar and producer Paul Fox was like ‘Fantastic, where’s the chorus?’ And I ran out to the corridor and in about 15 minutes worked out what I wanted the chorus to do. I kinda finished the song after months of playing it. It’s nice to have people question what you do.”

Be The Twilight will be available on November 17th. This Heart Attack is available now.

You can catch Faker on Sat December 1st at The Rosemount Hotel, Sun December 2nd at The Swan Basement or Sunday 3rd February at the Big Day Out.

For more info visit www.faker.com.au

Word to your mother!!!

Yes you heard right, the iconic rapper; creator of Ice Ice Baby and other sensations that sold millions - dominated clubs, pubs, playgrounds and karaoke halls worldwide to this day; award winning artist Vanilla Ice will be doing the rounds of Australia daily and nightly landing in Perth to play that funky music for a highly anticipated show on December 30 at Metropolis City.

Vanilla Ice is bringing retro back to Australia complete with his three-piece band and performing all of his past hits including ‘Ice Ice Baby‘, ‘Play that Funky Music‘ and ‘Ninja Rap‘, as well as a promised set full of covers bound to be as cheesy as cheddar.

Most recently famed for his appearance on VH1’s Surreal Life (with Ron Jeremy), Vanilla Ice is an absolute MUST for anyone and everyone who lived through the late-80s and early-90s, so DO NOT MISS this strictly limited, once in a lifetime opportunity to see Vanilla Ice in action! It will be the best $37 you’ve ever spent.

Visit www.vanillaicedownunder.com for more information
Tickets on Sale Wednesday 7 November: $37 +BF
Available from Ticketmaster7, Planet Video, Mills, 78s and inthemix.com.au

2007 Next Big Thing winners Harlequin League will be launching their debut single Hole In The Heart on Friday November 23rd at Amplifier Bar. The launch caps off a huge year for the band, who have only been on the live scene as of early this year, and have already undertaken a handful of East Coast tours and supports for the likes of The Freestylers (UK), The Cops, Expatriate and Dardanelles.

Hole In The Heart portrays Harlequin League’s eclectic mix of indie, pop, electronic, blues and horror driven riff rock. With performances described as “captivating”, “tight and flawless” and engaging, the band poses a style and substance that screams across the Nullarbor and beyond.

Joining them in their celebrations will be The Wednesday Society, The Preytells, Melbourne two piece Learn The Splits and French Rockets.

Friday 23rd November – Amplifier Bar
Tickets at the door - $10 / $15 with single
Doors 8pm

For more info visit www.myspace.com/harlequinleague