CD Review: Gotye

 Gotye (aka Wally de Backer)’s first full-length album, Like Drawing Blood, is a lively melee of sounds, instruments and styles. The tracks are have been recorded entirely by the artist, who plays all instruments, and has sampled a number of sounds in the tracks.  The music defies genre and borrows from a number of styles. Songs range from [...]

New album review – Meshuggah – ‘obZen’

The extreme metal world has been waiting for this release for quite some time, and it’s finally here! Meshuggah have blasted us with their newest studio release ‘obZen’. This album, is just what the fans of Meshuggah have been wanting, since they got their Ibanez 8 string guitars made for them, only a few years [...]

“Breaking down the partisan barriers that exist in music” – Professor Wilfrid Mellers

The SMH yesterday paid tribute to Professor Wilfrid Mellers, composer, critic and musicologist who “caused a stir in classical and popular music circles by giving serious consideration to the music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan as much as Bach and Beethoven” (SMH, 2008). Mellers introduced popular music into his teachings at Universities and was [...]

Selling Jack Black – image is EVERYTHING!

We’ve dicussed the process that music often goes through to make it “popular”…. Editing in the studio, airbrushing of the artists in glam mags etc… Jack Black and Kyle Gass from Tenacious D have also (kinda) recently been accepted as “popular” music… But what have they had to sacrifice to achieve this?! Over five years [...]

Industrial Ingenuity.

:Wumpscut: recently released the new album, Schadling (Pest); an engrossing body of Industrial/Electronic work replete with dark, danceable rhythms and bass lines, distorted sampling and synth, digitally vocoded vocals and harsh, abrasive loops. Rudy Ratzinger’s :Wumpscut: project has been a mainstay of Industrial and “dark alternative” sub-cultures for many years, and this release again finds [...]

Alternative to What? – Article Review & Commentary

Helen A.S. Popkin’s article Alternative to what?, an opinion piece posted on MSNBC January 23, 2006, makes some interesting comments, though biased and academically unsupported. Popkin writes on the US Grammy Awards, a music ceremony that recognises musical talent with various awards such as “Record of the Year”, “Album of the Year”, and awards for [...]

Eurovision – Oh NO Germany! Eurovision crossing cultural boundaries….

Oh no Germany! You’ve done it again! Just when no-one thought it possible, you’ve produced a Eurovision entrant even WORSE than last year! No wonder so few music journalists want to cover the joys (?!) of Eurovision – who would write about such rubbish?! Interestingly though, each year my family and friends must thank Eurovision for re-uniting [...]

Cd Review- DJ Kate Monroe

Kate Monroe is an Australian DJ who has been in the dance music scene for the last ten years. After doing compilation CD’s for mainstream recording companies like sony she has now formed her own independent recording company called MAT recordings. Her latest CD is called Mat Clear, it is a mix of eclectic underground [...]

Fabric Club London

Fabric nightclub is a great example of the thriving dance music culture that is alive in the Uk, America, europe and Australia. I went to Fabric last time I was in London. It has three separate rooms each with its own sound system which means there is three totally different music genres being performed live at [...]