It's all very simple.

In one of those "it's my birthday but you get the presents" kind of moments, I would like to engage in you, the members of my blog republic, in an experiment. I would like you to send your postal address to the following email account:

an.unexpected.gift@gmail.com

In return, I will send you something in the mail. That's it. Call it a gift really.

And yes, it is my birthday so I can make all the bad puns I like.

Useful advice from Alexander Stainthorpe of South Australia.

"Am I surprised? Yeah, I'm surprised that... I get to go to the next level, because there is a real bias against fictional people. Especially with reality tv, because they want it to be really real, but I can connect, you know. There's some real moments here, even if I'm fictional, you gotta get over that."

(Belated) Australia Day resolution, 2008.

Build less barbeques.

Current adventures in pop music: "he scratches his beard"... then wonders what the hell is going on?

It's difficult to say whether or not the world needed a cover of The Sugarcubes' song Birthday by The Mars Volta, but we have one nonetheless. Stranger still [that says a lot considering pretty much everything to do with this song is somehow odd], it's somehow popped up as an "exclusive" on amazon.co.uk [admittedly I first stumbled across it via Pitchfork's forckast section but we won't split hairs]. Some digging around has discovered that the track is a bonus on the Japanese edition of their new album The Bedlam in Goliath. Score!

As far as it goes, despite The Mars Volta's leaning toward apocalyptic melodrama with guitars, their version of Birthday is painfully faithful. Cedric Bixler-Zavala isn't Bjork, but he knows this, choosing a series of electronic mumbles for the chorus as opposed to the original's proverbial primal scream. The overall result is strangely alluring, but I'm not really sure if it's any good. A friend of mine described it as "like an underwater elevator nightmare". Even with it's slightly negative slant, that's still the best description of the song I can offer.

The morbidly curious amongst you should proceed here. One thing's for sure; no matter how horrible you think it might be, it beats 30 Seconds To Mars' version of Bjork's Hunter by a long shot.

I know that reads like a cliffhanger, and you're going to want to know more, but trust me, just leave it alone.

Research - 7th of January, 2008.

" 'We go to highschool. We dig rock 'n' roll. We date and go to parties and yes, we sometimes neck but no, we never pet. We also fall in love and that really burns us up. Then we pass notes in class and don't eat and even cry at night. We also think coke and hamburgers are really neat. We wear sneakers, short shorts, highschool sweaters. The girls have ponytails and the boys are crew cut. Our parents can be kinda draggy at times but, gee whiz, they were young themselves once and they're only trying to do their best for us. Finally, we dig America. We think it's really peachy-keen.' "

- Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Pop From The Beginning.

(The things of 2007) Current adventures in pop music: (Grudgingly) Sharing the love.

Some may note that my first attempt to backtrack though the back log of my brains blog-related sector didn't end so well. In fact, it never really started enough for it to end badly. Nevertheless, in the interests of persistence and flogging the proverbial dead equine I am going to try this again. So over the next little period of time I'm going to through up the occasional tidbit left over from last years' notes. This won't make any chronological sense, but I feel that that we'll all be able to cope. That, and I like the name I've come up with for it, so that settles it then.

That's it. I'm not going to introduce the blog post you're about to read, that would be pointless. Really.

...

Discovering that someone else likes a band or artist you otherwise believedly were relatively obscure can be a bizarre and disarming experience. You initially feel excited and safe in the knowledge that there are other people as clever and enlightened as you are, but this can sometimes give way to pure unadulterated jealously. How dare someone else be in tune with your intimate knowledge of the underground's underground! Surely only I could possibly be aware of this sub-genre of electronic post-grime break step??? Ultimately though, this feeling and it's true implication is no different to walking down the street and seeing someone wearing a t shirt you also own; you initially feel that someone's been through your wardrobe, then you realise that Target probably sells clothes to people other than you.

My most recent reencounter with such a feeling occurred whilst reading the music section of the Sydney Morning Herald supplement Spectrum on the weekend of October the 15th, and discovering reviews for Jens Lekman's new album Night Falls Over Kortedala and The Pipettes' album We Are The Pipettes, which rated as album of the week.

I had been introduced to The Pipettes and their poptastic stylings by Katherine earlier in the year, and had become quite a fan since acquiring the album over the internets long before any sign of an Australian release. Essentially, the music is no different to the product of anything a hundred Phil Spectoresque girl groups have ever released. There's the harmonising over love gone wrong, love that's unrequited, and love that's in process. And of course, there's the Be-My-Baby drums. Can't forget those. There's also harmonising over one night stands, boys who won't leave girls alone, boys who don't get the point, and boys trying moves on girls to place them in uncompromising situations. The production is so on the mark, and the vocals so sweet and lulling that you initially don't notice, and you almost do a double take when you do. It's this complementing bitterness to the saccarine sweet melodies that makes The Pipettes really interesting. That, and it's great to dance to. I talked about this with Kate at the time, and how these contradictions in the music pretty much alienates them from an Australian audience. Who do you possibly market them to? It's too pop for alternative radio, and no where near family friendly enough for the pop charts. But there was the review, glowing at that, so someone obviously thought it was a good idea [this would be later reinforced by the fact the group toured at the end of last year, but we'll get to that another day].

As for Jens Lekman, this was the second occasion I'd been reminded that someone other than myself had heard of him. The first occurred in 2005, when he toured on the back of his first album When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog. Playing the Hopetoun Hotel on a Tuesday night, I expected a fairly quiet evening with the odd punter strolling through. By the time Lekman hit the stage, the gig had sold out, and the room was filled with adoring fans. That the gig was great needs no mention; there was audience participation [via egg shakers thrown to the crowd], and backup tracks provided by Lekman's laptop which he dubbed "The Party Machine". Gold stars all around. I managed to speak to Jens after the gig, telling him that I'd first discovered him by accident via the video for his song You Are The Light buried on a rage new year's special I'd taped earlier. I thought this would make a nice anecdote, instead he replied [very nicely] that a few people had told him the same thing. Despite all of this, a return trip [which saw him playing on a Sydney harbour cruise no less] and and year and a half of building a fan base, I still was amazed to see the write up for his second album. The album, whilst a little tougher to crack than the first, is wonderful. Bursting with bombastic samples, witty lyrics and melancholic romanticism [yes it's possible, and I'm standing by it], Lekman's meticulous construction of pop songs has improved greatly in the passing years.

Zuel, as the narrative structure of this post would have you believe, agrees with me. Pitchfork agrees with me too. Lots of people probably share similar opinions. And yet, there's something mildly heartbreaking about this. Moments quietly spend taking in the music in the realms of your private universe seem to have a lesser value when you consider when it's occupying other peoples' universes too. The fact that it's easy to torrent only reinforces this [insert moral stance about paying for music you like here]. But of course this is a ridiculous stance to maintain, as painful yet obvious a point as that is. Not only for the fact that if there's a greater fan base, this may lead to more great music, but for the equally wonderful moments to be had in sharing your great little discoveries with other unsuspecting pop tragics. The furthering of enlightenment, if you will.

And thus we arrive at a point where the interests of sharing for the sake of global musical consciousness and harmony throughout all human beings is reached. We all learn a valuable lesson, and continue with our lives in the exact same way nevertheless. At least, this post now makes some sort of contextual sense, so I'm happy with that.

Oh, and if someone actually comes up with "electronic post-grime breakstep", I totally want full wikipedia credits for the term.

Victory and multiplicity.

There was running, hiding, occasional terse phone calls and many misunderstandings. But I found you, thai chilli jam, yes indeed. Many people [alright maybe a couple but many sounds better] had shared with me my concern over the lack of easily locatable thai chilli jam, but I had yet to find any leads as to where such a thing could be located [and before you say it, prospective commentor, I tried Chinatown, I really did. I know I probably didn't try the little obscure shop you can rattle off from the top of your head, but try in a superficial manner I did]. Fortune struck upon a visit to stupidly fancy restaurant Longrain in Surry Hills. So stupidly fancy are these people that they produce their own condiments. And what a joyous thing it is people. I mean sure, it does cost twelve dollars for a jar of this stuff but you really can't put a price on such a thing. You see the paper bag in the first image? That comes with it. Score!

You might think this is a slightly odd item to kick off the year with, and perhaps it is. But I think it's important to start the year off with a win. You can apply this to your own lives boys and girls. The chilli jam you seek is out there somewhere. You only need to have lunch to find it. A word to the wise though, when informing the masses about your new found spiritual experience, stick to the delivery methods you're aware of. An attempt to post something about this late last year via a feature on my new mobile phone lead to an entirely new blog being created, and the phone wouldn't tell me where that is. Or what it's called. Or how to delete it. If someone out there somehow comes across it, please let me know.

And in case you're wondering, I'm having doubts about the chilli-jam-as-metaphor-for-what-your-life-lacking thing too. Perhaps it would be best if you provide your own motivational metaphors from here on in.

The robots are coming.

Daft Punk / Modular's monstrosity of ridiculousness, Never Ever Land, arrives in Sydney this evening. I'm going, and maybe you are too. I really don't want to descend into gloating territory; chances are if you aren't going you will be soon attending events that I haven't managed to get tickets to [namely, anything at the sydney festival]. Nevertheless, I am more than a little excited about this. It quite possibly will be the best thing ever. At least the best thing ever for those who like robots, dancing to robot-made-music, pyramids, and lights... lots of lights.

Incoming politically themed art show!

My previously mentioned vile act of boredom Four More Years will be showing from this Thursday as a part of The Howard Years, a group show in response to eleven years of John Howard's Australia, being held at At The Vanishing Point in Newtown. These kind of shows usually bring out the worst in a geographic locales artist movement all presenting works that essentially preach to the converted in new and possibly not so interesting ways. I can safely say that my work will probably continue this trend. But if you happen to come along, wander to the back of the gallery and find that for some reason or another you aren't able to shake John Farnham's You're The Voice from your sub-conscious, I'll consider that a minor victory.

Of course it's not about bad art, it's not even about bad art and drinking [although both events are easily achievable if you so desire], it's about showing solidarity at a time when a Australia could do with a few subtle changes. Thanks my excuse any way. Annoying video art is just a bonus.

***

The Howard Years

The ATVP Spring '07 Show of the Season
Artists In Response to John Howard's Term As Prime Minister

Artists include:
Lachlan Anthony, Mick Bales, Gav Barbey, Gustavo Boke, Stan the Bottletop Man, Jenny Brown, CACA - featuring Schappylle Scragg, Pierre Cavalan, The Collective, Michael Davis, Maz Dixon, Seiko Furuse, Alyx Guidi & Bob Cooney, Daniel Green, Thomas Hungerford, Amanda Hunt, Rolf Knudsen, Amanda Le May, Wendy Lowe, The Motel Sisters & John Howard, Peter Moore, Audrey Newton, Jade Oldfield, Jaqueline Olivetti, Brendan Penzer, Georgina Pollard, Tony Priddle, Elizabeth Rankin, Tanya Richards, Che Ritz, Chris Samuel, Holly Schulte, Beau Scott, Wendy Shortland, Kirsten Smith, Megan Sprague, Jasmine Steven.

25 October - 18 November 2007

Opening Launch Thursday 25th October - 6:00pm - 9:00pm

At The Vanishing Point
565 King Street, Newtown.
http://www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au/

The only gay headmaster in the village.

J.K. Rowling says that Dumbledore's gay. Fair enough. It's nice to see that Hogwarts is such a progressive institution. Can't help but feel this isn't really going to do much to the right-leaning amongst us who think that the Harry Potter books are a recipe for one's soul burning for all eternity. These people probably also think that a thorough reading of said books will result in depraved children who can open locks with sticks, fly brooms and make their stairs move.

At least you get to hang out with Alan Rickman though, he's pretty badass.

"How long can we look at eachother..."

In a stroke of genius that's surprising myself in a way a blog post is never really going to describe properly, I'm currently rendering a new video work that features a seamless loop of a section of You're The Voice by John Farnham. It's quite possibly the most vile act of boredom I've yet produced, and I'm alarmingly comfortable with this.

As I said to a friend of mine yesterday, "I can feel my powers growing".

Members of the 2007 John Howard retirement campaign, your time is now.

http://www.aec.gov.au/

If you are an Australian citizen aged 18 or over and not on the electoral roll, you have until 8pm on Wednesday the 17th October 2007 to fill out an enrolment form and get it to the Australian Electoral Commission.

If you are on the electoral roll, but need to update your details, you have to do this by 8pm on Tuesday the 23rd of October 2007.

Now for some reason the whole thing about not being able to enrol once the election is called seems to not have come to pass. This is good. Get cracking.

That's not a moon... It's a money vaccum!

You do realise that while you are sitting there reading this, you could be spending your hard earned cash on a special edition Transformer that starts off as the Death Star and turns into Darth Vader, and another that starts off as the Millenium Falcon and breaks down into Han Solo and Chewbacca. It's just a matter of what you find important I guess.

[03.01.08 - Over Christmas I saw an ad on TV for the Darth Vader / Death Star number. This thing is available in Australia.

Seriously, what are you still looking at this for?]

Minor backtracking #1: Is beauseless is a word?

I don't know about other bloggers, but I find it difficult enough to keep up with the vast amounts of wonder and stupidity the world throws at me on a daily basis, let alone to then post it online in order to share said discoveries with all those out there in the internets. I try to keep track of various tidbits and webpages in the hope of going back to them at a later date, but this process has now blown out to four word documents and a large section of the to-do list in my diary from two weeks ago. I've decided that now is the time to combat this; that I will retread through my collection of abandoned data, if for no other reason than to finally realise that I really do spend too much time being fascinating by things that aren't really that interesting.

To begin proceedings, I offer you two gems from Wired.com. First of these is a guide to compiling a mix tape, courtesy of DJ Whoo Kid, which will surely come in handy at some point in your life. Secondly, from Wired's How-To-Wiki, is a guide to making a cake shaped like Nintendo's Wii console, which is beautiful. But you can't eat it, which is useless. This is quite annoying, but it's probably just as well; those motion-sensitive controllers would not be pleasant to digest.

Newcastle migratory season 2007.

The October long weekend means a number of things in New South Wales; like the AFL grand final on Saturday [alright, that might be more of a Victorian thing, but just go with it OK?], the NRL grand final on Sunday, and a day off on Monday to recover from the hang over. For a large group of artists, musicians, writers and other miscreants however, it means trying to find somewhere to sleep in Newcastle [and trying to work why you didn't learn from your mistakes last year and book accomodation earlier this year]. Now in its seventh year, the This Is Not Art Festival provides refuge to a number of oddballs and curiousities over four days and four smaller festivals - Electrofringe, The National Young Writers Festival, Sound Summit and Critical Animals.

I'll be running around town committing a number of acts of mischief in the name of Electrofringe. My video Ducks Should Be Free From Persecution will be showing as part of the Electroprojections screening series. On Thursday night I'll be stalking Newcastle's walls armed with a video projector and a power generator. Next Monday I'll be taking over TIN Radio with Ben Byrne to present two solid hours of something between 20:30 and 22:30 and this Friday I'll be presenting ElectroPopQuiz!, which may well just be my finest hour.

Taking place at the TINA Festival Club between 17:30 and 18:30, ElectroPopQuiz! will be your opporunity to flex your intellectual muscle over a range of topics that potentially you and most likely far less actually care about. Think of it as Wednesday night pub trivia hosted by your high school electronics club. It'll be sensational, I guarantee. And there's prizes too. All the trimmings.

If you're planning on entering, I suggest you bring a nerd along for back up. You have been warned.

Experiments in italics.

Hmmm... interesting.

Videogames... really.

Most nerds who were alive during the eighties would be aware of the notion of audio cassette tapes being used for the purposes of data storage. An odd concept perhaps, but at the time we all just went along with it. Fisher Price even developed a video camera, the PXL-2000 (more commonly known as Pixelvision), that recorded video to such cassettes and was famously used by video artist / filmmaker Sadie Benning in the production of her works. What I wasn't aware of was the application of VHS tapes for similar purposes. Stranger still, toy maker Hasbro sunk $20 million (US) into the development and production of a videogame system code-named NEMO (which stood for Never Ever [or Even, depending on who you ask] Mention Outside) that ran off specially designed VHS tapes. The system apparently worked by encoding multiple audio and video tracks on to the tape that could be accessed in any order necessary. Interesting perhaps, but possibly limited in what could actually be achieved by the format. The inherent nature of the system also meant that the games were extremely costly to produce, with productions costing millions, which was unheard of at the time.

The combination of this, it's potential $299 (US) price tag, and the dominant Nintendo Entertainment System, which retailed at $100 (US) and was infinitely cheaper to produce titles for, seemed to be enough to sink the system before its release in 1989. There's an article from Gamespy here about why the NEMO was a terrible idea and why we're better off without it if you're keen. Or you can go back to playing Night Trap; the choice is yours really.

Current adventures in pop music: The absolute finest pop song Jens Lekman has ever written.

I like Jens Lekman a whole bunch. I would even go so far as to say he is one of my top five in my top ten of Swedish people. He makes great pop songs that traverse the whole canon of twee-ism; misanthropy, lost love, found love, unrequited love, love that turns psycho, and misanthropy about all of the above. He has a new song that's about none of these, it's about bingo (amongst other things), and Jens believes it's the absolute finest song he's ever written:

On Swedish Radio it's on E-rotation. The lowest rotation. Which only further convinces me of what a genius I am. I'd like to change my opinion from what I said in the previous post to call it not "one of the finest...", but the absolute finest popsong I've ever written. Fuck Black Cab. Fuck Mapleleaves. In ten years this will be a true classic.

See, I don't just make this stuff up. These are certainly strong words, and what's more he may just be right. I mean, who can argue with a man who gave birth to the lyric She said it was all make believe / But I thought she said maple leaves. Genius. You can stream Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo from here (here, being Service, his Swedish label), and order the vinyl for 7 Euros while you're at it. That's a Euro per inch, that's a bargain in any Scandinavain language.

[06.08.07 - According to the Service website, the vinyl is 6 Euros. I'm not going to correct the main text though, as that would require deleting the joke about paying a Euro per inch and I honestly don't think I can do any better than that. But in the interests of ethical blogging, I feel it's important you know that I know I made a mistake.]

[04.01.08 - I moved the sentence "See, I don't just make this stuff up" from the end of the paragraph before the quote to the beginning of the paragraph after it. I also took it out of brackets for grammatical correctness and such. I'm sure you don't need to know this, but transperancy is always nice.]

Condiment-induced distress.

Once upon a time, the brand Asia at Home used to offer a Thai Chilli Jam stir-fry sauce. It was amazing. It was sweet, but had sufficient bite in it to remind you that you hadn't confused the order of your meal; you were definitely in savoury town here. It was all so very simple; chicken, an onion, a red and a green capsicum, a couple of cashew nuts if you felt fancy, and the sauce... done. Now, I'm very much aware that stir-fry sauces of this ilk are technically cheating, but then short of you growing the chillies yourself, and harvesting the sugar cane while you're at it, I would dare say that even the greatest cullinary masters amongst us have been guilty of skipping a few steps from time to time. This is all irrelevant though. The point is the sauce is gone, and I want to know what happened to it.

It's not as if the concept of the chilli jam stir-fry has gone out of fashion. Most Thai restaurants offer it, you can even get beef with it if you want to go all out. This hasn't stopped Asia at Home from deciding that Australians don't need chilli jam, covertly removing it from supermarket shelves and replacing it with single serve packets of "Thai Sweet Chilli". I'm sorry, but that's just not going to cut it. I can get sweet chilli anywhere; chilli jam I've discovered is somewhat more difficult to come across. Asia at Home, you had a market on Australian laziness. You had it all cornered to yourself, with no one even attempting to move in on your turf, and you gave it away like a Red Hot Chilli Pepper. So I denounce thee Asia at Home; I don't want any sunday markets preserves or other supermarket jams as substitutes, I want the real deal. So onwards I quest, in search of newer, better Thai Chilli Jam experiences. And I will find it, even if I have to turn to the internets to do it. But if you decide to bring back your version Asia at Home, you know there's always a place for you here. I won't ask any questions, or pry into the whys of the disappearance; but the damage is done now, and I just don't know if things can be as they were.

Performance evidence.

Shannon O'Neill has posted some photos from the Sydney leg of the Liquid Architecture festival on his flickr page, including some of myself in various stages of silliness. I also have some pictures I took from the opening night extravaganza, which I'll one day get around to uploading, but these will do nicely in the meantime. Thanks Shannon!