Emptyset (Unsound Adelaide)
Unsound moves for its two final nights to Queen’s Theatre on Playhouse Lane. Town Hall works for Thursday but I wouldn’t want to spend my weekend sidling by the brass bosom of Queen Adelaide in its...
View ArticleCut Hands (Unsound Adelaide)
William Bennett’s bold and permissive set as Cut Hands doesn’t quite manage to get the room dancing but it shakes things out and loosens things up and sets bodies free of brains to move without...
View ArticleNurse With Wound (Unsound Adelaide)
For the first time, people in the crowd ditch their self-effacing equidistance and form a tight, committed knot before the stage. Nurse With Wound’s show is why many are here. “I’ve been listening to...
View ArticleStars Of The Lid (Unsound Adelaide)
Assuming all Stars Of The Lid’s moving parts are oiled and in good working order (elegant venue, exceptional acoustics, interesting surface for projections and a worship-y crowd) the trio (third member...
View ArticleMorton Subotnick (Unsound Adelaide)
It’s impossible to predict if octogenarian Morton Subotnick playing his 1967 album Silver Apples Of The Moon (the first electronic work commissioned by a record label) will impress as an artefact or...
View ArticleA spectacle of sound and silence: MOFO 2015
From the maelstrom mustered by rock band Swans to the serenity spread by Adam Wojcinski’s tea art, MONA FOMA excelled when foraying the fringes of quietness and noise and the space between spectacle...
View ArticleMishaps and mayhem in Hobart: MOFO 2015
On Saturday Exxopolis is deflated, MONA market is postponed and the Australian Art Orchestra’s collaboration with Arnhem Land’s Young Wagilak Group is blown off MONA lawn and into the museum’s...
View ArticleNothing To Lose: Force Majeure showcases big bodies and bigger ideas
In New York in 1936, Josephine Baker scandalised the city by dancing the conga in a skirt laden with phallic tusks, knocking down male performers one by one. Baker’s dancing had been popular for a...
View ArticleFrame of Mind: STC captures love’s big notes (review)
Wearing shorts and a T-shirt as though he’d decided just a moment earlier to surrender to his excitement, Sydney Dance Company artistic director Rafael Bonachela introduces us to his first show of...
View ArticleLaura Jean (Django Bar)
For every transcendental moment live music delivers, there are keenly felt disappointments. Like loving an album down to its last breath, then finding the lyrics inaudible at a gig – muddied by bad...
View ArticleLore – fusion of Dreamtime & contemporary dance (review)
Bangarra dance theatre’s 29th production, Lore, is a double bill featuring Sheoak, by experienced Bangarra choreographer, Frances Rings, and I.B.I.S., a co-creation from Deborah Brown and Waangenga...
View ArticleKing Lear review – fails to sate craving for fury
It is King Lear’s unreasonable expectations that drive Shakespeare’s plot. After abdicating in order to “unburden’d crawl toward death” Lear expects the fawning and flattery only power can procure to...
View ArticleGillian Welch (Enmore Theatre)
It’s no fun explaining Gillian Welch to people who’ve never heard of her. Country, bluegrass, folk, old-timey – all are approximations that flop far short of her magic. “I’m not really into that...
View ArticleArcadia review – flat production can’t dampen Stoppard’s dazzling play
A quick flick through the program is usually enough to mainline a show’s ideas. Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, however, is the play of ideas of plays of ideas. Audiences would be better primed prepping on...
View ArticleUnsound Adelaide review – breaking ground with unorthodox live sounds
Some say the music of Unsound is “difficult”. But difficult to one is eyes-closed, body-slumped bliss to another. The phrase “boundary-pushing” is problematic too because boundaries are only pushed if...
View ArticleGodspeed You! Black Emperor/Monumental (Adelaide Festival)
Post-rock is a loudly ponderous, insistently serious kind of music: all brooding soundscapes, apocalyptic themes and long, instrumental songs that are fanned into vast fire-fronts of noise. Everything...
View Article10 great Australian albums that flew under the radar in 2015
If the Australian music tree of life were illuminated where the money flowed, only a twig or two would light up. The root structure, trunk and sturdy branches consist of volunteers. Take FBi radio’s...
View ArticleBabes in Toyland – Pain In My Heart
My contribution to The Quietus article, ‘Quietus Writers’ Top 40 Noise Rock Tracks.’ It’s odd that journalists ever thought Babes In Toyland were a Riot Grrl band. They’re not, which is why I fell so...
View ArticleMusic You Missed
Victoria’s Golden Plains festival celebrated its 10th anniversary in March. The line-up featured Sleater-Kinney, the Buzzcocks and Violent Femmes but it was Australian acts Royal Headache, No Zu, the...
View ArticleLand of grand trees
The volcanic soil of Far North Queensland’s Atherton tablelands is home to a growing movement of farms lead by organic, seasonal and local principles. ~ Wellbeing Magazine ~ The rainforest presses in:...
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