This image is irrelevant. I am not this man. This is not my gear. I never wear denim. I have fuck all resources.
So I’m back to recording, in between working on stuff for my upcoming Perth and Melbourne shows. I’ve been hammering away on some tracks I used to really enjoy playing but that musically didn’t fit anymore into what I do; one of them is this semi-industrial thing that was really poorly mixed in its’ previous incarnation. I’d done all this stupid editing on the bassline, and now with the right EQ and compression, it’s sitting FUCKING AMAZINGLY in this track. It’s now what I would call a mad-ass rhythm.
It’s starting to feel like the record is coming together; sequencing it is going to be interesting, because it has a solid theme and my production has fairly a obvious style now, but style and tempo wise it’s extremely eclectic. It should fit together, it’s vaguely been designed to, but the reality of that will be tricky to work. Still a way to go anyway. Still got a lot of tracks I want to lay down before I’m done, but the ones I have are strong.
I’ve still gotta get the vocals laid down to my liking, but I’m starting to feel more confident about that as well. After the heavy rehearsing for Disco Bunker, I’m really starting to feel like I’m in the inside of these songs.
What else is up? Gigs. Mostly, gigs. Listening to the new Spitfires, Gorillaz and Massive Attack records. Enjoying comparing my songs to the latter two and feeling like they are much better. Aware of what an egotistical bastard that makes me sound. Not caring.
Meanwhile, Rob Roy is playing in the background as I type this and Homeboy is hiding inside a dead MOOSE. I can’t top that, so I’m going to close my laptop.
Title says what I wanted to say. His work is pretty awesome, he basically invented the lifestyle Flash animation nerds around the world enjoy today. Painstakingly sitting around computers, inputting pretty mathematical patterns and colours. This is my favourite thing of his, but if you’re in the mood for looking at pretty digital things, search his name on YouTube and see what comes up, it’s all good.
So this should be fun. On March 19 I’ll be taking over the Republic’s Horror Shop show. Last time I played The Horror Shop, it was when it was running at Shape, which provided a thousand hilarious audience reactions from the electro emo hipsters in attendance - there were awesome people too, which meant there were people to share those fucked up reactions with.
The Republic is a much more Tomás Fordy proposition. Aside from being my favourite aftershow haunt, it is a purpose built male strip club. I dig that. The vibe is always good and there are seedy little booths you can sit in. And really fucking great classic disco music.
Supporting is Mark Storen, who I’m slightly in awe of. He’s a piano cabaret man, but not at all in the way you’re thinking. It’s a bit like if Tom Waits, Marilyn Manson and Tim Minchin had a baby together but without the gender issues that implies. He’s been off touring his recent show called “A Drunken Cabaret” to the Adelaide and New York Fringe festivals and is in extremely fine form. I’m pretty sure if you dig me you will dig him. Go check out the music on his Myspace, particularly my personal favourite, Stab U, which I would love to see have a Kosheen remix.
Here’s a review of Mark from the Advertiser:
MARK Storen delivers a philosophical and funny look at the taboo space where love turns homicidal.
Storen takes on each of the personas in this one man show with a fantastic physicality that seemed to fascinate the audience and draw them into his world.
The smutty and politically incorrect songs, which are original and catchy, show him at his best.
A Drunken Cabaret delivers a polished and memorable performance from a clever comic, excellent singer and avid observer of the human condition.
In short: Impressively incorrect.
You see what I’m talking about!? So COME!!!
Also, Melbourne kids will notice there’s another poster above - I’m playing Pony on the 27th at 2 AM. Last time I played there it was my favourite show of the tour. A really mental audience who were up for anything. Again?
I’m still recovering from my time in Tomás Ford’s Disco Bunker eight weeks eight days later.
It was a pretty awesome experience, I’m kind of weighing up how I thought it went; on one hand theatres are agonisingly middle class, a conventionally seated crowd is really hard to work with and I think the ticketed nature of the event priced out a few people I would have liked to be able to see the show. I’ve forgotten how to read theatre audiences a bit as well, which is an unfortunate side effect of my not working in theatre anymore; I’m totally ninja with festival/pub/club environments but it’s a very different feeling in a theatre.
Apart from those qualifications though, it was pretty much an unqualified success. The reviews have been uniformly excellent (you can read Ben Watson’s great one on my Press Kit page), so I’m likely going to be touring it to a few festivals this year. A lot of things from the show will feed back into my general live act, but there’s quite a few things that are specific to playing in a theatre and the journey I wanted to happen for the audience that I don’t think will work outside of that.
It really knocked me about though - aside from all the time I spent getting the show together, the nature of the gig was that it took a lot of my mental energy, which I didn’t really give the audience a chance to give back in a conventional way. So I was wiped after the shows and although I enjoyed playing them, it actually took a couple of days for me to really appreciate what I’d achieved with them.
Now I have even more ideas for how to progress the show, which is great, because I hate it when I start to feel satisfied and smug about what I do. I mean, feeling smug is a very enjoyable emotion, it’s actually my favourite feeling but it’s not very useful.
Anyway, there are some great shots from the show shot by William Buck for Faster Louder that you really have to go see for yourself. He shot both the early and late shows so you get a really good feel for the way the show went if you look at the whole set.
In other news, I’m back to recording this week and loving it, even if it’s still moving at a glacial pace. It’ll get there. Promise.
Had a power fun spoken word gig at The Moon this arvo. Though I’d set aside this arvo for blogging, I still haven’t had a sec to chill out since Disco Bunker, so I will blog about the AWESOME goodness of that gig tomorrow.
Meanwhile, I’m watching Goldfrapp videos. The new one (above) is pretty hilarious, almost as good as a track I only recently discovered because it was on an album of theirs I didn’t think I dug, called Ride A White Horse. She feels so fuckin’ dirty. You will want to watch both of these.
Photo by William Buck for FasterLouder.com.au
Well, what a terrible dribbling of shit that last post was.
Coverage for Disco Bunker is slowly starting to seep out of the media; FasterLouder have posted this great gallery of shots from the shows which give you an idea of what you missed out on, and Spaceshipnews have posted the first review and incidentally made me their first “Band Of The Week” in their relaunched (and rather sexy) new site, which aside from being an incorrect use of a word, is rather a distinct pleasure.
There will be quite a lot more reviews and photos to come this week I’m sure, but here’s the first taste if you want to relive the show or check out what you missed. It always makes an interesting read for me to see what individuals’ opinions are on shows, as a solo act I draw inspiration from reviewer opinions, if not always in the way the writer probably intended, so I’m looking forward to them.
I’ll post about the shows and my dj’ing at Future Music Fest tomorrow! Promise! My brain is still twisted into knots from the longest long weekend on record.
In the two days since my Disco Bunker (which went off by the way), I’ve had some time to chill out and watch TV. Which is awesome (will post about it tomorrow).
Unfortunately, everything I’ve seen has been SHIT.
I am currently watching Ross Noble recreate Billy Connolly’s 90’s Australian travelogue show. Almost shot for shot. Why is this happening? Surely he is better than this? I mean, I’ve never liked his comedy, but surely he’s at least got some original ideas in his head? WTF?
Last night I endured Scrubs: Medcal School, which I’m being generous to by adding the “Medical School” bit - I think they’re just pushing it as a new series. You can see it here if you want to enjoy the spectacle of a show jumping the shark so far it misses the ramp entirely. I think I counted three characters from the original series, all of whom have significant partners and young children who aren’t mentioned in the show at all - actually, the characters spend all their time on university campus, where they are now teachers, and at various bars. I can only assume that their home life is disintegrating entirely in messy ways that they choose not to talk to each other about, ever.
The other thing I watched was Airways, which has gone from being a vaguely amusing Australian riff on Airport USA/the most hilariously trashy awesomeness around to THE WORST SHIT EVER. It’s basically a long-form ad for Tiger now. At least Airport USA is not at all sympathetic to Southwest airlines and you found yourself hating everyone on the TV. Host Corinne Grant sounds like she regularly works shifts in the terminal herself the way she sides with bitchy check-in supervisors. Ugh.
And to reiterate the opinion of everybody who has seen it, BONO, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS ROXY MUSIC DOCUMENTARY.
TV: I think our relationship may be over. Oh wait, we have DVD’s of The Tudors? This is good news. Period-piece soft porn soap opera. Trashy crap with beautiful costumes and beautiful people. I can dig it.
Anyway, rant over.
We’ve sold all our tickets to the 8pm Disco Bunker show. But don’t fret. We’ve decided to add a 10pm show, which you can book tickets for now. Above the 10pm show is a listing for the 8pm show, which reads SOLD OUT. I am enjoying that a little more than I probably should.
I’m really excited. You’re coming, right?
Here’s the dodgy press release I knocked up in an exhausted post-early-morning start for my RTRFM breakfast interview today.
Tomasford.com and Tyranocorp Present
Tomas Ford’s Disco Bunker
8pm SOLD OUT!!! 10pm Show JUST ADDED!!
Tomas Ford expected his Disco Bunker show to be successful within his electro-disco niche in Perth, but he didn’t quite expect the reaction it’s had. Everyone in town, it would appear, is coming.
When the show sold out in presale over the weekend, he was assaulted with emails and facebook messages stressing out about tickets. But fret not. A 10pm show has been added to the night.
If you’re wondering what you can expect from the show, Ford says “I’ve got some amazing new costuming, there’s new video work that’s coming together really well and I’ve designed the show around the room because it’s a very unusual space, so it’ll be a unique experience. I don’t do theatre shows very often at the moment, but they’re great fun for the audience and I find they have a different kind of intensity to them that you don’t get in a pub or festival show.”
Ford’s shows mix up of electro-disco, cabaret and playing with the audience. You might have seen him twisting the minds of audiences at Southbound and Laneway Festivals this year, or in one of his myriad local pub shows. He’s built an audience around the country through touring on his own, well received seasons at Fringe Festivals, as support for Birds Of Tokyo and as part of Big Day Out’s insane Lilyworld lineup.
Despite all this activity, he’s more excited about these shows than anything else he’s done. “In a theatre I have a lot more control over what happens in the room; there’s no distractions. People are really buzzing about this show too, so it’s going to be a great atmosphere to play in anyway, and then I’ll come out and add layers of insane fun to it.”
Tickets for the new show are $20 and are available from Heatseeker.com.au, Planet Video and Mills Records, or there will be limited door sales available on the night. More information is available at http://tomasford.com .
TOMAS FORD’S DISCO BUNKER
8 PM (doors at 7 PM) – SOLD OUT!!
10PM (Doors at 9pm) – JUST ADDED!!
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 27
THE ASTOR THEATRE
659 BEAUFORT STREET
MT LAWLEY
BOOK TICKETS HERE BEFORE THEY’RE GONE!!
In what will no doubt be a fucking awesome way to come down from the excellence of my Disco Bunker shows the night before, I’m DJ’ing at the Future Music Festival next Sunday from 6:30-7:30 in the Silent Disco. Come by and visit to warm yourself up for Empire Of The Sun, The Prodigy, Booka Shade and Boys Noize :)
Wooohoooo!
(Mad photoshop skillz. I haz them.)
Oh Lady Gaga, you are so batshit crazy. I love you. If you haven’t seen her performance at the Brit Awards yet, even if you don’t like her usually,click the link below, it’s probably the closest thing I’ve seen to the kind of big production art-pop performances Laurie Anderson and Grace Jones used to do in the 80’s.
UPDATE: Oddly, Tumblr won’t let me post this. So click here to look.
The strange thing with Lady Gaga though is that I stumbled across an article at illuminati conspiracy site The Vigilant Citizen that has kind of infected my ability to enjoy her music without suspicion. They deconstruct her over three articles and at least 80% of what they say is bullshit, but like all conspiracy theories, 20% of it is pretty spooky and irrational. The deconstruction of the Bad Romance clip is particularly effective, but obtuse videos like that do lend themselves to that kind of thing. There’s also this and this (part 2 of the first this), which are kind of odd. Nonetheless, I can’t help but think about this site’s suggestions when I look at her videos/photos etc now.
And they give me another great excuse to hate the Twilight franchise. And the fact that anybody could draw anything from Beyonce’s lame “Sasha Fierce” concept character bullshit and the Crazy In Love video is awesome to me. Or the crowning piece of aceness, a deconstruction of the 2009 VMA’s as an occult initiation ritual for Taylor Swift. In the fairly implausible (but well explored) case that’s it’s true, I can only imagine Kanye saying something like “Imma let you finish, but Baphomet was the greatest…”
Aw hell, while I’m on a conspiracy bender, I may as well keep going. Some of this stuff amuses me occasionally, so I might as well share my favourite conspiracy of all time: Denver Airport, it’s absolutely bizarre. Actually, Vigilant Citizen has written about this as well and that’s probably the easiest place to start if you feel like a conspiracy googlethon. There’s something really, really fucked up going on there. Nasty.
On the other hand, WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT? Disco Bunker is just about sold out. Go buy tix NOW!!! Stand by for a further announcement on the weekend ;)