Last sunday, I set out on an epic adventure with my long-time collaborators Shaun Ferraloro (photographer of virtually every press shot you’ve ever seen of me) and John Aliaga (directed my ‘Til Death Do Us Part clip and shot the footage for my background visuals with me) to the sleepy WA wheatbelt town of Kelleberrin. If you’re not from Western Australia (or simply have no idea what I’m on about), it’s about three hours east from Perth. Australia being Australia, the geography is completely different out there. Huge cornfields, distant trees and shrivelled lakes. The town itself is basically a main street with a small patch of houses surrounding it. In the middle of the main street is this:
I don’t want to show you the inside yet, but inside this is a big, run down art deco theatre called Aurora. An amazing woman named Janelle Cugley runs the space, and we were lucky to be allowed to shoot in there. Especially at night, the building is the perfect setting for the person I become onstage as it basically looks the way the inside of my head must look.
We did 25 shots, plus a music video over 14 hours. It was a long, long shoot, starting at 2:30 in the afternoon and going laaaaaate. This is me just after 4:30, after shooting what I think will be the cover shot:
At this point, this was as far as I could open my eyes.
I can’t wait to share these shots with you and the film clip we shot… and THE ALBUM THAT THEY’RE FOR!!! All of these things are going to be coming out incredibly soon. I don’t know about you, but that makes me very excited.
Back to Aurora, I’m hoping to do some work out there next year, it’s an amazing space that’s perfect for me to work in. And, without being a tool about it, being out there sparked a whole different set of musical ideas that I’d like to explore. Not that I’m short on them at the moment, I’ve got songs for about five different album ideas spewing out of my brain. I don’t think it’ll be long until I’m making LP #3…
One of my Perth favourites Mathas has just released a rad single called White Sugar. His live show has really hit its’ straps this year, so if you get a chance to see him, go out and do it. This single is avaliable as a Radiohead-style name your price download from his website.
I’m working on a new live setup that I’m hoping to have ready in time for summer. There’s a few changes to how I do things I want to make - my current live setup is awesome but I want to be able to interact with it more, and I want to go back to having each song as its’ own song rather than as a continuous set. Plus I generally like to go over my arrangements at least once a year and give them a bit of a spruce up.
Not to mention that everything in my rig is broken and needs to be replaced, so what better time.
As part of that, I’ve just ordered a roadcase to fit my new setup. It will look a bit like this, but with more flashing lights and less boxes and mathematic things.
Quite unintentionally, I created a costume for this years’ Thrill The World that could be a character from the universe of You Have Nobody To Blame For This Apocolypse But Yourself. Thrill The World, if you’re not familiar, is an annual attempt to set a world record for the most people simultaneously dancing the zombie dance from Michael Jackson’s Thriller. ‘Tis fun.
Photo courtesy of Gillian Berry.
With CHOGM happening in Perth this weekend, the #occupy stuff happening everywhere and momentum building around the idea of having a look at how corporate interests are allowed to behave… this kind of stuff is just kind of floating around my head a lot at the moment. And, as is usually the case with me, it seems to have manifestated itself in the form of something rather, uh, silly.
Unfortunately only about three people got the joke. Most were confused by it and two people were grossly offended (which either far too few or too many). So it could be considered a bit of a costume misfire, if I were to think that way. Which I don’t. I think it was awesome.
Was it better than last years’?
PS: I have just been announced for the zombie themed (!!!) NEW BEGINNINGS festival on the New South Wales central coast (just south of Newcastle). Headliners are lovely gents Grafton Primary, Peter Coombe and the Vengaboys. Tell me that’s not awesome. You can’t. Because it is.
Short post today but I thought this was hilarious; while rehearsing my Injured Ninja remix with the band for their launch on the weekend, I discovered my version is based entirely on a misheard lyric. What I heard as “We move as zombies that live through the chaos and blood” is actually “We move as armies that live through the chaos and blood.”
Lucky I like my misheard version better, innit.
In other news, Sydney’s Simo Soo has just released his new record and it’s the wierdest thing you can do to your stereo. His music is so hyperactive it makes red cordial seem like NOTHING. He’s unleashed some totally uncomprimising wierd pop strangeness.
Speaking of uncomprimising musical awesomeness, I played Like Junk’s launch show for their new 3” floppy disk single Faceache on the weekend and they totally slayed it live. They really are one of my favourite live bands in Perth, on record they sound leftfield (which I like too) but they really hammer it home live. I hope they put out an LP, I think once they have an album full of this stuff together they’ll start to connect with the kind of audience they’re looking for.
It’s a releasey kind of month for me, between my new single with Ze!, the little free tidbit a couple of days back, not to mention last month’s I Feel Dirty single still doing the roundsand now this…
Injured Ninja asked me to do a remix several months back and I’d been slowly piecing together an instrumental, beats-oriented remix, using a few grabs of their vocal. It was good but to be honest I wasn’t really feeling it much as there’s a very fine line to be walked with using heavy music in electronic stuff; it’s very easy to sound like Limp Bizkit.
I saw Mathas perform his remix (above, totally amazing) for this LP at Abbe May’s album launch and his remix saw him rapping over a beat that stayed very faithful to the original. It opened up the idea of doing a song using their samples instead of a beats thing; with the track this is based on, Our Bodies, it’s been through two quite different recorded versions already, and it seems to be one of those songs that evolves to suit wherever the bands’ headspace is at the time. So I felt like I had a bit of liscence to take some choice elements from the album mix and push them in whatever direction I wanted, though I also wanted to maintain some of the thrashy intensty of the original (below).
By the time I made it, I didn’t have a lot of time of overthink things, so this kind of just exploded onto my Ableton Live screen. The first night, as I was putting the basics of the track together, I scrawled lyrical notes that I pieced together to lay down as a vocal at 3am in one take (hi neighbours! Hope you like blues howling!).
A couple of nights’ editing later and here it is. One of the strangest songs I’ve made in a career built on some admittedly pretty wierd shit. Have a listen and click the “buy” link to pre order a CD copy of the remix album with an awesome bonus poster for $13 aud.
I found this in the depths of my archive. I figure you may as well have it if you want it. It’s a bootleg remix; if you like it, head over to Beatport and buy his amazing Make It Yellow EP.
Roof Hopping (Tomás Ford’s Parkour Injury Bootleg) - Montoru by tomasford
A bit of a good week for announcements this one. If you haven’t seen the new video clip, scroll down IMMEDIATELY, but otherwise;
This is my new weekly night at The Hydey in Perth every thursdady; I’m excited about it because there’s not much else like it around and it will be FUN. The presser looks a bit like this:
Comedians? Performance Art? Cabaret? Acoustic? Yep. We’ve got all that covered.
Welcome to Raw Hyde at The Hyde Park Hotel.
Every Thursday kicking off on the 28th of September will see your host Tomás Ford showcase the newest and most diverse talents from Perth.
Open mic nights have never looked so different. Free entry, and at the Hydey from 7pm EVERY Thursday evening, starting this one.
Our opening lineup is a cracker, with appearances from Bonnie Tessa Davies (fresh from Edinburgh Fringe), Belowsky (straight off an amazing Downstairs At The Maj season), tunes from Taun Band, Mike Cardy and Peter Bibby (Frozen Ocean).
Plus 5 minute open mic slots all night. Rego for Open Mic will fill up fast, so get down before 9pm to ensure your place.
It’s going to be a blast, make sure you come check it out sometime as I’m hoping it becomes the kind of place where performers can try out pretty much whatever you’ve ever wanted to try out. It’s going to be crazy fun.
It’s a been a few months of clicking around with my good pal John Aliaga on this one, but it’s finally done. May I present to you, the finished video clip for my collab with Ze!, ‘Til Death Do Us Part…
This was a blast to work on - following an enjoyably chaotic shoot that incorporated an op-shop shopping spree, we ran around my managers’ house following a heavily improvised shooting script. It was almost as fun as playing the song live with Ze when we toured a few months back; by the end of the tour we were really bouncing off each others’ energy on stage, which is not something I get to do a lot of.
I produced this track at home and spent a lot of time getting all the floating layers and hooks in it to sit in the wierd-pop space I had in mind. We wrote our own lyrics; I remember getting Ze’s initial vocal contribution and being pleasantly shocked by it. Far from the glam electroclash of her other stuff, she slammed a disco murder ballad on me. As you can imagine, I was a little excited. A thousand mix-revisions later, we ended up with this thing.
It was avaliable as a free download a few months ago to coincide with our tour and picked up a stack of downloads; we’re re-releasing it commercially now, so you can get it at my Bandcamp site or on iTunes.
If you missed all the Ze!-related tour crazy crazy awesome funtimes, you can find out more about her at http://ze.com.my - this is what she does when she’s not trying to kill me:
This is my manager and soul boy Turin Robinson. Late at night, drunk, hammering out one of Turin’s songs on guitar and piano. It’s kind of nice. But really, the real reason I’m posting it here is that he probably doesn’t want me to post it here. I bet he gets me to delete it. But it will amuse me either way.
If anyone should feel shame about this video it’s me, with my thought-it-was-hilarious-when-I-was-drunk Will.I.Am-style backing vocals on the chorus. So if you’re reading this, Aaron, please think apon that and high five yourself for your mad keys skillz.