Tomás Ford

Tomás Ford’s Beer Garden Pleasuredome

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:02:00 +0800

Here’s some news: I’m going to be DJ’ing at The Rosemount every thursday from August onward until the end of time. It’s going to be a lot of fun, I have big plans that will slowly unfold over the next few months at this. If you want to keep up with this, the official web presence is on Twitter at @tf_pleasuredome.

Here’s the press release:

Up Fitzgerald Street, across from a bowling alley, next to a room full of live music, in the belly of The Rosemount lies a mystical beer garden. Within this magical space, the faeries* are all a-twitter.

Tomás Ford, the local crown prince of electro showmanship, is coming; it has been heard upon the wind. And he is bringing along records to play. In preparation, the Rosie faeries are planning thousands of cocktails to pour into punters for only $10 each. They are delicately preparing their Thursday night specialty, a $12 Parmigiana. They are hastily pouring jugs of Ted’s for $10. They are firing up the heaters. It’s an exciting time.

What is he going to be playing in this mysterious beer garden? It’s anybody’s guess, and anybody who tries will probably get it wrong. Whatever it is, it’s going to be fun. Genre-wise, we’re talking everything from alt-rock to minimal techno through punkfunk under stoner rock via authentic gay disco alongside delta blues vs oldschool hip hop classics and youtube sensations mashed into 70’s glam tripping over psychadelia with R. Kelly while exploring musique concrete and discovering the latest Korean pop hits. Actually, it would probably be more succinct to say “Tomás will spin anything that isn’t The Cat Empire.”

So yeah, no Cat Empire. If the rest sounds at all confusing, don’t worry, his soothing dulcet vocal tones will be there to narrate you through the nights’ musical story until everyone gets kicked out for being rowdy at around 1am.

Tomás will also be spinning the latest new release local music for you and people who make music are encouraged to bring their forthcoming cd’s down to the night for him to throw them into the mix (or else email an mp3 to management [at] tomasford.com). Actually, speaking of local music the Pleasuredome happens simultaneously with Space Ship News’ brilliant Thursday night live lineups on the Rosie’s inside.

In the leadup to the debut night on Thursday August 5, why not hop on Twitter and check out all the gossip about what’s going to happen? The night’s official twitter is @tf_pleasuredome (or http://twitter.com/tf_pleasuredome), and you can send requests and heckles there too.

TOMÁS FORD’S BEER GARDEN PLEASUREDOME
THE ROSEMOUNT HOTEL
Every Thursday Night, 8pm ‘til late.
Launch Night: Thursday August 5

*: The “faeries” may actually be Rosemount bar staff. I don’t know; I was pretty fucked up last time I was at the Rosie.

Masturbatory Self Analysis

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:52:00 +0800

I stumbled across a site that creates word clouds (I know, it’s so two years ago) and thought I’d see what my most usd words on this blog are. Turns out I say “like” about as much as I would, like, expect a character from a frat party film to. I also appear to apologise for my posts too much (“Posted Months Ago”) - sorry about that. The language I’m using is pretty positive though, which I didn’t really expect. Turns out I’m not the grumpy faux-goth I sometimes feel like. I’m doing well. I also use the word “pretty” a lot.

This one is my twitter tweets for 2010 so far, clouded up. Again with the “like”. A scroll through my archive reveals I’m not using the word in the Paris Hilton sense. It’s more like “I like this” or “It’s more like…”. Which is OK.

While I’m here though, why don’t you have a look at this? It’s my pal The Bedroom Philosopher, all up in your face dropping the best video clip of 2010 so far on you. If you don’t laugh at this, you are probably trapped inside a pair of spray on denims.

The Wrong Unicorn

Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:59:00 +0800

Seriously life alteringly rad t-shirt by local designer Evangeline Than that I ordered from TeeFury before even realising she’s from around these parts. Currently this is my favourite thing ever, it’s a simple gag done really well.

Apologies for the hat, I’ve just been outside in a storm, so my hair looks like death. Yes, worse than the faded straw hat. And yes, you are looking at my kitchen. Now you know what my kitchen looks like; you’re so lucky.

UPDATE: TeeFury only hosts t-shirts for 24 hours, but you can actually still buy this at RedBubble.

My Favourite Type Of Thon

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:37:00 +0800

As you can see on the left, I’m returning to The Astor, the scene of my Disco Bunker, for RTR FM’s Radiothon Opening Party. I’ll also be MC’ing the main stage. This is a bit of a killer lineup - all the acts are top shelf local music. I can’t even pick favourites, this is a great lineup to be part of.

Tickets are $20 or $15 if you are an RTR Subscriber. You can get them from the stations’ website. You’re going to want to be at this. It’s going to be huge.

Yay.

I Have A Harmless But Nonetheless Quite Potent Crush On Josh Fontaine

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:22:00 +0800

A few nights ago, bored of street press and the overly wordy books I seem to prefer when at the bookshop (but hate when I get them home), I had a read of the lyric sheet for 6s & 7s’ Choose The Sentinel Blooze LP. I really only did this out of boredom, but it turns out that Josh Fontaine, their frontman, is something of a genius wonderboy. If you have room in your album collection for a beach boys-ish record with sunny harmonies that mask lyrics so disarmingly raw they actually made me flinch when reading them, you should check this out. I’ve very little doubt it will place towards the top of my end of year top 10 list for Drum.

Last night I should have gone to his launch but didn’t. Luckily an old friend of mine, Senor Thommo, was there with his handycam and got this footage. Now I really wish I’d gone.

David Bowie Wasn't As Crap In The '90's As You Think You Remember

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:59:00 +0800

I was just watching the great live clip of David Bowie performing the industrial album version of Hallo Spaceboy in a club (above). I think it’s super-excellent; physical industrial music up there with the best Nine Inch Nails tracks. And yet I keep reading things that tell me Bowie’s ’90s were full of gross, esoteric records that nobody liked. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m gonna say it anyway; Bowie’s ’90s albums are amongst my favourites of his.

It might be because they were coming out as I was getting into him and Earthling’s drum and bass vs metal sounds weren’t far removed from some of my other teenage-gothic-phase records like the stuff on the Spawn/Matrix/Crow soundtracks. But I can’t dismiss this just as nostalgia for a naive appreciation of shit music; when I’d rather watch disc two of his chronological greatest hits dvd than disc one and when I posted the aforementioned video to Facebook, it got a LOT of likes. So let me talk you through his work from the ’90s onward. When I say talk, you know I mean rant, right? Good? Good. Let’s go.

TIN MACHINE - TIN MACHINE 2 & TIN MACHINE - OY VEY BABY
OK, OK. I wouldn’t touch these albums with a barge pole. Everything you have heard is true. But he had just done Labyrinth. That’s gonna take some recovery time.

BLACK TIE, WHITE NOISE
Yeah, OK, so I can’t listen to this as a whole album. The production is very much of it’s 1993 time; lots of bad keyboards, new jack swing influenced beats, that kind of shit. But really, if I was in 1993, this would sound OK in the same way that Justice’s album sounded OK two years ago but now every time I go to play it my ears bleed preemptively. The singles are great though, which isn’t surprising, because this is a commercial pop album and they were pretty uniformly full of filler during this period.

Miracle Goodnight is my favourite off this and the clip is fantastic (they won’t let me embed it so you’re stuck with Lucy Can’t Dance, which is painful). It’s all the things I love about early ’90s pop videos; vague aspirations to being dance music, awful clothes and wanky underdeveloped arty pretentions. Plus a cowboy girl! This album isn’t going to be for everyone, but if, like me, you can find amusement in spinning a Peter Andre record, why not extend that thought process to this?

THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA
OK, it’s a boring album. But it was just a soundtrack, give the guy a break. The TV movie adaptation was crap anyway so he didn’t have much to work with. Great book though.

OUTSIDE
This has a few of my favourite Bowie songs EVER on it. The Pet Shop Boys’ remix of Hallo Spaceboy was the first time I’d heard one of his songs outside of spinning my parents’ record collection - up until then my favourite song had been Breaking Glass from Low. Plus it featured the Pet Shop Boys, who I was obsessed with as a teenager.

There’s so many other great songs on this album though. My favourite of all time is The Hearts’ Filthy Lesson. It’s a dirty, swampy funk track that combines the things I love about Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode and the swagger of Beasts Of Bourbon into one awesome thing, with bonus wierd narrative lyrics. I love it. As for the rest of the record, it’s worth listening through to so you can find some tracks you like as it is very patchy, but there’s tracks like the The Motel and No Control that floor me.

EARTHLING
For years, you could walk into any cashies anywhere and get a copy of this for a dollar. You probably still can. But if you aren’t a technophobe, it’s actually his best album of the period. All the tracks are favourites of mine; he’s not just putting on drum and bass as a style, the songs are all written to take advantage of the musical form. It’s a bit leftfield for the mums and dads part of his audience though. But still, check this shit out:

This is Little Wonder. It’s powerfully wierd songwriting; the way the vocal moves around the slo-mo piano chords utterly rocks me. I won’t throw the other singles at you, but I’m Afraid Of Americans is definately worth a listen. OK, OK, here it is. I think if you listen to this record, you’ll pick up quite a few things that have made their way into influencing my act.

HOURS
This album is Bowie doing his best to turn into Phil Collins and is obviously a reaction to the public perception that he had become a bit too “wierd”. It’s not bad; there’s some really trite, cheap songwriting on here, but in amongst that are some great individual tracks.

Something In The Air is arranged in the Phil Collins style of the record, which kind of ruins its’ kitchen sink drama. At it’s best, that’s the feel of this record; taking quite unbearable 80’s pop sounds and applying them to the actual realities of his by then quite middle aged audience.

Then there’s this, in which Beck and Timbaland redeem one of the albums’ absolute stinkers, Seven:

HEATHEN
This is an absolutely amazing record. This carries on with some of the kitchen sink themes from Hours…and borrows the warm analogue synth sounds of Low to just come off as pure class. If you’re into Bowie and you haven’t heard this, you need to get onto that now.

This is Sunday. It is amazing. But it’s not as good as later in the record where Bowie is talking like the old dude that he is about death and family. I was very surprised to hear him singing about that and with such rad lyrics. Heathen: The Rays is a really, really powerful song for me and a possible contender for my funeral music.

REALITY
People like this album. I don’t know why. To me, it’s all the things people said about his 90’s period. Bloated songs, dated production full of crappy sounding keyboards, awful MOR 80’s commercial pop-rock guitars… listening to this makes my head explode.

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant at you about this. It’s been a very self indulgent blog tonight.

If you want to check this stuff out before you hunt it down, I thoroughly reccomend hitting up Grooveshark, which I think is pretty much the future of how you’re going to listen to music anyway. You can stream whatever you like, though you don’t actually own any copies of anything. It’s basically all I use now. And yes, you can stream a selection of my tracks on there, just search for my name.

Flashback To Awesome

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 22:11:00 +0800

Sometimes I forget how awesome I am. Luckily, now there’s YouTube to remind me. Power awesome. This is from 2007, at the end of my first national headlining tour. The show is at Shape and it was fuuuuuun.

I miss those shoes.

High Fives To Kids Of 88

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:41:03 +0800

I just wanted to correct something I blogged earlier. I mentioned how I was looking forward to the Kids Of 88 show last night but that they possibly weren’t really my kind of thing. They definately were. It was like Perth band Harlequin League covering Kylie Minogue’s electro tracks with a live show that reminded me a bit of Hot Chip. Anyway, you would have totally loved them. I’ll be seeing them again, hopefully next time they hit WA they get the audience they deserve.

This song, Ribbons Of Light, in particular is an absolute winner. Sure, I am really starting to hate triangles/pyramids as a motif in videos, but if you just listen to the song, this is a banger.

In other news, total high fives to Mojo’s for treating me so well last night. Me and my mates had a blast and it cemented my opinion that it’s my favourite place in the universe to play a show. Luckily, there is another coming up in a couple of weeks with the awesome master of tweedisco Carl Fox, synthpop gurus The Transients and DJ Captain K. For ten bucks.

Gaining A Singing Voice, Losing Vowels

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 17:13:00 +0800

Pivot. Well, “PVT”, officially, but I will be entering their new record on my iTunes under “Pivot”, because I don’t let American metal bands decide anything about the way I conduct my business.

Anyway, this is just a quick blog post because they’ve just put this out and I love it. The bit where it slows down in particular is really powerful and I can only imagine what it will be like live. Hammy, I hope. Personally, I would stretch that motherfucker out to as long as I could and then slam back in. But they are perhaps slightly more understated in their approach than I am.

Anyway, have a watch of this video. You can get an mp3 of it here.

Miles To Go Before I Sleep

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:46:25 +0800

When you put things on a list, they look so much less difficult than you know they are going to be.

I Raped Yr Song, Dude.

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 01:30:07 +0800

I’m sorry, Zack. I’m really sorry. This remix was supposed to be awesome. Something is going wrong.

Rockingham Famous

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:09:58 +0800

From the Sound Telegraph, Rockingham’s local paper. I was also in the Weekend Courier the same week, but I’ll give you this one as it’s a slightly better interview on my part.

Anyway, if you didn’t know before, I grew up in Rockingham. It was a bit of an odd place for a gentleman of my nature to grow up, what with its’ working class industrial area/naval town kind of vibe. Perhaps I need to put a gig on down there… it’s been a while since I’ve freaked people out in that ‘hood.

My thinking cap is on.

I Hope You Leave Enough Room For My Fist Because I'm Going To Ram It Into Your Stomach

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 23:40:00 +0800

I’ve just posted a new video blog at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS66Ms8xYSA

Which features a bootleg remix of the theme from The Running Man that I’ve been tinkering around with for a while now. There’s a content claim on the video, which means I can’t post it here and it’ll probably be taken down over the next day or so.

But at least you can go and get yourself a pretty copy of the remix as a download from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?zztyzmq5i4q

I’m very happy with how this remix has turned out, at the moment I think it’s up there with my best. It’s a pretty iconic theme tune, and it took me a long time to find a way to get something fresh out of it. Have a listen.

Kids Of '88

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:09:00 +0800

So I’ve just confirmed to play a set with an act from New Zealand called Kids Of 88 at Mojo’s on the 27th of this month; they do a kind of pop/electro thing that reminds me of a more indie version of TV Rock or Rogue Traders, something like that… if I can say that without it sounding like an insult. You know what I mean. It’s a different kind of band for me to play with, which means a different kind of crowd to fuck around with, which I always love. Plus it’s at Mojo’s, which is my favourite place to play in WA when it’s cold outside. They have an open fire and a kickarse wine list, so it’s really cozy.

Ill Advised Late Night Public Image Experimentation: The Video Blog

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:05:15 +0800

This is my new thing. Video blogs. I dig them. I plan to do more of them as they are extremely self indulgent fun. To kick things off, I’ve done two this weekend for you:

This whole thing started because I was messing around with the vocals for Nice and started craving the attention I get on stage. Turns out from stupid ego-based bullshit, beautiful things can grow.

I’m afraid I have no excuse for this one. Just know that I’m sorry.

Boomtown Boombox: Snow Bros

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 01:05:53 +0800

I’m not sure if you were at my Amplifier gig for the WAMi’s a little while ago; if you were, you may have seen the act before me, Snow Bros.

They’re a Perth production duo who have just put out a very nice collection of beats called Second Mystery. It’s got a cartoon spy theme groove to it and I must say I’m feeling rather partial to it at this late hour while I wait for some video to render. You can listen to it all on this player, or hit them up for digital copies for $10 or a cd for $15 by clicking through to their site.

Pretty awesome, no?

I Am Sitting In A Video Room.

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 18:12:00 +0800

I’ve just come across this fantastic bit of video (thanks to this Gawker article); its’ inspired by the Alvin Lucier piece recently performed in Perth by the new music ensemble Decibel with Peter Holland on vocals, I Am Sitting In A Room.

Sound artist Ontologist has taken the original concept of that piece in a very different direction and has ended up with one of the more elegant pieces of video art around on the web. He recorded a monologue, uploaded it to Youtube, then downloaded it and re-uploaded it 1000 times. The result is that most of what you see is Youtube’s inbuilt compression algorhythm gone wild. It’s also the first time I’ve ever seen someone use the Youtube platform itself to create an artwork. I dig it.

You may or may not dig it, but it won’t take up much of your time so have a look. If you’re into it, click through to the videos on youtube and there’s all 1000 of the variations sitting there, begging to waste hours of your time. If you are into halloucinogenic drugs, this would make a very tidy accompaniment. Much better than that MGMT record you were considering reaching for anyway. I saw you. Don’t deny it. Go on; put it in the bin.

Number 1:

Number 100 (warning: LOUD):

Kylie Requires Serious Statistical Analysis

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 18:07:00 +0800

What are the actual stats on this? Are people who wear foundation really more likely to fornicate with each other? Is it really possible that Kylie has been with that many people (luckily she dates mostly actors so casting this video would have been easy)? How much plastic surgery can you have before your face starts to take on a rubbery, bouncy appearance? Is this song meant to make me feel less awkward in approaching Kylie for sex - and further to that, isn’t that already achieved by the aforementioned foundation overload? Would the air inside the seething sexcave of human sluts be breathable? What does Jason Donovan think of all this - I imagine he thinks himself to be something of a catch in bed? Has Kylie passed the “Madonna In A Jumpsuit” threshold of Too-Old-To-Be-That-Type-Of-Sexy-Sex-Creature?

Seriously, what are the stats?

Patricia Piccinini Freaks Me Out

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:23:00 +0800

This is a still from the first work I ever encountered by Patricia Piccinini, Plasmid Region. I’d never felt such a strong sense that I was about to vomit, just from watching a video. These things mutate and change and it’s seriously, amazingly disgusting. Or it was at the time anyway. Taken along with some other work from her flooring We Are Family exhibition, she instantly became my favourite visual artist and hasn’t quite been pipped from that place yet (there’s been a few close calls, but nothing serious).

Piccinini has a retrospective exhibition on at the moment at Art Gallery Of WA that thankfully doesn’t include this, but does include some of her even more amazing recent waxwork sculpture stuff that takes these whacked out genetic design ideas and puts them into three (very real) dimensions.

Everyone who has been to this exhibition has raved about it and I was worried my high expectations would get the better of me, but I wasn’t disappointed. This is IT for me as far as visual art goes. Absolutely amazing. You have to go see it if you’re in Perth, we’re very, very lucky to have this work showing as a solo exhibit.

While you’re looking at the second section of work in the Centenary Gallery, make sure you head down to the end to the courtroom to check out the elegant gut punch of the Untitled installation in that room. On viewing that piece today, I discovered at I really hate crying in art galleries. It hasn’t happened before. It was only a little cry and nobody was around - my masculinity didn’t feel too comprimised. But seriously great work.

Can’t believe I’m writing about the Art Gallery Of WA. WTF? When did it stop sucking? Or is this temporary?

Here’s another old Piccinini still (neither of these are in the exhibit by the way, so there’s no spoiler alert needed):

T. Raumschmiere Have Come To Kick Your Ass

Fri, 28 May 2010 22:29:07 +0800

What can be said about a tune like this? Turn off your brain, turn up your stereo and throw yourself around the room. One of my all time favourite tracks.