During a break in shooting in Kellerberrin, John Aliaga and I did this.

If you’d like to see me roll a whole set like this, I’m playing with Dave Graney (!!), Odette Mercy and Adam Brown at Mojo’s in North Fremantle, WA from 6-10pm on Sunday night. It’s going to be a rad night, so do come down. Simply do.

With great delight and fanfare, I present to you two new, shiny, FUCKING EXCITING things. My new album and a music video for its’ lead track, Nice. Let’s watch the video together first, yeah?

You may recall I launched my album An Audience With Tomás Ford a couple of weeks ago at Amplifier Bar. Since then, I’ve been on a rollercoaster of amazing shows including a support spot for Regurgitator, a rave party at Fringe World and all kinds of other craziness, which continues this Saturday at The Provincial in Geraldton (!!!!!!!!!), if you’re in town.

The album is now avaliable to stream and purchase online; there’s a few packages avaliable. If you just want the MP3’s, it’s $12. The album by itself is $19.95, or with a copy of my 2012 Erotic Adventure Calendar is $29.95. Or you can buy (nearly) EVERYTHING I’VE EVER MADE EVER in a deluxe $45 package. Stream the record below and click through if you’d like a copy - go on, get yr purse out. It’ll make us both feel better about being in the world.

So the launch was AMAZING. I’m going to do a post full of pictures and some of the grand bits of press that ran around it, but first I’m going to go to bed. Here’s a rap battle I did with Boys! Boys! Boys! on the Youtubes last week in advance of the gig. They caned me, but I think both of our efforts were valiant.

Finally, An Audience With Tomás Ford is coming out. I think that’s cause for a party, no? Well I’m throwing one. A big one. On January 27 at Amplifier Bar, Perth.

If one were to take six years between albums, one had better make sure that the album one is putting out is fucking awesome. One would probably also want to make sure that when one launches said album, one does so with a killer party. Tomás Ford agrees with these sentiments entirely and so is pleased to simultaneously announce both an awesome album and a killer party.

THE RECORD IS AWESOME
First, the record; An Audience With Tomás Ford. It’s a wierdo masterwork; twelve slices of skewed electro-pop that catalogue the weirdness of Ford’s live show. The album takes listeners on a strange and twisted trip, from messy Youtube hit I Feel Dirty, through the crowdsurfing love-in of Cuddle and deep into the dark industrial disco of Five Times… this isn’t the kind of pop record that you can play at a dinner party, unless your friends are really messed up. But Tomas Ford isn’t meant to be easy to take.

Recorded in isolation before being mixed and vocalised at Soniclolly studio in Margaret River and mastered to perfection by Forensic Audio, the album sounds rather splendid. It will be released in an initial limited run of 100 handmade copies on January 27, before hitting stores nationwide via Firestarter Distribution to accompany national touring in March and April. The launch edition will feature a beautiful fabric cover, a bonus disc of demos and alternate versions of songs from the record and a zine that’ll give you a bit of background to the songs. This is going to disappear quickly and if you don’t
pick up your copy at the launch, you won’t be able to get one until March.

THE LAUNCH PARTY WILL BE KILLER
Luckily you’re coming to the launch then, right? For one night only, Amplifier Bar will be transformed into two rooms of underground music, barrier-smashing performance and unmatchable debauchery. Obviously TOMÁS FORD tops the bill in the main room with his full live experience, plus Sydney’s 8-bit firecracker SIMO SOO will be along for the ride, Nintendo-popsters BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!, post-everything destructionists INJURED NINJA, all-star collaborators DIGER ROKWELL & FELICITY GROOM, BRASH AND SASSY’s GENNIA FEBBRAIO in her solo debut and Melbourne hip hop mixtape masters L-BURN DJ’s between sets.

The Beer Garden Cabaret Spectacular is going to be even more debauched, with SCHVENDES’ sultry songstress RACHAEL DEASE playing a rare solo show, circuit bending avant-pop ludicrousness from THE GIZZARDS, comedy cabaret from freewheeling freaks LADYBONER and a never-to-be-repeated audiovisual spectacular from LEON (aka LOON-X-WING aka LEON EWING aka THAT GUY FROM BEAVERLOOP) and partystarting blueslooping from ADAM BROWN.

Plus you can expect performances and intrusions by Fringe favourite HOT PINK BITS (NZ), ukulele genius JOHN ROBERTSON, the walking confuse-o-rama that is JOHN CONWAY, splendid character comic ZACK ADAMS, spine tingling storytelling from ANDREA GIBBS, the comedy debut of LAITH TIERNEY, elegant phrases from Perth’s poet laureate BYRON BARD, DOSH LUCKWELL’s salacious sex poems and Perth’s legends of underground drag, VOIX DE LA VILLE.

COMBINE BOTH PRODUCTS FOR MAXIMUM ENJOYMENT
Don’t fret, you don’t have to choose one or the other – you can come to the party AND obtain an album! Everything will be available at Amplifier Bar on Friday January 27 between 8pm and 1am. Tickets are available for $15 (or $25 with a copy of the album) from Moshtix online: http://www.moshtix.com.au/event.aspx?id=53631&ref=tomasfordamplifier

AN AUDIENCE WITH TOMÁS FORD
TWO ROOM ALBUM LAUNCH PARTY

AMPLIFIER STAGE SUPER-PARTY:
TOMÁS FORD
BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!
SIMO SOO (SYD)
INJURED NINJA
DIGER ROKWELL & FELICITY GROOM
GENNIA FEBBRAIO (EX - BRASH & SASSY)
L-BURN DJ’S (MELB)

BEER GARDEN LOFI CABARET SPECTACULAR:
THE GIZZARDS
RACHAEL DEASE (SCHVENDES)
LEON (AUDIOVISUAL SPECTACLUAR)
ADAM BROWN
LADYBONER

WITH SPECIAL GUESTS ALL NIGHT:
HOT PINK BITS (NZ)
JOHN ROBERTSON
JOHN CONWAY
ZACK ADAMS
ANDREA GIBBS
LAITH TIERNEY
BYRON BARD
DOSH LUCKWELL
VOIX DE LA VILLE

AMPLIFIER BAR, PERTH
FRIDAY JANUARY 27
8 PM TO MIDNIGHT
BOOK NOW VIA MOSHTIX
More information at HTTP://TOMASFORD.COM

Oh dear, between the last post and this one, things are a little bit smutty around here at the moment. In a Benny Hill way though, so it’s all good. Anyway… bit of a fun announcement today. This thing was a blast to make and it makes me laugh every time I look at it…

Virility: Tomás Ford has it.

As he is finally releasing his new album An Audience With Tomás Ford in January after working towards it for SIX YEARS, Tomás is feeling spectacularly virile. Being as though he’s not entirely sure what to do with that sensation, he has channelled it into the production of a hilarious erotic calendar.



Shot in retired art deco theatre Aurora in WA wheatbelt town Kelleberrin with photographer Shaun Ferraloro and filmmaker John Aliaga, the calendar is a byproduct of an intense fourteen and a half hour shoot that also spawned the sprawling album artwork and performance videos for album tracks Nice and Vice.

Each calendar comes with a streaming preview link for his forthcoming album, scheduled for launch on January 27 at Amplifier Bar, featuring a huge two-stage multi-arts megacabaret lineup to be announced in the new year.



Oh, OK. I can tell you that it will feature Sydney 8-Bit lunatic Simo Soo whose recent self titled album on Lesstalk Records is a frantic burst of digital punk and distorted funk, with a hyperactive live show to boot. And there will be comedy, dance music, circuit bending, punk rock and all kinds of amusements. BUT NO MORE CLUES, ALRIGHT? JUST CALENDARISE IT ALREADY.

In the meantime, you need to get yourself a calendar to mark the 27th into. Tomás can help you with that. For $19.95, you can have a splendid A5 calendar (plus $3 P&H - international rates by request) on sumptuous card. They’re printed on glorious thick A5 card in full colour, and look sumptuously delicious.

The only place to get them is by emailing management AT tomasford.com with “I CAN HAS CALENDAR?” in the subject header. Payment can be made by bank transfer or Paypal and you will get your beautiful date-keeping object in the mail as soon as Australia Post can get it to you.

My tour buddy DOS4GW is so helpful, he’s provided the perfect Xmas recipie. If you want to bring something a little more exciting than fruit mince pies to your party, check this out:

#DILDOS4GW from DANKCITY on Vimeo.

It is the most amusing thing I have seen in the last 39 hours.

Next week will be a bumper week of posts; got some big announcements up my sleeve and my end of year top ten records list, which will be fun because while this year was a pretty shitty one, there have been so many amazing albums that I want to share with you.

Though you’d like this photo (by Mat De Koning) from the Film & Television Institute’s 40th birthday on friday night. Di has worked at the institute for about twenty five years, so when I saw her up the front I thought I’d cede my crowdsurfing privelages for the night. Splendid.

Last week was superintense but rather rad. Tuesday night I hosted the Amnesty International edition of Cottonmouth, which was full of pretty flooring spoken word. Then the Alternative Edition of my monthly Pop Quiz at Ya Ya’s. Thursday night was Raw Hyde (more on that in a sec) and Friday night I had a blast running amok at the FTI 40th Birthday Party in Princess May Park in Fremantle. I’m kind of in recovery mode at the moment but mostly working on the design for the packaging and a 2012 CALENDAR we shot pictures for during the album shoot, which is going to blow your miiiiind.

Back to Raw Hyde though, which has been going excessively well. It’s an “Open Mic Saloon” but we supplement the format with feature comedians, bands, spoken word and whatever performance art wierdness that comes across our desk. It happens at the refurbished Hyde Park Hotel, and any readers from Perth will know the significance of the Hydey before it’s refit; it’s actually been a great experience, the venue have been fantastic, but I’ve wanted to do an oldschool punk rock hydey night there for a while. So the last one was a bit of a pet project of mine; The Bible Bashers, Joe Bludge from The Painkillers, The Spitfires and Frozen Ocean tore the room a new arsehole with blistering sets. It was most pleasant. I took some crap photos:

Laith Tierney from The Bible Bashers, who have just launched this double A-Side:

The Spitfires who have just released this vid for their single Smile:

Frozen Ocean who have just released a great LP called Snoises:

Joe Bludge from The Painkillers, who have let me have all kinds of wierd ways with their song Love Cancer. This was one of my favourite ways:

Anyway, it was a rather satisfying night. You should come down if you live in Perth, every thursday night we program some kind of awesome fun wierdness. Good things happen at about 9pm.

What a strange little time I’m having at the moment. Slowly bringing together the bits and pieces of my album release (and calendar, which is a really stupid but awesome thing that I’m going to be announcing properly soon). It’s a lot of emailing back and forth with a lot of people, a lot of photoshopping and a lot of, to be honest, pretty boring shit. But it’ll be worth it when I can give it to you early next year in exchange for your coins.

The roadcase I talked about a few posts ago finally came, along with a whole stack of new equipment, and it’s beautiful. I’m really excited to get into reworking the show; I’m going to be spending some time on it over December, hopefully I can get something fresh together for the new year, but I suspect it will be a longer process. I’m actually really enjoying my current setup at the moment anyway so I’ll be happy to play around a bit more on that. It’s fair to say that what I’m putting together is going to really take the live show to the next level though.

Absolutely dying to get out on tour at the moment. Tomorrow night I play Fremantle Town Hall for the Big Swingin’ Ball as part of Fremantle Festival. The Town Hall is a one of those fantastic big old rooms that’s going to be a fucking blast to desecrate with my antics. It’s an unusual bill for me too, which always means things will be a bit more interesting; it’s pretty much a guarantee that there will be a fresh batch of punters that won’t have seen me before along with the (always welcome) veterans.

While I’m writing, can I draw your ears to the Naik remix of I Feel Dirty? I love it and I think you should download it if you haven’t already. It makes my shitty car stereo sound AWESOME.

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…