electrologue

San Antonio’s GIRL IN A COMA have left a permanent tattoo on the hearts of music lovers with their piercing songs and nuclear performances. They’ve blazed a singular trail since Nina Diaz joined the band at age 13 and have found champions and comrades along the way including Joan Jett who signed them, Morrissey, Sia, Tegan and Sara, The Pogues and Amanda Palmer who have hand selected them for tours. In addition, Robert Rodriguez asked them to compose one of the key songs for his film Machete last year. 

the church’s 30th Anniversary year has taken the band all over the USA and Australia with the induction in October 2010 into the ARIA Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame. In April 2011 the band played their “A Psychedelic Symphony” concert at a sold out Sydney Opera House with the 70-piece George Ellis Orchestra.

To conclude these celebrations the band are pleased to announce the Australian “Future Past Perfect Tour” in December 2011. The band will perform an album from each decade of their existence – the critically acclaimed Untitled #23, perennial fan favourite Priest=Aura and the iconic Starfish. In America the shows were rapturously received and reviews were outstanding. As this tour comes to Australia it is an opportunity to experience the past, present and future of one of Australia’s best and most intriguing bands.

Untitled #23 released in 2009 is widely regarded as a modern classic and has received glowing reviews from the music press, including an unprecedented 5 star review in Rolling Stone magazine. Priest=Aura (1992) has constantly been voted as a favourite of church fans over the years and Starfish (1989) is the album that put the church on the map in America. Starfish features along with The Blurred Crusade (1982) as one of two entries by the band in the “The Best 100 Australian Albums” book published in 2011.

The ticket price includes an exclusive A4 program featuring album and single sleeve artwork, selected lyrics and photographs of Steve Kilbey, Peter Koppes, Tim Powles and Marty Willson-Piper. This seated show will include two intermissions and will last for three and half hours with no support. Playing the albums in reverse chronological order the band ask you to simply close your eyes, sit back and join us on this special journey through the decades.

the church
“Future Past Perfect Tour” December 2011
Performing three classic albums in their entirety

SUN 11TH DEC WAVES Wollongong NSW (On Sale Thursday 13th October)

SAT 17TH DEC THE ENMORE THEATRE Sydney NSW (On Sale Now)

FRI 23RD DEC THE POWERHOUSE Brisbane QLD (On Sale Now)

THU 29TH DEC NORWOOD CONCERT HALL Adelaide SA (On Sale Date TBA)

FRI 30TH DEC THE FORUM Melbourne VIC (On Sale Saturday 15th October)

On the web: thechurchband.com

In the advent of the Nirvana 20^th Anniversary box-set and the resurgence of vinyl, New York City based Nu-grunge act, Baby Teardrops, are set to re-release their latest album X is for Love on vinyl November 15 through Kansas City, MO based label, Golden Sound Records.

For Jerad Tomasino and the rest of Golden Sound Records, it is critical to sign a band that will aid in shaping the label’s image and mission. Upon hearing Baby Teardrops live and listening to their record, the crew at Golden Sound Records had determined that there was something special about the band.

“Baby Teardrops had the perfect aesthetic to balance our artist roster,” Tomasino said. “They have a sound unlike any of the other bands, yet they fit into the puzzle perfectly.  In the digital/disposable age, anyone can make a noise, but with X is for Love, Matt and Baby Teardrops have created art,” Tomasino said. “It’s not high-brow, inaccessible music; it’s fun, well-crafted music done with care and intention. It is an album with excitement, intelligence and depth that we couldn’t be more proud including it in our catalog.”

The respect is mutual. Matthew Dunehoo (vocals, guitar), who has written an album’s worth of songs that themselves harken back to an era when vinyl was king, appreciates Golden Sound Records’ focus on the quality of music and packaging. “Jerad and Ross have a great vision for the label” Dunehoo says. “They’ve got a strong center of label/musician employees, and the focus is on high quality presentation and product.”

Listen to music on Baby Teardrops Radio

For Ashton Tremain it all started out with nothing more than a pen, some paper and an acoustic guitar, piecing together songs in the comfort of his bedroom. As the songs fell into place Ashton made his way out of the bedroom and onto the stage, spending the last few years honing his skills and defining his sound.

What transpired was a melodic blend of acoustic driven roots, folk and reggae to create a unique sound that connects to audiences of all kinds. With a handful of songs and many late nights in the studio comes Ashton’s debut album ‘From The Ground Up’. Recorded and MVM Studios (Angus and Julia Stone) on Sydney’s Northern beaches and mastered by Ian Pritchett (The Beautiful Girls), this first installment provides an insight into Ashton’s journey that many can relate to.

After the release of the first single “Better Light” earlier in the year ‘From The Ground Up’ is now ready to hit the airwaves and along with it comes the second single “Temple Times”. A feel good track written from experiences we have all had. Setting the scene of a household of mates and the non-stop good times and parties that became their lives behind the walls of the place locally recognized as The Temple.

October 15th – SYDNEY, The Gaelic (Upstairs), Surry Hills

October 22nd – ROCKDALE, St George Tavern

October 28th – AVALON, RSL

November 20th – NEWPORT, Newport Arms Hotel

December 2nd – NARRABEEN, The Narrabeen Sands

-Reposted from Jeremy Richey’s blog Moon in the Gutter

Every time I go to the movies I hope and pray that I will come across a new film that moves me as much as my favorites from the seventies and early eighties. With each passing year it seems like I find fewer and fewer modern works that spark that special flame in me but when I do I am both exhilarated and grateful. Drive, the masterful new film from director Nicolas Winding Refn is one of those rare new movies that hits me as hard as those films that I routinely list as my favorites, like Arthur Penn’s Night Moves and Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas. It’s an audacious, gripping and absolutely pulverizing work that combines the themes of the seventies existential neo-noirs with the dazzling style of the eighties Cinema du Look.

Like a film that it owes much to stylistically and thematically, Paul Schrader’s still-stunning American Gigolo (1980), Drive is centered on man who has become a prisoner of a persona he has tried so hard to cultivate. Like Schrader’s lonely Julian Kaye, Drive’s unnamed main-character is a man who has worked his whole life pushing people away when all he truly wants is to let someone in. As played by Ryan Gosling, who delivers a elegiac and poetic performance that stands with the best I have ever seen, the character in Drive is a man who seems to be having a constant inner-monologue…a man who finally realizes that beneath the cool façade he has worked so hard to create lies a human being with the capability of doing something meaningful and pure. As my buddy James Hansen writes in his eloquent piece over at Out 1, “He is nothing if not a reluctant super hero decidedly unaware of his powers due to their quotidian function in his life.”

Opening with a long near-silent sequence that pays homage to the works of Michal Mann (who owed much to Jean-Pierre Melville), Drive suddenly becomes a work driven by sound during its striking opening credit sequence, which seems to pay homage to incredibly both American Gigolo and Risky Business. From the first frame to the last, Drive is a stylistic triumph for Refn but it’s also filled with the kind of emotional depth rare for American films released today, especially the many modern action films that Drive could have become in less intelligent and thoughtful hands.

Directed with a fierce fluidity by Refn, Drive is a, rightfully, propulsive experience that manages to feel frenetic even when it is chillingly still. While the film features several of the most shocking and well-done sporadic moments of violence I have seen in quite a while, Drive is at its most potent in the scenes between Gosling and the character played by Carey Mulligan, who says more with her touching smile than most actresses can say with the best dialogue at their disposal. The two have a palatable chemistry that radiates off the screen, and at times it feels like Refn is allowing us to look at a private, but destined to be doomed, intimacy we probably shouldn’t be allowed to see.

While the film is controlled by Gosling and Mulligan’s poignant performances, Refn has gathered together a truly outstanding cast of supporting players including a magnificent Albert Brooks, a menacing Ron Perlman and a wonderfully damaged Bryan Cranston, who plays Gosling’s mentor and only friend in the world. Christina Hendricks (good in a part originally meant for Bobbi Starr), Oscar Isaac and Andy San Dimas also pop up in the film, one of the most perfectly cast of the year.

Along with Refn’s confident and expertly handled direction, and the performances given by his cast, much of Drive’s success is due to the wonderfully sleek and shimmering photography of cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, a gifted artist who has usually been confined to photographing films that aren’t deserving of his talents. With Drive Refn really allows Sigel to shine, and if all the film had to offer was its look it would still be among the most notable of the year.

Also delivering devastating work is composer Cliff Martinez, as his score here joins the ranks of his best (which include Solaris and the more recent Contagion). His music, as well as the songs carefully selected for the film, tells us as much about Gosling’s character as Tangerine Dream’s score did for James Caan in Thief or Moby’s “God Moving over the Face of the Waters” did for De Niro and Pacino in Heat. Martinez’s score becomes its own character in Drive, a work in which each sound seems as carefully chosen as every movement.

Drive has had its critics (including my friend Tony Dayoub over Cinema Viewfinder) but it moved me like no other film has in a very long time. It even provoked a physical response as I left the theater shaking and I have barely slept since I saw it, as images of Gosling’s haunted stare keep replaying in my head. Drive left me feeling shook-up, dazed and, like my favorite films, if left me feeling like I had been granted a glimpse into part of myself that I didn’t know (or had forgotten) about.

Laura Imbruglia is back to offer a taste of the new material she’s been working on since moving from Sydney to Melbourne in late 2010. This comes in the shape of new single – “Why’d You Have To Kiss Me So Hard?”.

Following on from 2010′s critically acclaimed “The Lighter Side Of…”, this new cut is a psychedelic about-turn from Laura’s recent alt country explorations.

Produced by Liam Judson (Cloud Control, Belles Will Ring) in the Blue Mountains, NSW, and backed by a smoking hot band featuring members of Talons, Songs and Jewel & The Falcon, Laura shows yet another side of her unique versatility.

Whilst her trademark lyrical wit is retained,  this time it’s given virgin subtlety treatment- the line between literal and figurative blurred.

Having undertaken national tours in the past year with The Eels, The Gin Club and Adalita, and recently hand-picked by Sebadoh to open their sold out Melbourne show, Laura is primed for the stage.

Those eager to catch her with a full band will be given the opportunity as she launches the single in Sydney and Melbourne over Oct/Nov.

Listen to the single on SoundCloud

-Reposted from Jeremy Richey’s blog Moon in the Gutter

While I am one the biggest Ghosts of Mars fan on the planet, I think that John Carpenter’s latest film The Ward may very well be his best work in more than twenty years. Carpenter’s first feature-length film since Ghosts of Mars a decade ago might not be as ambitious as his In the Mouth of Madness (1993) or as exciting as his Vampires (1996) but he hasn’t delivered a work directed quite as beautifully directed since They Live, his sadly undervalued masterpiece from 1988.

Set in the mid-sixties and starring the fascinating young actress Amber Heard (finally an ‘it’ girl with some real chops) as Kristen, a troubled girl who ends up in an all-female wing of a mental hospital after burning down a farm house for no apparent reason, The Ward is a smart and sneaky fright-film from the pen of Michael and Shawn Rasmussen, a young writing and directing team responsible for 2005’s Long Distance. While there isn’t anything particularly original about the script and the film’s ending is perhaps a little too transparent, The Ward is a real filmmaker’s film as Carpenter’s skill behind the camera easily makes up for any pedestrian moments the plot suffers from.

While Carpenter’s direction controls the film, The Ward is a production overflowing with talent in fron of and behind the camera. With its splendid supporting cast, including Mamie Gummer, Danielle Panabaker, Laura-Leigh, Lyndsay Fonseca and the always great Jared Harris, lively score courtesy of Mark Kilian (sitting in for Carpenter who opted out of providing the music for this one), and eerie photography by talented cinematographer Yaron Orbach (a man not usually associated with horror films), The Ward is an extremely well-rendered film that is so much more successful as a true fright-film than any other released in 2011.

Even though Amber Heard is absolutely terrific as the lead, the real star of The Ward is indeed Carpenter’s direction, which is at its confident and controlled best. When I met John Carpenter a few years back, around the time he had finished up working on his Masters of Horror episodes, about the last thing he seemed interested in was directing another feature so to see him come back with a work so polished, muscular and beautifully finessed is a really fabulous. The Ward is also incredibly contemporary feeling and outside of a marvelous visual and musical cue inspired by Halloween this is not at all Carpenter in summation mode…this is the man firing on all cylinders again and the news that he is preppy another film is extremely welcome.

Like most of John Carpenter’s great films, The Ward was released to a mostly hostile critical reception earlier this year and sadly it didn’t even have a chance to become a popular success as its time in theaters was limited at best. Pity, as this is a wonderfully elegant and well-made horror film overflowing with style. Watching this I kept saying to myself, ‘This is how you do it…this is how its done’, and I felt truly privileged to watch a new film by of our great American masters, who has been out of sight far too long.

The Ward looks fabulous on both DVD and Blu-ray but sadly it has arrived with only extra, an enjoyable audio commentary track from Carpenter and Jared Harris. While many have gone out of their way to trash The Ward, I found this to be quite a return to form for the great Carpenter even if it finally doesn’t rank among his very best, as it doesn’t have the transformative power of Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, The Thing, Escape From New York or Christine. I am confident that time will catch up with The Ward though and it will eventually be viewed as quite a special little-film from one of our great American auteurs.

Toy Bombs are serious about music. Their fun, garage pop sound may seem to belie this fact, but making music is not a whim for Cole Barnson (guitar, vocals, bass, percussion, harmonica) and Brandon McBride (guitar, keyboards, vocals, bass, percussion, drums, harmonica, effects), who manage and book shows for themselves as well as run a label, Flat Top Records, and live in their own recording studio. “We simply have the same work ethic anyone else would have in their fields of work,” says Barnson. “We want to be in music because it is what we are good at, not because it’s an easy way to money and fame”. It should be no surprise then that their second EP should come with the tongue in cheek title, Will Work for Free. “Now days, especially in the music industry, people expect things for free,” says McBride. “For some reason it is deemed socially acceptable for people to steal music. People want music, both recorded and live, for nothing. We are asking the questions, ‘Is this really what you want from musicians? Is what we have to offer really worth nothing?’” Will Work for Free is worth paying for, with songs that manage to cover cowboys, parenting, addiction and the degradation of society equally well and in a package that is bursting with energy harnessed from their always worth catching live show. Will Work for Free will be released nationally November 15, 2011.

Listen to music on Toy Bombs Radio

Melbourne-based post-hardcore band, Aural Window, will be hitting the road in the coming months to promote their cover of Britney Spears’s smash hit, Till The World Ends.

Johnny Rock and The Limits release their much anticipated EP, ‘Highly Likely’ this September. Following their single, ‘Give You What You Need,’ being featured in the summer Cornetto TV ad campaign early in the year, and touring their hit single ‘Shoeshine’ in June the band bring their fans what they’ve been waiting for. Produced by ARIA nominated, Steven Schram (Ground Components, Little Red), the raw energy of Johnny Rock and The Limits live shows has been captured and distilled into a 4 track set of all killer no filler EP. Bursting out of your stereo like a freight train with it’s non-stop, energy-driven pop, ‘Highly likely’ is rough around the edges, yet powerful in its conviction.

Will it be the soundtrack to your summer? Maybe.

Will this be your new favourite CD? Maybe.

Will you turn it up to 11 while tearing down the motorway? Highly likely.

Look out for Johnny Rock & the Limits bringing their explosive live show to Sydney, Melbourne and Wollongong from September.

You can also visit Johnny Rock & the Limits on Facebook.