Compilation - Hear
HEAR is the enema your iTunes needs. Bringing you the most thought-provoking and up-to-date music reviews this side of Lester Bangs, HEAR sifts through the ever growing mountain of press releases and promos to only feature albums, EPs, LPs and mixes that we want to, not that we have to. Also, we try and make things make sense in 200 words or less so that you can just listen to the music.
Stroke: Stongs for Chris Knox
The history of punk and DIY music is super inspiring, and songwriting is fu*king tough.
These are just two reasons why Chris Knox is revered not only in his native New Zealand, but worldwide. In 1979 he formed Tall Dwarfs with Alec Bathgate, helping to pioneer a lo-fi, DIY aesthetic that combined punk's simplicity and disdain for musical virtuosity with home-recording experiments, cryptic lyrics, introspection, and the ultimate rebellion in counter-culture circles - admitting to love pop songs and hooks.
500 Days of Summer Soundtrack
Like many-a-good indie flick these days, 500 Days of Summer is one of those films that is largely made by its music. The happiness, the heartbreak, the whimsical moments - all are defined and deepened and etched in our minds through the tunes that accompany them: a near-perfect selection of both indie favourites and rising talents, from generations past and today.
Fly Girls! B-Boys Beware: Revenge of the Super Female Rappers!
I like women. It's no secret to anyone who knows me; girls are right at the top of my list of interests. Just below that is under-appreciated music, so when FLY GIRLS! hit my desk, I almost went into a state of shock.
Female hip hop is now thirty years old. These woman have been struggling and subverting the overly male dominated world of hip hop for three decades.
Cookin' Hot Buttered Soul - An Isaac Hayes Tribute
Oh just because he kicked the bucket you thought you were free from the ass kicking you deserved from that bad muthafu-SHUT YO' MOUTH! Look, I was just talking about the man behind the legend, Isaac Hayes. Not only did he wear more bling than most rappers today could even imagine, he also played a bounty hunter preying on a man named Gator, and a cartoon elementary school chef who sung about balls.
Escape Pod (Podcast)
Once upon a time mad, cynical geniuses like Kurt Vonnegut and Phillip K. Dick made a living hacking out stories for pulp magazines, trashy bits of entertainment that could earn a writer a few bucks for whiskey and cigarettes. In the science fiction world, pulp is still alive and well, and a writer can still make money selling short stories to podcasts like Steve Eley's Escape Pod.
Background Briefing
We are truly an attention-challenged, internet-addled generation who has forgotten that news can be found outside an RSS reader. For us overwrought victims of Web 2.0, social media and lifecasting, listening to BACKGROUND BRIEFING is like taking a warm bath in journalism juice.
BACKGROUND BRIEFING truly is Aunty at her finest - rational, thorough and educational.
Cloth Ear Music
Online mail order service Cloth Ear Music is a boon for fans of lo-fi psychedelia, drone experimentation and handmade recordings. Operated anonymously from Sydney with orders taken via email only, the site is a mainline for local and overseas releases of the most ethereal, under-the-radar kind; limited edition LPs, 7s, CDRs and tapes of Noise-fallout otherwise unavailable in Australia.
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