Australian Geek Rockers – Heartbreak Club – are International Songwriting finalists

‘Fail with style’ at Youth Week Sydney/Newcastle/Melbourne’s (yep, spread over three cities!) hardest working independent geek rock outfit Heartbreak Club (HBC) have just been announced as finalists in the Rock category of the International Songwriting Competition, judged by Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, Robert Smith (The Cure) and more!

(Other finalists include Aussies such as Eskimo Joe, The Living End, and Children Collide). In a tenuous segue, HBC will also test new material from their upcoming album “Our Horse Is Dead” on all ages crowds for Youth Week, notably the Sounds Loud Festival at Moonee Ponds w/ Bluejuice, Calling All Cars, Philadelphia Grand Jury, Behind Crimson Eyes, Hungry Kids of Hungary at more!

To record the album, HBC reunited with US Producer Ed Rose (worked with Soundwave favourites Motion City Soundtrack and The Get Up Kids) who was joined by Australian engineer Matt Voigt (The Killers, Midnight Oil, The Living End) at the helm. The album will be released in May 2010 coinciding with the single ‘Truth or Consequences’. Abandoning somewhat the ‘teen angst parody’ of their EP’s, the band promises the new album to be ‘unapologetically melodic; adopting a brutally honest, confessional, darker, grittier and grungier tone’, with the band noting their 90′s influences of Weezer’, Regurgitator, Blink 182 and Nirvana. They are, however, still geeks. “We’re definitely taking a step to the left of field with the album”, says singer Teddy Hernandez. “Whilst happy with our previous two releases, many people did not realise the music was a satire”. Still maintaining a socially satirical edge, the new album is a critique of “male narcissism, shallow sexuality, obsession,” and, wait for it… “impotence”.

Editor’s note: faints> how geeky!

U P C O M I N G S H O W S :

Friday March 26 @ Manly Youth Centre, Manly NSW w/ Town Hall Steps, Static Silhouettes, Aplonea, and Standing Silence

Sunday April 11 @ SOUNDS LOUD FESTIVAL, Moonee Ponds VIC , w/ Bluejuice, Calling All Cars, Philadelphia Grand Jury, Behind Crimson Eyes etc.

Saturday Aprill 17 @ QUEANFEST, Quenabeyan NSW w/ Super Best Friends, Steady the Fall, + 10 more! Saturday April 17 @ The Phoenix (18+), Canberra ACT w/ Rubix Cuba and Steady the Fall

I M P O R T A N T I N F O : Recorded new album in with Ed Rose (Motion City Soundtrack, The Get Up Kids) and engineer Matt Voigt (The Killers, The Living End, Midnight Oil) at Sing Sing Studios, Melbourne. Released in May 2010 First single ‘Are You Leaving Me?’ on Triple J’s ‘short.fast.loud’, Nova (nights) and Triple M accompanied by 9-weeks of national and regional touring. Recorded EP ‘O Tempora! O Mores!’ with US producer Ed Rose (Motion City Soundtrack, The Get Up Kids) and engineer Anthony The (The Vines, Youth Group); Heartbreak Club released ‘O Tempora! O Mores!’ nationally on Oct 25 2009 (Goodman & Hart / Amphead)

LINK to music: www.myspace.com/heartbreakclub – New tracks available if requested Www.heartbreakclub.org

Triple M to launch #AC/DC digital radio station

Austereo’s Triple M is launching digital radio station, High Voltage Radio, (MIX 94.5) featuring songs and content dedicated to Australian rock band AC/DC.

It will go to air for four weeks until the end of AC/DC’s national tour and will be broadcast on DAB+ and online at mix.com.au, High Voltage will be the fourth Digital Radio offering from Austereo and will air for four weeks until the end of AC/DC’s national tour.

AC/DC songs featured will include their big hits, lesser known tracks, live versions and archived Triple M interviews.

SPINAL TAP releases New Short Film exclusively On iTunes

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the cult classic film “This is Spinal Tap”, Shorts International and INgrooves have released SPINAL TAP‘s new short film, “Stonehenge: ‘Tis A Magic Place”. The film is available to download exclusively from iTunes for $1.99.

The seven-minute short marks iTunes‘ first original film, where SPINAL TAP, having put Stonehenge on the map in their legendary song about the world heritage site, pay their first visit to the monument. As if drawn by some primal, magnetic force, Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls set out on a pilgrimage to this ancient site. The silent song of these mysterious lithic Sirens inspires the distinguished artistes to make a trans-generational house-call.

iTunes is featuring “Stonehenge: ‘Tis A Magic Place” alongside the original “This is Spinal Tap” film, available digitally in HD for the first time, as well as all three of the band’s albums including their new “Back from the Dead”.

More from Blabbermouth.net

World record guitar speed

Supersonic flight of the bumble bee performed by Brazilian guitarist Tiago Della Vega.

For more of his videos, check out YouTube or visit: www.tiagodellavega.net and www.myspace.com/tdellavega for his Bio.

Knitted Abyss a night of melodic experimental sound

Saturday 1 August
Knitted Abyss
Seth Rees + Seaworthy
Hochman & Hopkins

A night of melodic experimental sound.

Hochman & Hopkins features members of Jonathan (Holy Balm, Stick Stick, Pagan Dawn) & Matthew (Naked on the Vague, Vincent over the sink and Bad Tables/Lamp Puffer) and make a fuzzy kind of melodic noise.http://www.myspace.com/hochmanhopkins

Knitted Abyss features Anna (Holy Balm) and Lucy (Naked on the Vague) and specialize in buzzy jams of melodic guitars, organ and vocals.http://www.myspace.com/knittedabyss

Seth Rees is a Melbourne-based New Zealander (Amplifier Machine, The Spheres, This is you captain speaking) who uses guitar and feedback to create drifting multilayered textures. This show will also feature Sydney-based soundscapist Seaworthy in a special one-off improvisation.
http://www.myspace.com/sethrees
http://www.myspace.com/backgroundfrequencies

Saturday, August 1, 2009
7:00pm – 10:00pm
Don’t Look Gallery| 419 New Canterbury Rd, Dulwich Hill, Sydney, Australia

Eugene Chadbourne plays Australia

A seemingly endless — and endlessly eclectic — series of releases made the innovative guitarist Eugene Chadbourne one of the underground community’s most well-known and well-regarded eccentrics. Born January 4, 1954 in Mount Vernon, NY, Chadbourne was raised in Boulder, CO, by his mother, a refugee of the Nazi death camps. At the age of 11, the Beatles inspired him to learn guitar; later exposure to Jimi Hendrix prompted him to begin experimenting with distortion pedals and fuzzboxes. Ultimately, however, he became dissatisfied with the conventions of rock and pop, and traded in his electric guitar for an acoustic one, on which he began to learn to play bottleneck blues.

Perhaps Chadbourne’s most significant formative discovery was jazz; initially drawn to John Coltrane and Roland Kirk, he later became an acolyte of the avant excursions of Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton. Despite the huge influence music exerted over his life, however, Chadbourne first studied to become a journalist, but his career was derailed when he fled to Canada rather than fight in Vietnam; only President Jimmy Carter’s declaration of amnesty for conscientious objectors allowed the vociferously left-wing Chadbourne to return to the U.S. in 1976, at which time he plunged headlong into the New York downtown music scene. After releasing his 1976 debut, Solo Acoustic Guitar, he began collaborating on purely improvisational music with the visionary saxophonist John Zorn and the acclaimed guitarist Henry Kaiser.

Quickly, Chadbourne carved out a singular style, comprised of equal parts protest music, free improvisation, and avant-garde jazz, topped off with his absurd, squeaky vocals. A complete list of Chadbourne’s countless subsequent collaborations and genre workouts is far too lengthy and detailed to exhaustively document, although in the early ’80s he garnered some of his first significant attention as the frontman of Shockabilly, a demented rockabilly revisionist outfit which also featured the well-known producer Kramer. Following the group’s breakup, Chadbourne turned to his own idiosyncratic brand of country and folk, accurately dubbed LSD C&W on a 1987 release, the same year he joined the members of Camper Van Beethoven for a one-off covers project. In addition, he recorded with artists ranging from Fred Frith and Elliott Sharp to Evan Johns and Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer in the Mothers of Invention; in between, he continued exploring unique styles inspired by music from the four corners of the globe, all the while issuing a seemingly innumerable string of records, most of them on his own Parachute label.

Presented by dualpLOVER
Performance: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 8:00pm
La Campana 53-55 Liverpool St, Sydney, Australia
plus special guests SUZANNE GRAE & THE KATIES / Crab Smasher / DJ Smallcock

GG: I;ve only found this plus one other gig at IMA, Brisbane on January 20th> IMA’s take on the performer is somewhat hip;–

In January, IMA teams up with Audiopollen to present a concert by two legends of underground music, Eugene Chadbourne (USA) and Mani Neumeier (Japan). Guitarist Eugene Chadbourne fuses bluegrass, rockabilly, and country with free jazz and noise. In his hands traditional forms bristle with humour and anarchist energy. Chadbourne has cut a remarkable track through the world of new music, collaborating with the likes of Jello Biafra, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, Kevin Blechdom, Camper Van Beethoven, They Might Be Giants, Violent Femmes, and Sun City Girls. Legendary German percussionist Mani Neumeier was a pioneer of free jazz, krautrock and kosmiche. He founded the seminal group Guru Guru, Acid Mothers Guru Guru (with Japanese psych-lords Acid Mothers Temple), and Harmonia, and has played in countless engagements with Damo Suzuki, Peter Brotzmann, and other key figures of non-conformist music. Chadbourne and Neumeier will perform sets solo and together.

IMA (Institute of Modern Art)
420 Brunswick Street
Fortitude Valley Brisbane AUSTRALIA
Performance: Tuesday 20 January at 7pm.

http://www.eugenechadbourne.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Chadbourne

ANYONE KNOW OF MELBOURNE GIGS????? 

30 years of AC/DC

The zeitgeist can be a keen ironist. Even as the punks of the mid-1970s were fuming and scheming in their English or American ratholes, menacing the future with dreams of a stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll noise that would kill all the hippies forever, their omens were being unexpectedly fulfilled by two tiny Scotsmen in Sydney, Australia. By 1975, the band built by Malcolm Young and his little brother Angus was already the complete statement: sawn-off Chuck Berry riffs, blood-throb bass, pistonlike 4/4 drums, and boisterously anti-social lyrics, everything delivered with a special edge of mania.

More on Slate>…

Meet the Kingpins – Thurs 11th Sept – Brisbane

The Kingpins, an awesome female foursome will present an artist talk at QUT Art Museum. They use elements of mainstream media, pop culture and art history, to comment on issues of gender, sex, public space, consumerism and corporate branding. Their performances are usually in drag and play with music, video and costume.

Editor’s note: Awesome is an understatement, check out the showreel. Seriously not to be missed!!!

Thursday 11 September, 5.00pm
FREE
QUT Art Museum – Ground Level, U Block Gardens Point Campus 2 George St,
Brisbane
artmuseum@qut.edu.au | Ph: 07 3138 5370
www.artmuseum.qut.com

Video: Motorhead’s ‘Jesus’ Lands His Own Biopic

“F*ck Keith Richards, f*ck all those dudes that survived the ’60s, flying around on Lear jets,” argues Foo Fighters’ front man Dave Grohl in the trailer for Lemmy: The Movie. “You know what’s Lemmy’s doing? Lemmy’s probably drinking Jack and Cokes and writing another record.”

Now, who can argue with that? Well, some probably could, but they’d have a hell of the time convincing anyone with a sense of music history that Grohl is out of his mind.

Long before he landed a gig as a roadie for Jimi Hendrix, got kicked out of Hawkwind and launched the foundational outfit Motorhead, Lemmy Kilmister was born to rock and rock hard. Which is what Motorhead has done since 1975, influencing Grohl’s Fighters, Slayer, Metallica and many, many more. Which is another way of saying that Lemmy is overdue for a rockumentary. As one fan in the trailer argues, “He’s f*ckin’ Jesus Christ!”

Lemmy: The Movie lands not like a Lear jet but a B-52 bomber on the eyes and ears of fans, doubters and sonic dilettantes. Having recently entered his 60s, Lemmy’s feted by a big-name cast: Grohl is joined by metal stars like Alice Cooper, Slash, and Ozzy, as well as punk and pop pioneers like The Clash’s Mick Jones and New Order’s Peter Hook.

View the clip

AC/DC planned world tour

This is gunna be huge!!!

Photo Getty