UK dance legend FATBOY SLIM has had a very long and extremely enviable career that has spanned over 30 years, reaching the pinacle of his success with hits like ‘The Rockafella Skank’, ‘Praise You’ and ‘Weapon of Choice’. We’re a little bit excited at the moment because he’ll be in Australia next week for the entire 2012 Future Music Festival Tour along with acts like New Order, The Rapture, Aphex Twin, The Wombats, Azari & III, Alex Metric, Frank Ocean, Holy Ghost! and heaps more. Almost equally iconic to his list of huge chart smanging singles are the famous film clips that accompany them – here are some of my favourites.

One of my all time best-loved FATBOY SLIM tracks is 2005′s ‘Don’t Let The Man Get You Down’, which samples the opening line of the Five Man Electrical Band‘s 1972 single ‘Signs’. This video teaches you not to be a racist and to always look both ways before you cross a street…

A classic and a song I have heard probably over 5000 times in my life… ‘Praise You’. The Spike Jonze directed clip is nothing short of unique and features the ‘Torrence Community Dance Group’ busking outside a movie theatre in Westwood, California for a crowd of stunned on-lookers. Shot guerilla-style and with a budget of only $800, the crew bust out a 2 minute dance routine before a disgruntled theatre employee turns their boombox off and asks them to leave. They promptly turn the music back on and finish what they started. It ended up taking out Breakthrough Video, Best Direction and Best Choreography at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards.

This one speaks for itself… Christopher Walken dancing through the lobby of a hotel before diving off a balcony and flying around a room… say no more.

More info on the full Future Music Festival lineup HERE. Also catch Haylee Evans ‘Must See Acts’ HERE.

Words by Gabe Gleeson at WAX WAVES.

WATCH MORE VIDEOS HERE

FANFARLO have been making their beautiful indie-pop tunes since ’06. Yes, one of their tracks was featured on the Twilight soundtrack, but we can look past it ‘cos their music is really that good.

FANFARLO’S sophomore album Rooms Filled With Light is due to be released next week on the 28th February, and we have some copies in our hot little hands to give away. The album was produced by Ben Allen (Deerhunter, Gnarls Barkley) and engineered by David Wrench (Bat For Lashes, Everything Everything) in North Wales.

The album is filled with new textures that you may not be expecting. They’ve electrified everything: guitars not acoustic, now electric; and a whole bunch of synths have been thrown in. It’s nice to see the band mature for their second album, and continue to evolve their sound. To watch a live session performance of ‘Tight Rope’ see HERE.

WIN WIN WIN
To score your own copy of the album, comment below telling us what country founding member Simon Balthazar hails from? Winners will be notified by email.

ENTER OTHER COMPETITIONS HERE

Haylee Evans is putting her indie-pride aside and heading to Future Music Festival in Melbourne on March 11 to catch some of the premier dance artists from all over the world. She’s put together a list of the must see acts below.

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When I told my housemate that we couldn’t have our housewarming Labour Day weekend because I had a festival to go to, this was his exact response: “hahahahahaah, but you’re way too indie for Future, shouldn’t you be shaving the side of your head or some shit”?

Yeah, so what if I don’t look amazing in a singlet and denim cut-offs and am allergic to fake tan, I can still get down with the best of them. Despite all the ridiculous hype surrounding SKRILLEX, I can also appreciate that the crowd is going to go absolutely fucking mental, and I can suck it up and join them. So with a cider in one hand and a wolf shirt represent, this is where you’ll find me at Future Music Festival…

THE WOMBATS

THE WOMBATS are one of those great festival bands that get the blood moving from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. “Let’s Dance to Joy Division” has to be one of the catchiest songs out there.

APHEX TWIN

When someone has been doing something for 20 years without a drug overdose, bankruptcy or being beaten up by Chris Brown, you know you’re onto a good thing. Hailing from Cornwall, UK, APHEX TWIN makes the kind of music to fall in love to and by fall in love, I mean, lose your shit across every genre with flawless, unimaginable talent. His set promises to be worth the ticket price alone, being known for his distinctive stage production, that will blind, shock and blow the headphones off the beginner DJs watching, who think remixing NOVAs finest will get you babes. Tracks to wait for before you pass out: ‘Windowlicker’ and ‘Come to Daddy’.

DIE ANTWOORD

I was told that I had to mention these guys. I was also told not to mention that I think they’re a shit version of Flight of the Concords and how do so many people not realise that they are taking the piss and aren’t real? So I’m not doing either. I’m making my friend Sam do it:
“People should go see Die Antwoord, because of that next level Zef shit. Dj Hitek has the best beats going bro.” Sam “Shumpy” Humphries.
I don’t even know what that means. But cool.

NEW ORDER

‘Blue Monday’. Enough said.

THE RAPTURE

Yes, THE RAPTURE have been around the traps for a while, but a live show in their presence is always going to be freaking amazing. No matter if they fill the set with their new album (cos we loooove In The Grace Of Your Love) or throw in a whole bunch of golden oldies (personally crossing fingers for ‘No Sex For Ben’). Yeah. I’ll be there.

SKRILLEX

The last time I saw SKRILLEX live, I was so drunk on agwa shots that I climbed on the stage, high fived him and then threw up. The show cost me $6. I feel like this time, the experience could possibly be a little less intimate. If you don’t know who SKRILLEX is, there is such a thing as being too much of a killjoy. Kick off your brogues and don’t even think about missing this show.

Words by Haylee Evans

FULL FUTURE MUSIC FESTIVAL LINE-UP HERE

Let’s begin by taking you back in time, back to a simpler time, a better time. It’s January 2011 and three friends have set out on a media venture just like every other – to create a music journalistic enterprise to incorporate everything new and awesome that Australian music has to offer. The difference, these guys do it well.

The trio, combining of NICK CLARKE, DAN WATT and TIM HAMILTON, better known as PONCHO TV, had, for the past year been bringing us music news, interviews, reviews and anything else of interest in the form of weekly webisodes. Over the three seasons of 15 (or so) minute eps, Clarke and Watt (with Hamilton behind the scenes) managed to combine journalism with genuine observational comedy. Whether it be; GOTYE, Dubstep, Julia Gillard vs Kevin Rudd, AFL, Sexuality or Prime-Time Television – they’ll somehow fit it in between interviewing massive acts and subtly making fun of society one joke at a time.

They’ve also been known to put their bodies through some of the most outlandish (and stupid) stunts for attention, including: walking from Melbourne to Geelong and locking themselves in a room listening to DUCK SAUCE’s ‘Barbara Streisand’ on repeat for 36 hours.

But of course, you already know this. So let’s get back to the present. 

The team is back for season four; but this time around it’s begun on a less than perfect note, with half of the on screen talent, Dan Watt, announcing he was leaving the show late last year.

After this shock announcement, many fans believed the end was nigh for Poncho - or at least the show would lose some of its brilliance – but luckily we were all proven completely wrong. The team have opted against bringing in another co-host to the show; instead the new season sees Clarke taking the reins on his lonesome. In season opener; aptly titled ‘All By Myself’, Clarke faces the world of journalism on his own, struggling with the possibilities of his future as a solo presenter.

Whilst dealing with his inner troubles; he attempts to befriend Roger Waters, is harassed by Drosspig, talks to a cactus and successfully dances a one-man ballroom routine – plus it features PURPLE SNEAKERS favourite, OWL EYES. What more could you want from episode one? 

Watch HERE, thank us later.

Follow PONCHO on Facebook HERE.

Words by Tom Hutchins. 

But it goes further than that. Shots of Gabriel Andruzzi (multi-instrumentalist of THE RAPTURE) dancing solo, tinted blue and red, remind you of that single person who you’ve been paying attention to all night, while dizzying shots of club lights during the climax take you right back to smoky, sweaty dance floors where you can remember literally nothing else but the colourful lights and the darkness. It’s kind of incredible. Of course, none of this would come together if it weren’t for THE RAPTURE’S amazing blend of post-punk, acid house, and indie rock, with Luke Jenner’s impressive vocal range just adding to the already talented musicians in the band. Make sure to catch THE RAPTURE’S set at Future Music Festival 2012. For the full line-up see HERE.

Words by Stephen Pham.

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THE RAPTURE & AZARI & III TOUR DATES

MELBOURNE: Tuesday 6^th March, The Forum.
Tickets on sale now HERE.

SYDNEY: Thursday 8^th March, The Metro.
Tickets on sale now HERE.

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WIN WIN WIN

To score a double pass to The Rapture’s Future Music Festival Sideshow in Melbourne, simply comment below telling us which Australian label In The Grace Of Your Love was released on? Winners will be notified by email.

WATCH MORE NEW VIDEOS HERE

If pop is basically personality music, GRIMES might be the Next Weird Thing. Real name Claire Boucher; she’s got a unique look and an endearingly free-spirited personality (with a backstory involving a DIY, Tom Sawyer-esque houseboat misadventure). Visions finds her dialing back the ambient experimentalism of her back catalogue for what is essentially a twisted take on electro-pop, something Madonna might have made in the 80s if she’d taken more acid.

One thing Madonna doesn’t have is GRIMES’ vocal sound. The love song platitudes she sweetly delivers are over-dubbed, harmonized, pitch-warped, panned and echoed. This Cocteau-Twins-meets-The-Beach-Boys effect leaves GRIMES sprawling all over her backing tracks in a beautiful mess. It’s attention-commanding, bona fide pop star stuff.

The first thirty seconds of opener ‘Infinite ♥ Without Fulfillment’ give you a pretty good idea of what to expect from the album. The vintage drum machines, ethereal vocals and pulsing synth bass are put together with an ear for sing-song pop melody. This basic formula is tweaked again and again to take in a fascinating variety of influences. ‘Genesis’ sounds like something Aphex Twin could have produced, while ‘Nightmusic’ samples Mozart. ‘Oblivion’ marries a propulsive rhythm straight from 1984 to an enchanting vocal, GRIMES crooning “see you in the dark” like some kind of benevolent witch.

The GRIMES package is hard to fault. Visions is pop enough to be palatable, and edgy enough to stand out from the pack. GRIMES’ vocals would sound great over just about anything, and she tries out quite a few of those things while maintaining a stylistic consistency. It makes for a captivating listen – surely one of the most idiosyncratic and enjoyable albums of the year.

You can stream the album in full over HERE.

Words by Matt Nielson.

LISTEN TO MORE NEW MUSIC HERE

For those of you who were going to Groovin The Moo purely to see CHIDDY BANG, well… your luck is out. He’s pulled out of the Australian festival tour to do some TV and radio promo back in the US. Disappointed? Well don’t be. Brisbane’s very own crafty crooners BALL PARK MUSIC have stepped up to the plate to fill that gaping hole.

BALL PARK MUSIC have been all over the radio and stuck in our heads, with their tracks ‘It’s Nice To Be Alive’ and ‘All I Want Is You’ both finding their way into 2011′s Hottest 100. We’re uber excited to see them join the ranks of some pretty spesh artists including BIG SCARY, MATT CORBY, SAN CISCO, WAVVES and our very own PURPLE SNEAKERS DJS. Hellz yeah!

2011 was a great year for these indie-poppers, and we’re sure 2012 is going to be a whole lot hotter!

Words by Melissa Holden.

FOR THE FULL GROOVIN THE MOO LINE-UP HEAD HERE

If there ever were a perfect time to be a band in the Brisbane music scene, it would be now. You would have caught local boys LAST DINOSAURS supporting a little three piece known as FOSTER THE PEOPLE on their recent tour. Their infectious sound is one of the best things to have happened to indie-pop since LD’s favourite - Phoenix.

Kayla Clibborn caught up with bass player Sam Gethin-Jones to chat about their upcoming launch shows and what it’s like to be a young band in Brisbane.

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PS: Your debut album In A Million Years comes out on March 2nd. It’s been a busy year for you guys. How are you feeling?

Sam: A lot of crazy stuff seems to be happening at once. We’re incredibly excited to get the album out because we’ve been sitting on it for six months. I just can’t wait for it to finally be out and to see what everyone thinks.

PS: Are you nervous?

Sam: I haven’t really been thinking about it too much. I’ve mostly been thinking about the launch shows. I really want to make the next batch of shows an awesome experience for the crowd. We’ve got three launch shows this month and they’re more a party than anything so we want to make it as fun as possible.

PS: It’s been said that the album asks the big questions about human nature. Where does this come from?

Sam: Sean did most of the lyrical content for the album and he’s very interested in the future and looking in the past as well.

PS: A few of the tracks come from kind of obscure or abstract beginnings. ‘Time and Place’, for example, is based on Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla. Could you tell us more about this?

Sam: It’s almost an indirect apology to Nikola Tesla. People in his time shrugged him off as crazy and a lot of his ideas have paved the way for technology that we use today. In some ways it’s kind of a love song, and it’s also a way of keeping him in people’s minds when they listen to it.

PS: Which comes first: music or lyrics?

Sam: We’re a very technical band. We pride ourselves on playing songs that we’ve written all of the tunes for first and spent months and months trying to refine each song. We want our parts to be as perfect as possible. A lot of the time the lyrics come only a couple of weeks before we release the songs.

PS: Is the writing process a collaborative thing?

Sam: Usually someone will bring in a riff and we’ll jam. A few songs on the album we actually wrote in the week leading up to recording during pre-production. It felt really natural to me because it was just us sitting in a room constructing the songs together and it felt really genuine.

PS: During pre production you travelled to your producer Jean Paul Sung’s farm on the Central Coast. Has the atmosphere and the setting had a huge impact on the album?

Sam: Absolutely. We gravitate to that atmosphere. We’re all city guys in our element, so to be in a completely different environment just lends itself so much to the songwriting. There’s no phone reception so even if you wanted to distract yourself it’s very hard to do. Even when we were doing other things, it was things we wouldn’t normally do – climbing mountains or shooting rifles. It’s good to get your mind out of the norm when you want to create something.

PS: The album was mixed by Eliot James who’s worked with Kaiser Chiefs and Two Door Cinema Club. How surreal is it to have someone of this calibre taking an interest?

Sam: It’s ridiculous! He engineered Bloc Party’s album Silent Alarm, which is my favourite album ever. We got him to do ‘Time and Place’, then he was really keen to do the rest. He was meant to be moving houses and changed the date so he could fit us in! I was so shocked to find out he was that keen to work with us. He got a really great sound out of us, too.

PS: I caught you guys at the Tivoli when you supported Foster the People – the reaction of the crowd was huge. When you played Honolulu everybody went nuts. How does it feel to make an audience move like that?

Sam: It’s definitely the best experience you can have in life. The rush of adrenalin when people are moving to the music you’re making definitely lends so much to your performance. If you’re playing to a crowd that doesn’t want to be there, it’s very hard to convince them that you’re worth their time. You rely on the crowd to give you some energy back. When that happens, it’s a beautiful thing.

PS: What was it like to work with Foster the People?

Sam: They’ve just exploded; it’s crazy how big they’ve become in such a short amount of time. In Melbourne they invited us back to their room after they played. It’s always nice to find out that a band you look up to are just regular nice guys. It was the same when we played with Foals. Foals and Phoenix are collective favourites for Last Dinosaurs, so I lost my shit when I found out we were supporting Foals. You kind of think maybe they don’t give a shit about the support band – and rightly so, because they’re so big – but everyone has just been so incredibly pleasant.

PS: You’re all local Brisbane boys as well. I’m told you all went to school together with the guys from The Cairos and Dune Rats as well. What’s that like?

Sam: The whole Brisbane scene are very close. We’re like a brotherhood. I play drums in Gung Ho every now and then and Sean will play in Dune Rats sometimes, too. There’s no competition, it’s just completely supportive. It’s such a great atmosphere to be making music in. And everyone seems to be coming up at the same time; we’re all being played on Triple J at the moment.  I think it’s a really exciting to be in a Brisbane band right now.

PS: So when you started playing together back in high school, did you ever imagine that you’d be where you are now only a few years down the track?

Sam: You always have aspirations, ever since I was a little fella I knew music was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a drummer in a heavy metal band, to be honest. You always have these dreams of making it, but the reality of it is so hard. I’m so happy to be where we are.

PS: What’s next for you guys?

We’ve had a few offers to record from overseas. It’s all so surreal. It all happened in the past two weeks or so. I think we’ll be doing a lot of planning for the rest of the year and if we could make the whole year about the album that would be incredible. I just love being kept busy by the music.

Stalk the guys on Facebook here.

Check out their EP Back From The Dead here.

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LAST DINOSAURS DATES

Melbourne
The Toff, February 28
Featuring: Themswoops

Sydney
Spectrum, February 29
Featuring: Toucan

Brisbane
Cobra Kai @ Oh Hello, March 1
Featuring: The Jungle Giants

Words by Kayla Clibborn

Grammy-nominated New Orleans three-piece MUTEMATH have announced their first-ever Australian tour in support of their latest album, Odd Soul. Since their 2004 EP, Mutemath have consistently defied categorisation, their sound being a unique blend of psychedelia, gospel, electronica, and New Orleans rhythm and blues.

No two Mutemath albums sound the same, and Odd Soul, the latest evolution in their sound, is no exception to this. Boasting understated yet masterful guitar solos from Roy Mitchell-Cardenas, an impressive vocal range from Paul Meany, and no-less-than amazing drumming from Darren King, it’s no wonder Odd Soul was featured as a Triple J Album of the Week.

Mutemath have been described by Alternative Press as “a band you need to see live before you die”, so make sure that you catch them in your capital city while they’re here! Tour dates below.

Watch the video for their single ‘Allies’ here:

MUTEMATH TOUR DATES

May 10 – Zoo, Brisbane
www.oztix.com.au 

May 16 -Hifi, Sydney
www.thehifi.com.au

May 17 – Corner Hotel , Melbourne
www.cornerhotel.com

May 20 – Amplifier, Perth
www.moshtix.com.au

Visit Mutemath’s website HERE.

This can only be the Tyler, the Creator directed video for ODD FUTURE’S latest track, ‘Rella’. Yep, after a period of inactivity following EARL SWEATSHIRT’S return, Odd Future are back. And what a glorious return it is. You’ll laugh, you’ll shake your head, you’ll cry tears of confusion.

‘Rella’ is a brand new track, to be featured on Odd Future’s upcoming LP OF Tape Vol. 2, and, as you’ve come to expect from Hodgy Beats, Domo Genesis, and Tyler, the Creator, they absolutely kill it.

As Hodgy warns, “Don’t dabble with the apple/cause a swagger like mine turns apples into Snapple”. Yeah, alright, I have no idea what that means either.

Watch ‘Rella’ below.

Keep up with Odd Future HERE.

Words by Stephen Pham.

WATCH MORE NEW VIDEOS HERE