Brisbane songstress Georgia Potter is going it alone and turning heads as she goes.
Georgia has been part of the Brisbane music scene in one band or another since 2007, but it's her solo project that is getting the soulful singer noticed this year. After a long bout of overseas travel, Potter has returned to Australia with a bang, releasing two singles, the latter of which, 'Reckless' has already earned her the title of Triple J Unearthed feature artist last week.
“It's been an awesome first week for ‘Reckless’,” Potter says. “We've had thousands of listens on Soundcloud, and some really glowing reviews, and obviously it's exciting to be Unearthed feature artist. So that's very encouraging since the song's only been out for seven days.”
'Reckless’ was born in the back of Potter's car in the camping ground of Splendour In The Grass, when she awoke with the bassline in her head. Potter laughs that the song wasn't about her getting up to mischief but was “just to do with the kind of time that I was having. More so than specifically being about lust and desire, which initially the song is obviously about, it's also about spontaneity, about the fact that you do have to have those moments where you don't give a fuck about the consequences, and you're doing something that is reckless and whimsical and perhaps not as cautious. You've gotta just trust impulse sometimes and not try to predetermine anything. So, ‘Reckless’ is a celebration of that, I guess.”
Her solo releases have drawn comparisons to Frank Ocean, albeit female, which Potter says is the style she was aiming for.
“Frank is possibly one of my most favourite artists of all time,” Potter admits. “It's massively flattering that people are drawing those comparisons and really understanding what I'm doing. Probably, to be honest, there's a lot more kind of darkness in what I do than in Frank Ocean's kind of stuff, so I guess another massive influence on me is Portishead. That would possibly be the only thing that would equal or better that statement would be [a comparison to] Portishead.”
Potter will hit the road in April with Laneous & The Family Yah, of which she was previously a member, for Pink Dove III: The Bird Fire Review, a three-show tour of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The show is described as a five-hour long epic of Bird Fire Artists combining in various incarnations.
“I think it's going to run pretty back-to-back; there's going to be no dead-air time. So it's going to be kind of like those old-fashioned soul revue shows, where it is totally about the audience, and about having non-stop music. [It's] sort of paying homage to that kind of tradition of performance, rather than just putting on a normal gig.”
Fans can expect plenty of crossover between the 12 musicians who make up the bands of The Bird Fire Review.
“I think there's somebody in every band that's in the next band, and the drummer, she's playing in every set. We'll all probably guest with each other at some point, so I guess it is going to be a bit incestuous.”
Potter agrees that this nature is typical to the Brisbane scene.
“There's also camaraderie in Brisbane, and especially having seen other scenes — London and New York and being in those kind of places — I think it is really special that in Brisbane we are all kind of nurturing each other, and trying to bring as many people along with our successes.”
Potter credits her earlier work with bands like Laneous & The Family Yah for helping her to develop her musical style and persona.
“I guess only since my travels have I really decided to put my own project right at the forefront of what I'm doing and make it my sole priority. It's been nice to sort of find my feet and cut my teeth with all these other bands, and kind of bring a clarity to my own stuff from experience with those bands.”
Georgia Potter performs in Pink Dove III at The Zoo April 27. ‘Reckless’ is out now.
Sydney musical duo Canyons are bringing live music and visual art together.
The pair will land in Brisbane next month for a special one-off performance, but don't expect to hear any tracks from albums past or future. Instead, Canyons will present '100 Million Nights' at the Gallery of Modern Art, a collaboration with Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd that combines live music and visual art.
“With us, it's not what Canyons is,” says half of the Perth-born, Sydney-based duo, Ryan Grieve (the other is Leo Thomson). “We're not going to release an album of what we'll be playing for this show. It is an art piece. It's really for the visuals and the visuals are constructed for the music as well. So we've been collaborating all the way to get it to a point where it's not just us doing our thing and Dan's not just doing his thing. We've made it all about collaboration.”
It's a collaboration that came about at Boyd's request.
“Dan contacted us, as we'd worked with him before,” Grieve says, with the show growing from experimentation on both sides. “From the work that we'd done with Dan before, we just kind of had [the visuals we were] going to begin with, then we'd just sort of start [playing] basically.” Although there's still plenty of rehearsal to be done before the show, Grieve says the live art will influence the music on the night, and vice versa.
“We wanted to leave it quite open. Just be able to enjoy it and lose yourself in it. It's quite hypnotic and almost meditative in parts as well, so you want to be able to feel it and not be stressing out. You want to just be able to immerse yourself in the moment as well.”
The show will feature Canyons as a five-piece band, with elements of traditional instrumentation (think guitars, drums, and keyboard) coupled with electronic effects.
“It's more about textures really rather than what instrument, so much,” Grieve says. “So if it's a really abrasive part, maybe there's like bass guitar happening or a little bit of rocky kind of synth.” To accompany the sound, the light and colour visuals created by Boyd's signature veil of transparent dots will appear on a stunning three-panel video screen installation.
“I'm most looking forward to hearing it all through a nice big system and seeing the visuals behind us on the big screen, and that coming into sync.”
Grieve hopes the choice of venue will bring out a previously-untapped audience.
“It's not your typical venue I guess. It's a little more special, so maybe you get people that wouldn't necessarily go out to a club to see something, or wouldn't go to the standard venues. It's a bit more of an event, and a nice place to see something live.”
Grieve encourages people to check out his previous work with Boyd, 'Dark Matter', for a taste of what to expect at ‘100 Million Nights’.
“There'll be everything from very, very sparse landscape desert-road type textures to fairly unrelenting and psychedelic frenzied drums, and guitar wailing and synth madness. Lots of light and shade and everything in between. It's hard to explain. Hopefully people react in the way that we are designing the sound and visuals to make them feel.”
Grieve says a Canyons album is now in the works, provided no more side-projects crop up. “When good things come up you don't want to say no to them, you know? It makes things a bit more interesting, keeps it more interesting when you get out of just your own world of 'we're making our album, we're doing this for us'.”
Those good things include working on a track for the latest Grand Theft Auto game, and writing music for a film.
“We do these things that can take us out of that headspace a little bit, which is always refreshing. It's like a real breath of fresh air, that sort of stuff.”
Fans can expect a more “coherent” record when the album drops — “there won't be as many styles of music, I don't think” — with single releases later this year and a finished product expected in 2014.
Canyons perform ‘100 Million Nights’ at Goma April 12.
Seminal punk veterans Buzzcocks may have been around for nearly 40 years, but guitarist Steve Diggle isn’t tiring of playing live any time soon.
“The nature of Buzzcocks songs is that they're so catchy and well crafted in their own weird way, and they're always such a pleasure to play,” he says. “It just feels like you are playing a classic all the time. What I've learned over the years, is that a live show is about communicating with the audience. It doesn't matter whether I play a bum note or the wrong chord; we can all be in this together, and in that way you never get bored of playing them. We're feeding off the crowd every night, and I think that's where the magic is, human beings connecting, you know? But fortunately they're all pretty good songs as well.”
Coming to Australia to play the Dig It Up festival and headline their own shows is a double bonus for the band, but whatever the size of the gig, Diggle is clear about what to expect from a Buzzcocks show.
“A selection of great classic songs, and a lot of excitement on-stage – that's the nature of Buzzcocks music. Bigger festival crowds bring that big sense of occasion, but then the smaller crowds are more focussed intensely on the music. So it's great to see a band in a small place as well; you can really get the essence of what they are. When I'm on-stage nowadays, it's not what I'm playing; I'm more concerned about what the crowd are doing and feeling.”
Buzzcocks are one of the few original punk bands to still be together since their formation in Manchester in 1976.
“When you're on the road together all the time, it's like being married to four people, and it's bad enough being married to one sometimes! This is why a lot of bands split up. We split up for a while in the '80s. We had a lot of success, we were on tour all the time, and all of those things take their toll. But when we got back together again we learned a lot from the break-up; to keep things in focus and in check, and now 35 years down the line we know how to deal with all that. We started when I was 20, and a lot of success came to us quickly, but then I realised that rock 'n' roll is in my blood and I embraced it. Like Turner, I nailed my colours to the mast and went out into the seas and experienced it all. Some people start taking it all personally and cracking up, you know? We got over those things quite early on, and that helped us survive. It's been a great journey. Like James Joyce's Ulysses, we were Mr. Bloom for a day, but the day went on and on for about the last 37 years.”
Organising their trip down under is easy for the experienced and well-travelled band.
“I bring two guitars and that's it,” Steve says. “In the early days when we went to America, we took the whole of the back line with us. Now we just turn up and plug in. The great thing about Buzzcocks is that we don't need rows of effects pedals. Australia is a little like home in a sense, because we're always well received; it's a great understanding we have. We know what to expect, and Australia knows what to expect, so let's all get down to it.”
While a Buzzcocks show may be rooted in music from the band's long career, Diggle is also very much looking to the future.
“I'm working on my solo record,” he says. “Pete lives in Estonia now, so it's hard not being in the same country. It's easy for me to do a solo record as I'm in London and the studio's just down the road. We will get a new Buzzcocks record out at some point. In the mean time we've got about 150 songs which are great to play live. Our live experience has always been the best.”
Buzzcocks play The Zoo Saturday April 20.
Live Review from The Hi- Fi March 22
It was reggae, but perhaps unlike anything you have seen before. A unique combination of soul mixed with electro and a splash of pop, West End hosted a night to be remembered if you ignored the strange smells coming from some of its dreadlocked patrons. Friday night at The Hi-Fi launched the latest singles from Dubmarine and Kingfisha: ‘Beat In Control’ and ‘Digging For Fire’. But first up were special guests The Chocolate Strings, who were great to watch. Beginning the night to a smaller crowd, they did their best to get the beats flowing and their onstage presence is not something easily forgotten.
Combining great sounds and shall we say varying dance styles, The Chocolate Strings are ones to watch. Dubmarine’s nine-piece band were in sync and had clearly rehearsed. Front-woman Billie Weston did not disappoint fans, and alongside front-man Kazman the duo brought plenty energy to the stage. Kingfisha also brought to the stage clean and synced sounds, but lacked the same onstage ‘oomph’ that Dubmarine had. But you’re better off soaking in their brand of reggae dub, with plenty of heads nodding in appreciation as the night went on.
See photos from the night at Scenestr
Brisbane fans are in for a treat when We All Want To serve up a new platter of their old songs.
“We're performing the second album [‘Come Up Invisible’] with a different singer on each song. The rest of the shows on the tour are just regular band shows,” frontman Tim Steward says.
The Brisbane show will incorporate a bunch of talented local artists.
“We've got the guy from Inland Sea [Alastair McRae), Ed Guglielmino, Chris Hetherington from The Slow Push, we've got Jamie Hutchings from Bluebottle Kiss, Sue Ray, a singer called McKisko, a guy called Ross Hope — he's in Disco Nap and Iron On — a poet called Ghostboy and a guy called Daz who's the singer of The Good Ship.”
Steward connected with the artists by online means and hopes the audience will get more from the songs by hearing them in a different manner.
“Although it was a logistical nightmare to put together it's probably going to have its perks, like the songs will be interpreted differently.”
We All Want To were all drawn from entirely different backgrounds and Steward says it was a big musical awakening.
“We've got a drummer who as a kid was in a church band, and a marching band. Our singer Skye grew up listening to real folkie sort of '70s stuff on the Sunshine Coast. She was a singing waitress for a while. Dan the guitarist grew up learning Rage Against The Machine and Nirvana … so it's a huge diverse thing. If we can get a song from A to Z … finished and recorded, however it comes out that's fine by me.”
Steward spent his former days with the alternative rock band Screamfeeder and before that he was a member of '80s punk outfit The Lethal Injections, formerly known as The Psycho Skate Smurfs On Smack. I was intrigued to know where the name came from.
“Holy shit I've got to think back to 1986. We were just a bunch of drunk kids sitting around at band practice and we were like, what's the stupidest name we can think of and that was it. We had a bunch of one and a half minute punk songs. It was a crazy scene. The drugs, the booze, the punk music, the whole lot.”
We All Want to play The Judith Wright Centre April 19.