So Die Antwoord have been accusing the Suicide Squad movie of “jockin my style.” The phrase is apparently a thing and unfortunately I have one of those brains that locks onto a phrase like that, replaying it in my mind and forcing me to think about it in the middle of the night when I need to sleep (I spent a sad 2 months with “Boris backs a Brexit” repeating inside my head). Apparently ‘Jockin’ means to copy, steal or follow closely and this group have decided that the visual aesthetics of the film have been appropriated from their act. Is it true? I don’t know – though I’m pretty sure the Joker and his hair came first – but I think I have some reasons why I don’t care.
Imagine a school classroom where one student points at another and says “You can’t wear a hat! I wear the hats! Hat wearing is my thing!” you might deem that childish and unreasonable behaviour. You might think they’d command more respect if they stop acting like a spoiled butthurt brat with an unreasonable belief that he has a monopoly on hats. Now imagine adults doing this – High profile supposed adults – artists, no less – doing it on the internet for the whole world to see.
Frankly, it’s fucking ridiculous. You can have wacky hair, but unless you can acquire a patent for it a patent, you don’t own wacky hair. To get that patent you’ll have to prove why you own wacky hair and prove nobody else should have it either. It’s not as easy as you think. And if what you think you own is tatts and bling and wanky wannabe gangsta posturing and just happens to shared by a big chunk of gen Y, then perhaps you should STFU and quit while you’re ahead before one of them accuses you of stealing from them.
Artists have to be protective of their work these days. It’s hard to get paid for your music. But in a world where musicians are fighting to protect their actual work – the ideas, the music, the writing, which are often appropriated by companies and other bigger artists. But that’s the actual work itself. U2‘s contribution to their field isn’t the sunglasses that Bono inexplicably wears indoors. Supposedly they have a music legacy of some merit. . The Cure might wear lipstick but it’s their music they don’t want you to steal.
Real artists don’t worry about anyone “Jockin their style” – Real artists worry about people “Jockin their substance.” If you’re an artist and if what you’re worried about is people stealing your fashion sense, then perhaps you might be seriously lacking in the substance department. Some people dress similarly. The movie industry looks to the music industry for inspiration all the time. And the reverse it true also – plenty of bands appropriate film aesthetics. And that’s generally OK because it rarely matters. If someone can steal your fashion sense, then you probably didn’t really own it. The Cure don’t worry about these things – they know that Hollywood can make a movie inspired by their aesthetic (like The Crow) and they still get to be The Cure without feeling like anything was stolen from them. I can’t help but feeling that in an age where musicians struggle to own what’s theirs, the ones who are bitching that other people like to dress in the same way are only diminishing the concerns that artists face
2016 is one of those wonderful rare years in which I’m able to offer two Alternate Parallel Reality releases. The new one is called “Here Goes Nothing.” I’m very proud of it but I’d like to know what you think. Details over on the 
If I sound a bit judgmental here it’s not because I hate the genre – far from it – but that so much of it lets me down. Ambient to me is a bit like Horror films; I like the genre but I have to admit that 99% of it’s bloody awful. I feel like the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes when I hear a lot of indie ambient because I get impression that about 15 seconds of idea has been stretched out to 13 minutes, that the creator has cunningly chosen to create “ambient” so they won’t be called out for failing to work on melody, rhythm or structure or any kind of songwriting craft. If you’re not a musician and you want to bluff your way into calling yourself one, ambient is pretty easy to crank out.
Hunt through the Ambient listings in any music store and you’ll find lots of titles referring to nature, to desirable mental states like bliss and serenity, and with lots of words like ‘reflections.’ I’ve not personally come across a Nazi-themed ambient album before. But then you’re not going to hear any pan pipes, trickling water or whale farts here either. What we have is four lengthy meditations on a historical social phenomena, four sessions spent staring into the abyss. Four reflections on how it can happen and what we can learn from it, an urgent search for prescience to approach our own precarious situation with.
This is his challenge when using the sonic medium. A visual artist could create a piece that makes a powerful statement and is aesthetically ugly but still sit in a gallery without losing any points for it’s lack of appeal. A musical artist still seeks aesthetic appeal. There are strains of music that pride themselves as being unlistenable but Keith has no interest in creating that sort of thing. We both have a laugh when I mention that the unlistenable music rarely comes with a redeeming message or statement to justify the cacophony,
Keith’s pulled off quite and achievement with “Führerbunker”; something that’s dark and ambient but still has melody and evolution and structure, a work which references an evil movement without glorifying, appropriating or preaching. The EP works on a visceral level.
Brace Yourself. Election Time Is Coming! This is a time of trepidation, or excitement, of optimism and cynicism. And I sincerely hope for everyone out there, it’s a time for reflection. A time to consider what the last few years have brought us, who we currently are as a nation and who we want to be in the future. History is something that can be learned from, and my most optimistic self hopes that we all review and consider every time we vote in a process of continuous improvement, ensuring that the trajectory of this country, through corrections, is toward a brighter future.
The Tony party lied about a lot of things; “No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS” and then did exactly the opposite. A mere ten months into his “leadership” 
But Tony was incredibly honest about some things – He openly stated that he’d resist any progressive moves to giving the LGBT community marriage equality or any other kind of equality. He was very clear about his position on global warming and the environment, stating that climate change is “absolute crap”. He absolutely told the truth about what his position on immigrants and asylum seekers were and made it clear he was going to treat refugees really inhumanely . He made his positions on these things really clear. He was pro-Christianity, anti-gay, anti-refugee and anti-environment. He delivered completely on those promises.
Which is why I said what I did. You can’t say you’re a friend to Mexicans if you vote for Trump. And you can’t say you’re a friend to the environment, the LGBT community or asylum seekers if you select the guy that says he’s going to crush them and then give them the power to do so. If you voted for the Tony party, you knowingly elected certain things – three more years without a hope of marriage equality, a massive setback to any progress that could be made on the climate front, increasing intolerance and worsening conditions for asylum seekers. Those are direct consequences of voting that way and I still can’t understand why anyone would claim to be sympathetic to these causes and elect a government so committed to crushing them.
It was suggested to me at the time that these causes weren’t the reason why people voted that way, though the reasons weren’t disclosed so I can only speculate (though if it had anything to do with improving the economy, a cheaper NBN, education reform, worker’s rights or healthcare, then I’m guessing we’re all disappointed). But here’s the thing – it’s a package deal. Shitting on gays, refugees and the environment comes with the vote and though there might have been other promises that were more important to you, saying you didn’t vote against these things sounds to me like “Oh I don’t smoke because it’s cancerous, I only smoke for the flavour”
I’m not going to tell anyone here how to vote in the upcoming election – there will be enough people doing that – but I will urge voters to actually look at policies. Because even though it’s suddenly cool for everyone on social media to claim that “all parties are the same” it’s just not the truth. It reminds me of when guys in high school used try and sound jaded and experienced by saying “If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” about naked women’s bodies which you would only think if you have not even seen one. They really are different from each other – there’s only one party you can count on to challenge the rights and wages of the working class. There’s only one party with a policy against campaign donations. Some of the parties might overlap in places but they are most definitely not all the same, so your vote really does matter. And if a politician tells you that your energy bills might be cheaper and he’s going to unleash Cthulhu onto an unsuspecting world, think before you vote for the first bit because the second bit might be the promise he actually keeps.
Mention Nashville, Tennessee and you might imagine that the music coming out of it will have a distinctive Country or Bluegrass flavour. This is very far from the whole story, though: Nashville calls itself “The Music City” and is as rightfully proud of it’s melting pot of genres and sonic styles as of it’s 100+ live music venues. It’s a city passionate about it’s music and thriving modern music scene and the home of my current favourite pop band, The Sweetest Condition.
I can hear the industrial influences in The Sweetest Condition’s music, I can definitely feel the cinematic drama, and I can see that acts like Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails are definitely in their DNA, but to me this is great pop and does all the things that it should. Every track on their new album 
I’ve had 
And when I did? Totally worth it. The Glove’s only album 
There’s also a demo version of Looking Glass Girl and a 
The Glove were deliberately psychedelic (something I love more and more with each passing year) and the album was titled after the 
The Glove’s as a band name and logo is a nod to The Beatles‘ album and animated movie 
With these references you might expect the sound of Blue Sunshine to be incredibly psychedelic and you would be very right. Like a lot of my favourite psychedelic albums (I’ll be covering Male Or Female‘s 
Some Youtube videos:
Presenting a series of album features where I look at each item on the APR discography and discuss it’s context, themes and technical info
Many of the themes I was working with were retained – solipsism, panopticism and paranoia, as well as the perennial question of epistemology and how we know what we know and whether we can trust knowledge we get through our senses. These are themes I use a lot but I really wanted to explore questions like “Do you think what you think you think?” and “how do you know what you think you know?” The very first track 
This theme of being able to trust one’s own senses is also why I reference the writing of 
I wrote most of the album during a period where I was working my first ever job in a call centre for a telecommunications company, so it might be reasonable to assume that’s where the title of 
Sonically, I wanted to play mad-scientist. Unlike a lot of other electronic musicians, I’m usually quite OK about using presets and I don’t spend all of my time writing synth patches. I think like a guitarist – We don’t write patches, we write songs – and guitarists don’t feel obligated to make a completely new guitar sound for the songs they write – using the stock sounds doesn’t invalidate the worth of the song or your legitimacy as a musician. But for this album I focused on the sound design. Reason (the tool I use) wonderfully allows you to do crazy things with the way you can connect instruments and push the limits of what’s possible with synthesizers, etc… all without any risk of blowing up real instruments (which I sadly have done in the past) and so I was free to design insturments and sounds that did strange things.
For 
In high school I was playing in a punk band called The Scream (doing a bunch of Dead Kennedys and Subhumans covers) and our singer Simon lent me this record (along with a bunch of Crass albums) which I had not actually heard. I took it home, put the needle on the vinyl and less than a minute into Safe European Home I was in love and knew I had to get myself a copy because I’d be playing it for years.
For
By contrast English Civil War follows with a vision of an England torn by violence from within. Next, Tommy Gun proves to be frighteningly prescient about 21st century terrorism… check these lyrics while you remind yourself that this was released way back in 1978 before the while airport terrorist thing was part of our lives: “you better strip it down for a customs run, waiting in the airport ’till kingdom come,an’ we can watch you make it on the nine o’clock news, standing there in Palestine lighting the fuse”
Give ‘Em Enough Rope