The animation is by another French artist, Yannick Puig, and I think it is the combination of the music and the video that make this piece so stunning, compelling me to play it over and over again and write a random blog post on it.

The animation represents so much that I love about art. This guy has awesome talent and has joined my list of artists that ignite passion. He has a very interesting web page on the making of this video; an explanation of the story, how he and Kwoon shared common points that made for a perfect match and his love for insects, plants and the mineral kingdom that feed his well of inspiration.

I was interested to find out what music genre Kwoon fell into as I am not very learned in these things and after googling it was surprised to discover a knew one: Post-rock! That’s one I never would have guessed.

I never feel I am very articulate when it comes to expressing how I feel about something but after reading some of the comments from YouTube I think enli85 says it all:
“Whats better … Song or video – i realy cant decide – but both of them are piece’s of art, and mixed together ? …Good Lord. Oscar.”

After leaving a little late and then queuing for half an hour to buy t-shirts we missed the support band, Jet, unfortunately. I then queued for another fifteen minutes to buy chips and pies as we hadn’t had any food before leaving and were both pretty hungry. However, it was all timed really well because as we were just finishing the last chips the lights dimmed and the crowd errupted.

The first thing I noticed was, even though the tickets said no photography or filming equipment allowed, there were camera flashes going off left right and centre. I’m glad I had decided to take my camera anyway and I took a few shots and video clips here and there to capture the moment. We had pretty good seats; although they were right at the side of the stage, so the acoustics weren’t as good as they would have been in the centre, we were at the front of the first level above ground so got a really good view of everything.

The whole concert was absolutely fantastic. Billie Joe was a real showman and kept the crowd constantly hyped. They played a lot of songs off their new album, 21st Century Breakdown, at least the same again from American Idiot and a whole heap of other classic old school Green Day tracks. They also did parts of some random covers including ACDC and The Beatles.

As well as the music Billie Joe kept picking random audience members to come up on stage. A couple of them were just got up for the experience, needless to say Billie Joe looked like he was half strangled by one chick who was a bit over enthusiastic (well who wouldn’t be?). Then he got a kiddie up on stage for one of the new songs, East Jesus Nowhere, which envolved absolving him of his sins and ended in big pyrotechnic explosion. I took a video of this but I still haven’t managed to find a way of converting my mov files to avi small enough to upload to youtube without the quality dropping to shit so I’ve pinched someone elses:

He got a couple of people on stage to squirt water from super soakers at the mosh pit and then continued squirting the crowd intermittantly throughout the rest of the night from a hose. He also had a rather funky contraption that had a bog roll and some sort of air gun attachment which launched toilet paper into the crowd in long streams. Then he had a t-shirt gun, like a spud gun but which fired rolled up t-shirts into the audience; about ten lucky people managed to bag one of those. He had a couple of people up on stage to sing with him after making them promise faithfully that they knew all the words. The first guy was bloody good and did the whole dancing about the stage thing at the same time. There was countless numbers of explosions and fire jets that never ceased to make me jump every time. When a couple of the people left the stage he got them to launch themselves into the mosh pit which was pretty cool; it always amazes me how they seem to float along over everybody’s heads without seeming to hurt anyone, especially when they first land.

Here’s one from the beginning of the night “Know Your Enemy”, again, I’ve pinched it from a lovely person that must have been sat somewhere near where we were as the angle is the same:

At one point in between songs Bille Joe left the stage and went out into the middle of the audience to greet random fans (see picture three). The list goes on and on. They didn’t disappoint at the end either; the whole band came back on for several songs after their initial departure and then Billie Joe came back on again after that and finished with some glorious acoustic classics. Here’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”:

All up Green Day played for a solid two and half hours and it was definitely up there at the top with my all time favourite gigs. It took nearly two days for my ears to go back to normal afterwards!

Fantastic night! Thank you Green Day

As soon as I heard this on the radio I decided this would be one concert Mat and I would not miss out on (previously being too late to score Neil Young tickets and also dibbing out on the Foo Fighters back in 2007). Tickets went on sale at 9am on 30 June and as Mat was off sick with food poisoning I was able to persuade him out of his sick bed long enough to hound the website until he had secured a pair

Here is sample. This is their current single in the charts from the new album:

This time I was determined to conquer my fear of heights and go for it, as nothing could be as bad as the fifty metre Diamond fire lookout tree I climbed in Western Australia, which I am yet to write about. The Blowhole is located on the south cliff of Warriewood beach and is a tunnel going all the way through the cliff which you can swim through. You get to it by walking through a reserve and ignoring the danger sign that warns of a dangerous cliff edge and advises to keep away etc. etc. There is a path that goes down to the cliff and then all the way round the cliff to the other side. To get down to the blowhole you have to climb down two ropes onto ledges further down the cliff which then enable you to scramble down to it.

There is then a little ledge about fifteen feet above the narrow inlet that you can jump off, into the water, making sure you time it correctly so you jump into a wave as it comes through. I think you have to be careful about height of the tide as well, but it was fine when we got there. The rope descent was no where near as bad as I thought it would be and in actual fact was dead easy.

Here you can see Mat preparing to jum off the ledge into the water with Nick and Kat in the background. The second picture shows the height of the cliff behind and also some people in the background climbing up the bottom rope:

Here you can see the swell from a big wave errrupting through the blowhole and the second picture shows a closeup of the bottom rope ascent (it gets a bit scarier on the top rope as it’s a bit longer and higher up):

I’m afraid to say I wimped out of the little jump and just got in off the side. I didn’t swim through the blowhole either as I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t get thrown against the rock whilst inside as the waves seemed very strong, even though Mat and Nick went through and said it was fine. This said, I was a bit surprised at how tame the jump was as we’d heard stories about it being very dangerous and having to know what you are dong as far as the tide is concerned.

It wasn’t until we climbed back up and around the cliff to the north side of the blowhole that I understood. We met a group of lads all clustering round a sheer drop and realised that this was the dangerous jump – fifteen metres, not fifteen feet, into the sea at the other side of the blowhole. We watched a couple of them jump off and then went on our way.

I think next time I will definitely do the small jump as it really wasn’t very high at all. I just wish Chris and Tom were still here as they would be mad enough to do the big one for sure (we only discovered the blowhole after they had both gone back to the UK).

On googling “Warriewood Blowhole” I found this Myspace video of some local lads doing the big jump, together with some amusing commentary:

Video taken from the myspace.com page of JG

This video from youtube shows some more big jumps and people doing the smaller one as well:

Video taken from the youtube.com page of iitchbae

Well, after the non existent storm that was promised to rage over Sydney last night it did at least begin to rain this morning. Of course it was dry by the time I left for work but it wasn’t long before the drizzle and intermittant showers started and by 8.45am the consensus was to jack it in for the day. Once home I set to doing a little tidying and what not and decided to put some music on. After deliberating for a while I decided on the radio and started listening to Triple J through the computer. Just recently I have heard some good stuff on this station and have taken to listening to it in the car instead of my usual cd of choice, just because I thought about all the good stuff I would have missed out on if I didn’t (I am not usually a huge fan of the radio, easily bored by music that does nothing for me).

Anyway, about an hour ago my ears perked up when I heard an intrumental guitar piece that instantly grabbed me. After the opening bars a fantastic electric guitar came in and I thought to myself “that sounds a bit like Neil Young and Crazy Horse”; my absolute all time favourite artist.

I listened keenly to see if the DJ would announce who it was afterwards, not holding out a lot of hope as they have an annoying habit of not doing this very often. Anyway, to my delight they said it was from the soundtrack to the film Dead Man, and to my surprise went into a little bit more detail saying that it was in fact written by Neil Young (my musical ear is obviously more finely tuned than I think it is). Not only that, the soundtrack was not recorded from a score but instead Neil Young apparently just sat down and played from his emotional reaction to watching the film. This just goes to show that the man truely is a Legend! Here’s the piece from youtube:

(Mum, this is a video, not a picture and to play it you click on the little sideways triangle!)

I was just thinking to myself, “Bloody Hell, Triple J has introduced me to another little gem” when they went on to mention that Neil Young would be touring Australia next year. “”Oh my god!!! Can it be true?” If I could see anyone live in the whole world it would be Neil Young and he is actually coming to Australia?

Yes, but only three shows: one in Brisbane on 21st January 2009, one in Sydney on 24th and Melbourne on 28th. “Gold, he’s in Sydney!” “F*&@, all the Sydney tickets are sold out already!”
“This is too pants to be true!” I was already thinking of my dad who said he might be coming out in January and how fantastic it would be if we could go together (he introduced me to Neil Young when I was little).

My thoughts instantly turned to ebay and I did a quick preliminary search. To my delight there are quite a few on auction already, starting from around $450 for a pair. If it is within my power I will be going to that concert. I remember years back Neil Young did a tour in the UK but my dad only found out about it the same day or something and it was too late. I do not want to miss out again.

And that is the story of how fate whispered in my ear for me to listen to Triple J who introduced me to what looks like a great film, a fantastic soundtrack and the tour of a musical legend!

Cog are an Australian progressive metal band from Bondi Beach. I first heard them on the local radio station, Triple J, where I also heard Pegz and The Herd for the first time so all in all it’s quite a good station.

Anyway here is a cog track from their new album, Sharing Space. This is the first one I heard but there is no video for it:

This is another one off the same album with video:

I love bushcraft and being in Australia with all the different native wildlife and aboriginal heritage of bush tucker etc, this track, for me, embodies that wild and raw aspect of the country: “munchin on witchety grubs”, “chasing tasmanian devils”, “diets of fresh yams and honey ants”, “eat vermin for lunch with Steve Irwin”.

Have a listen and see what you think. Like raw UK hip hop I think Aussie hip hop is another sub-genre with a lot to offer.

Bro, this one is especially for you cos I think you will appreciate it

Rap Artists is a website which lists hip hop and rap artists’ song lyrics. As well as this, each artist that is listed also has a biography and other information of interest, eg. discography listing. The site is quite comprehensive and has a lot of useful information aside from the lyrics including a forum. The one disadvantage that I can see is that so far it only lists what I would class as popular artists or American artists. I did a search for a few of my UK faves, Taskforce and Phi-Life Cypher, and these were not on here, neither was The Herd or Pegz (Aussie hip hop artists that I have discovered since living over here). However, new artists are being added all the time so maybe they will feature in the future.

However, I have been driving the Suzuki this week as Hayley’s car is out of fuel and I haven’t got around to filling it up yet; lol, lazy or what! Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me last night that the Suzuki now has a CD player in it, something which Hayley’s does not have and something which Mat’s ute does have but due to lack of CDs we’ve just got out of the habit of using it. So, this morning I grabbed the new Foo Fighters album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, on my way out of the door and slipped it into the CD player as I drove out of the drive.

The first track was The Pretender which I banged out as loud as I possibly could:

Wow, I hadn’t realised how much I had missed listening to music of my choice as opposed to the radio. I’m not knocking the radio and Triple J has certainly introduced me to a few new Aussie bands that I really like, however, nothing beats listening to my faves at top volume, something which is hard to do at home when there are “neighbours to consider”.

This should mean my journey home is a lot more pleasant also. For some reason I’ve never minded driving to work as there’s never much on the roads at 6.30am and I normally have my head in the clouds, literally, gazing at the views as the sun is rising and trying to see good photo opportunities. The home trip, however, normally takes twice as long, it’s down hill so the views are disappearing and the rush hour traffic riles me no end (must get around to writing a post on Aussie drivers!).

I say music really is vital nourishment for the Body, Mind and Soul!

I love this song, it’s my favourite of Linkin Park’s since “In The End”. It was the theme tune to the Transformers movie which we watched a couple of months back; I was pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed it. Subsequently they have been playing it on the radio a fair bit over here.