FREE IN AUSTRALIA good music, proper culture, real history issue one, august/september 2002 CONTENTS 4 COVER DESIGN PROFILE Tom Phillipson 6 ARTIST PROFILES Betaville Orchestra Quark Kent Lucas Abela Pivot 12 LABEL PROFILES In the last few years the music scene around here Frigid. The New Audiences pro- CYCLIC DEFROST MAGAZINE Bloody Fist PO Box a2073 has been dying. The venue crisis that began with ris- gramme assessed our application Sydney South Monotonik NSW 1235 Australia ing property prices and the development bonanza and we were successful. Although leading up to the Olympics has forced Sydney into a this nowhere near covers the full www.cyclicdefrost.com 16 SPECIAL black hole of house djs, glamourous vacuousness, costs of the magazine we figure [email protected] Frigid Retrospective We welcome your contributions and contact and the marginalisation of anything left-of-centre. that its a fantastic opportunity to For young people trying to find out about new publish a magazine that doesn't Publisher & Editor-in-Chief 22 GENRE OVERVIEWS Sebastian Chan music the options are few and far between. A few have to rely solely on advertising Commodore 64 Sound Designer & Co-Editor listen to community radio stations to get an ear on or party promotion to hit the Australian ‘Electronic Dale Harrison the new sounds, and many others still try to distin- streets. And we're guaranteed to Listening Music’ Sub Editor guish between the adverts and the music content in be around for at least six issues. Aparna Khopkar what is left of the music press. As for finding out It's an opportunity for us to make 26 OVERSEAS Advertising about the people making music in their bedrooms in an attempt at resuscitating elec- Luke Dearnley Montreal Sebastian Chan your street, forget it. tronic music so there are more events going on that don't just Advertising Rates 28 DESIGN For us, being into music means tracing back musical involve bad DJs playing bad download at <www.cyclicdefrost.com> LP Sleeve Art Distribution trees. Finding all the records produced by a certain music. And, most of all, its an Inertia Distribution producer; the band that they used to be in; the track opportunity to build a strong net- 30 REGULARS <www.inertia-music.com> that is sampled in this one. Yes, it's a pretty rockist work of people who care about Reviews Printing way of thinking for a certainly un-rockist age. And in music and music cultures. Judgement Jury Torch Publishing a world of too much music it's getting increasingly This first issue is our first timid Degrassi Web Programming hard to do this. The internet was supposed to be an step into the water. There’s a lot of Giv Parvaneh, Qbique <www.qbique.com> infinite resource, yet if you don't know what you're words about local producers and Web Design Luke Elwin, qbique <www.qbique.com> looking for it is next to useless. labels you may only have heard of Electronic music is especially slippery. There is in passing; some stories on music cyclicdefrost.com Web Hosting Blueskyhost <www.blueskyhost.com> just so much of it. And so much crap. And so much from overseas you may like; some log in...stay frosty Guest Cover Image hype. Maybe the best record of a genre was one that humour; some reviews; and the Tom Phillipson <www.dumphuck.com> only 250 copies were ever made of. And yet it may first in a series of guest covers by Contributors never have been reviewed in a magazine and thus designers who are also working + Lucinda Catchlove, Hillegonda Rietveld, never stocked by the shops and it's still sitting under with sound and music. And it Extended articles Andrew Maher, Peter Hollo, Bim a bed in some nondescript suburb. doesn’t end with the magazine you Ricketson, Chloé Sasson, Jordan Spence, Angela Stengel, Tom It worries me that there may not any longer be an have in your grubby hands either. easy way for people to find out about new music. No, get to an web browser and go Phillipson, Adrian Ferra, Melinda Music downloads of Taylor, Alex Crowfoot, Barry Handler, Sure, there are plenty of parties going on purporting online and read extended 12" ver- Lawrence English featured artists to play earth-shattering new sounds, and, yes, there sions of some of the articles, some Thank You are the real new music festivals like the fantastic web-only articles we couldn't fit in Penny Boddington at the Australia What Is Music, Electrofringe, Liquid Architecture and the magazine, and listen to music Council; Nick, Ash and Ruby at Inertia, EXCLUSIVE CONTENT Natalie at Torch Publishing, Giv and our own Sound Summit, but what about for the rest by the artists you haven't heard of! Luke at Qbique, Chris Bell at of the year? How does the 18 year-old kid that goes to We hope you like it. Additional reviews Blueeskyhost, all the advertisers and big parties because ‘their friends do’ ever find out contributors to this inaugural issue about good music? Or discover that the ‘history of Sebastian Chan & Dale Harrison Exclusive Broken Beat breaks’ might be more than just the name of a party? Editors feature (online only) If your store doesn't carry Cyclic Defrost then Maybe we’re just getting old. But getting old has A New Audiences project, Exclusive on-line get them to order it from Inertia Distribution its perks. assisted by the Australia Council, the tour diaries from Federal Government's art funding The views contained herein are not necessarily Last year we decided to put in a grant application and advisory body, through its thug & clue to kalo the views of the publisher nor the staff of Cylic to the Australia Council to see if they would fund Defrost. Copyright remains with the authors Audience and Market and/or Cyclic Defrost. the publication of a music magazine closely tied to Development Division. Exclusive online giveaways 4 Cover Design out there without having to sell out and sell their an instrument, but learning a machine. You learn had worked so tirelessly on. “I soul to do it. They can have exposure without hav- the parameters of what it does and however you get really attached to one-off Interview with Tom Phillipson ing to compromise what they do.” interact with it is what the music is. I still don’t pieces of art, like paintings. It’s by Angela Stengel Tom is currently working on DumpHuck’s latest know how to play an instrument or read music. I do strange, I think producing CDs release which is an Alphatown live cut-up CD everything from hearing stuff. It’s not as if I start has done that to me. You know… recorded at Frigid. “The learning process hasn’t with a sound in my head and I think I want to make spending hours compiling a CD stopped, but we know enough to be able to do that. I find things and put them together and mess and then four weeks later having everything without really making a mistake. We’re them up.” He remarks that he creates his artworks, 500 of them – all exactly the not saying that mistakes don’t happen because we which often incorporate mixed media and an same. It makes you look at single actually like the mistakes. We try to endeavour to unknown outcome, in the same random way. “I’m piece of work totally differently.” have a mistake on every product. At first it was just not actually sure what is going to happen when, for Being an instigator of many ROBOT LOVE spelling mistakes because we’re all appalling instance, I paint something and put crackle medium things creative and being a nice spellers. There has always been a defect in the on it and then set it on fire.” guy has given him a few prob- product in some way – generally speaking. We try Some of his recent graphic design work includes lems, especially when it comes not to make them too big – we hide them. We don’t layout of the Soundbyte and Virtual Museum sites to passing opinion on other peo- actually put them in intentionally but we don’t look for the Powerhouse Museum. The Virtual Museum ple’s music. “I try as much as too carefully either.” site allowed him to get down and dirty with Flash possible to be straightforward Despite seeming like a creative-project-producing to make a behind the scenes panoramic tour of the with people. We often get demos machine, Tom admits to being bad with deadlines museum. This site has an industrial and mechanical and people wanting feedback, and creating things on demand. “If someone can aesthetic behind it with a high level of interactivity. but it’s hard. If you’re not going give me a project just by saying ‘XYZ’ then I can “It was really fun actually. I love working on proj- to get on the compilation then create ‘XYZ’. But if they say ‘pick a letter’, I don’t ects where I know it’s not just to sell a product. And the feedback is probably some- have an idea what they’re talking about. Creatively while the museum is on some level a product, it’s thing you don’t want to hear. I everything I know has just been stuff I’ve learnt also one that is educational and helps people. I hate don’t mind giving feedback, but I myself and it’s partly the reason for it.” When he porning myself out, especially when it involves my learnt long ago that I don’t like DumpHuck releases to date: was asked to design a cover image he felt it was the creativity.” The Soundbyte site on which he worked lying to people and telling them perfect opportunity to pull out a recent creation that is a music network which links schools and sound- their music is great.” He men- Various Artists was without a home.