SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF! UPDATE ##### “Guaranteed to turn heads” FLUX “Caribou’s new album is fan-fucking-tastic" RIP & BURN #### “It still sounds like nothing else on Featuring members of: the planet” MODEST MOUSE,THE BETA BAND MUSIC WEEK BLOOD BROTHERS, BUILT TO SPILL “Fresh and groundbreaking... FREE ASSOCIATION,AIRBORN AUDIO a welcome PITCHFORKMEDIA PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES return from the 8.4/10 influential artist” “A highly ANTI-POP CONSORTIUM organic blend of MURDER CITY DEVILS underground hip-hop and and indie-rock” ROOTS MANUVA STYLUS B+ FORMERLY DAN SNAITH’S “Short, blunt and skitless, AGCT seethes with everything post-aught genre-fucking needs” NEW ALBUM OUT NOW ON SELF-TITLED DEBUT OUT NOW ON ISSUE 11 CONTENTS CDITORIAL 4 COVER DESIGNER: JOE SCERRI/LAKE LUSTRE Hola! Welcome to issue eleven. This issue is our first mass assault on Europe with by Bim Ricketson two thousand copies touching down at Sonar 2005 in Barcelona along with a double CD sampler of Australian music courtesy of Austrade and the Australia Council. Perhaps 8 VELURE you are one of the lucky folk sitting back in the Catalunyan sun sipping on cava sud- We welcome your contributions and contact: by Anna Burns denly discovering that there is some great music on the other side of the world, or PO Box a2073 10 MONKFLY/FREQUENCY LAB alternately you are sitting snug and warm on a couch under a doona in share house- Sydney South by Angela Stengel hold in wintery St Kilda or Newtown wondering ‘where can I get a copy of this CD?’. NSW 1235 Australia 14 JODI ROSE There’s always been amazing experimental and independent Australian music (just [email protected] by Bob Baker Fish look at Australian punk and post-punk) but even with the evolution of the internet, it is www.cyclicdefrost.com 16 ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI still a real struggle for the rest of the world to get much of an opportunity to hear it. In by Vaughan Healey fact, at least for a part of their careers, it is almost a given that the best will leave ISSUE 12 deadline: 1/07/2005 Australia and move overseas to be able to sustain their music.Australia is an unforgiv- 21 FERAL MEDIA ing and under-populated, spread out, and sport-obsessed nation, but every so often Publisher & Editor-in-Chief by Sebastian Chan Sebastian Chan these geographic, demographic, social and cultural factors make us strike out in spite of Art Director & Co-Editor 24 COMBAT WOMBAT them. Cyclic Defrost is one such strike against geography. Dale Harrison by Dan Rule In this issue we have a guest cover design by ex-patriate Australian Joe Scerri and his col- Sub Editor 27 AUTECHRE league Dominik Huber who are now based in Switzerland, at least for now.Like all our cov- Aparna Khopkar by Peter Hollo ers, Joe, the designer, is also an electronic musician recording as Lake Lustre.There are Reviews Editor 30 KEITH FULLERTON WHITMAN interviews with Sydney-based label Feral Media, and the artist-run experimental space the Frequency Lab, Melburnians Velure,Architecture In Helsinki, activist eco-pioneering hip Dale Harrison by Ron Shepper Advertising hop crew Combat Wombat, as well as Jodi Rose who tours the world recording the sound of Sebastian Chan 34 MUSIC REVIEWS bridges.Rounding this out we dig into Keith Fullerton Whitman aka Hrvatski and fellow Advertising Rates 50 SLEEVE REVIEWS sound experimentalists Autechre.Add to that a stack of reviews and a digging in the crates download at www.cyclicdefrost.com by Alex Crowfoot of Sir Robbo who happens to co-run our Sydney-based weekly club night Frigid. 53 SELECTS: SIR ROBBO If you are new to the magazine then we’d encourage you to check out on website by DH (www.cyclicdefrost.com) where you can download music from some of the featured Distribution artists as well as search and print back issues, and read all the web-only interviews and Inertia Distribution (www.inertia-music.com) reviews which didn’t fit into the print version of the magazine. For this issue, the online Printing Plus online at www.cyclicdefrost.com version has extra interviews with M.I.A, Chris Cunningham, and indie rappers Sole and Torch Publishing McEnroe. The web site is undergoing a redesign at the moment and will be unveiled in Web Programming MORE MUSIC REVIEWS: Issue 12. Until then, make contact, join our music club, tune into a live stream of our Giv Parvaneh, Qbique (www.qbique.com) Including: Accelera Deck,A-ux,Boris Hauf, weekly radio show, and enjoy the finest sounds from our southern continent. Web Design Bucketrider, Cooperblack, Enuma Elish, Fast & Bulbous, Günter Müller + Steinbrüchel, Gus Till Sebastian Chan & Dale Harrison Editors Luke Elwin, Qbique (www.qbique.com) Hammock, Hesius Dome,Homrong Chum Ngek, Web Hosting Johann Skugge, Phillip Samartzis, Plat, PXP, Blueskyhost (www.blueskyhost.com) Ronnie Sundin ,Seven Ark, Shuriken, Suicide, STOCKISTS Guest Cover Design Tomas Korber & Kazuya Ishigama, Uber Stomp, NSW: Victory Music, Plum Music, Market Music, Troy ACT: Impact, Landspeed Layla, Roots Manuva, Prefuse 73, plus compila- Horse Rock Shop, Hi Fidelity Lounge, Salamander Joe Scerri QUEENSLAND: Skinny's, Rockinghorse ,Butter Beats, tions: Alt +F4 , C.U.E. Compilation , Dub Pastry , Sound, Spot Music, Redback, Spank, Music @ Byron, Issue 10 Contributors Sunflower, Toombul Music,Alleyway, Cosmic Music, One Point One, Transient Travels Hum on King, Hum on Miller, Hum on Oxford, Leading Alex Crowfoot, Bob Baker Fish, Lawrence English, Leading Edge, Music Scene Edge Warriewood, 360 Sound, Leading Edge Penrith, Matt Levinson, Tim Levinson, Peter Hollo, Ron Schepper, MORE ARTICLES: Mall Music, Electric Monkeys, Fish – Newtown, Fish – WESTERN AUSTRALIA: Dada's, Mills, Central Station Alex ollo, Guido Farnell, Dan Collins, Dan Rule, Anna Burns, SOLE, MIA, MCENROE Glebe Music, Bizarre, Euphoria, Freestyle, MCA, Perth, Planet Video, Chinatown Records Bim Ricketson, Angela Stengel, Max Schaefer, Luke Killen, CHRIS CUNNINGHAM Metropolis, Recycled, Explore Music, Disc, Reefer, SOUTH AUSTRALIA: Muses, Big Star, B Sharp, Barry Handler, Melinda Taylor, Jai Pyne Record Store NSW,So Music, Red Eye Chatterbox, Uni Records Thank You MP3 DOWNLOADS VICTORIA: Licorice Pie, Slap, Readings Carlton, TASMANIA: CD Centre, Ruffcutt,Wills Music,Aroma Nick, Ash, Justin, Chloe @ Inertia, Natalie, Noel & Wayne Northside, Kent St, CC Geelong, Recycled, Missing NT: Casuarina @ Torch Publishing, Giv @ Qbique, Chris Bell at A New Audiences project, Link, JF Porters, Boston Sound,Voyager Port assisted by the Australia If your store doesn't carry Cyclic Defrost then get Blueskyhost, and all our advertisers. Melbourne, Record Collectors Corner, Second Spin Council, the Federal them to order it from Inertia Distribution Tech,Voyager Ivanhoe, Greville, Sister Ray, Polyester, The views contained herein are not necessarily the views of Government’s art funding and advisory body, through its Synaesthesia, Central Station Melbourne, Substrata, the publisher nor the staff of Cylic Defrost. Copyright remains Audience and Market Gaslight, Raouls, Kriskay with the authors and/or Cyclic Defrost. Development Division. CYCLIC DEFROST ISSUE 11 [05.2005] PAGE 3 FEATURES / LOCAL Cover Designer Interview with Joe Scerri/Lake Lustre by Bim Ricketson LUSTRE FOR LIFE you’ve probably caught on by now: all the designers chosen to create covers for cyclic defrost are involved in music as well as design – some run labels, others design record covers, some are musicians in their own right. but the background to this issue’s cover designer is especially cyclic in its linking of music to design and back again. Joe Scerri got into music first, spending his was an integral part of the artwork. It was just do as it wishes. I feel like I am not responsible for school years absorbing the ‘70s underground the oddest combination of elements but perfect- how it functions as a design or composition of music explosion. Design came next, directly ly aligned. It was the first time I looked at typog- sound because it now belongs to the public ear from music: a particularly luscious record cover raphy seriously, which spawned an obsession to and eye. For example, when I was about 6, I was has driven Scerri ever since. all art, all music, and other related merchandise. really fascinated in the way I could strip some- ‘I was born in London at the time of flower ‘It was then I trusted the instinct I’d had as a thing right back to reveal its skeleton. My older power, on the same day, same morning, same area 12 year old to desire a life of work with graphic cousins always gave me hand-made models of that playwright Joe Orton was murdered,’explains design. Before studying units of drawing, film planes, hovercrafts, ships and cars, but it was not Scerri.‘”If You’re Going to San Francisco”was making and painting, I enrolled at the Central the object that I was intrigued by, rather how I number one at the time. My parents are Maltese Metropolitan College of Visual Arts in Perth, could turn it into something completely different and we moved from London to Perth in the early Western Australia and began the gruesome by reversing the process and pulling it apart ‘70s where I did all my schooling years. I took like three-year task of learning everything by hand: piece by piece. I’d then have handfuls of grey, a magnet to the English music scene in when I typesetting, bromiding, hand drawing, photogra- plastic debris and get into a lot of trouble.’ was about 12, liking the more underground “non- phy, typesetting with mathematical complexity A similar exploration of process was the leap- commercial”music sound. and learning the process in stages to complete ing point for Scerri’s musical development.