ISSUE 8 CDITORIAL CONTENTS Welcome to issue 8 and the end of our second year. It has been a 4 COVER DESIGNER: MARK GOWING upward curve since Sonar last year, and Cyclic Defrost is back at Sonar by Bim Ricketson this year and continuing to build connections with Europe. Good Australian electronic music has been starting to spread more broadly 6 PURDY overseas and the next couple of months sees the number of Australian by Sebastian Chan PO Box a2073 acts overseas growing substantially. Sydney South 10 CITY CITYCITY This issue’s cover art is by Sydney-based graphic designer Mark NSW 1235 Australia by Bob Baker Fish Gowing, whose logos and other work should be familiar to a lot of We welcome your contributions 11 ANTHONY PATERAS Sydney locals. Inside you’ll find interviews with the old guard – Kevin and contact: by Bob Baker Fish Purdy, Coldcut, Tortoise’s Jeff Parker, as well as the spring chickens – [email protected] Perth’s IDM youngster Pablo Dali, Melbourne post-rockers City City www.cyclicdefrost.com 14 PABLO DALI by melinda Taylor City, Lali Puna and Anthony Pateras. After the continual hectoring ISSUE 9 DEADLINE: AUGUST 12, 2004 about MP3 politics in previous issues, one of our writers, Vaughan 16 COLDCUT Healey finally got hold of an iPod for a fortnight and went about trying Publisher & Editor-in-Chief by Clark Nova to learn the art of iPod krumping, and Degrassi gives solid holiday tips. Sebastian Chan 18 LALI PUNA By the time you’ve waded through those in this 44 page bumper issue, Art Director & Co-Editor by Peter Hollo you’ll come to the treasure chest of reviews and this issue’s sleeve Dale Harrison 20 TORTOISE design look at embossing. Sub Editor by Matt Levinson There’s so much that couldn’t fit in this issue, including an even Aparna Khopkar greater number of reviews – some for some very important releases 23 MP3 AESTHETICS that just couldn’t be squeezed in. We’re trying to add those to the Reviews Editor by Vaughan Healy Dale Harrison online version over the next month or so, and some will run in the 26 MUSIC REVIEWS next issue. Our other news for this issue is that Cyclic Defrost has Advertising received some additional funding from the Australia Council for the Sebastian Chan 38 SLEEVE REVIEWS by Alex Crowfoot Arts to help us keep our advertising rates down and continue for Advertising Rates another 4 issues. Also, we will be putting out a double CD compilation 40 SELECTS: MUSIC VS PHYSICS download at www.cyclicdefrost.com in early 2005 for which there will be a call for submissions on the by Dale Harrison website and in issue 9 (September). Get in touch, Issue 9 is up next. 42 DEAR DEGRASSI Sebastian Chan & Dale Harrison Distribution Editors Inertia Distribution Stockists www.inertia-music.com NSW: Victory Music, Bloody Fist, Plum Music, Market Music, Troy Horse Rock Shop, Hi Fidelity Lounge, Salamander Sound, Printing Spot Music, Redback, Spank, Music @ Byron, Hum on King, Torch Publishing Hum on Miller, Hum on Oxford, Leading Edge Warriewood, Web Programming 360 Sound, Leading Edge Penrith, Mall Music, Electric Giv Parvaneh, Qbique www.qbique.com Monkeys, Fish - Newtown, Fish - Glebe Music, Bizarre, Euphoria, Freestyle, MCA, Metropolis ,Recycled,Explore Web Design Music, Disc, Reefer, Record Store NSW, So Music, Red Eye Luke Elwin, Qbique www.qbique.com Extended articles Victoria: Licorice Pie, Slap, Readings Carlton, Northside, Web Hosting Kent St, CC Geelong, Recycled, Missing Link, JF Porters, Downloads of featured artists Blueskyhost www.blueskyhost.com Boston Sound, Voyager Port Melbourne, Record Collectors ISSUE 8 EXCLUSIVE WEB CONTENT: Guest Cover Design Corner, Second Spin Tech, Voyager Ivanhoe, Greville, Sister reviews of Koji Asano, Backfeed Slumber, Mark Gowing Ray, Polyester, Synaesthesia, Central Station Melbourne, Cornelius, Scanner, AGF, Sun Ra, Issue 8 Contributors Substrata, Gaslight, Raouls, Kriskay Giardini di Mirò, Kid Spatula, Pensive Jordan Spence, Bim Ricketson, ACT: Impact, Landspeed Vaughan Healy, Alex Crowfoot, Melinda Platforms Comp, DJ Shortkut, Illogic, Queensland: Skinny's, Rockinghorse ,Butter Beats, Tayor, Bob Baker Fish, Lawrence Music vs Physics plus more Sunflower, Toombul Music, Alleyway, Cosmic Music, English, Tim Levinson, Matt Levinson, Leading Edge, Music Scene Tim Colman, Peter Hollo, Damian O’Keefe, Ron Schepper, Dan Collins, Western Australia: Dada's, Mills, Central Station Perth, www.cyclicdefrost.com Barry Handler, ollo, Lawrence English Planet Video, Chinatown Records Thank You South Australia: Muses, Big Star, B Sharp, Chatterbox, The views contained herein are not necessarily the views of the publisher nor the staff of Grace Chan for blessing us with your Uni Records Cylic Defrost. Copyright remains with the authors and/or Cyclic Defrost. presence, Nick, Ash, Justin, Ruby, Tasmania: CD Centre, Ruffcutt, Wills Music, Aroma A New Audiences project, Chloe @ Inertia, Natalie & Noel @ NT: Casuarina assisted by the Australia Council, the Torch Publishing, Giv @ Qbique, Chris If your store doesn't carry Cyclic Defrost then get them to Federal Government's art funding and advisory body, Bell at Blueskyhost, and all our adver- order it from Inertia Distribution through its Audience and Market Development Division. tisers. This issue is dedicated to the memory of Paul Rodwell. Handmade compendium for 4 Hopscotch Films took Mark and a bunch of friends and work expe- rience students many weeks and piles of materi- als to create, and although he drew no fee from the project, it has led to an strong relationship with Hopscotch, and Mark now designs cam- ‘The job was assisting the marketing art direc- paigns for all their films. Especially proud of the LOGO RHYTHMICtor in a then one-man studio. EQUATIONS Within four years posters for Spellbound and Raising Victor Vargas, Cover Designer the studio grew to eight people and I received all Mark has also sold the designs of some of these my training from the art director, Peter Lee. I campaigns overseas. ‘Money for nothing,’ he says. Interview with Mark Gowing stayed at Scholastic for seven years, and in that Mark also developed the distinctive Hopscotch by Bim Ricketson time worked as art director for the Book Club, corporate identity and this year developed that Software and Trade divisions. I then took a job at into a live promo for cinemas. Deliberately Next Media as art director of Hyper Magazine. I avoiding the mega, 3D, animated, aural extrava- Escaping from the cold wind into a big old ware- chose this job as the magazine was a culture- ganzas of other cinema promos, this is simply house in Redfern, I’m struck by the size of Mark based computer games publication and allowed the Hopscotch logo filmed as neon, sitting in an Gowing’s studio, which he has all to himself. ‘I me to explore and experiment with design and urban park. Simple, real and a point of differ- just like having the space,’ he shrugs. Recent type in ways I had only dreamed of at ence. Also immediately recognisable to Cyclic photographs are piled in neat stacks on gener- Scholastic. After four years working on various readers are his corporate identities for Sydney’s ous bare desks, a retro digital clock tells the publications and freelancing for the music indus- 2SER and Inertia Distribution, both of which wrong time and a pad of hand sketches lies try, I left to start my own business.’ have had recent updates and additions. beside a couple of immaculate Macs. An impres- Gowing’s business now has an impressive Mark’s has also designed artwork for a number sive and inviting workplace. range of clients and media, most of it culture or of releases in the last few years, including for arts based. His work ranges from corporate iden- trip hoppers Lino, chart topper Groove Mark Gowing, designer of this issue’s front cover, tities and packaging to film campaigns, record Terminator, indie rockers Big Heavy Stuff and got a very early start as a working designer, leav- covers and photography. In his office I am shown compilations of his own Preservation label. ‘I ing school at 16 to work as a junior at children’s a sample of recent work, much of it recognisable started working with the music industry through book publisher Scholastic. ‘As a kid I was fasci- and all of it quality. Responding to my compli- my contacts at Rolling Stone Magazine when I nated by logos and typefaces and I used to copy ment Mark shrugs again. ‘Thanks, I do try. A was at Next Media,’ he says ‘I always wanted to them from magazines with textas. My grandfa- couple of years ago I decided I didn’t just want design record covers. I guess as a designer I saw ther told me that what I was doing was called to design, I want to be good.’ it as a way to somehow contribute to my love of commercial art (as it was at the time), and that The first outstanding thing I spot in Mark’s music. From there it just snowballed.’ Before there was a part of commercial art called typog- portfolio is a hand-made compendium for long Mark found himself designing for a major raphy. My head started spinning at the idea of Hopscotch Films. In keeping with the company’s label – but he soon found they weren’t nearly as designing logos and typefaces as a job. So that commitment to ‘real’ films, Mark used fabrics and receptive to cutting edge ideas as perhaps their was it. I knew what I wanted and went after it. I found materials that related to each of the distri- European or American counterparts were.