SUNNYBOYS

Photo: Dallas Killponen

Summer fun with the SUNNYBOYS, this time tackling regional centres with an all star bill. Tickets and full info here.
Get some fun!

After a 21 year break, Sunnyboys re-entered the fray in 2012 at the behest of a Hoodoo Gurus invitation after agreeing to regroup “just for fun and for old times’ sake”. Six years later andSunnyboys 2.0 have notched up a resume the envy of any band – contemporary or vintage – including a co-headline appearance to 45,000 people for A Day On The Green 2015; a succession of sold-out shows at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre and the Sydney Opera House, a venue attendance record at the Coolangatta Hotel (previously held by Noiseworks) plus sold-out shows (multiple times over) in Melbourne, Byron Bay, Perth and venues across the nation. The current edition of Sunnyboys features all the original members who are making the most of their second chance as a touring outfit.

NENEH CHERRY

As her stunning new album ‘Broken Politics’ hits stores and online this week, legendary pop icon Neneh Cherry has unveiled her full Australian tour, hitting our shores this January including not-to-be-missed appearances at the Sydney Festival and Tasmania’s MONA / FOMA.

With a career spanning three decades and hits like ‘Buffalo Stance’ and ‘Manchild’, Cherry has always been an artist with something to say, stamping her mark on the world with feminist anthem ‘Woman’ and her commentary on world issues in her iconic hit ‘7 Seconds’ with African singer Youssou N’Dour.

Produced with British electronic legend Four Tet and showing yet another artistic transformation, Neneh Cherry holds a mirror up to the world on ‘Broken Politics’, showing the beauty and ugliness of modern society touching on issues like gun control, feminism and race.

“I’m very shy about taking on big themes with the airs that I’ve got a solution – who has the f*cking solutions?” I like writing from a personal perspective, and the time we live in is so much about finding your own voice. People have been left feeling misheard, misunderstood, and disillusioned. What the f*ck can I do? Maybe politics starts in your bedroom, or your house—a form of activism, and a responsibility. The album is about all of those things: feeling broken, disappointed, and sad, but having perseverance. It’s a fight against the extinction of free thought and spirit.”

And joining the appearances at both the Sydney and MONO / FOMA Festivals will be headline appearances in Melbourne & Adelaide plus a first ever appearance in Brisbane.

“Neneh Cherry’s Kong is absolutely phenomenal” Clash Mag

“Musical icon Neneh Cherry played an important role in British protest and pop in the 80s and 90s, moving from Sweden…to London when she was just 16 and becoming involved in the city’s punk and squatting scene. She’s not stopped protesting since” DAZED

“Kong captures Cherry’s eternal vibe, an impeccable cool wrapped in weary wisdom.” NPR

“Few artists can craft such a minimalist, forward-thinking protest song some three decades into their career…Cherry makes the task look easy.” Pitchfork – Best New Music

FOUR TET

With his 2018 London shows selling 19,000+tickets in less than two hours and his entire US tour selling out in just one day, Feel Presents are proud as punch to announce to announce a one-off Australian show for pioneering UK electronic artist Four Tet.

Four Tet a/k/a Kieran Hebden will perform ‘In The Round’ on the dance floor of Sydney’s iconic Enmore Theatre – a first for the theatre and an Australian first for Four Tet. 

“For the first fifteen minutes of the show, we are walking on clouds. The music is pretty, rich, drifting. Then he drops the bass. This passive, dignify crowd leaps to its feet and the Opera House becomes a festival crowd, hollering for the peaks.” – Vice Magazine

Tickets for the essential one-off appearance will go on-sale 7.00am sharp Friday March 1st. No pre-sale, no ballot, first in first served.

Also playing Sydney’s emerging Days Like This Festival (DJ set) Golden Plains (live set) and Pitch Music & Arts Festivals (DJ Set)

“Four Tet leads a stomping crowd through a beautiful, banging set. The dirtier grime and dubstep influences on “Pink” and “Beautiful Rewind” are gone, and the deep house spiritualism is left: “Jupiters”, “Ba Teaches Yoga”, “Sing”, a running fever dream of sweet, steady beats. He closes with “Morning Side” from his recent Morning/Evening LP, Lata Mangeshkar’s voice billowing out around hall, a glowing heart in the curtain of light, pulsing slowly with the music.” – Thump

 

 

XYLOURIS WHITE

Xylouris White, the visionary duo formed of Cretan lute player George Xylouris and Australian post-punk drummer Jim White (Dirty Three) return to Australia to perform at BAM. After shows at the Sydney Opera House, and an album launch in Melbourne to celebrate the release of their third album. Mother continues the duo’s visionary concoction of free-jazz, avant-rock and ages-old Greek folk traditions that saw their 2014 debut album Goats top the Billboard World Music chart.

“It’s dark and magical music, and there’s nothing else like it.” – TheArtsDesk.com *****

“George and Jim continue to evolve their arresting arranged marriage between gnarly tradition and free-flowing adventure. Simultanelously rooted and rootless, we might call the results Otherworld Music.” – Uncut 8/10

“If it sounds like gypsy punk one minute and unspun folk balladry the next, that’s simply the happy fruits of these defiantly distinctive players exploring their own instruments” – Weekend Australian ****

‘Mother’ is that good – Mojo ****

DO RE MI

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Do Re Mi, arguably the most successful Australian act of the post-punk era, make their long overdue return this summer for the By The C Festival appearances (featuring Icehouse and Sunnyboys) and headline shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

The Sydney born band featuring singer Deborah Conway and bassist Helen Carter are best known for the chart hits Idiot Grin, Adultery, Guns and Butter; the indie chart topper Standing On Wires and the controversial Man Overboard.

It’s May 1985 and Virgin Records execs in London and Sydney are worried. Their first Australian signing, the staunchly independent Do Re Mi, wants to release Man Overboard as the first single from their debut album Domestic Harmony. Mainstream radio won’t play the single unless the band cuts the controversial lyrics ‘your pubic hair is on my pillow’ and ‘you talk about penis envy, your friends applaud’. Predictably, the band refuses.

Man Overboard – with lyrics intact – went on to reach the Top 5 in Australia and critical acclaim in Europe and the UK. The album, Domestic Harmony reached #4 in the mainstream charts and Gold album sales in October ’85 with the help of hundreds of live shows, critical acclaim, a solid schedule of TV and radio performances and positive press reviews. In 1986 Domestic Harmony won three Countdown Awards – the pinnacle of achievement in Australian music at the time. Numerous other press and popular awards also cemented their crossover success.

Come 1988 though, and after the recording of a third album with legendary UK producer Martin Rushent, the band would go their separate ways. Depending on who’s telling the story, the cause was either a planned hiatus, a record company plot, or a bizarre gardening accident … 

30 years later, and following a successful solo career (Conway) and a career in non-profit management, working for Greenpeace, aged care and disability organisations (Carter) an invitation for Do Re Mi to appear at the inaugural Australian Women in Music Awards proved the catalyst for the reformation but other factors played a part too. Bassist Carter explains… 

“Playing those songs again and listening to the words, I’m struck by how danceable they are and sadly, how the forces we railed against persist. Those songs are still relevant and it goes to show how long it takes for real social change to happen.”

Says Conway “After 30 years we’re opening a time capsule and rediscovering artefacts that have been out of circulation for more than half my lifetime. Breathing life back into this treasure trove of tunes, words, riffs & rhythms is a loving enterprise. I come to them again with an appreciation of our passion, affection for our naivety & awe of our energy; I am looking forward to reopening that time capsule for our older & wiser audiences & for their great grandchildren ;-)”

The reinvented Do Re Mi will also feature drummer Julia Day and keyboardist Clio Rener – why the all-female line-up? Put simply, it is a well-timed moment to showcase women playing the type of strident, challenging music the songs of Do Re Mi represent. Balancing the gender scales, if you like. Always asking questions, debating the answers, and having fun making a damn fine racket. 

Its Do Re Mi: musically, socially and politically as relevant now as they were then.

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THE AINTS!

Forty years after the release of (I’m) Stranded – one of the great Australian debut albums of all time – Ed Kuepper returns with a brand new band and a brand new contender for the title: The Aints! The Church of Simultaneous Existence.

Made up from songs, musical elements and bits and prices that Sir Ed wrote from when he began high school in 1969 and started seriously fantasising about being in a band through to the Saints implosion in 1978 and arranged by The Aints! over 2017-2018, The Church of Simultaneous Existence is an album 40 years in the making. From the glorious slash and burn of Stranded-era track SOS ’75 via the horn-driven Red Aces (the mooted follow up to 1977s classic 7″ Know Your Product) to Winters Way recorded and released originally by the Laughing Clowns for their 1984 swan song LP Ghosts Of An Ideal Wife but written in 1975 and presented here closer to it’s original form.

”Things had started to move fairly quickly once The Saints recorded  [I’m] Stranded (Fatal Records) in mid ’76. We recorded three albums over the next two years as well as doing a fair it of touring, and for a while things were looking very promising, however, business problems, compounded by personal and artistic differences meant the band didn’t get around to recording all the material I had lying around….so forty [very] odd years later it occurred to me that these songs might well have made up a hypothetical 4th album….The Church of the Simultaneous Existence…..the songs that refused to die….performed in much the way they would have had the band not split up in 1978’” – Ed Kuepper.

In celebration of the albums release The Aints! also featuring Peter Oxley (Sunnyboys), Paul Larsen Loughhead (The Celibate Rifles / The New Christs) and jazz soloists Alister Spence (keybaords) and Eamon Dilworth (brass) will hit the road this spring for an extensive national tour performing all your new favourites from The Aints! with a treasure trove of classics from The Saints.

“It was a life changing moment when as a teenager I watched the Saints perform live on TV a slouching, hypnotic and blistering “Erotic Neurotic” with what I still consider today as a totally amazing, wrenching, electrifying guitar solo still in my top 3 of all time. That song and the classic album it came from still sounds as timelessly great as it did then, not to mention the rest of their brief legacy, Eternally Yours and Prehistoric Sounds. And, having recently experienced the Aints live, it is cultural gold that a new album with unrecorded songs from that era will finally see the light of day!’” – Mick Turner (Dirty Three)

“I started my first high school band a few weeks after buying Eternally Yours. I learnt how to play most of the songs on guitar. It’s rare a band can make a perfect album, let alone three… It’s even more extraordinary when 40 years later a fourth will be revealed.” – Jake Robertson (Ausmuteants / School Damage)