Held in honour of the thirty-one year recording career of Australian garage legends the Hoodoo Gurus, Dig It Up! highlights the iconic bands finely honed musical taste and inspiration by way of multi-band / multi-stage appearances in both Sydney and Melbourne and single stage events in other capital cities.

For the 2012 Dig It Up! Hoodoo Gurus performed Stoneage Romeos their much loved debut album in its entirety. For the 2013 edition of Dig it Up! Hoodoo Gurus will again perform a full work, their equally as impressive second album Mars Needs Guitars (a feature listing in 2010 book: 100 Best Australian albums) and home to singles Like Wow, Wipeout! Death Defying and the classic Bittersweet. It’s another first in a series of firsts for Dig It Up! 2013 where once again the Hoodoo Gurus have put together an ultimate (live) mix-tape for fans of real rock ‘n’ roll. Lets get the party started…

Between 1972 and 1978, San Francisco’s Flamin’ Groovies – featuring core members Cyril Jordan (guitar/vocals), Chris Wilson (vocals/guitar) and George Alexander (bass/vocals) – produced some of the decade’s most vital recordings, including the 1976 classic Shake Some Action. Dig It Up! will be the first time since 1981 that the Jordan/Wilson/Alexander line-up of the Flamin’ Groovies have appeared anywhere in the world.

Blue Oyster Cult may be the ultimate ‘cult’ band. Revered by punks, metal heads, sci-fi geeks and horror movie fans alike, B.O.C. have carved out a 40-year career via a string of complex hard rock albums and killer live shows. Their best known track Don’t Fear The Reaper, was a U.S. top twenty hit in 1976 while the overall catalogue sales are in excess of 24 million. This will be the first-ever Australian tour for Blue Oyster Cult and it’s all thanks to Hoodoo Gurus.

UK punk pioneers Buzzcocks are no strangers to Australian shores and it’s not hard to see why. Their trademark mix of hi-energy guitars and pop smarts resulted in some of the greatest songs of the punk-era: Ever Fallen in Love, What Do I Get, Love You More et al. Original ‘Cocks Shelley & Diggle will lead their band of merry pranksters through Dig it Up! Sydney and Melbourne and for headline appearances in most capital cities.

Peter Case made a name for himself in the late seventies via power-pop pioneers The Nerves and the original version of the Blondie hit, Hanging On the Telephone. Case then moved onto eighties combo The Plimsouls and provided us with the all-time garage-pop classic A Million Miles Away. Fast-forward to the nineties and Peter Case has been nominated at the Grammys for his solo work. Move into the noughties and it’s another Grammy nomination, this time for best traditional folk album. For Dig it Up! though, Peter Case has assembled a crack-band to perform those Nerves and Plimsouls classics as well as solo material. It’s another first not just for Dig It Up! but for the world.

Had it not been for all of the above The Stems may not have happened. Heir apparent to the Hoodoo Gurus in the early eighties, The Stems produced a stunning run of garage inspired pop-singles and EP’s and one great album (At First Sight, Violets Are Blue) before leaving us in 1987 to ponder what could have been. Reforming due to demand in the noughties The Stems toured Europe and Australia before again disbanding in 2009. However, in 2013, the call went out, Ladies & Gentlemen: The Stems. Dig it Up!

But wait, there’s more! In addition to the above nominated acts Hoodoo Gurus will select an all-star all quality support cast to assist in bringing the streets and venues of Sydney and Melbourne alive with the Dig It Up! sound. Stay tuned for those choice cuts.

For up to the minute information concerning Dig it Up! – Line-up, times, additions – sign-up to facebook/DigitUpAustralia. Dig It Up! Another Feel Presents initiative.

MOON DUO (supporting The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion)

San Fransico’s Moon Duo return to Australia in 2013 as special guests of The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

Formed in in 2009 by Wooden Shijps guitarist Ripley Johnson and Sanae Yamada, Moon Duo’s fuse the futuristic pylon hum and transistor reverb of Suicide or Silver Apples with the heat-haze fuzz of American rock ‘n’ roll to create tracks of blistering, 12-cylinder space rock. And like The JSBX, they are also kindred spirits with Australia’s own Scientists having covered that band’s classic track Set it On Fire for their first 7″ release back in 2009.

Moon Duo first toured Australia in October of 2010 off the back of critical acclaim for that single, their first two ep’s and debut album Mazes. The return this time with a new album Circles, the product of a long winters isolation in the Rocky Mountains.

Full of grinding guitar drones and synth spirals, their second album ‘Circles’ is less an orbiting lunar satellite than a full-blown Death Star, its phasers set to krautrock-inspired noise marathons. – NME 8/10

Inspiration for many of the songs themes, as well as the title Circles, came from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 essay by the same name, on the symbol and nature of “the flying Perfect.” From the opening lines: “The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.” And so it goes. Rust never sleeps.

See Moon Duo on tour with The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, live this March

THE MARK OF CAIN – SONGS OF THE THIRD AND FIFTH

“Six years in the making and worth every bit of the wait. A career high point” – Rolling Stone

“Songs… is an outstanding return. It has everything a fan could want, from the familiarity of the band’s crushing, minimal sound to the strong songwriting” – The Age / SMH

“Songs… may be The Mark of Cain’s best work to date and an Australian great waiting to be anointed” – AU Review

“A testament to bands everywhere- fly the flag straight and true, or get outta town” – Stack Magazine

“This album is a must” – Heavy Magazine

Songs Of The Third and Fifth is The Mark Of Cain’s fifth studio LP. It lands in stores  November 2^nd and to celebrate, they would like to announce their first national tour in six years.

“Call it violent soul music, call it cold fear rock. This is music to be felt in the fist, the gut and the base of the spine!” – Murray Engleheart / Remedy

TICKETS ON-SALE NOVEMBER 12th. See the tour dates for details.

Work on The Mark Of Cain’s fifth studio LP began as far back as 2006 when Adelaide brothers John and Kim Scott caught up with drummer John Stanier while he was touring through Australia with his band Battles. The desire to produce another TMOC record was strong, but the reality of geographical distance (Stanier being based in the USA) and his constant touring commitments with his other bands, coupled with John and Kim’s day jobs and family commitments made it logistically impossible.

“I write better with the entire band present rather than trying to work out material at home. In order to help progress the writing I worked with a local drummer, Ben White, “ says John (Scott).  “He and I would jam at Frank’s Custom Music in Adelaide once a week and Heart of Stone, Milosovic and Avenger came from those sessions.”

John Stanier’s other bands Battles and Tomahawk have a strong presence on the Australian live scene, which provided the trio a number of opportunities to get together and develop the rest of the songs for the record. They would spend one or two weeks jamming in Adelaide whenever he was out here, working the songs and recording the bare bones so that when Stanier left, John and Kim could continue to work the material into cohesive tracks.

In early 2008 Stanier returned to Australia with Battles for the Big Day Out, and the trio entered Adelaide’s Broadcast Studio with Evan James recording, engineering all of the beds (bass, drums, guitar) before Stanier returned to the USA.

During his 2008 Australia talking tour, long time friend and producer of their breakthrough record Ill At Ease, Henry Rollins, wrote and laid down a spoken word vocal part to the track Grey 11.

2009 and 2010 saw the breakdown of John’s (Scott) long-term relationship and subsequently two years of attempts to deal with the results of the split, while maintaining a job and trying to limit the ongoing personal turmoil which resulted in hindering the singer getting into the studio on a frequent basis to complete the record in a timely fashion. It wasn’t until May 2011 that John (Scott) and long time manager Tim Pittman joined engineer Forrester Savell (Karnivool, Cog, Birds Of Tokyo) at Melbourne’s Sing Sing Studios to start mixing of the LP, which would be completed in December 2011.

Now, in 2012, four years after they began making this album, and ten years since their last studio recording, The Mark Of Cain make a triumphant return to the Australian music scene with Songs Of The Third and Fifth.