Jim White and Emmet Kelly are The Double.
Jim plays drums and Emmett strums his electric guitar.
Another fella, James Turrell, is an American artist who plays around with light.
What do these guys have in common you may ask?
Well I went to see The Double play a few years back. They play a piece of music which lasts 45 minutes. Cool rhythmic drums and an E Major guitar strum. No changes. No slowing down. No speeding up, just constant. During the performance I kept hearing other melodies, bass lines, other guitar parts and sounds.
But there was only the two of them. What the hell was going on?
In James Durrell’s Skyspace installation at The National Gallery in Canberra, you sit in a circular room at Dawn or dusk and you look at or through a hole in the domed ceiling. As night turns to day or day turns to night
The light and colours change dramatically. But what I saw, the colours and changes in light were always
Slightly or greatly different to what my friend was seeing.
As with The Double, what I was hearing in my head was probably different to what other people were hearing.
In the light dome I was seeing blue black. My friend seeing orange yellow flames.
With both the music and the art, our minds were adding to the performance.
Twisting and turning.
Out of this world
– Peter Oxley (Sunnyboys / The Aints!)
RISING’s Artist in Residence, Jim White and long-term collaborator and guitarist Emmett Kelly (aka The Double) are joined by brand-new collaborator Jo Lloyd, to create a physically and musically intense catharsis to open RISING.
Jim White and Emmett Kelly bring the background of countless uninvented rock and roll songs, right to the front.
Traversing the space is choreographer Jo Lloyd and her dancers—their intricate patterns loop and persist, working against and with the sound.
In this takeover of a traditionally silent and reverent space—music and dance strike a balance between perpetual stasis and perpetual motion.
British musical raconteur Baxter Dury brings his indie croon-come-disco swagger to Vivid Sydney in his first Australian tour after a career spanning two decades. In that wry self-deprecating way of West Londoners, Baxter describes himself as ‘a guy in an ill-fitting ’80s suit singing over a synthesiser’. What he delivers is louche sardonic music fuelled by late-night London snapshots. Baxter’s chamber pop, shuffling basslines and comedown disco vibes all juxtapose a seedy bleakness with a sweet love for humanity.
After a topsy turvy youth and addled early adulthood, Baxter found an unlikely avenue into a musical career on the back of a performance at his old man’s funeral. That old man was no other than new-wave punk icon Ian Dury. Though Baxter never aspired to be a chip off the old block(head).
Instead, he has forged his own peripatetic musical path, mopping up vignettes worth intoning along the way. Minor characters often take centre stage in Baxter’s songs. Spinning wry stories of life among the well-heeled yet badly behaved, he has that rare knack for making the ordinary sound extraordinary. Hear him turn grey into gold as he surveys modern life’s underbelly in his whisky-bar-at-2am voice.
“Like his pater, Dury is a compelling performer, enchanting and amusing in equal measure. Between songs he engages in bluff, geezerish banter,… this scruffy cherub could be Jeff Buckley reincarnated as a Cockney stoner.” – The Guardian
Xylouris White, the two-headed monster comprised of Dirty Three / Springtime drummer Jim White and Cretan folk / lute legend George Xylouris return to Australia this June at the invite of Melbourne’s Rising Festival and for a special co-headline appearance with Scottish duo Arab Strap at the city’s premier venue, The Forum.
For Jim and George it will not only be their first Australian show in two years but the first time the pair have been in the same room in that time, their last confirmed sighting being Castlemaine, Victoria the day before the world turned upside down. In their time apart though, they have not been idle.
Jim learnt to record at home (in Australia) while George taught lute on zoom from Crete.
They worked on lots of music along with silent third member of the band, producer Guy Picciotto, including a sound track for UK filmmaker Rebecca E. Marshall.
As well as a deep archive of finished and unfinished music, Jim would record at home and at Guy’s studio in New York City and send files to George who would add layers of lutes and lyra ideas and Jim would overdub. Similarly, Guy would combine, excavate and create.
They have a new album ready; their fifth, but now it is time to perform live.
“There’s a fearlessness to their playing: their knowing glances and nods reveal their shared intuition, and the occasional clunky moment comes as both a natural side effect and a welcome wrong-footing during an evening that is endlessly and joyously fluctuating” – The Guardian
On-sale March 21.
Mess Esque is the musical vision of Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner & McKisko composer Helen Franzmann. Since forming via a lockdown-confined correspondence in 2020, they have recorded & released two records: Dream #12 (Bedroom Suck) & Mess Esque (Drag City/ Milk!).
Together they create a curious synthesis of dream pop, psych soul & ethereal indie rock. Effortlessly balancing bold emotional immediacy with a quietly assured sense of composure, Mess Esque draw the listener into their compelling world of sideways shadows & nocturnal projections. Franzmann’s dream diary reflections & cyclical refrains echo Turner’s tapestry of guitar, organs, flutes & scattered percussion. Melodies arch upwards dramatically before dissolving into diaphanous substratums of whispers & sighs. Songs unfold in their own time, drifting outwards before circling back to find themselves where they left off, each time the same but somehow different.
Their self titled album ‘Mess Esque ‘ on Drag City/Milk Records has been described as A DREAMY VISCERAL MASTERPIECE
“Mess Esque’ the album is an ethereal, gentle delight: yearning brittle and delicate vocals that glide over subtle but barely restrained instrumentation that adds a gold filigree to a barbed wire brush. It has the raw and visceral edge of Velvet Underground mixed with a dream pop blur.“ (Backstreet mafia)
Mess Esque play their first and only Sydney show at The Great Club, Marrickville Friday 13th May 2022. Tickets on-sale now via feelpresents.com
‘It’s not jazz, it’s not rock…Whatever you want to call it, this is one mighty sonic trip that paints colourful pictures in the mind.’ – Noel Mengel, The Music Review Loudmouth Magazine.
The brainchild of pianist and composer Alister Spence, Asteroid Ekosystem is a supergroup for the 21st century bringing together four of the countires most acclaimed and talented musicians. Spence; the leader of avant-improv group the Alister Spence Trio and touring keyboardist with Sunnyboys, The Aints! and Laughing Clowns, bassist Lloyd Swanton of jazz giants The Necks and the catholics), world class percussionist Toby Hall on drums and the legendary and pioneering Ed Kuepper; guitarist and founding member of The Saints, Laughing Clowns, The Aints! and a solo career that has now stretched into 37 years.
“I first heard Ed Kuepper’s music more than thirty years ago. His interest in and skill with sound and improvisation came across so clearly. His songs always unfolded in interesting ways and often opened out to be extended by the players in his bands.” – Alister Spence
Late in 2020 Asteroid Ekosystem released their eponymous debut album, a double length CD that took Spence’s verbal sketches and melodic cells into new and unknown terrain that earned them rave reviews from around the world and saw them shortlisted for the 2021 APRA/AMCOS Art Music Awards under ‘Jazz Work of the Year’.
With Kuepper’s schedule of releases and live activity – most recently with Dirty Three drummer Jim White – plus Swanton’s ongoing commitments with The Necks coupled with the many covid-inspired lockdowns meant live activity has not been an option for the fab four but finally a window of opportunity has opened up that will see Asteroid Ekosystem play live in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide this February-March.
ED KUEPPER WITH JIM WHITE
… and so our heroes return; having wowed audiences with their take on 45 years worth of Kuepper catalogue Ed Kuepper ’n Jim White return to finish what they began back in May ’21 and before the world went topsy turvy (again).
Kuepper, of course, is the co-founder of ’70’s proto-punks The Saints, chief architect of the uncompromising Laughing Clowns and The Aints! and master songsmith over some 15+ solo albums, while White is the brilliant drummer of renowned instrumental trio Dirty Three, partner in the genre-defying Xylouris White and disciple of all things Ed.
“…both Kuepper and White standing by the end of the righteous and powerful performance and seemingly as engrossed in the music as the adoring, sold out throng before them. It’s a masterful display by this Brisbane legend and his new musical compatriot, long may Ed’s local reign over us continue.” – Rhythms
“After 90 minutes of watching their linchpins play and improvise together, it was easy to understand why geographical borders mean nothing to music this transcendent.” – AF
Coinciding with the tour(s) has been a trio of retrospective releases from Kuepper including a first ever solo singles collection, a handpicked best of from Kuepper post-Saints outfit Laughing Clowns and a live release from Ed’s very own Saints tribute The Aints!
“Across a rich career that stretches back to the first half of the 1970s, and spans such bands as The Saints, Laughing Clowns, The Aints! and countless solo projects, Kuepper has had a singular ability to reinvent himself and to reinvestigate his own back catalogue from new perspectives.” – SMH
“I like how Ed Kuepper – like Lou Reed or Bob Dylan – doesn’t want to replay the hits as was and at the same time doesn’t pretend to not have a past nor a future. In working with the musicians they play with, they revisit their material in new and old ways as well as creating new material and its not a binary problem, an ethic that seems relevant to all things to me.” – Jim White
Ed Kuepper: Singles ’86 ‘- ’96 (CD, vinyl out now)
Laughing Clowns: Golden Days – When Giants Walked the Earth (vinyl only)
The Aints! Live At Marrickville Bowlo (vinyl only)
