Earthdance

Another victorious weekend comes to a close. This weekends highlight... Earthdance. A change for true hippies to come out and pray for the well being of Mother Earth and dance the afternoon away at a free festival held in Sydney Park.

These events always bring a strange mix of people, from biker grandmas to 13 year olds wondering why people are having such an amazing time whilst sitting down. Kyle and I have a sport we call 'people watching'. It is an overarching sport that also includes: 'what kind of job could you hold down with that hairstyle' and 'who is the happiest person here'. Today was a fantastic day for people watching. The areas included a drum and bass setup, a heavy dub area, a tech house set, standard house, live local bands and psy trance all set against a truly post-apocolyptic background of chimney stacks and warehouses. The park looked like a postcard of utopia, people laughing and flying kites... against a grand urban sprawl leading back to the citadel of Sydney.

A good afternoon all round. RASTAWOOKIE were a highlight, playing a style not too dissimiliar to a comiminbation of the Cat Empire and Salmonella Dub, we have been meaning to see them for months now, so I guess good things come to those who wait.

Second posting: Sigur Rós

Right now I am having a lazy Saturday afternoon at home, reading the papers, eating bacon (hmmm), playing the guitar and listening to music. It’s about now that I am beginning to question the validity and direction of this blog. The main reason being: the opening sentence is not something that screams: ‘I am worthy of being published.’

A couple of weeks ago Serge, a Russian friend of mine, asked: ‘what is the purpose of blog?’ The immediate response was: blogs are a great way to share your thoughts and activities with friends. So there you have it friends: today I read the paper and ate bacon.

Today I have been listening to the new album from Sigur Ros (Takk), a band I have held close to my heart for sometime now. New album time is always a risk for any decent artist as it leads to the inevitable dilemma of having to choose between a challenging new sonic direction or a tried and true rehash of past sounds. Given that the fundamental changes between their last two albums were a) production quality and b) a flattening out the extreme dynamics I wasn’t expecting them to break into a funky uptempo hip hop break any time soon. What does that mean: no change is a good thing… to a certain degree.

I jumped online to read the pre-release reviews from Metacritic and Pitchfork and was struck by the tone of the reviews. Both sites claim: no change, nothing interesting… yet the album still received numeric scores of 4 or 5 out of 5. How is it that a band can be written off as bland yet receive scores that surpass a large amount of other bands in the market? Oh well: fickle crowd. Seems that maintenance of high standards is not something that is rewarded.

So there we have it: Saturday.

Cheers

W

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