Recording a Christmas album is not for the fainthearted. On paper it must seem like one of the easiest things to do in the world – gather together your favourite “golden oldies” Christmas carols and songs, write one or two new songs that will hopefully become classics in time Continue Reading
Music
Now this is music #59: Paris Wells, Moguai ft. Cheat Codes, Transviolet, DWNTWN, Pell
I hear ya – it’s Friday and frankly you’ve only got enough energy left to dial up the local pizza place, twist the top off a bottle of wine and collapse on the couch to watch “Real Surviving Housewives of the Amazing Race” or something. But sometimes, and hear Continue Reading
Andrew turns the big Five-O: The 50 favourite singers and songs of my life
I can’t imagine a time when music wasn’t a major obsession. Granted I never took up the guitar or drums and joined a band, and my efforts to learn the paino were dismal at best (right Mrs. Noble?), but as a listener I was devoted beyond all reason. It didn’t Continue Reading
Andrew turns the big Five-O: The 50 favourite TV shows of my life
I was not always as enamoured with television as I am now. Back in 1970, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and there were no such things as Apple TV or Netflix – IKR GASP! – my family and I had just returned from years spent living in rural Bangladesh Continue Reading
Now this is music #58: Sebu, Keep Shelly in Athens, Anna of the North, Kacy Hill, vōx x Dylan Brady
As befits a Friday, when the grueling intensity of the work week has taken its toll and Monday’s vigour has given way to a more languid wine-assisted pace, the five following songs and artists have taken things down a notch. The result is music that is thoughtful, considered and Continue Reading
Now this is music #57: Max and the Moon, Postiljonen, Cheat Codes, Lost Kings, Philco Fiction
Light and dark. They go together more often than we’d like to admit in life, the melancholic sitting cheek-by-jowl with the ecstatic, and so it makes perfect sense that it would find expression in music. The five bands and duos features know this lesson of life well and have distilled Continue Reading
Now this is music #56: TRACE, Okay Kaya, Swim Good, Wales, HONNE
We all want to be moved, to feel something that matters don’t we? In our hustle-and-bustle-filled, all too easily distracted by digital baubles-and-trinkets 21st century world, it’s all too easy to miss the fact that while we’re taking in a lot, we’re not necessarily really hearing it, or feeling it. Continue Reading
Now this is music #55: Midnight Pool Party, Back Back Forward Punch, Panama, XYLØ, Lola Marsh
Head down, you’ve been working like crazy all week. All your time, effort, concentration given over to catching trains or buses, meeting deadlines, cramming lunch into impossible small pieces of time, racing home, living life, never really stopping. Well, here’s your chance. Five artists with songs that will transport Continue Reading
“Well here’s another nice (dancing) mess you’ve gotten me into!” – Laurel and Hardy dance to Morrissey’s “Hairdresser on Fire”
I have long been a fan of classic comedy duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, known of course as Laurel and Hardy, who were popular from the late 1920s through to the mid-1940s. Way back in the dim dark days of the mid-1970s, Australia’s national broadcaster ABC used to broadcast a Continue Reading
Now this is music #54: Holy Models, sjowgren, CAPPA, Galantis, TACACHO
Get up and dance people! It’s Friday, your cubicle no longer needs yo,u and your dancefloor most certainly does. But fear not; should intense full on gyrating prove a tad too taxing, there’s some quieter but no less emotionally-ebullient music to luxuriate in as well. There’s something for everyone Continue Reading