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No.24: Khankoban Written on November 20, 2008, by admin.

Andre from Khancoban took a moment out from moving house to come by the terrace. Sounded like he was in the midst of a move back to the city from the idyllic but isolating Dandenongs. So much for the utopian tree change dream…

Funnily enough, phrases such as “idyllic but isolating”, and imagery of broken forest utopias go some of the way to describing the musical world that Khancoban inhabit. The title of their new album is “limbs may fall”. Which strikes me as perhaps dangerous and pastoral at the same time.

Andre and I played through the title track from the album together and the recorded a version, which is in the middle of the podcast. Then we had a talk about his band and songwriting and whatever else came up. I’ve put in some tracks by bands that were mentioned (We Grow Up, Grand Salvo, Sodastream) too.

Khancoban are playing at the Empress on the 29th of November supported by We Grow Up and me.

Hope you enjoy the cast. If you have any feedback for Khancoban or me or the world at large, leave a comment.

Oh and I just came across another podcast that Andre did for 5 foot high and rising so have a listen to that too.

Playlist

Peter Joseph Head: Before Too Long

Khancoban: Limbs May Fall

Khancoban: Comedy Night

We Grow Up: Wrote It All Down In My Diary

Grand Salvo: Shaelem Relagh

Sodastream: Wedding Day

Nick Huggins: Doorframe to Bedhead

No.23: Periodic Collective Written on November 5, 2008, by admin.

 

 Periodic Collective Interview [27:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Tom from label Periodic Collective and I are playing a gig together at Melbourne’s Old Bar on Monday 10 Nov. Ahead of that, I thought it would be fun to get Tom for a chat over tea and cake.  We discuss his band, Woollen Kits’, music and have a knatter about several of the bands on his label…

Tracks played:

Woollen Kits: Cupcake Kiss
Woollen Kits: I Wonder
Dachen: Boy and His Family
Wonderful Fellowship: Save the Kids
Yama Boy: Backward Cap
Timothy & Wilderness: Rivers & Stones

No: 22 Interview with Irit Rozenfeld from Oblako Lodka and Cordelle Written on October 24, 2008, by admin.

 

 Standard Podcast [32:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Irit stopped by for a chat and a cup of tea at the house this week to talk about what her bands Oblako Lodka and Cordelle have been up to.

Tracks played…

Peter Joseph Head: Take On Me

Oblako Lodka: NYE ideas

Oblako Lodka: This road is not for sitting

Oblako Lodka: Wet Red

Sparrow Hill: The Ploughman

The Motifs: Tell me more

This gig coming up:

No.21: Interview with Michael Zulicki from Albert’s Basement Written on October 20, 2008, by admin.

This time a chat with the man behind “Albert’s Basement”, a Melbourne group that has hosted a couple of gigs a month for the last couple of years and has released a vinyl record recording of a gig with 15 bands in a bedroom, among other strange and wonderful activities…

Music by The Frightening Lights, Owl + Moth, Team Red, Oliver Mann.

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20: New Podcast Format Written on October 13, 2008, by admin.

I’m trying a new format for my podcast today, calling it my Terrace House Podcast. In this episode I play you my latest creation, “Our Turn”, as well as “place” related songs by some of my favourite Melbourne musicians including Evan Meagher, Milk Teddy, Extreme Wheeze, Sleepy Township and Guy Blackman. And also a Bing Crosby Blooper. Hope you like.
I am also doing a mini competition ; write a review of the podcast in the itunes podcast directory and copy it into the comments field on the blog and I’ll pick one or two people to send a pack of 4 CD’s from my back catalogue…

tracks:

Peter Joseph Head: Our Turn
Evan Meagher: Alma
Milk Teddy: Going to Sri Lanka
Extreme Wheeze: TV Theme
Bing Crosby: Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams
Sleepy Township: Sleepy Township Song
Guy Blackman: Carlton North

 

 Standard Podcast [39:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

No.19: Beneath the Bananas Written on September 12, 2008, by admin.

 

 Standard Podcast [2:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Here’s a track to get us all in the mood for the coming summer, if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, or to transport you to a warmer place if you are a Northerner. It’s a simple little number with a quasi-hawaiin feel and the sound of the ocean in the background to take you away to a utopian fantasy land. Maybe like that Fantasy Island show with the midget fellow in a white suit. Actually, thinking about it now, in a parrallel universe that show could very easily have been directed by David Lynch. And this track would have been on the soundtrack. But sung in German, and as a death metal song, which would have segued into a jazz combo playing a cool little tune with a dirty walking stand up bass line and syncopated finger clicks. In fact I think I’m going to do a new version of this song. Just as soon as I get the call from David.
Speaking of films I went to see Persopolis at the movies last week. Interesting that it came out about the same time as Waltz With Bashir, which I saw at the Melbourne Film Festival a little while back. They are both autobiographical animations about people people living in Middle Eastern countries dealing with their own personal demons. Strange how such singular things often come in pairs.
I enjoyed Waltz With Bashir better out of the two. The quality of the animation in it was different to most things I had seen and it had an amazing soundtrack.
Hope you like the track. No guests this time. Just pure anadulterated Poit.

There is also this gig coming up:

No.18: We’ll be right Written on August 12, 2008, by admin.

I ran into a couple of uni friends, Danny Richardson and Alan Lee, a few weeks back so I thought I would get them over to record. Danny is a percussionist so I asked if he could bring a few bits and pieces over. I was surprised when he turned up with a well loved station wagon filled with a formidable arsenal of equally well loved percussion instruments including: a professional glockenspiel (it had been a long time since I had seen one that wasn’t in a yellow plastic case and hit with matching yellow plastic mallets, nay, beaters), a vibraphone that couldn’t be plugged in for fear of electrocution (though which could still be played with a double double bass bow to great effect), a large ride symbol with screws in it which I believe they call a “sizzle” and the piece de resistence, a full size, frame mounted tam tam gong which made the entire terrace house ring with a bowel threateningly low frequency hum whenever he so much as tapped it.
In contrast, Alan brought absolutely nothing and inexplicably forgot his shoes when he left. He did, however, make up for his lack of paraphernalia with an astounding technical display on his virgin encounter with the quintessentially analogue beast that is the Fender Rhodes Keyboard. Though Alan is firmly established in his new calling as the last bureaucrat in Canberra with a pure heart, our national capital Don Quixote if you will, his performance attests to the old adage about taking Tarzan out of the jungle. I feel that if you listen closely to his melodic embellishments and inspired harmonic extrapolations you can audibly discern that something dark and primal, from deep in his past, was stirred within him. Which perhaps goes part of the way in solving the mystery of the shoes.
Fumiko, however, was relegated to the musical equivalent of the kiddy’s corner on the fabulously orange plastic “Tempi” keyboard which needs to be plugged in and somehow makes sound by pumping air. It is kind of like a cross between a keyboard and a vacuum cleaner, wrapped inside a toddler’s toy exterior.
In the end, I smothered the second half with electric guitars and fuzzy synthesizers. How’s that for gratitude.
The song itself is about cancer. Which seems to be everywhere. Where does it come from? How do you hide from it? It is exasperating and terrible.
The song is also about fear and optimism and comradery. I hope you find it simple and epic, complex and understated, like a Kubrickian monolith in a terrible cyberspace.

No.17: All the songs that you sing I sing too Written on July 29, 2008, by admin.

This week’s song is a re-record of a song I originally did for a little E.P. a couple of years ago called 5 Short Songs About Forever.  I thought I could do it better in light of recent developments in audio technology and recording/performance techniques that have gradually been unfolding within the long, thin oblong of my terrace abode.
Fortuitously, some music I have been making for some advertising videos has reminded me once more of the pleasures of the Virtual Midi Instrument.  So that has gone into the mix along with the Rhodes and the axe.  One was called “claw” and the other “cheese machine”, kind of like the musical equivalent of R2D2 and C3PO, but with much cooler name.  I’m feeling good about the results, but I am trying to keep in mind that this path can be a slippery slope to a slow arpeggiated synth ruin and that marijuana is a gateway to other drugs and that the road to hell is paved with good intentions etc. etc.
In other news relating to the dark kingdom of eternal torment, I learnt today that Melbourne’s Princess Theatre is haunted by the ghost of an actor who died whilst playing the part of Mephistopheles in a production of Gounod’s Faust in 1888, apparently at the very moment he went down a stage trap door to dramatically depict his character’s decent into the fiery underworld.  His name was Federici and there are many thespians who can vouch for the existence of the ghost in the theatre, including the great Bert Newton, so you know it must be true.  I didn’t think anything that intriguing ever happened in Australia.

No.16: How To Rest Written on July 16, 2008, by admin.

I had help from several talented friends on this week’s track: Neil Erenstrom and Chris Hung(The Crayon Fields and The Motifs), Alexis Hill (The Motifs, Light Music Club), Thomas Bjorn Mendelovits (Milk Teddy) and, of course, my especially gifted wife Fumiko. It was pretty much all recorded live one afternoon in our front room, except for the obligatory angelic chorus at the end where the male band members huddled round the microphone and pretended we were the rolling stones adding “woo woo’s” to “Sympathy for the Devil” as the lady members looked on and tried not to laugh. Needless to say, we are not the rolling stones.
It was somewhat of a revelation for me being in the presence of so much early eighties keyboard technology at one time. Most of it provided by Casiotone I think. Perhaps 4 keyboards? I am hoping to get a call from Casio one day to do a poster of us all holding their keyboards a-la the posters you see of Joe Satriani with Ibanez or Dimebag Darrell with Washburn guitars you see in guitar stores (I wonder if that is correct…please let me know if I have mucked that up.)
The instrument that sounds like a a banjo is a sanshin, which if you say is an Okinawan version of a shamisen, Thomas will be quick to tell you that the shamisen is a Japanese version of a sanshin. In a miraculous feat of octopussy ambidexterity, Thomas manages to play sanshin in the verses and his retro keyboards in the bits that for purpose of constrasting with the verses we called the choruses.
Special mention must go to Chris’s surprising and beautiful way of playing slide guitar. It starts off atmospheric, goes percussive, becomes melodic and manages to remain breathtaking throughout. Of course, it was all done with a drinking cup, as all the best slide parts are.

Neil played thigh percussion. Enjoy.

今回はたまたまいっぱい日本の楽器を使っている。カシオのキーボード四つぐらい使っている。沖縄の三線もある。一回ライブで説明として「三線は沖縄の三味線」と言ったら三線を弾いている人トマスに「三味線は日本の三味線だ」と怒られた。なんでオーストラリアで生まれ育てられたトマスはそれほど沖縄と共同感を持っているか分からないけど。

No.15: Were Things Simpler Before? Written on July 4, 2008, by admin.

Here is a track I recorded with my fellow humansixbillioners in bass player Ry’s apartment above a grog shop in Richmond probably 2 years ago.  Fumiko says she likes my music but that it is weird.  When I asked her why, she mentioned my penchant for grandiose choral endings.  On the whole I don’t agree that my music is so unusual, but listening to this track, she definately has a point that the whole choral thing does at times reach odd extremes of melodrama.  Yes, odd extremes of melodrama, I like the ring of that. Which is probably just more proof that I am tragedy tragic totally out of sync with the zeitgeist.   Let me assure you, though, dear listener that this is not an aesthetic without an element of humour.  I am no stick in the mud.  Seriously.
Anyway, have a listen and decide for yourself whether the comic/tragic yin and yang is in harmony…

Cast & Crew:
Moi: Vox, guitars, cello.
Fumiko Head: Synthesizer, vox.
Julian Harris: Drums, vox.
Ry Haskings: Bass, vox.

 

 Were Things Simpler Before [4:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Oh, I’m putting together an “album” of songs too, because, hey, I have to admit we all love albums.  So be ready for it kapow zap zing coming right at you real soon this year hopefully.

今回は２年ぐらい前、日本からオーストラリアに帰って来てから１年ぐらい、に録音した曲です。
この前史子にピーターの曲好きだけど変わっていると言われた。なぜかというとちょっと変な感じの大合唱団擬きみたいなところがあったりするからだ。この曲 を聞いて自分でも確かにそのような劇的で大げさなところはあるかもしれないと思った。けどなぜか僕はそういうちょっとヤリスギなところが好きだと思う。完 全に真面目じゃないけど。
まあ自分で聞いて判断してください。

今アルバムを作っている。やり過ぎたアルバムを作っています。楽しみすぎて下さい。

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