Melbourne singer-songwriter COBY GRANT talks to JODY MACGREGOR about her EP Fanfare For Love and her ideal rider.

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Musicadium have announced the artists and speakers for their budding musicians’ workshop series, White Noise, running Mar 15-20. The speakers include Maggie Collins (manager of The John Steel Singers and Triple J Presenter), Ben Preece (pictured, manager of Hungry Kids Of Hungary and founder of Mucho Bravado) and David Carter (senior lecturer at the Queensland Conservatorium). A free showcase event featuring Melbourne R&B/soul outfit Sietta and local electro-rockers The Belligerents (plus a third band from the event’s workshops) will take place at The Edge, South Bank on Saturday Mar 20. Doors are at 6pm for the free all ages show.

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• Fresh from supporting AC/DC across the nation, Melbourne’s Calling All Cars join up with the Clint Boge-fronted Thousand Needles In Red to play at The Kallangur Tavern on Saturday Mar 27.
• Sydney-types The Holidays will support the mighty Bluejuice at The Hi-Fi on Friday Apr 23, The Coolangatta Hotel on Saturday Apr 24 and Byron’s Great Northern on Sunday Apr 25.

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Legendary guitarist, Al Di Meola is bringing his six-piece Latin jazz fusion band World Sinfonia to Brisbane this week, calling into QPAC’s Concert Hall on Monday Mar 15. Renowned for being provocative and enchanting, tickets for Al Di Meola & World Sinfonia (pictured) start at $106, through Qtix.

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Photo: Kylie Keene

Arriving late to the Convention Centre, it’s with a heightened sense of anticipation that we take our seats  (yes, seat) for the triumphant return of Phoenix. When last here, they blitzed V Festival – albeit a blitzing that took place at the rather un-rock&roll hour of 3pm.

With echoes of Lisztomania ringing through the hall, one thing becomes immediately apparent: Phoenix can do the unthinkable, and get one of Brisbane’s larger venues to almost capacity – on a Monday night. Unheard of. Also, it’s the first show in a long time where we’ve seen teenage girls screaming, squealing, and getting all giddy on the front barricade. This is for frontman Thomas Mars, who is at least a decade older than anyone in the front row, as he leaps down to sweat all over them … give the girls 30 years and it’s not all that different from Al Green’s crowd last month. But we digress.

While Phoenix have always been a favourite among pop’s tastemakers, it’s clear Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix – the band’s fourth studio effort – has been the dam-buster commercially. As proven by the sea of bodies shimmying along to the Wolfgang-heavy set-list, the band have definitely made the transition from edgy indie proposition to genuine pop stars. Older singles like Too Young and Long Distance Call remind us that they’ve always been capable of great songs, they just haven’t had an audience quite as large as this to play them to. Such is the enthusiasm of the fans that Mars enters the fray himself, even skipping up into the bleachers for a brief serenade from the cheap seats. Crowd-surfing back to the stage, we get a brief break before Mars and guitarist Christian Mazzalai provide a cover of Air’s Playground Love (Mars did vocals for the original under a pseudonym) and an acoustic rendition of Everything Is Everything. The rest of the band return and they close with a rapturous extended version of 1901, leaving the fans elated. Like Pulp, who also came into popularity later in their career, Phoenix have built on cultish roots to become bona-fide stadium stars. And if they keep writing crystalline pop with the same unaffected naturalism that got them this far, there’s really no reason why they can’t go even further.

MORGAN JOHNSON & TOPHER HEALY

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MINISTRY OF SOUND – Electro House Sessions 3

(Ministry Of Sound/Universal)

Genresize Me!™: Electro

Perfect for: Movin’ on up from autotune-pop.

The drop: How’s electro doing? Judging by Klass’ effort on disc one, the genre is stalling faster than a Russian airliner, with ideas seemingly running out as producers wheel out remix after remix. But, I’m more inclined to think that Klass simply sorted through the mail in the kitchen of his Cologne apartment, saw one from Ministry Of Sound, opened it and a cheque fell out. I guess The Only’s effort does increase the energy by speeding up the saw oscillators, but it still remains a simple replica of a festival set, umpteenth rerun of Bangkok included. If you’re in the market for electro, pass this one by. And if you’re in the need for digital snooze, buy an alarm clock.

**

GLOBAL UNDERGROUND 038 – Carl Cox

(Global Underground/Stomp)

Genresize Me!™: Tribal/Techno

Perfect for: The experience, man!

The drop: I had wondered how Global Underground was going to avoid giving Hobart a comp, because they’re running a bit low on cities. It seems natural enough to start honouring major festivals, which is why the Big Cox is doing a GU for Black Rock. Does he recreate the Burning Man experience? Well, yes. Both discs are recorded live out of the mixer at Opulent Temple – musically, worlds apart from Coxy’s local summer festival appearances – and dark pads and percussive tech are all over, easily appealing to the notion of being pumped outdoors in the middle of nowhere. Get into it – this is the closest most of us will get to having orgies naked in the desert.

***½

MASIF HARD DANCE ICONS – Lisa Lashes

(Ministry Of Sound/Universal)

Genresize Me!™: Hard Dance/NRG

Perfect for: Adventjah and Systo graduates.

The drop: Fair call to name Lashes as the latest Hard Dance Icon; she wields the sword as well as any of the generally unattractive fat and/or bald dudes that have ever played a rave around here. And it looks like she’s recovered from her poor showing on the recent Good Greef comp – gone is the dated hard house, replaced by a smart showing of tech- and hard trance through to NRG. It’s still not exactly cutting the edge off her modern Dutch counterparts, and a little more attention in the transitions and gains of opposing tracks wouldn’t have gone astray – but much like Proteus’ effort for Masif, at least it’s good to see a bit of live mixing for a change.

***

CR2 PRESENTS – Live & Direct Miami 2010

(Cr2 Records/Sony)

Genresize Me!™: Balearic/Tech House

Perfect for: People who can’t afford to go to WMC or Ibiza.

The drop: In the midst of all the excitement happening during our summer, you may have forgotten that Miami is in the middle of their Winter Music Conference. Someone’s always holding up the moneybag ready to collect, and this year it’s Cr2 putting out a triple set to celebrate the tracks they haven’t even heard yet. Predictably, there’s a Balearic surf ‘n’ sand combo for the ‘day’ disc, superclub tech-house out the asshole on the ‘night’ disc and last year’s Cr2 releases for the ‘classics’ disc. None of which will particularly inspire you to do anything, except for maybe remembering how much you hate the beach, think about how expensive club drinks are, or wonder how anyone on Earth would consider Tum Tum a fuckin’ classic.

**½

SCOTT HARMS (Scott is happy to accept cheques in the mail as much as the next guy!)

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