Love, in the middle of the afternoon / just me, my spike, my arm and my spoon / feel the warmth of the sun in the room / but I don't care 'bout you / and I got nothin'....
It was in a different life. I was on the back deck of a house I lived in, doing some chores and listening to Sydney community radio station FBI. This track came on. A droning synth followed by pounding drum machine and a haunting voice talking about dreams. I wanted to know more, waiting for the DJ to back announce and eventually they came on and said it was Sydney darkwave artist Buzz Kull. Who was Buzz Kull? Why did their music speak so profoundly to me, someone brought up on no wave guitar bands and stoner rock? I bought the track on iTunes, I am guessing it was 2015/16 and when Buzz Kull’s debut album, Chroma, came out, I quickly jumped on board. Electronic music seemed like the future. So now it’s 2023. Buzz Kull – Marc Dwyer – has released two albums since Chroma – 2018’s New Kind of Cross and, just last year, Fascination. Being a fanboy, I wanted to catch up with Marc / Buzz Kull and find out what makes him tick. “Buzz Kull had a very soft start i...
I am a long suffering BUDD fanatic. Long suffering because, being from Sydney, they stopped touring here in the late 90s, maybe due to the demise of the scene they belonged to. I had looked on with great envy at the shows announced in Brisbane and Melbourne on and off over the last few decades, thinking “they’ll visit here next time…”. When I heard about their latest show in the Cactus Room in Thornbury in Jan 2024 I decided enough was enough. Flights got booked and soon enough I was on the train out to the venue, happy to pass Northcote station on the way and see some young folks sparking up in a park where I alighted. I arrived in time to see the most excellent Smoke Witch play some very catchy and groovy tunes. A highlight was one of the band member’s teenage sons joining them for a song or two. Very heartening to see the next generation in development. BUDD then start setting up and I was very happy to be seeing them play for the first time in 30 odd years. When t...
Jimi Hendrix had a problem. He’d broken through with his 1967 Monterey Pop performance, where he closed his set with a raw, confronting version of The Troggs’ proto-punk track Wild Thing and, as the song came to an end, he smashed his Fender Strat against the stage, set it on fire and then threw the pieces into the crowd as his rhythm section, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, kept up a syncopated backbeat. The performance was a statement of intent, and Hendrix’ fame only grew over the next few years before his untimely death on 18 September 1970. The problem Hendrix had is that he wanted to grow as an artist and musician, but the audience wasn’t having a bar of it. They wanted more of the same: Purple Haze , Hendrix playing his instrument behind his back and with his teeth and, yeah, the guitar smashing. What most of the audience didn’t want were extended jazz-blues fusion jams or collabs with Miles Davis. And so Hendrix was t...
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