The Big Pink: Just Another Word For A Gang
Still on a high after celebrating their big win at the NME Awards a few days earlier, Robbie Furze, one half of new British band the Big Pink, sits back in his studded leather jacket, moments after hopping off a plane from Heathrow to Kingsford Smith, and recaps the events of the aforementioned awards show.
“Well I didn’t get to meet Slash,” the lead vocalist and guitarist smiles, “but we did perform with Lily, which was . . . cool.” He breathes it out, as if it hasn’t quite had a chance to sink in yet. “I always dread these things, and it was a big night. Performing and being nominated is nerve-racking — so as soon as we won and it was over, we just wanted to party,” he says, with a mischievous grin.
He and the other half of his band, Milo Cordell, were presented the prestigious Best Track Award (beating the Arctic Monkeys, Animal Collective and Jamie T), after performing the winning song ‘Dominoes’ back-to-back with a cover of 'You're So Vain', accompanied by Lily Allen. They also presented an award to New York band the Drums. After the formalities, the pair partied so hard that Milo misplaced his passport somewhere in the haze of the evening. “He missed his flight to Sydney,” laughs Robbie, “Let’s hope he makes it to our first Aussie gig!”
While Australia’s attention has been mostly diverted by new Brit acts Florence and the Machine and Mumford and Sons over the past few months, Big Pink have fast become one of the most hyped new bands in the UK. After winning the Radar Award at the NME Awards in 2009, the pair was quickly signed to 4AD Records and shipped off to New York to record their debut album A Brief History of Love. But Robbie insists it’s not all been peaches and cream: “I love the fact that people are talking about us, but it creates a lot of resistance too. All of a sudden there are people who just want to be the people that hate the Big Pink, because apparently everyone else loves us. If you love our music, great, but if you don’t like it, just don’t listen to it.”
Robbie and Milo, who have known each other since they were 16, mix electronic beats, distorted guitars and dreamy vocals to create a sound that is abstract yet melodious. Their award-winning track ‘Dominoes’ infests itself in one's mind, its addictive chorus returning to you in mid-afternoon daydreams. They write about love, but not necessarily love songs. When asked to define the Big Pink, Robbie says instantly, “We are just a rock ‘n’ roll band. I mean it’s got different shit going on, and I could say, like: noise, rock, electronic, whatever, but at the end of the day we are just a rock ‘n’ roll band.”
Listening to A Brief History of Love, it’s not hard to imagine each track being played to a packed sports stadium, a la Muse, in the not-too-distant future. “In the studio, Milo and I like to write choruses that make us throw our hands in the air. There’s a lot of dancing and swaying. When we wrote 'Dominoes' we thought we were just pissing about and didn’t realise what we’d created. Now people are calling it an anthem!”
When playing live, they borrow the talents of two close friends to play drums and bass. But when asked if they’ll expand, Robbie is unsure. “I think creatively there will only ever be two of us, because we agree on everything. Every other creative process I’ve ever been involved in has always been such a long, boring, drawn out process, with everyone trying to put their opinions in . . . with the Big Pink it’s just me and Milo, and it works — it’s a much quicker, easier process.”
Both of music stock, Milo runs the independent Merok record label, which discovered Klaxons and Crystal Castles, and is son to the late 1960s pop producer Denny Cordell (who produced Procol Harum's ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and Joe Cocker's ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’), while Robbie is a former guitarist with Alec Empire.
Over the past year, the band have experienced backlash due to their strong music industry roots and associations. “When the album came out, the interviews were all about us personally rather than our music: where we came from, and who we knew. I was like, I don’t know where the XX live, or who Alex Turner’s best friend is, but everyone seems to know where I live!” says Robbie, “I think people have this visual image of me and Milo in a skyscraper on the 35th floor in glass offices, laughing about how successful we are because we know how to cheat the system. It’s ridiculous; Milo runs his record label out of his bedroom and I was in a cross-punk band for four years. We started out with real low expectations of what we were going to do. There was no strategy. Me and Milo love each other so much, we just want to hang out.”
The pair, who tend do everything together (apart from, in this instance, catch planes), named themselves after the debut album of Bob Dylan’s the Band. Robbie, who was named after the Band’s guitarist, Robbie Robertson, says “My parents were big fans when I was growing up. I didn’t really like them at first, but they started to make sense to me in my teens. The whole idea of the Band, they symbolise to me the real deal. They toured for 15 years; they lived together, they probably died together. The whole idea of a gang is so cool. Milo and me always talk about having matching jackets, like the T-Birds. I guess that’s what being a band is like, it’s just another word for a gang.”
After tying up their tour in Oz (the two were successfully reunited just in time for their Aussie shows), the band is headed to the US to play Coachella festival. But Robbie has his sights set elsewhere. “If we don’t play Big Day Out next year we’ll be seriously pissed off,” he says. “Ever since I was little, I wanted to go. They fobbed us off this year, told us to wait until next year when we’ll be billed higher up. We had an argument, but as long as I come back next year, I’ll be happy. It looks like such a cool festival!”
The Big Pink’s debut album A Brief History of Love is out now.
Germaine Not Dead
We at Concrete Playground tend to believe young people should be in charge of big, important media organisations. But Ben Naparstek of the Monthly: you’re starting to give us a bad name. Commissioning Louis Nowra (not 'Louise', as could be innocently skim-read) to write a bitchy appraisal of Germaine Greer forty years after The Female Eunuch. Seriously?
We’ve all had our mixed feelings for Germaine over the years, but Nowra’s piece is full of half-baked assertions that Greer “misunderstands” women because “young women today love shopping more than ever”, embrace “fripperies”, accept botox as a “rite of passage”, and all while sometimes being even more educated than their husbands. Apparently devoid of irony, he proceeds to lambast Greer for her looks, age, and resemblance to his "demented grandmother".
The explosion of internet derision has been all-consuming; follow it here, here, and here. Particularly check Helen Razer’s funniest, most vitriolic and satisfying rant in years. Greer also kind of responds. Meanwhile, the Independent reprinted Germaine’s own words as a challenge to Nowra’s assertion that she “has no idea what makes women tick”:
"Maybe I don't have a pretty smile, good teeth, nice tits, long legs, a cheeky arse, a sexy voice. Maybe I don't know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I'm sick of the masquerade. I'm sick of pretending eternal youth. I'm sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. I'm sick of peering at the world through false eyelashes, so everything I see is mixed with a shadow of bought hairs; I'm sick of weighting my head with a dead mane, unable to move my neck freely, terrified of rain, of wind, of dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls. I'm sick of the Powder Room. I'm sick of pretending that some fatuous male's self-important pronouncements are the objects of my undivided attention, I'm sick of going to films and plays when someone else wants to, and sick of having no opinions of my own about either. I'm sick of being a transvestite. I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate." (from The Female Eunuch)
Yeah, Louis, you’re damn right I like to shop. But I don’t think that makes either patriarchy or capitalism particularly grand.
There was a time when the Monthly looked like Australia’s inspirationally impoverished answer to the New Yorker; those seem like heady days now.
Concrete Playground seeks Deputy Editor
Concrete Playground needs a Deputy Editor! Writers, readers, and friends-we-haven’t-met-yet are all encouraged to apply.
This is a fantastic opportunity for someone with creativity, editorial savvy, organisational wizardry, and an interest in Sydney arts and culture to get some solid experience working in online media and have a real hand in developing this upstart startup.
Duties will definitely include: writing and editing copy, managing our social media presence, organising giveaways, and attending editorial meetings. Outside of that, the job is what you make it; you can focus on the areas of editorial that most interest you.
This is a voluntary position and will require a commitment of five to ten hours a week. Email resumes, clippings and hellos to rima@concreteplayground.com.au by Friday, 26th March, 2010.
Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed to curate Vivid LIVE
Little is yet known of what’s in store for Vivid Sydney 2010 — Sydney’s so-branded festival of ‘music, light and ideas’ aimed at getting us through the winter — but we’ve been given enough to get excited about by today’s announcement of curators for the Vivid LIVE (previously, Luminous) portion of proceedings: Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson.
New York’s premier rock royalty (and super-cute marrieds) will be compiling the programme of events — promising music, dance, film, theatre and comedy totalling a music festival with a difference — and, out of sheer hunger to attain their level of enlightenment, we will no doubt devour the whole thing.
Everything is still TBA, but Anderson suggests that the people she has in mind are very “eclectic”, and she’s drawn to the spirit of collaboration, improvisation, and “things that can only be done live”.
Word is that Creative Sydney, Fire Water, and the bit with all the pretty lights will be back as part of greater Vivid this year, too. The festival runs May 27 to June 11. Keep an eye on http://vividsydney.com/.
Conspirators series: Babekuhl
Boutique design collective Babekuhl breathe a little bit of spiritual playfulness into their work. Creating graphics and identities for high-end international brands such as Samsung and Ford at the same time as working for local favourites such as FBi Radio and SBS, the trio behind the agency hope to innovate and inspire.
As their bold graphics stretch across print, fabric and screen, Babekuhl consult and direct with ideas pulled not just from street culture but from the upper echelons too. Not content to lead others, they also create personal work, publishing their own artwork for all to see.
This post is an extract from Conspirators: A Snapshot of Sydney's Creative Community.
By Rich Fogarty
Conspirators series: Bababa International
A piece of hand-made soap that acts as both cleansing tool and an x-marks-the-spot treasure map? The work of art collective Bababa International explores community and art, creating a dialogue between the two.
On any given day, they might ask you in off a bustling Hong Kong street to see if they can paint your nails, or invite you over for breakfast in a gallery in Surry Hills. It’s hard not to connect with artists who declare “waffles for all”, and, in turn, it’s hard not to think about your time with them, and how that sits within a collective experience. Bababa extend a playfully open hand and that’s a rare thing. The soap that told you where to go? A shower, naturally.
bababainternational.com
This post is an extract from Conspirators: A Snapshot of Sydney's Creative Community.
By Rich Fogarty
Conspirators series: Art vs Science
We all love a good smackdown. Power Rangers vs Lord Zedd. Bishop vs Gillard. It’s usually pretty clear from the outset who’s going to emerge on top. When it comes to Art vs Science, well, that would be us.
Art vs Science are a welcome addition to Sydney’s DJ-centric club scene, pushing a combination of dancefloor-worthy beats and synths with nary a laptop in sight. The trio has become a mainstay of the Australian festival circuit since winning 2008’s triple j Unearthed, and has played alongside acts such as The Presets and Lyrics Born, becoming a big name in their own right. They get extra brownie points for managing to work the line “keepin’ it cool like a Kelvinator” into their latest single ‘Parlez-Vous Français?’
This post is an extract from Conspirators: A Snapshot of Sydney's Creative Community.
By Rich Fogarty
Conspirators series: Ampersand Magazine
Let’s imagine The Monthly and Meanjin get together. The longnecks come out, witticisms are exchanged and before you know it, things are hotting up. Ampersand is what you might expect to turn up nine months later: young, literary and just a little rough around the edges.
The self-styled ‘curiosity journal’ was launched in 2008 and combines columns, essays, fiction and interviews, with plenty of visual art thrown in for good measure. It’s gratifying to see a magazine operating on the premise that kids today might just be more interested in arts, politics and culture than whether or not Lindsay Lohan has flashed her lady-parts in public this week (hint: she probably has). Our only complaint? An average (thus far) of one issue annually won’t be enough to sate our culture-hungry countrymen.
This post is an extract from Conspirators: A Snapshot of Sydney's Creative Community.
By Rich Fogarty
Artist Profile: Kevina-Jo Smith
Kevina-Jo Smith explores utopia, discovery, frailty and protection through patterns and repetition, drawing on native and exotic flora and fauna...
Can you explain the senses of magic, myth and symbolism in your work?
I often combine all those things, and more, into a bit of a fantasy landscape. In my last solo exhibition at Black & Blue Gallery there was a lot of reference to the 'tree of life' and the importance of the canopy, and I made Australian endangered flora and fauna super hero outfits.
Texture is also huge part of what you do: what technical practices do you draw into your work?
The pieces for that last exhibition were made from knitting, weaving, braiding, knotting, drawing, painting, carving, machine sewing and hand sewing. All very repetitive and laborious activities.
How important for you is the physical process of making so many detailed pieces?
My process is very labour intensive, obsessive and repetitious. People are often suggesting that I get things printed or made by machine, but I could never let go of the process... It is a huge part of why I do what I do.
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