sonicanimation
i went to sonicanimation on saturday (22nd July) and had a great time. The HiFi bar is a downstairs venue which has been host to "powderfinger", The Sharp and various other bands over the years. It consists of two main areas, a downstairs dancefloor area with a bar, sunken dancefloor infront of the stage, the mixing desk and a small back area where t-shirts are sold. Upstairs is a lounge with comfy couches a bar and nice big speakers pumping out the soundboard feed, all looking down on the stage through big windows.
It was from the lounge I watched DJ Billy Wizz and Groove Terminator. BW was nothing special. A pretty good DJ but it was a fairly standard set, he's certainly no Jeff Mills but that is hardly fair.
Groove Terminator was "live" with a live bass player, a live guitarist, decks etc. up the back and a front guy doing DJing and singing. Lots of cliche jumping around etc., playing up to a pub rock image. I'm usually impressed by live dance but this seemed very fake. I suspect the DJ mixing was fake as the scratching definitely was. I enjoyed their non-single songs a lot more than I suspected, as personally I think the Triple J played songs of theirs suck.
sonicanimation came on around 12:15, interupting DJ BW's second set. A live drummer using 100% electronic pads, keyboards and a huge setup of drum machine gear including a funky looking orange portable iMac (a bloody good use for them I must say).
The vocalist did just that, rarely touching the keyboard. He made up for this by jumping around to the max and mixing with the crowd. I must say seeing a band play live with the singer bopping next to you in the huge crowd is something special. Hooray for cordless mics.
They played up the Triple J crowd, playing mainly set songs from "Orchid For The Afterglow", rarely interpreting beyond the CD. "Love Lies Bleeding" seemed a crowd favourite but all songs went down well. They ended the set with "Joyride", my favourite.
During their set I went to get a drink. While fishing for money some dick stole it right off the bar. I'm not sure what he was doing out after midnight when he had kindergarten in the morning but there you go.
After a pre-encore pause the band returned for their biggest single "theophilus thistler", followed by a sped up mix with impressive speed rapping. Then followed the much hoped twenty minutes of so of 'rave mode' sonicanimation of just pure mixing. Fantastic.
Check them out on Thursday at Monash Uni Clayton if you're nearby.
Aus Government gets a clue
Looks like the Aus Gov. grew a brain and used it all up on deciding that it was a stupid idea to think web streaming sites would need a broadcasting licence to stream content. Good. Story at Australian IT.