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When I hear the phrase 'country music' I can't help but imagine either American cowboys scowling through tales of the dustbowl deep south, old English men supping real ale and singing in impenetrable accents or the new breed of wiry alt-country stars who never have a good word for anyone or anything, however it seems that Australian Country artists fall into their own unique sub-genre.

After a surreal party on Saturday night... It had a Gangster theme, Gangster rap... All police tape, chalked murder scene markings, fake money and loud tracksuits.

When I was younger I did a lot of acting at school and at some youth drama groups, but that was nigh on 7 or 8 years ago...

Lots of news and reviews to post here soon, but in the meantime here's my latest Indieoma.com post with all sorts of stuff in it...

I suffered a uniquely Melbourne (and several other Cities) injury yesterday, I was cycling and my bike wheel got stuck in a tram line as I turned a corner, flipping me over the handle bars and into a (fortunately) grass verge, in rather comical stylings.

I haven't made any personal posts for a while, not due to lack of anything to say or to talk about, just haven't got round to it, I've been quite busy, beavering away trying to sort a load of things with varying degrees of success. I wont bother getting everything up to date, just a few highlights from the past few weeks and I'll try to be more regular from now on.

Glenn's old outfit, 'Squeeze' were a British new wave band hailing from SE London in the early eighties (from the same area as me! In fact several members sent their children to my school?) chalking up a string of hits such as 'Cool for Cats' and 'Labelled with Love'. A small but loyal fan base followed the band into their 'MOR years', but an ever fluctuating line up and a ubiquitous series of splits and reunions led to Squeeze's eventual demise. Now Glenn tours the world in an RV with family in tow bashing his way through a vast back catalogue adapted for acoustic guitar and solo delivery.I had the fortune of catching two shows whilst he was in town, and Glenn's shows are full of energy and enthusiasm with Glenn frequently abandoning the mic and wandering the stage. His songs of lamented love and forbidden fancies interspersed with anecdotes and musical tales of two decades on the road, well documented in Amy Pickard's film 'One for the road' which received it's debut showing prior to his first performance. The seated, older and more sedate audience at 'Don't Tell Tom' on Friday night were reluctant to fully immerse themselves in the many acts of participation that Glenn had planned, preferring instead to shout requests that are gleefully added to the set ad hoc. The younger, keener and more energetic audience at 'the Espy' on Wednesday night however were up for everything thrown at them, singing along without prompting in all the right places and gathered in a throng at the front of the stage for the entirety of the set.The second half of The Espy show Glenn was backed by the infamous Rockwiz orchestra with the intention of adding a little more 'Rock' to the show and I'm unsure if they really did Glenn any favours. All the songs were played too slowly, this coupled with Glenn's obvious nervousness at playing with an unfamiliar band drew away some of his earlier energy and presence, a friend at the show nicknamed them 'The Masters of Homogenisationî which describes their effect on all they back beautifully.Life for the old stalwarts of Rock that refuse to quit touring must be an odd existence, over 20 years of material and all audiences primarily want to hear are your early 'hits'. At the very least frustrating, possibly even a little depressing, however Glenn certainly doesn't show it.

From The Answer's opening chords it's immediately obvious why the band are more popular in Australia than their homeland of Ireland, bearing more than a passing resemblance to a certain electrically themed Australian four piece, a member of the crowd even shouts, 'Welcome Home!î Fortunately there's more to the band, they seemingly channel aspects of every major 'Rawk' band from the past four decades, and carry it off it extraordinarily well with a vast show of talent and tunes. The band are on fine form tonight with the crowd firmly in their hands, the singer croons, howls, swings his microphone stand and poses, the guitarist solos with a foot on the monitor and riffs hard, the drummer and the bass player keep it all going with some solid rock. There's a lot of hair, a lot of volume, a lot of ego and a lot of sweat, the perfect ingredients and dare I say it, the perfect answer(!) for any night of fully blown, seat of your pants' Rock.

The life of support acts to large touring artists is a tough one, playing early to half empty rooms for little money to people who are largely indifferent to your efforts and sadly tonight is no exception as a multitude of people seem happy to pay $30 to only watch one band. The Regular Johns kick off proceedings with a dangerous name for any rock band, as despite their high energy stage show, faultless playing and excellent stage presence, musically they are sadly no more than a fairly regular rock band. The Mint Chicks are up next, a band I've been wanting to see for a long time since they became a regular part of my DJ set in the UK and I hate to say, I was a little disappointed. Personally I get the feeling that the band's sound was set up for The Bronx as their usual clear punchy sound (on record) was just a big mushy mess with no clarity or distinction. Despite this, Kody, the band's singer is one the most acrobatic front men I've ever witnessed (second to the British Institution that is John Ottway!), flinging himself about left, right and centre, back flips and belly flops, sadly though the sound doesn't do the energy any justice and I'm left a little under whelmed. The Bronx on the other hand live up to all the hype my uber-fan companion gave them, my initial thought was that I'd be bored after 20 minutes of relentless, incessant hardcore, far from it, I was transfixed from start to finish. From the lead guitarist playing despite a shattered pelvis, the tank-like bass player and the shear passion and energy of singer Matt Caughthran as he crowd surfed around the venue whilst still 'singing' on full throttle and remaining vaguely in tune. Aside from the music the band love the crowd, flattering Melbourne and Australia, encoring with a cover of The Victims' song, 'Television Addict'. The Bronx rock, love what they do, love the crowd and the crowd love them, what more could you want?

I've just returned from Attending the Melbourne Atheists society (<a href="https://home.vicnet.net.au/~atheist" target="_blank">home.vicnet.net.au/~atheist</a>), I was intrigued to see what the topics of conversation might be, and tonight was the turn of agnosticism, hard work for the speaker, preaching to the (un)converted as it were. The first thing that struck me aside from the wonky OHPís and prevalence of socks and sandals, was the age of the audience; does Atheism hold the same appeal to the elderly as religion? Does the steadfast belief in Science and practicalism hold the same appeal as faith in the older echelons of society? <br><br>As far as I could ascertain from the talk being an agnostic is being open minded about supernatural entities and the superiority of Science, whereas Atheists discount supernatural entities altogether, although the lengthy discussion that ensued after the talk gave the impression that perhaps the definitions are not as clear cut as that, and as usual with these things a battle of semantics raged. It reminded me of a passage (as many things do) from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy were the philosophers of a particular planet build a machine to tell them the answer to "Life, the universe and everything", when they get an unexpected answer it is made clear to them that they never really knew what the question was. If everyone has a differing opinion on what Atheism and Agnosticism mean then how can you have a balanced discussion on it? It's these sorts of arguments and discrepancies that have plagued the spiritual community for many years. If retaining an open mind on the origins of the world is Agnosticism, then I guess that's what I am, I wouldn't discount anyone's beliefs if I couldn't wholeheartedly disproved them myself. My final question is this, if we take Atheism as a negative, slightly pessimistic belief in nothing beyond the material world, and Agnosticism as a more optimistic, non-dismissive way of life, would Atheists still refuse to believe in a 'God' or a supernatural entity if it were proved without a shadow of a doubt by science that one existed?

Been a while, now seems a natural point to update you all on what I've been up to...<br><br>As now I have a home, and not only a home, but my first permanent address for nearly a year, which I was quite excited about, but now I also feel a little down as I have commitments again for the first time in nearly a year, it feels like the end of the Holiday.<br><br>This is compounded by the fact that I need a little more work, whilst the journo work I have is paying, and it covers rent and bills, it covers little else, I need some part time work, maybe 2 - 3 days a week, so I'm very paranoid about money...<br><br>All that sort of negative stuff aside, everything else has been going pretty well, things with 'Australian Lady' (don't know if they want to be named in my public outpourings to the world, yet...) have been strangely easy, all things considered.<br><br>I am enjoying Melbourne, it's a very vibrant city, full of life, variety, character, multiculturalism and culture. The size is still confusing me, one of the things getting me down about London was the nepotistic cliques I kept encountering, to be fair, they were nothing in comparison to here, everyone pretty much knows everyone else on the \Rock\" circuit, or knows someone who knows someone else (if that makes sense), the degrees of separation are slight, I'm unsure yet as to whether that's a good thing or not.<br><br>I'm attempting to cause a few crossovers of 'scenes', attending gigs and getting involved in quite a lot of social groups and alternative political activities.<br><br>Likewise, I don't know if the move was necessarily the best to further my musical career, whilst it may be easier to be noticed, breaking out of that may be harder, we shall see. On that note I have now started forming a new band and have some solo shows in the pipeline, people are interested in hearing and helping me which is refreshing.<br><br>After some technical hitches I have now nearly finished mixing the Macaca Mulatta demos, if anyone cares remains to be seen, but they're sounding good so far and that makes me happy.<br><br>So, I miss people and things, but now the story really starts... Watch this space, will be a little more regular from now on.<br><br>Chinch xx<br><br>PS... My (now) multinational promotions and label has an event coming up...<br><br>Here we go, PR is below<br><br>Antescene Present a night of :<br>Sick Country gypsy blues and perverts<br>The Cuban Bar, Camden on 28/03/07<br>Stables Market, Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8AH, 0207 424 0692<br>Featuring : The Urban Voodoo Machine, Captain Blood Blood & The Sea Dogs, Lil lost Lou, Congregation<br><br>Antescene promotes promising artists with something new to offer, artists who may not or donít want to belong to any particular genre or scene. From weird outsiders to promising ego maniacs, the decadent, the many and the few, all out there doing their own thing, making music for the sake of it, for the love of it. The event is in association with the ëNational Studentí newspaper, a free and independent newspaper for the UK student body, one of very few surviving in an increasingly commercial Student world (www.national-student.co.uk).<br><br>Antescene believe that music can help raise awareness of real world issues so the event will be helping promote Friendís of The Earthís ëBig Askí Campaign (www.thebigask.com), the campaign was launched to lobby for new Climate Change laws, Following huge public support, the majority of UK MPs supported the campaign, and the Government announced it would introduce a Climate Change Bill. The challenge for 2007 is to ensure that this Bill is strong enough, including annual targets for the reduction of carbon-dioxide emissions, and enforcing these targets so they are actually met. Meet with Friends of the Earth on the night, and find out how you can put pressure on your MP to ensure the UK takes a lead in addressing the greatest challenge of our times.<br><br>This is Antesceneís second event after a riotous squat party late in 2006 attended by hundreds of people with more events planned for the future as well as forthcoming releases. For March the 28th Antescene is promoting a night of bourbon soaked gypsy blues led by The Urban Voodoo Machine, a band becoming increasingly notorious for their bizarre audience - often including fire breathing dwarves and transvestites, as much as for their dark hypnotic and stomping rhythms played by an ever increasing number of band members. The Urban Voodoo Machine are suave and dress to impress, so get your glad rags on and bring enough money to buy some absinthe.

I wanted to review this fifth album from the Newcastle Lo-Fi stars as they reminded me of my fanzine writing days in the late 90's. Therein lies the problem, despite claiming to have influenced the current crop of highly successful bands from the North East of England (which I can't hear myself), the band remind me a little too much of the late 90's, they haven't really changed. If you're after a proficient slab of good old-fashioned Lo-Fi Indie then look no further, Spraydog are definitely the band for you, but personally I overdosed on it a long time ago.<br><br><a href=https://www.spraydog.co.uk target=_blank>www.spraydog.co.uk</a>

Whilst I'm all for supporting new music and anything that raises the profile of good new artists I'm not entirely sure what this fairly long running scheme in partnership with FOPP, The PRS Foundation for new music and Clear Sound and Vision is trying to achieve. Looking at the judging panel which includes staff from the NME as well as big wig A&R men and listening to the music on this sampler CD one can't help but wonder that the award is aiming to find new music with the biggest commercial potential not necessarily the most competent or interesting music. Olympus Mons sound like every other 'Libertines-Lite' band currently doing the rounds, Conrad Vague is a proficient but uninteresting singer-songwriter with only The Dials and Morton Valance doing something slightly more interesting, which is interesting as they're the only two artists on the CD that already had a profile before entering the competition. Proof perhaps that those deserving will win through and be noticed anyway or maybe a sign of conflicting opinions and motives in the Judging Panel.

This is a demo, so I will treat it as such and offer Pocus Whiteface some constructive criticism, which I hope is what they want. There are some wonderful riffs here, some amazing crazy guitar noises, discordant chords, thundering bass lines (played by a brilliant bass player) and manic shouted vocals (though they could do with greater projection), all of which are good in my books. The bands' main flaws lie in their structure and arrangement, despite no song being longer than four and a half minutes at times they drag and feel a lot longer. The songs need more ups and downs, more hooks, better dynamics, bury yourselves in a studio for a bit, tear the songs apart, put them back together again and we'll have a mighty musical force on our hands.

Proficient debut demo from London five piece for those who remember the sweeter and more melodious side of Britpop and have since got jobs, got lives and grown up? A bit.

Despite my suspicions that Big Strides may have a lot of money behind them (headlining the Electric Ballroom already?) this is a brilliant single. Each track has a different style from bluesy-funk to mellow Ballad, un yet still possessing a similar feel and sound, all superbly captured and recorded. Three boys to watch out for.

IV Thieves last single, Day is a Downer received a fairly muted response from me and after listening to If We Can't Escape My Pretty it was a definite case of too few tracks to properly judge a band, the album is awesome, unrelenting, rock and riffs fill it from start to finish. Three of the Four Thieves take turns on lead vocals which leads to a variable if slightly schizophrenic feel to the album, albeit with a John Lennon-esque delivery at their core. Each vocal seems to be complimented perfectly by the musical backing, this isn't just a random allocation of duties, proceedings have been planned and thought out. It has a retro feel, I stick by my Britpop references and add a probable love of 60's music to the equation, but it's retro beefed up, revved up, brought slap bang into the modern age.

Collaborations seem to be becoming increasingly popular, varying from perfect pairings to just plain embarrassing, this release is somewhere in-between. The first few tracks are brilliant; especially 'Live with me' that not only features Mark Lanegan on vocals sounding like the ghost of Johnny Cash, but is also a cover of a Massive Attack song. Tracks 2 and 3 are also wonderful dark laments, full of brooding bass lines and discordant chords, from here on the music remains fairly interesting and dark but the vocals become duller and more generic as we revert to the normal band line-up, which begs the question, who are the Twilight Singers?

I'm instantly suspicious of bands who try to make themselves sound a lot more interesting than they really are, if you've got nothing to say or it's too early in your career to have anything interesting to say on a press release, then just keep it simple, let the music talk for itself. Fortunately in the Vice's case the music does a fair job of this, despite being a low key and budget release. The band's sound is currently schizophrenic as they find their voice, fusing a few 'fashionable' styles and a few of their own ideas, thus they have the potential in sound, looks and attitude to be twisted into a marketing commodity, turned into whatever a label executive with a fat wallet desires them to become. At the moment the band's music has some honesty, rawness, some life, I hope it and they stay that way.

10 minutes spent playing an E chord, ear splitting and ostentatious guitar solos and more posing than you care to shake a stick at are a few of the elements delighting a packed and buzzing Water Rats Tonight. Imagine part Led Zeppelin, part LSD from 'The Producers' (The original film) and part Menswe@r and you're half way to a rough idea of knowing what a night with Pop Levi is like.

Elements of Orphan Boy sound similar to many other bands currently on the bandwagon, some elements are even cringingly similar. Thankfully there seems to be a little more to the band. Firstly they poses an aggressive rawness presently lacking in so many bands, frantic, shouted lyrics on the Dull mundanity of life, great crashing guitar chords and driving instrumentals. If only more bands of this genre could be as imaginative.

Rose Kemp's Live shows are phenomenal, such an expression filled and fuelled singer coupled with a tight proficient band make for a blistering combination. Rose Kemp's Debut single, Violence was a particular favourite of mine, a brooding builder it was one of my favourite singles of last year. Hand Full of Hurricane contains some incredible tracks; Rose Kemp's voice soars in Rock Majesty and drops into serene heart felt moments. The music cleverly arranged, played and produced with skill and thought. The songs are raw, open and honest, about feelings and emotions, good and bad, but deeply personal and every word meant. There is a but to this review, although it's a small one. A few tracks are a little self indulgent, in that the songs are too long and some unnecessary, they feel like padding, with Rose's vocal trickery rather overshadowing the feelings of the song. Overall an impressive debut from a talented artist who exceeds all expectations and assumptions.

Went to a most inspiring talk last night entitled "Holy War, Religion and Violence" given by Keith Ward at Gresham College. I hope to get a copy of the transcript to post here but I learnt a lot and had a lot of thoughts implanted in my head including : <br>The Byzantine Empire was a remnant of the Roman Empire (which I knew) but far from being the glorious, free civilised image it liked to portray, the empire was in fact a dictatorship and when the Turks (Muslims) attacked they were seen by many as liberators and welcomed.The supposed 'Dark Ages' were only really in the West; the Muslim world was full of advances and enlightenment at the time.<br><br>The Arab world continued and kept alive the Greek traditions of philosophy and discovery, presumably from their Byzantine conquest, the west relearnt them from the Arab world.<br><br>When the West had caught up after the Dark Ages it commenced a 'colonisation' (Christianisation?) of most of the world, the Europeans were seen as Barbarians by the Muslim world, but we ignored most of that and just drained and destroyed them, turning them into the 'Third World' they are now.<br><br>The Qur'an is a set of principles or rules; there are no 'Clergy' in Islam, but a set of 'lawyers' if you like, who interpret the rules and pass those interpretations on to local followers, these 'rules' were written a long time ago for a nomadic society, so their interpretations have changed over the years. There is no supreme head of the Islamic Faith (The last Kalif was deposed in the 14th Century by Muslims) and there is only one Islamic State (Iran), compare that to Christianity. Mohammed was a political leader, so has influence on Politics, but Christianity was and still is tied in with politics.Most phrases taken from the Qur'an and used against it are taken out of context or presented in an edited form. The same applies with extremists; they even use elements of Lenin's teachings on Violent Revolution being the only solution against what they don't consider 'real' Islam, i.e. Democratic politicians in Islamic Countries.<br><br>Islam is an inclusive religion, all prophets from all faiths are considered valid, as are all paths to Heaven, however Muslims do consider Islam the best route, two quotes that sum this attitude nicely :

When I first listened to this CD I wanted to slate it completely, sounding like a horrendous hash of all my least favourite current musical genres, including Emo, disco-beat shit, Jingle-Jangle Indie Fop and obligatory Northern accents (not that there's anything wrong with that, it just seems that the Industry is almost looking for them!). Whilst there is a little too much of all of the aforementioned genres in Dartz!'s sound I'm glad I gave it a second listen as beneath all the spine chilling scene chasing are some good melodies, lyrics and musicmanship, boys, get original, you can do it!

Despite a promising album name and some splendid song titles such as Let the Blind lead the Blind and Talentless Fuck this album on the whole pretty is terrible. There is too much Emo crap at the moment and far too much Disco beat nonsense (I keep saying this over and over again, I feel like I'm repeating myself far too much!) so why the hell combine the two! Commercial success I guess.

With a name like Duke Garwood I was hoping for some low down dirty blood, guts and spit blues, which this release is to a certain extent, but with an off-kilter, lo-fi edge. However too many times on the album you're left wanting tunes with direction and more of Duke's soulful, gritty voice and less meandering music that sounds mostly improvised, it all starts to drag after a few tracks

I seem to have been sent an abundance of random noise albums recently, I don't quite understand the point of recording an album of meandering melodies that don't really go anywhere. All very nice and pleasant, and a smattering of pretty melodies, but all to no avail.

Despite a name influenced by wondrous family fantasy romp, Willow the band are yet another overproduced slab of boring American influenced trite. I barely noticed the tracks change from one to the other, I was just glad when it was all over.

ULU is full of sweat, teenage hormones and casual day time radio listeners, Jingle jangle and the kids all dance, Uh Oh and the kids all chant, but there's something fundamentally important missing, where are the songs? The Maccabees set is like one long yawn, lots of nice sounding chords all strung together, where are the verses, the choruses, the hooks, the ups, the downs? Where's the stage show, the presence? Where's the Rock & Roll?

Somewhere buried beneath all The Disco Beat crap and Indie-Fop rubbish that plagues the current music scene is an encouraging and burgeoning army of Singer-Songwriters with something to say. Clayton Blizzard is one of it's finest exponents, his lyrics are incredible, he raps, he sings, he improvises, but unlike some of his contemporaries, he can write original tunes, played with skill and ease on his acoustic guitar. He speaks the truth with a dose of un naive reality, the residents of Notting Hill aren't all up for hearing it, but this is what music should be about, Fusion is the future, Black meets White, genre meets genre, Folk and Phat, inspiring and pure genius.