Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Killbot Kindergarten


2010
06.09

My friends started a band slash electro neo-soul duo called Killbot Kindergarten. They wanted me to write a bio for them. It was hard because they hadn’t done a whole bunch of stuff yet. They haven’t even played a show. Killbot Kindergarten though, how could you turn a gig like that down. Here’s what I wrote. Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/killbotkindergarten

Killbot Kindergarten are electro folks. Two soul children with a glass-bottomed boat and pentatonic sails. Micro Korgs and mellow chords; hearts in Brisbane, ears abroad.

A retro-futurist collaboration of neo-soul tones draped over unashamedly binary bones, Youka Snell and Adam Sait’s project has graduated music college and arrived back at a pre-school for pandas bearing jet packs; Gorillaz in their midst. Like a soy chai latte in a styrofoam cup, the result is both organic and plastic. You won’t recognise the sound on your lips at first, but after a few sips, you’ll never go to Starbucks again.

It’s quirky café music, the kind the cool kids on Neptune are probably listening to right now, but it started in the parlour; in West End. Doornoch Terrace to be precise – about as far from London as it’s possible to get on this planet. And while they’re the polar opposite of Gilbert and Sullivan, elements of Killbot Kindergarten’s sound could have come direct from the overture of an oriental Damon Alban opera.

This isn’t the Mikado though, Youka, a classically trained violinist and Sait, an audio engineering dropout have thrown convention out the window to create a new form of operatic digital soul. Working from the Brisbane studios of dub maestro producer Paulie B (The Beautiful Girls) and the Gold Coast’s Govinda Doyle (Angus and Julia Stone) the duo have produced an epic five-track EP. A year in the making, the disc is a culmination of a six year creative journey for the two songwriters, who have known each other and played in numerous bands together since 2004.

Veteran tourers, the two have been criss-crossing the country with Grassroots Street Orchestra, (insert other band names here) for the latter half of this decade. Now, as Killbot Kindergarten, Sait and Snell are set to take on the world, with an Australian tour planned for the latter half of 2010 and a passport-destroying sojourn around the planet in 2011.

Lovers of digital neo-soul should be on notice. There are two new headmasters in town and school is never going to sound the same again.

Notes I made on my iPhone this month whilst drunk


2010
04.29

Lego as world currency

Potential Band Names: The London Underground, Henry Sugar, The Black Rabbits

Tattoo Artist, Buy Pants, Car Tyres, Sell Van

Breathing Golden Stars. Raconteurs song, but with chick from other band

Sex partners expressed as an interwoven threads graph showing the generational change.

Rent a Puppy

‘Monday Leftovers’ you pick a different charity each Monday and get people to donate whatever money they have leftover to that charity online

Words I wrote on an iPhone on a plane about a girl about a memory of a moment


2010
04.25

Sometimes there’s a glint in your eyes, a tiny explosion as you take in the world at that moment, oblivious to everything but the unadulterated joy of pure being and you are so beautiful it hurts and I pretend not to notice but that light in your eyes sparks a fire in the part of me that creates things and wants to see the sunrise and wants to stay out all night until my ears are ringing and inside me bells are sounding, heart is pounding, and I’m, in general, an astounding mess and im not going to tell you and you have no idea what is going on. And then you turn your head and find reality for the briefest of moments and smile and exist on the same plane as the rest of us, before you get a glint again and my breath goes missing for another minute.

Panel Van Billboard


2010
04.15

I just got this email from a guy called Mark:

Hi, I have a 1981 WB Holden windowless panel van in need of a paint job, I would be open to a proposal for you to use it as a tasteful mobile billboard. I live in Palm Beach on the Gold Coast and frequent most of the popular surf spots including Burleigh Heads, Currumbin Alley, Duranbah and Snapper to enjoy the Breaks as well as driving to Southport daily to attend uni. The deal would be basically you paint, I drive and you get good exposure in a variety of places. The Panel van is rare and attract a lot of attention even in its current state. If you think that you may be interested please contact me, Regards Mark

I think I’m going to say yes. What a champion.

Notes from my iPhone, volume one


2010
03.25

I’d left her with nothing but a rolled up fifty dollar bill and a saucepan with some Spanish soup made from the sherry I’d drunk and she’d watched me drink the night before. She didn’t like the sherry but she’d finished the bottle of white wine she’d borrowed from her neighbour at 2am all by herself. I was staying at her place because I had a meeting in the city in the morning and she’d insisted I not get a hotel. I’d gone to bed early but she woke me sometime past two thirty after she arrived home. She had a small bag of cocaine in one hand and two glasses in the other. My participation, she had already explained via text message from the cab, was not optional. That was the Tuesday before she flew away. I’d been reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s and had already started calling her Hollie Golightly.