Camp A Low Hum folds; ASTRA music finalists; Blues and BBQ Festival to launch

Camp A Low Hum folds

Underground NZ music festival Camp A Low Hum have announced that next February’s event will be the final one. A statement on their website reads: “I have been agonising on whether to announce that this would be the final Camp for many months now. I wasn’t going to make it public that I was finishing after this one, but I realised that it would be a bummer for me to announce on the last night of the event that it was the last one as it would create more of a buzzkill and depressed vibe than the celebratory party that I am hoping it will be! So I’m giving everyone a heads up so we can give it the send-off it deserves.”

ASTRA music finalists

Up for the 12th ASTRA subscription TV sector awards’ Most Outstanding Music Program are Kings Of Leon On Sydney Harbour (Channel [V]), STUDIO at the MEMO (STUDIO) and The Riff (Channel [V]). The awards take place at Sydney’s Carriageworks in Redfern on Thursday March 20.

Sydney teen cracks Italian charts

19-year-old Sydney singer Elen Levon has cracked the Italian charts with her single Wild Child. It’s top 5 on the Dance charts and #12 on the Italian iTunes chart. The track is about to be released throughout the rest of Europe. ”I’ve been getting so many messages on Facebook and Twitter from fans all over Europe, I can’t wait to get over there!” Levon was born in the Ukraine, moved to Sydney as a child, and was signed to Ministry of Sound aged 16.

Blues and BBQ Festival launched

The Blues and BBQ Festival, highlighting the culture of America’s southern states, makes its debut in Port Macquarie next year. It is the handiwork of Scott Mesiti and Simon Luke, who are behind the town’s Festival Of The Sun. It will take place on March 28 and 29 at the Town Green, and Mar Haze and Mesiti’s own band Whores 4 Pinot are announced on the bill. There’ll be a focus on southern BBQ style food, including a BBQ competition. Mesiti and Luke emphasise they are not affiliated with past three Blues & BBQ festivals or BBQ competitions that have been run in Australia.

Venues #1: rolling up in Tasmania

Tasmania gets a new live music venue this Saturday, the Cinema in Burnie. Co-owners James and Karena Simpson believes Burnie can be developed into a third touring stop behind Launceston and Hobart. The club is located at the old 1,000-capacity cinema on Mount Street.

Venues #2: Metal scans for Townsville

Townsville nightclubs Bullwinkles and Santa Fe Gold have introduced a metal scan on all punters. This followed a knife attack on a policeman on the Santa Fe premises. Both clubs are owned by Greg Pellegrini, who is in the doghouse with the CBD Townsville Liquor Accord for not joining it.

Venues #3: new launches

Promoter Peter Wright opened the 400-capacity Jam Gallery in Sydney’s Bondi Junction at the former site of BJ’s nightclub …  Newtown’s The Bank opened for business, with a band room at the top … Old Courthouse gallery in Ipswich, Queensland, re-opened as a place to showcase art and live music … The 300-capacity Murray’s At Manly (Manly, Sydney) underwent a name change to Yardarm Taphouse after an ownership name but still has music.

Final additions to AMP Longlist

The final ten 9th Coopers AMP Longlisted is: Medicated Spirits by Dog Trumpet; Harvest Of Gold by Gossling; Open Season by High Highs; The Cloud Appreciation Society by Melanie Horsnell; The Loving Gaze by Montero; Lovegrass by Sara Storer; Malabar by Songs; Rookie by The Trouble With Templeton; and World’s End Press by World’s End Press.

Platinum logic

The Rubens’ self titled debut on Ivy League picked up its first Platinum this week … so too did Human Nature’s The Christmas Album … One Direction’s Midnight Memories and Flume’s Flume went 2 x Platinum … Taylor Henderson’s debut is Gold. On the singles side, John Legend and Lorde (with Team) went platinum. Pitbull & Ke$ha went double-Platinum, as did Drake.

SWIPE

Which singer wanted a body double during a video shoot?

Mums and kids bopping along to two Nova Perth DJs at the Subi Street Festival were mortified when out blasted Black Eyed Peas’ Let’s Get Retarded (“Bob your head like epilepsy, up inside your club or in your Bentley”) rather than the better known version Let’s Get It Started. Nova rushed out a statement it was played “inadvertently” and handballed to “a freelance DJ company engaged by Nova 93.7 to play music at the …festival.”

Has a group of wireless audio users approached a major law firm to take class action against the Australian Government to seek compensation caused by the shutdown of analogue TV? (CX Media).

Which journalist threatened not to turn up to a Christmas dinner if he was put on the same table as his rivals?

Sydney band Faker’s Nathan Hudson, who is travelling around the US, crashed his BMW in New Mexico but survived.

Meryl Swanson’s departure from 2HD Hunter Valley happened a week before planned. She’d gone on air and slammed the “insufficient resources” for her show and suggested listeners take it up with network owner Bill Caralis. Station manager Guy Ashford pulled her off midway and replaced her with Brent Bultitude. Ashford later shrugged that it must have been an issue for Swanson that she went backwards in the last ratings, although it was her decision to leave.

Unkind thoughts asked on radio the other day: does new Sydney radio brand KIIS stand for Keep It Irritating Stupid?

After some truly stunning shows in Australia with Muse. Matt Bellamy, Kate Hudson and their kid Bing are going to stay on downunder for a holiday.

The battle to keep Perth’s new 60,000 seater concert and sports stadium in Subiaco rather than Burswood has started. Eight councillors put their hands up to form a working party after a first meeting which mayor Heather Henderson described as “very robust and fruitful.” Meantime, the Burswood plan is going ahead: three consortia – Confidem, Evolution and WESTADIUM – have put forward their proposals to design, construct, partially finance and maintain the new stadium, due to be ready by 2018.

Aussie radio presenter Mel B is pushing for the Spice Girls to reunite for a Las Vegas residency, but Posh Beckham is determined it won’t happen.

Carol Dowling of Noongar Radio Perth won the 2013 Human Rights Award in the radio category. Her 30-part series looked at ear disease.

Which record label exec was looking particularly worried at a music industry Christmas function

Heard on community radio the other day: how many Emo kids does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None, they all sit in the dark and cry.

LIFELINES

Hospitalised: a 33-year-old police officer needed surgery after being stabbed in the neck in Townsville nightclub Santa Fe Gold. A one-time bouncer has been charged.

Ill: Sydney band Glasshouse had to blow out their performance at Festival Of The Sun in Port Macquarie on the weekend when singer Ben completely lost his voice due to acute laryngitis.

Injured: a female punter in Darwin got punched in the face by a singer in a band after they got into an argument about a song she requested and which the band was reluctant to play. Whether they get re-booked to the pub remains to be seen.

In Court: Gold Coast police issued warrants for the arrest of Erika Ann Silvester, 23, who twice in two weeks failed to front up to the Southport Magistrates Court. She faces 10 charges of advertising tickets for music festivals on online classifieds site Gumtree, getting thousands of dollars and sending ticket reference numbers which later proved to be false.

In Court: the owner of a Ferris wheel at Bluesfest Byron Bay that misfired and left three teenage girls with severe injuries pleaded guilty to breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The axle failed, and the girls’ carriage fell 6-8m to the ground.

Vale: South Australian musician Molly Kneebone, 18, in single-vehicle crash, near Murray Bridge. She performed in the family group, fronted by Murraylands Music Festival co-founder Noel and mother, singer, Karen.

Vale: long-time Canberra radio presenter Dave Gosper, aka Doctor Dave, after a lengthy battle with cancer. He also made his mark as a voice-over man and creative copywriter.

INSIDE TRACK

Sarah Blasko preps live set

Sarah Blasko’s two shows at the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney International Orchestra will be released as I Awake Live At Sydney Opera House on January 10. The show already got a global audience via a real time YouTube stream. The recording features a rendition of Blasko’s latest single Fool. The album precedes Blasko’s Heavenly Sounds Tour which stops by churches and cathedrals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide

Miami Horror report from La La Land

Miami Horror have been in Los Angeles for three years, so they’ve experienced enough things which you can only experience in that city. “In one day we managed to see the Dalai Lama and go to Coachella,” recounts Ben Plant (producer, keys, bass). “At an illegal after party Julian Lennon told us to ’stop staring at him’. We went to the Magic Castle members club which is set in a really old French chateau with hidden rooms and magicians hanging out doing tricks everywhere. We saw Thom Yorke DJ at a party that you enter through a 1920s brothel type bedroom where a girl sitting on a bed presses a button to make the bed slide out of the way to reveal a hidden trap door entrance. Then finally a recent one, we ended up at a party at Robert Patterson’s out the back of the Hollywood Hills (he was completely out of it) and let’s just say a few people were responsible ’destroying’ his couch with various liquids.” Little wonder, then, that Miami Horror’s new video for Real Slow, featuring Sarah Chernoff from a local arty band, is a triubute to LA circa ‘60s and ‘80s.

Coming up next year are two albums: one by Miami Horror and a side project called Wonder Wonder which is “more psychedelic, organic and dreamier.” Plant did consider releasing the two as a double album but decided they’d be happier in their own context. On their early 2014 dates here, Miami Horror will preview three new songs in their set, dropping the earlier dancey songs.

Jason Singh back in the (taxi) rank

When former Taxiride member Jason Singh launched his debut solo album Humannequin at the Toff In Town in hometown Melbourne, he told the packed crowd, “I’ve got my eyes closed because I’m lost in my world up here, I can’t believe after three years I’m actually playing these songs live.” When Taxiride ended their journey after a series of hit singles and global success, Singh took a step back to find his new direction. He played 800 gigs as part of an acoustic duo. He went back to the Michael Jackson and Prince records which had inspired him as a kid, and also listened to the ambience of Bjork and French electro. All these elements are in Humannequin, with radio friendly songs and classic vintage songs from producer Charles Fisher, who’s worked on everyone from Savage Garden and Ol’55 to Radio Birdman and the Hoodoo Gurus. Singh and Fisher met some years back in Los Angeles; by chance, they ended up living in the same neighbourhood down coastal Victoria. “What spurred me on,” Singh confesses, “was I had to know that Taxiride were not a fluke.”

Live album from LCD Soundsystem 

James Murphy confirms that a live recording of LCD Soundsystem’s final show is in the works. The show, at their hometown New York’s Madison Square Gardens before 20,000, took place on April 2, 2011. The final 48 hours before and during that finale was chronicled in the documentary Shut Up And Play The Hits, which had limited release in cinemas. But Murphy has mixed the live album “significantly differently” to what’s on the film. A definite date is still not fixed. It was due in March 2013, then last month, and now he’s looking at early 2014. He told Rolling Stone about the hassle of putting the album together, “It’s been murder!” Not on a label any more, he’s had to do the artwork and clearances all by himself. “It was a comedy of errors.”

Letting the Resin Dogs out

It’s been some years since Brisbane hip-hop duo Resin Dogs released a full length album. “So we decided to put out an EP to show people what was leading to the album,” explains Katch, who makes the up the act with Dave Atkins. The two tracks and their remixes return to the harder edged sound of their early days. “They had a similar theme and are a bit more up-tempo. Because we haven’t released anything for awhile, we decided to just put them together with a few remixes just so we could test the waters.”

Guests on the Beats From Down Under EP include triple j presenter and Koolism member Hau, and Kel from Bankrupt Billionaires. For My People is a love song to fans, friends and family. It touches on the death of Hau’s friend in a helicopter crash. For Ride, Katch outlines, “We wanted to make a track similar to a sound library record we have which we have always liked. Ride is totally original, but you could say it was inspired by this other record. To me it’s a raunchy bouncy big band swing style. The music for the track was first recorded a few years ago when (UK producer and engineer) Alan Mawdsley was out (here). We loved how it came out, but knew it needed a strong voice. We were doing some work with Kel on Earth and played it to her.  She totally dug it, so came up with the lyrics for it.”