Terror of a year that it was, let the history books show that not everybody spent 2003 intent on blowing up neighbours they believed also possessing blow-up materials. Some air and lips please, to those carving their own path, and in particular to the following outstanding celebrants of imagination.
Machine Poet Of The Year : DJ Krush @ Prince of Wales, St Kilda
Flanked by two large screens showing his fluid and wandering child-like hands, the turntable samurai bewitched an already whooping crowd with a a sublime display of liquid beats, morphing textures and relentless bass hooks of his own that spanned decades. With the aid of the cameras on the untiring hands, sounds presumed to be digital FX could instead be understood as turntable riffs, the particular motions and patterns repeated as often as needed. Redefined in my mind, what a remarkable interface the turntable can be. Stunning.
Animated Discovery of The Year : Run Wrake ( .com)
Has been chugging for years as you can see on his site, but I only discovered his crazed yet composed, coherent animations a few months ago. Dense with clever and playful screen excitement, Run Wrake’s work covers a huge spectrum of styles from lo-fi photocopied textures through to hi-fi 3D modelling, and all somehow in a way that gels together. Some music video clips of his include ‘We Have explosive’ for Future Sound Of London, and a bunch for Howie B and others. So consistently inventive it kinda makes you wanna have a little lie down.
Fast Filmer: Virgil Widrich
This’ll make you want to go to sleep entirely. 65,000 frames of a film referencing 400+ movies, were individually printed out, then folded into origami, then rephotographed and combined to make a 10 minute short film which is quite unlike anything else I’ve seen. Check out the process here ; http://www.widrichfilm.com/fastfilm/
Cut N Pastry Sushi Pop Award: Sutekh @ Opera House
After being introduced by Sub Bass Luke as having the ‘largest max patch I’ve ever seen’, Sutekh proceeded to finely milk the opera house sound system, building an initially luscious soundscape into a cascading and eclectic range of sound aesthetics, before glitch-hopping home like a rodeo jukebox king. A gorgeously crafted set of sonics with plenty of fang.
Bootylicious Corey-Oh Graphics Award:
Ladies of Da League: Tour of Booty @ This Is Not Art, NCL
Any show that features a professional skipper who seems to bounce her ass off the ground over a high-speed skipping rope, followed by all manner of moves pulled from some blend of breakdancing, martial arts & aerobics – and all involving a skipping rope in some way – is already an attention grabber. When combined with 20-30 girls skipping through a range of comedy routines and solid day-time drama, complete with a fight scene that’d make Bruce Lee proud and slow-motion war scenes to boot – the effect is somewhat transcendental.
Dual Plover gig @ Electrofringe
On a night where Curse oV Dialect, Team Plastique, Suicidal Rap Orgy brought together the mashiest of Melbz, Syd & Briz, funny that a normal looking family would outweird them all. And god Bless The Von Trapp family – for who else will perform on stage with dad sawing his way through a guitar, mum, smashing records, and a little boy with giant headphones placing toys such as chattering teeth atop a snare drum, and being urged by his mum to go and smash an egg over papa’s head? As they rush offstage, yolk dripping down pappa’s ponytail, I wondered whether I would ever witness something like it again?
Notable Mentions
-Monolake’s sunrise set at an outdoor party in Brisbane, Berlin-head bobbing away beside a tree as people lay on the ground dribbling behind him…
-Amon Tobin’s dark sci-fi sounds finally getting a good bass workout…
-Waffa Bin Laden – the niece of Osama, was reported earlier in the year to be considering a record deal. Apparently she is studying law, likes to ‘party @ clubs and wear mini-skirts’ and doesn’t like her uncle very much. Stay tuned.
-The inventors behind meowlingual / bowlingual & babylingual devices invented for Asian speech research companies – which supposedly translate what cats, dogs and now babies mean by their various yelps.