when the kind was a kind

Hope that you all have lots and lots of FUN at NYE.

Because we all know - if you're not having fun then you're not part of the team!

In fact, you're dropped from the team. See you again for the tryouts in late 2009.


The Peacock Centre sits high, halfway up a humpy hill in North Hobart. There are no peacocks here, they wandered out underneath a cortina and got concertina'd.

I will be playing for three and a half hours on Sunday the 28th inside a shipping-crate at the Tasmanian Taste Festival. Wow ... isn't that impressive ... my fingers will be fairly sore at that point.

Don't listen to Robert Fripp with a hangover.

jxo

This culture of background noise

This is a newish kind of age where newish kind of music hits the availability levels of NEVER-BEFORE ... and yet somehow our neurons in our head like to travel along the same neuron paths that they've always travelled along. Perhaps a little like jumping on the internet and always going to Yahoo! for information ... instead of ... well-I-don't-know ... somewhere else (... is there somewhere else??)

So we continue to buythe music that gives us the quick fix because it already fits in our brains ... everything else is a little too much to take right now, it may take a while for me to get my head around that and ... by the time I get to work and back for dinner, another thirteen fortnights it's already June and wintery in the southern capitals of the world and there's a new candy-popped piece of candy-pop available at the top of the coca-cola isle in the HMV mega store that'll make me feel sweet in the background at dinner time ... perhaps my husband might say something romantic if his ears are being sweetly whiplashed by big-hipped, long-lashed Sasha Fierce or staring at the candy-popped-crotch jewel-cover of Xtina in her cowboy gear sitting on the stereo.

Maybe we should watch SBS tonight? Check out the Italian news ...

ahhh, Silvio and his bevy of beauties.

6a

Settling into the new hometown of HOBART. It really is quite warm ... and strawberries are cheap so we tried our hands at Strawberry Wine ... looks nice on the mantel - I recommend playing with Yeast.

I`ll be hosting a new Radio show on Edge Radio starting on sunday the 7th of December 

The Potted History of the Musical Dissidents

99.3fm in Hobart

or Stream it from www.edgeradio.org.au

Focusing on the history and the present state of experimental/fringe/unusual/genreless musicians and their art. 

In other news - I`ll be playing at 6a Artist Run Initiative in North Hobart on Friday the 12th from 7pm ... also other bands, experimental films ... bring your own stools ... woohoo.

AND - last but certainly not least I`m involved in a collaboration with Nadine Kessler in the container project down at the wharf in Hobart at the Taste Festival. On the 28th of December at the beginning of the Taste of Tasmania - just when the boats are coming in for the Sydney to Hobart. Come and join in!!

Respond

The interactive culture

By Nadine Kessler & Joshua Santospirito

Culture is created by many individuals who help to shape and form it over time, it is a constantly shifting environment in which we make our emotional, physical and mental homes. Through a constant process of responding to the ideas produced around us in the human environment we learn to navigate our way through it.

The shipping container is filled with newsprint sheets, textured and coloured paper on the walls and hanging from suspended ropes. Moving images and words will light the space using a visual projector. Music/Sound will be improvised by Josh with willing audience members, constantly reacting to the slowly evolving environment. Passers by will be invited to respond by writing their emotions, thoughts, scribbles and artwork upon paper and pinning them on the walls and upon suspended string throughout the space. Observers are drawn into the process of interacting with a dynamic environment through sight, sound and touch, becoming observers no more! Thus simulating the processes of cultural development.

Over four hours the space will be continually changing with more and more colour, stimulation, chaos and activity. An observer who steps out at one point will return later to a familiar but changed landscape.

 

Bio

Nadine Kessler has lived in Australia for four years. She grew up in Germany near the Swiss and French borders and studied visual communication in Basel, Switzerland. She is now a freelance graphic designer whose passion is playing with typography, exhibition design and is particularly interested in cross cultural interactions. Joshua Santospirito is a musician interested in improvisational and experimental music. He performs under the name of Drive West Today and has played throughout Australia over the last few years. In early 2008 Josh performed in Berlin, Germany. Nadine and Josh spent three years living in Alice Springs, being challenged by intercultural issues and work environments, and have now settled in Tasmania.

black man

man, what a week ...

um, I haven't ranted in quite some time: perhaps I have nothing to rant on/about. I have recently been making a lot of homemade beers: a couple from kits - a stout and a draught; and also I'm now fermenting some leatherwood honey beer from a recipe that I found in a great book on wine-making and beer making ... and I've been doing the ol' non alcoholic ginger beer - fizzy goodness. If you want any recipes, just let me know. 

I am yeast man - I have a sourdough on the window-sill named Reginald ... which Nadine put to good use, I have a ginger beer started called Gerry to keep him company, the shed is filled with bottlos and I shall be pickled in Hobart very soon. 

The weater is fine, and I shall start to decide what I'm doing with music very soon ... what is it with the ants in Hobart??? 

crazy

live in Hobart - 24/10/2008

oh my GOD

I've been doing dome googling ... and I've found some gems.

go to this website - http://www.daxo.de

This Germanic-like bloke Hans Reichel is bloody fantastic - he invented the daxophone ... which is one of the most expressive instruments I've ever heard in my life. It sounds like the human voice and then ... like nothing I've ever heard of before.

Also - to make a Hank drum - go HERE. 

find Rod Cooper on the net ... there's one youtube that show's a beautiful creation or three of his.

Summer music

G`day,

The gig at the Alley Cat was a fine one indeed it seems. The sound guy Chris was a loverly gentleman. Indeed. 

In other news, I have had the divine luck to witness Because of Ghosts at the venue at Salamanca, and previously I saw Mt Eerie. Mt Eerie was cool, I never heard of this name, though I`d heard of the microphones before many times ... same dude, different moniker. very eccentric indeed, but so watchable. 

The thing that makes Because of Ghosts stand out must to be a bunch of factors … hard to pin down to be sure. One of them I feel is their mixture of Morricone-messy guitar playing from Reuben Stanton and the exuberant drums spraying from Jacob Pearce’s kit … the man has a style it has to be said. The quiet nature that Dominic and Reuben Stanton have at the front of the stage is beautifully concentrated between them and their brother bobbing around over his kingdom of drumskins. Dominic’s bass anchors and paces the music thoughtfully and gracefully. As the spokesman for the musicians between songs his gentle nature further emphasised

 

On Saturday the 25^th, Because of Ghosts came to play ‘the Venue’ in Hobart, Tasmania. Their first gig on the island. With moppish hair and good Melbournian fashion sensibility they took the stage with an ease and serenaded the audience with huge sounds inflicted with heartache. The one thing that makes them stand out from the mainstay of post-rock fare is their ability to draw out a truly beautiful musical storytelling melody and back it up with a feeling and intensity that seems plausible. Not just relying on the time honoured tradition of building up the sound out of the ground in an hour long crescendo.

 

I would not suggest that long drawn-out crescendos is a bad way to go about making music on stage. Many a band has sucked the audience in with a breath of their lungs in the valley and spat them out at the top of the mountain. I remain an avid fan of Bolero to this day and believe that it’s relevance will be sustained throughout history and, indeed, it’s simple exercise in crescendo make the point that it should also remain as a damn fine tradition in music which is currently being held up high and true by such greats as Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros and other post-rock lumieres of our age. Somehow, this band that we were watching tonight, were standing as tall as the others. Reuben Stanton’s guitar would seem to play billions of separate notes rather than strum his guitar. His hand slowly floats above the strings in his fashion and pulled us up with them into a multitude of loops and longing. If the aim of music is inflict the rainbow of emotions, elevating us above the every day, then this was a music that the world should take note of. And they kindly brought themselves across the Strait to visit. Plugging their album This culture of background noise, they play their way through a barrage of halcyon nostalgia and gorgeous sentiments. These nice young chaps from the mainland left the audience in a very loving mood … buzzing even, like their noise. A rare treat. 

The Alley Cat Bar

Hobart is a very nice little town, it has boats, rednecks, greenies, normalities, suburbanites, reasonable prices, music, cliques, misfits, mermaids and missionaries.

I am still a misfit ... though I aspire to one day become a mermaid.

Gig - 

Friday - The Alley Cat Bar, 24th of October, North Hobart. 

poster by Nadine Kessler. 

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DWT’s improv-guitar acts as tour-guide in Australia’s vast open spaces; sound-tracking & sculpting, setting stories out in splayed layers of melodies. Musical cues are picked out of sepia-soaked memories and skilfully formed into gorgeous yet monolithic sounds.

 

Formerly known as boy Brightlulb, Joshua Santospirito has performed his unique and intuitive music to enchanted, horrified and enraptured audiences all over the country since 2005, and even as far abroad as Berlin in 2008.

 

Originally from Melbourne, Santospirito has spent much of his adult life scooting ‘round the deserts and cities of Australia in cars and pushbikes - the experiences from which he draws his musical inspiration. Having been largely nomadic he is now permanently based in Hobart from where he plans to make his regular forays across the Apple Isle and on to the mainland for concert tours in 2009/10. Plans are also underway for a series of three EPs to be issued by mid 2009 on his independent label The Colossal Adjective.

 

Under the moniker of boy Brightlulb Santospirito has released three self-released albums. 2006’s Is this a desert? went on to make some impact despite having no formal distribution and minimal radio play, mostly on the strength of Santospirito’s dynamo live performances.

Hobartianites

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

I live in Hobart ... how strange.

click on the headline for a definition of Hobart.

photo Nadine Kessler - somewhere South of Forster ... near an overfull Lake.

Consolador De Los Caras

My sister has her sixth baby due in about six-seven weeks ... I have been playing K'Nex with the other five children ... it's highly addictive. My good friend Brendan Phelan is disgusted that I have been staying on the North Shore of Sydney as he has horrifiable childhood memories of the area ... but I think his childhood would have been better if he'd had K'nex instead of Fischer Teknik ... or Lego for that matter ... poor Brendan.

Played in Sydney last night at Club Consolador at La Campana latin nite club - 53-55 Liverpool St: it's on every Wednesday as it has been for the last year or so: run by those charming Dualplover scallywags Lucas, Swerve and Shaun.

On stage I thought that it was probably the worst gig I have ever played ... but apparently it didn't sound that bad ... the curses of having no idea how it comes across to the audience. But there you go people -

Gig - Sunday in Melbourne at the Edinburgh
Am moving to Hobart on Tuesday.

pic - Nadine Kessler

Car parks always undo me ...

I just discovered Nick Huggins ... I haven't actually bought his album as of yet ... but I am homeless and without CD player so he will have to forgive me ... but his myspace page has three wicked songs on it which take me away. There's also a nice film-clip with a really cute little girl on it with big cute eyes - aww.

And here I was thinking that the only interesting thing coming out of Melbourne at the moment was Laura Jean ... HOW BEHIND MUST I BE?? Are there any other gems that I need to know about pronto, please let me know pronto. Though I note that there appears to be some nice interesting people associated with Nick at twobrightlakes, in particular I reccomend that you discover seagull, and Otouto for meloncholic songwrit.

So I was sitting in a carpark at the dreaded Byron Bay Woollies waiting for my brother to come back from somewhere else (wherever that may be that brothers go to) and I was sitting chatting to myself and this girl walks by who looks as though she's been at some humungous festival who looks at me talking to myself ... her expression said "that's a little weird".

Driving tractors

The child & the tractor was once what I called my brother ... but now he let me drive the tractor ... and it is a muchly a nice way to pass the afternoon, cutting grass to mulch on permacultural pastures in the hills.

Peak oil is possibly a reality - click on the link for your homework assignment - it may happen a hell of a lot sooner than you realise: do you remember how to chop wood for yourself?

no?

burn your cds

I played Audiopollen on Sunday night in Brisbane's West End - they are a lovely bunch of eccentric young people who put on quite a nice show ... just down the road from rocking bars playing funk pop and blues there's a loading dock out the back of a vegan cafe that hosts a group of avant-bards. This would be the place to come if you feel a little nauseous at the thought of coming down to West End to be surrounded by the beautiful people.

mwah

PS - buy more CDs now ... or move to a warmer climate.

Russia

Things are not allowed in some places of the world.

In St Petersburg, Peter the Great decided that swamps were not allowed, only buildings with canals weer permitted ... so he banned the swamp completely ... and built himself a new Amsterdam, which was later renamed a few times only to come back to Sankt Peterburg again.

I have concerts up and down the coast, I will ride my little bicycle after Nadine down to Sydney, then we'll drive to Melbourne for another concert and then we'll sit and figure a way to move our stuff to Tasmania ... any suggestions anyone?

jxo

Lehmann Smith

This young gentleman was brought to my attention by Biddy Connor, violin extraordinaire from Melbourne who refused to play support for on some night. She recommended Lehmann Smith as he wanted to have more gigs. I checked his myspace but didn't listen very closely and thought - why not, I need more people to play.

Then i met him on the night, he seemed very young, clean faced, neat young bloke and I thought - well, there's a young, clean-faced etc etc. and then he got on stage with a gaggle of girls sitting at the front of the stage chattering away in between his songs. And I thought, what an odd performer. His lyrics and style of singing made me stop and think. hmm, Unusual. Which is refreshing to say the least.

Then he got progressively more plastered as the night went on.

but - my GOD his music was interesting.

also plays with Kes Band who are currently taking off in Melbourne and Australia ... 

DWT Biography

((( In brief

)) Drive West today

DWT’s improv-guitar acts as tour-guide in Australia’s vast spaces, sculpting stories in splayed layers of melodies. He has enchanted, horrified and enraptured audiences all over with his gorgeous yet monolithic sounds.

((( Web

www.myspace.com/drivewesttoday

http://www.camaldulensis.blogspot.com/

((( Bookings email disco_jeans@yahoo.com.au

((( In not-so-brief

)) Drive West today

DWT’s improv-guitar acts as tour-guide in Australia’s vast open spaces; sound-tracking & sculpting, setting stories out in splayed layers of melodies. Musical cues are picked out of sepia-soaked memories and skilfully formed into gorgeous yet monolithic sounds.

Formerly known as boy Brightlulb, Joshua Santospirito has performed his unique and intuitive music to enchanted, horrified and enraptured audiences all over the country since 2005, and even as far abroad as Berlin in 2008.

Originally from Melbourne, Santospirito has spent much of his adult life scooting ‘round the deserts and cities of Australia in cars and pushbikes - the experiences from which he draws his musical inspiration. Having been largely nomadic he is now permanently based in Hobart from where he plans to make his regular forays across the Apple Isle and on to the mainland for concert tours in 2010. Plans are also underway for a series of three EPs to be issued by mid 2010.

Under the moniker of boy Brightlulb Santospirito has released three self-released albums. 2006’s Is this a desert? went on to make some impact despite having no formal distribution and minimal radio play, mostly on the strength of Santospirito’s dynamo live performances.

((( Web

www.myspace.com/drivewesttoday

http://www.camaldulensis.blogspot.com/

((( Bookings email disco_jeans@yahoo.com.au



_____
Other stuff -
Gigography - all DWT's past concerts arranged on one page! oooh
Media written about DWT - reviews, mentions etc.
Video - Some live, some not.

If you would like a pdf version of this bio, promotional photos or any further information please feel free to e-mail the above address.

the beginning

It has occurred to me today on the bicycle that the name "boy brightlulb" has reached it's end.

What has been an amicable relationship thus far has produced many fine motifs and musical chairs. From jigs to jumbled noise experiments, counterpoint to counterintuition, fugues to fusspots, it has been a long but beautiful growing process.

But,

the world has become complex and complicated. What was whimsical and silly must now become EXTREMELY serious and overrated. I realised today that what began as "Stormboy" in 2003, moved through into adolescence as "boy Brightlulb" in 2005 to present, now has to become a MAN!!!

I'd like to ask that the media respects our mutual grieving processes in this difficult time.

Thank you for listening.



PS - I have no idea what this young man's name will be so please watch this space closely over the next month or so.

Russian Eagles Have Two Heads

There are mammoths ... huge woolly ones, flying over these hills of Northern Khovsgul. You'd want to be careful they don't do a huge woolly one on ya from the lofty heights. Perhaps when these bicycles have finally broken down and the oil has dried up in the last of the seas and the water has become steamed ... we'll have to relearn how to hunt the gazelles from the skies on the backs of these ruddy great galoots.

aren't they beautiful

I'm sure Georgia's on their mind

A northern country

here's some pictures that should explain why you should NOT follow suit and cycle around Mongolia ... unless you're a masochist ... Google told me I couldn't put up the pictures with the saddle sores.

spot the caption that goes with the image

a family who fed us ... fed us lots
a nice camp site

a camp site plagued by visitors

a burnt out riot scene in Ulaan Bataar

a broken down bus

a poser on a bicycle

The Old Bar gig

Was a most enjoyable experience. Seth Rees is a lovely fellow ... he plays guitar like he's waving a wand from the storm above ... goading the electricity in the clouds like he's playing with putty ... I reccomend you watch him in a foul mood ... or if you'd like to be in a foul mood and you just can't manage it by yourself.

If anyone knows a gigable venue in Brisbane in the next month then please let me know ...

If anyone knows a gigably venue in Sydney in the month of September please let me know ...

jxo

Western Media

It has been intriguing to read the news about the recent riots in Ulaan Bataar, capital of Mongolia in the mainstream newspapers of Australia. I was in Ulaan Bataar as a tourist at on the night of the protests that lead to the destruction of the headquarters of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP or MAXH in Cyrillic). Many Mongolian people told me before the elections and after the elections that the head of the MPRP was corrupt and a bad leader. After the elections they told me with absolute certainty that it was widely known that there had been rigging of the ballot boxes … during the Saturday night when they were counting the votes there had been numerous black-outs in the buildings where they were counting the votes. The Democratic Party had been ahead up until around 1 or 2am in the morning of Sunday prior to the black-outs, afterward there was a dramatic swing in many electorates to the MPRP who eventually claimed victory. In one electorate of Bulgan aimag (province) one of the runners for a parliamentary position told me candidly that the MPRP representative had paid many of the nomadic people of the area 20’000 Togruk (approximately US$20, which is around a week and half’s average pay in Mongolia) to vote for them in the lead-up to the election.
Mongolian people have a very robust and healthy democracy, many people have a moderate to good education and believe that every person has the intelligence to make up there own mind about politics. They constantly have discussion about many topics and are very involved in what they all believe is necessary for the future of their country. Since the fall of communism in 1989, Mongolia has been plagued by many problems to do with their political leaders. Corruption has remained an issue, the MPRP retained power for most of the time since the system change. The leaders of this party have been rumoured as being linked with the Russian mafia and have been seen by the people of their country as holding their country back from economic progress. Mongolia has many natural resources which they have been unable to tap by themselves due to lack of capital or experience. The result has been that many foreign companies have come into Mongolia to mine the resources and have exported out of the country with very little benefit going to the people of Mongolia, a form of economic colonisation you might say. Many Mongolian have strong opinions about this issue and want a system that benefits them more, more joint ventures, higher percentages of the profits coming to the Mongolian government who sets up growth funds to benefit the education system and the building of infrastructure.

On the Monday after the election, many angry people gathered out the front of the MPRP building not far from Sukhbataar square in central UB. The building also housed numerous other businesses that rented rooms from the MPRP. The people demanded that the MPRP stand down or a recount of the election take place. Police attended the scene which gradually became more and more out of control. The fence in front of the gardens was pulled up, people broke the glass on the front of the building and attempted to enter the building. Police attempted to push protesters back, only to be outnumbered and eventually pushed back into the building. The footage from inside the building showed the police attempting to spray protesters entering the building with a weak jet from a garden hose with the effect of getting the protesters a bit wet. Eventually the protesters set fire to the building through the windows and some looting began. Nearby the Mongolian National Museum of Modern Art was also set on fire destroying some reported 4000 or so artworks possibly from smoke damage and there was some looting of other nearby buildings. The television broadcast of this event had been, up until around 11pm, constant. There are around four free-to-air channels in UB which suddenly turned to static except for NBM, the government channel. A curfew was put in place with the conditions of no-one to wander the streets between 10pm and 8am, the main roads in and out of UB were to be closed (smaller roads remained open), main market places were closed and the military were present around the central area of the city. This remained in place for four days. The police and the government stated that they would identify the trouble-makers from the riots from the video footage and charge them. What started off as justifiable anger eventually turned into what was seen by many outsiders as opportunistic vandalism. Many Mongolians I spoke to felt that the destruction of this building was an important symbol of the people’s will and anger. The government was shaken by this event and announced a recount of the election ballots. One person died in the building itself, and on the Tuesday morning it was reported that another three people were found dead from police bullets in the street outside. The curfew had it’s intended effect and things calmed down considerably afterward. On the Friday I returned to Australia.

The Age newspaper had a small article about the riots stated with very little details other than to say that the riots caused instability which meant that foreign traders could not access the natural resources of the country to help bring the country out of poverty. Curious, no mention of the record of the government, no mention of the possibility of election-rigging. The article merely blamed the people of the country for ruining their own chances of having the peace required to allow foreign companies to take away their natural resources.

This was a Reuters article. A very simplistic one. Of course I understand that such articles cannot contain all the local details required to give a whole picture, especially in one that is about a country that not much of the world knows or cares about. But this was the first such riot ever in this country. It takes a lot to make a Mongolian person so outwardly emotional: this was remarkable. Surely Reuters would find the presence of corruption or election-fixing something worth commenting on. It seems to me to be a fairly large omission, or perhaps I am naïve. I was only a tourist in this part of the world and I don’t know the extent of the story. Perhaps the finer details are easily lost on passers-by. If they wrote this article based on someone else’s reporting, then who was it? Was it the MPRP party officials? Was it a Russian connection? Was it Chinese? Who knows, but this of course begs the question, how much else in world news misses such information? Probably a lot … don’t believe all you read kids.

Over and out
bB foreign correspondent.

"return"

Just saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ... should have known Spielbergo's fetish for aliens would ruin a potentially decent flick ... I liked the flesh-eating ants though, nice touch.

I'm currently in Ulaan Bataar, capital of the Mongolian People's Republic ... the other night there was a riot ... and now there is a curfew! It only takes a few rotters to stuff it up for all of us, bastards.

Nadine and myself have ridden our bicycles very far in this very very unbitumised country (is that a word) ... and now we have very very very sore arses and tomorrow we fly back to mumsy and dadsy's house to recuperate and moisturise.

I shall return to the very nice place of The Old Bar, Johnston Street Fitzroy, on 14th of July ... please come for I shall have nice backup from the ethereal Seth Rees and the charming Lehmann Smith, they are both nice boys and we would lurve your company.

ciao ciao darlings
Josh

Mongolei

bB plays Privatclub in Berlin - Mai, 2008

Man,

the train across Russia is like they say ... a very long boat trip with vodka, random card-games, lots of Russian people (strangely enough) ... lots of weird food ... overheated cabins ... and mad attempts to buy tickets for destinations at the last minute to uncollaborative ticket-ladies who basically told us to fuck off the second they heard us speak English ... and then a few grand saves by the wonderful Russian people who helped us battle these deadly foes.

I ... wouldn't recommend taking bicycles across Russia by train unless you can speak Russian, know who to bribe (read encourage), and enjoy bureaucracy at it's most 'interesting' level. But of course, if you fulfi all of this criteria then please - apply for a Russian VISA application invitation, hope that you receive a VISA, then follow the cues at the airport that explain how to then get registration ... the cues that only exist in your guidebook.

Russia is an interesting place ... and Russian really are very nice people once you get past the first five minutes of silence.

But, it's utterly astounding how friendly the Mongolian people are ... more later.
jxo

photo - Nadine Kessler, Irkutsk 2008

Farewell Beliner Mauer

hello Stalingrad...

tomorrow Nadine and I will leave fair, fair Berlin ... I had many conversations with Angels whilst here ... or at least, they listened to my thoughts when I sat in the library ... lazy bastards won´t even read a book for themselves.

Last night I played support for the Chap ... who were nice chaps ... and also Bleubird ...

see hear

I shall not really be contactable much for the next month or so ... I shall be in the depths of Siberia seeking out a cure for liverspots for the multinational drug company Johnston & Johnstons. They pay well ... but the job is dangerous.

and then after that I have a contract with a colonial anthropologist company to document the interesting habits of the Ruaki baki shalucky people of South Northern Mongolia ...

I shall be back in July I hope ... if all goes according to plan ... and it shall

farewell Berlin

it´s been real ...

righteous!

Playing Fourtrack on stage at the Monkey Club in Prenzlauerberg in Berlin was much funtastisch.

It was muchly pleasur-ass to play with Tomi Simatupang the crazed and with Van Ly the precise.

Other people I have discovered on my travels to European places are as follows - Therese Aune: this girl I saw in a town called Bodoe, in the Arctic circle in Norway ... she will on day be famous ... her live show was fucken unreal ... and she´s only very much just getting started, she lives and plays in Oslo, Norway ... but you may see her in more places later on, just wait a little longer.

Oori - very intriguing percussionist who lives in Berlin, played with Robert Curgenven whilst I was here in Berlin.

Ingeborg Selnes - I hope she visits Australia one day ... she writes nice stuff.

Rockettothesky - whom I have mentioned before: has a new album possibly popping along ... it be sounding very much nice ... isn´t that nice ... perhaps those who don´t live in Norway might get more of a glimpse this album around.

Cold Mailman - an indie band also from Bodo, Norway gave me cause to stand up and take notice

Laura - a teen band also from Bodo (can you tell I saw a couple of concerts in this town) got my heart a-pounding when I saw them ... they sing in Norwegian ... which is most righteous ... one day I´ll get them to tour Oz ... where they can come face to face with their Melbourne name-sakes who keep taking their music off Lastfm ... and then they can all have a fist-fight and have a beer afterwards ... and then create the Laura superband!

rock on Laura!


Coming up
20. Mai 2008 Privatclub Pücklerstr.34. 10997 Berlin. Einlass: 20h Eintritt: 8-10€ amSTARt präsentiert: 21h BLEUBIRD one of the most positive yet bitter MCs. he'll sound as political as Noam Chomsky, as dirty as 2 Live Crew and as emotionally fragile as a young girl's diary entry. endemik bleubird. org myspace. com/bleubird 22h THE CHAP London Art Disko Rock..n Roll Band. Album "Mega Breakfast". VÖ: 19.5.08 Lo Recordings/Ghostly International myspace. com/thechap www. thechap. org + Überraschungsgast Alice Springs. www. myspace. com/boybrightlulb



photo of concert by Nadine Kessler

Germania

After successfully surviving Northern Italy (Milano traffic is pazzo) ... we have crossed the alps to be again safely in Allemagna ... I have once again confused Hoch Deutsch with Allemanisch and Swiss Dutsch ... and Italian ... and even some Swahili for good measure ...

Gigs in Berlin for May are as stands

May 6th Fourtrtack at the Monkey club in Mitte.

May 20th with Bluebird and the Chap at Privatclub in Kreuzberg.

I hope that you can come.

`___
a little bit North of Milano is a nice place for driving exceptionally fast cars.
To get to Switzerland catch the Chiasso train to Como, say hi to George Clooney then catch the train to either Zurich or Basel (€60 per person). Once you arrive in Göschenen you have successfully survived the San Gottard tunnel of DEATH!

So, continue on to your destination and reqard yourself with
- 12 bravery points
or
- 2 pieces of Kinder chocolate
or
- one of Lindt
or
- fresh olives from Catania if there are some left.

jxo

Radio show

Nadine and I are on the move yet again ... Sicilia is nice ... we discovered the garden of Eden in the middle of the Valle dei templi near Agrigento ... less tourists than we expected but we made the numbers up with the sheer size of our presence!!

Check this link - here.

over ...

Campeggi

stuff the north of Sicilia ... we've caught the train to Agrigento.

è bella città nel sud.

Perhaps a gig in Berlin in Mai-May (6th, 7th or 8th), at the Monkey Club ... will inform you Pronto!

giossue.
x x x

I am Eurasia

I will be a little out of range for mobile reception in the next four months ... I have left the deserts of Central Oz ... and have landed at my parent's house in Melbourne ... it has been unusual, to say the least, to be in cold weather ... the climate change seems to have killed my circadian rhythms ... Nadine and I fall asleep at around 3pm ... wake up with our eyelids glued shut to the boney-thing surrounding the eye socketty-thing (anatomical nomenclature not this nurse's strong point).

I will be doing some reasearch into Lapplanders ... Buriats, Derzu Uzaly, Germans, peasant Italian-folk, Swiss folks, Nowegians, Russkis, Mongolians, Koreans ... a lot of culturally diverse peoples who have perhaps all ... at some point or other ... in some way or another ... been conquered by the all powerful Khan ... (well ... perhaps not Norway ... but perhaps they developed their postal service from Genghis's idea of relaying horses across large areas ... I'll get there, write a report in triplicate and let you know) ... in July.

I was on To and Fro the other night with Tim & Dave ... two lovely lads whose mothers must be very proud of. We had tea and scones and talked about the good times whilst Triple R listeners listened in and wished they were present in the studio. I must say I wish that they wouldn't listen in so much. They were even nice enough to rack up my APRA bill by playing three of my tracks from "Is this a desert?"

Incidently does anyone know anyone in Berlin who'd have me play at their venue? I seem to be having a touch of trouble getting to know people through e-mails ... I think the server in Germany must be down /// noone seems to answer ... perhaps unsolicited e-mails are considered junk ... who knows ... maybe they just don't like me and I need to c0me to grips with that ............ ................ ............. .

This coming Tuesday!

Tuesday 4th - I will be playing at the Make It Up Club at the wonderful Bar Open on Brunswick Street from around 9.30pm.


Later that night you can tune to 102.7fm at midnight and hear me chatting to the To and Fro lads, aren't they just lovely.

& then on Saturday ... me 'n' Nadine are buggerising off overseas for four months, where I hope to organise a gig in that charming city of Berlin ... anyone have suggestions as to where? I've heard of Schokoladen but they haven't answered my e-mails. Besides, we won't be goin' nowhere if the Russian Consul don't give us our passports back.

see you in a few months.

jxo

Part III - In between

)))
A shitload less understanding than is required!
By boy Brightlulb


Central Australian languages have a word for those who have passed on. You do not say their name after they have died, you call them “Kumunjay”. In fact anyone who has the same name as the deceased must also be called Kumunjay. Some respected person named Alice died once in the town of Katherine in the top end of the Territory, from a time they referred to Alice Springs as “Kumunjay Springs”. Kumunjay is not a name really, just indicates that you have an unspeakable name. Everyone understands and doesn’t bother questioning, they just call you Kumunjay until such time as people forget who died and go back to the original name. Some people change their name completely to avoid the Kumunjay phenomena – I met a Cigarette Morton once, and a Jungle Bob … Tarzan.
I was discussing the flying boy of the poem when someone said the word “anomé”. I said what? They said the boy had become disconnected from the world and from himself. In that moment, whether he has died or not, he has become not-himself, unreal.
If you look at the scene even more closely as the young man screams at his wife you might notice that something changes. Look at his belly. Something about it shifts; something more subtle than his centre of gravity. Perhaps his locus of control passes out through his navel. Perhaps it slips in through hers. Perhaps that’s why the look of terror on the face of his wife equals the anger in his. Perhaps he has given her all power over him but stolen her power over herself.
“Shit!”
If I were her I’d rip that little silver ball of light out of her belly and piff it as far from her as possible. As far out of reach of him lest he forces it back on her again. Throw it out the window!
“Shit!”
It’s this point that our young Spaniard becomes disconnected from everything. The silver ball is now falling to the concrete ground three storeys down and the fear has taken grip of his senses. As he runs for the window and his feet lose their connection with the floorboards, the world loses its connection to him, and he will go tumbling after. The situation has run out of control.

The man said that the word for this is anomé, the name for those with no name. An Aboriginal Mental Health Worker said yeah, that’s what we call Kumunjay, same thing see. The other bloke paused and said, isn’t that interesting, you could say that in that moment, in that moment before he becomes Kumunjay to the living, he has become Kumunjay unto himself.

It wasn’t as out of control as we thought. Perhaps he flew out onto the fire-escape and lay feeling sore. Sore but connected, connected to his world. Nothing but a bloody lip to show for it.

Lady luck does CPR. Nice lady sometimes ... but these things brew over time. Again, the ‘next time’ is already thinking about next time.

Remember son, all our problems come out of a clear blue sky.

Part II - Death

))
A shitload less understanding than is required!
By boy Brightlulb

A very charismatic man, came for a very philosophical planning day for the Remote Mental Health Team and put the first line of a poem by Gabriel Garcia Lorca (another Gabriel) to us -

“ (Perhaps it occurred because he hadn’t learnt his geometry) ”

Perhaps he hadn’t … I hadn’t thought about this in terms of geometry.

Suicide in Aboriginal societies is something that plagues all of us in Central Australia who are not racist bastards. Suicide didn’t really exist in Aboriginal cultures around twenty years ago. It’s rampant now. Where suicide in Western societies is generally thought about in terms of depression, suicide in Aboriginal societies almost exclusively comes under the banner of powerlessness. Most suicides have a few common elements - domestic violence; an argument between families; and an individual tries to take their life in a public place where they are easily seen by everyone, sometimes succeeding, but never with a truthful purpose; Alcohol is often involved but not necessarily.
They are seen to be extremely impulsive and the perpetrators do not usually have thoughts of suicide and do not have depression per se. Suicide prevention is a tough concept for NGOs. The problem they face is how one combats an enemy with this elusive nature. The locus of the perpetrator’s control is so far from their centre of gravity it’s hard to imagine that they can stand on solid ground without falling to their dooms. The perpetrators are many and give no warning signs until the screaming comes, the heat of the moment seems to burn all ties with reason as they teeter on the edge of oblivion.
It is important to note that this type of suicide, used as a threat under pressure, is not at all singularly related to Australian Aboriginal people but is also found in all societies where there is some breakdown of structure. The Western suburbs of Sydney would sport its own fair share of this behaviour, but perhaps not on the widespread level that this behaviour has been taken on in the last twenty or so years.

Geometry is the study of bodies in space, the distance between this object and that one, their angles, their connections, my relationship to you, your relationship to the government, this could extend from country to country, the planet to the sun, the solar system to the galaxy so on, so forth, etc, Amen.

Lorca’s poem begins with a parenthetic afterthought. Perhaps he had never stopped to think about his relation to the world, his connection to his family and friends. Perhaps Lorca judges him here: he had never stopped to think and learn. Literally speaking of course, he had perhaps not stopped to think even about gravity, the gravity of the situation or the gravity that makes him plummet to the humid concrete below. If you follow our gentle Spaniard out of the window in slow-motion you wonder what is going through his head right now. Is he perhaps thinking “oh shit! I think I’ve overdone it!” Or is he so caught up in the intense emotions that we assume are required to follow through on this act. Like the suicide that associates itself with Indigenous peoples, you could imagine that, in the moment, all thought of consequence are disconnected, all ties to the things that anchor you are untied, you become weightless, your feet leave ground.

Part I - Life

)
A shitload less understanding than is required!
By boy Brightlulb
Part I - Life

[ These are thoughts that I am thinking out loud to the ether … if you care to read them, be my guest, you might even have something poetic to add to the comments section down the bottom … again, be my guest. They are thoughts that I am contemplating in relation to my album-in-waiting, I like to have some theoretical substance behind my albums, so they sit within a design rather than randomly recorded music that has nothing interesting to bring up. They are not amazingly complex concepts but they are, nevertheless, concepts that have developed in a context that may be wholly alien to you, so take your time in reading them, or skip through merrily and blissfully.

The concepts that I have in my head are ones that come from conversations with people that I have bumped into in my work in Central Australia and the experiences that I had there. I think Central Oz is unique in Australia and, consequently, misunderstood by many people. I worked as a Mental Health nurse in remote Aboriginal communities. Mental Health, by itself, is a very misunderstood area at the best of times. Remote Aboriginal communities are also majorly misunderstood which has led to many poor decisions by successive governments which have complicated the demolition of their cultural integrity. I won’t go into that much. ]

In 2004 I made another hand-made album that was titled “the balloon”. The background concepts of the balloon had been largely influenced by Dante’s La Commedia Divina. Certain phrases and images that Dante used stuck in my mind and I thought about how they might apply to some sort of high-urban fantasy sequence of someone running out of their apartment window and stepping into the space of air between buildings and soaring upwards. It reminded me somehow of a particular scene in Gabriel Garcia Marquez “One hundred years of solitude” where the village’s most beautiful girl was once lying in her bed and she simply flew up and out the window and into the sky. Nothing more is mentioned about her for pretty much the rest of the book, transforming that moment into a simply exquisite mythical scene.
boy Brightlulb was a character that was developing in my head at the time. The balloon itself was something that the boy saw floating gently over the cityscape, past the Russell Hotel and out of sight. It caused wondered in him about what lay beyond the visible landscape of buildings, cars and smog. This was really me wondering how to get the hell out of the urbanised hell that I felt I was surrounded by. Whilst I love cities, another part of me hates them, a small but not insignificant part of me. So I imagined myself willing the balloon to float towards me … or perhaps I just imagined the balloon floating toward me as I sat on the tin roof-dunes of warehouses and apartments. As it came close I stood up and reached for the string dangling downward and I grasped for it.
As I floated over the mountainous buildings, between windows of offices, toward the blue sky, I saw people at desks, board-meets, couriers, I saw hustling and I saw bustling. And I ascended upward.
There was a line from Dante’s Purgatorio which was translated to say “a cloud enclosed us”; myself and the balloon, Dante and Beatrice; the protagonist and the guide. Retrospectively I have the idea that my thoughts were searching for something divine. I was dreaming about what was beyond the reaches of the city. Perhaps I was yearning to explore the world, who the fuck knows?
My life growing up in Melbourne entailed living in suburban and then urban areas, very urban. In lived in three-storey terrace houses with twenty bodies, cheap wine carpets and dimsim dipped in curry dinners. I moved to Sydney warehouses on busy streets with apartments flats towering around, no privacy, only fumes. The one patch of paradise was hanging off the fire escape mid air either accepting how beautiful urban profanities were or wishing my way out. There was a piece in “the balloon” called “Flying out the 3rd storey window”. Suicide is not something that is particularly interesting to everyone … though I’ve met people who think of it all the time. I seem to be a very good coper. The song-title didn’t actually mean that I was flying downwards, more up really. I don’t know how I coped with Sydney. Perhaps I didn’t cope, I just moved to Central Australia, I got the hell out of Sydney.

ah to be on the radio

Radio is the transmission of signals, by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light.

isn't that interesting.

My friend is going to get her novel published ... isn't that even more interesting! Hooroy.

I'm going to be interviewed on my fave radio station in the world ... in Melbourne in March. RRR on the To and Fro show at some ungodly hour of the night ... come and listen at a radio near you.

Isn't that fabbo!!

Just got back from six days in Kintore and Haast's Bluff ... the mountains around the Western Desert country are truly spectacular.
There was some bad news whilst I was in Kintore. Some Walpiri folk with connections to the Pintupi people of Kintore were driving up that shithouse back-road from Sandy Blight junction from Kintore to Nyirripi and their car broke down. Two of them decided to walk, apparently towards a known non-permanent waterhole. Their bodies were found not far from the water-hole dead in the 40+ degree heat. The family member who stayed with the car survived.

Even bushies can die on back-roads.

The Mental Health First Aid Course has been very interesting indeed ... after a few goes (as presenter) you start to get good at pre-emtping the powerpoint slides ... though I get a little bit tired of how text-driven the damn thing is ... but everyone seems to quite like the course ... and I have lots of stories to tell people from experience ... as a mental health nurse you are a little bit like a historian or an anthropologist ... ah the stories ... they are sooo cool! Ask me sometime for a good story.

Is this a desert ? - boy Brightlulb (2006)

This one was a collection of music that I made over a couple of years ... it took me quite a while to formulate what this collection was really about. It was recorded mostly in Alice Springs, NT, where the music is mostly centred, after numerous adventure after adventure after adventure.

I had numerous concepts behind this album, things that i had been pushed into thinking about by the very nature of working in Central Australia ... things are not black and white out here. Some of my thoughts are in this blog entry if you're interested.

"This album gives the privileged feeling of having just been handed someone’s flights of fancy in the form of a personal travel journal—a gift to thumb through at leisure. Sonically, you’re taken on adventures through memory saturated landscapes and shown quirky thumbnail sketches of people encountered along the way. Visually, the piece is somewhat clumsily handmade, scrawled and dog-eared, which is just how such a personal offering should be presented." - Bec Paton (Cyclic Defrost magazine).

Is this a desert ? (2006)
1. Great northern Highway 2:06
2. creation of Gosse Bluff 3:25
3. King Sound (Buckle Head) 4:18
4. ships and smoke of Port Hedland 1:34
5. mice in me boots 1:54
6. Pareroultja 3:02
7. Dance Under Undoolya (redback stomp) 4:10
8. Where in buggery is Borroloola? 0:51
9. I swam past the inland sea 1:48
10. Road train (the truckie’s profession) & Poeppel cnr. 6:40
11. I walk long way tonight (the Summerland Way) 1:27
12. Zoe buses to Darwin 5:00

This hand-made cover was reviewed by Cyclic Defrost by Bec Paton ... (and the music got reviewed at another point by some other people). Check the reviews section for a few reviews of this album, also an interview with Matt Levinson about the time I spent in the remote areas of the world which led to this album. Flying underwater past the inland sea.

feather - boy Brightlulb (late 2004)

Feather
or
Josh plays Amy's guitar (2004)



This was a collection of lonely pieces of music played on a steel-string guitar borrowed off of my housemate Amy Luschwitz. I dedicated the music to her. I have, at this point, not made this music available except for a couple on the internet.

I can't imaginary what your seeing in him?
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tracklisting -

Feather (or Josh plays Amy’s guitar) (2005)
Feather 0:33
Empty house 0:51
Heart-breakingly strange 1:52
traveller from eternity (E.E.Cummings) 0:53
L’homme aux semelles de vent 1:43
Get used to change 3:28
the tale tattle 1:40
the feather medoly 17:24

the balloon - boy Brightlulb (2004)

This cool little album was made by the boy but this time he was living in Sydney in a warehouse with numerous creative people around him ... who offered him no technical advice whatsoever.

I made the cover out of chinese paper bought from a shop in Sydney, Pitt St ... where the majority of this music was created. The artwork on this page was all from the conceptual material to do with "the balloon", as was the poetry of this page, which was taken partially from Dante.

the little boy reached out for the balloon and he lifted up and flew over the tops of the buildings that he longed to escape from, and it took him away.

The balloon (2004)
contrapunto mutevole 3:32
a bathtub near the Grampians 3:31
a cloud enclosed us 1:24
a balloon … 0:20
… rose past the chimneys 1:40
murder on the third floor (Dan’s floor) 1:50
the red sky 1:05
impatient Jah 3:32
horizont 1:16
Merri 2:14
Dante’s warning 2:20
faeries live here 2:04
brewery view 1:58
flying out the 3rd storey window 0:30
ban the whale 1:39
across the tin roof dunes 2:10
passionfruit on the fire escape 0:21

Stormboy - the child & the tractor (2003)

This album was made mostly in a house in Northcote in a shambles house with a shambles housemate ... who was really quite a top bloke but had some severe mental health issues.

This album was about the trail of water as it trickles down a small bubbling brook into a creek in the hills, joining a larger stream which becomes a river which flows down through the city of lights and out into the bay where the ships are and then into the sea. I only made 101 copies, all of which were given away for free. The poems that accompanied the music are somewhere on this blog but I can't remember where ... no, wait - I found it! go here!

tracklisting -

the child and the tractor (2003)
A creek near a farm 5:09
A kingfisher 0:14
The child and the tractor 4:10
A duck-billed platypus 0:58
Downstream to the sea 1:02
River through a town 10:43
This beach is too small to skirt the seas 2:10
The pelican and the boy 1:23
Driftwood and shell in a glass vase 1:38

Why why why

I've recorded enough stuff for a mini-album.

It has a running title ... it may end up being called

a shitload less understanding than is required

it may come next year ... and I may take it on a mini-tour of Europe (since I'm going there anyways). Berlin, Oslo ... perhaps Basle ... don't know anywhere else worth going ... do you?

There's some new photos on my flickr site in the photos section on the right-hand side of the screen that you're lookin at for some reason. The wedding photos have now moved further down the page ... how time flies ... ahhh.

ciao
jxo

photos from 30-12-07 at Bar303 (by Nadine Kessler)

Incidentally - has anyone heard Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid's music ... those guys are unreal ... totally unrealistic non-existentially unreal! I recommend for discerning listeners of out there. They got the sync going on!

a lack of shitloads of understanding

I have returned to Alice Springs in the hope that a cool change from the

Drove in two days from Melbourne ... a record. Gisborne to Glendambo.

Dad remembers when the road swang by Kingdoonya forty clicks to the West of Glendambo.

It's kind of funny talking to people in other parts of the world about Aboriginal people ... I don't think they understand that there is a possibility that they don't understand ... do you understand?

Incidentally I found out that I was played on RRR in Melbourne in December.
Later than that ... but in the same December, I played a gig in the front room at 303 which was good fun, got a little carried away though and played for about 2 + 1/2 hours .... and then I was joined onstage by an elder gentleman by the name of Nicholas who played a nice fiddle with my looping station.

The label that my mate Robert Curgenven is on has a new myspace page that should be investigated for all possible tourist activity.

ciao
jxo