The Blackmail

A Time And A Place

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:22:04 +0000

Did that TV show 24 ever end? Was it supposed to end or was it supposed to go on forever? Like days, consecutive 24-hour lots, over and over till the end of time. But when is the end of time? Where do we as humans fit into time? Right now, I guess. Moments come and then they are gone. Times change, people grow. What I am trying to say is that, after 24 issues of The Blackmail, we are moving on. Our plans are big and they include our friends and contributors, but most of all they include you, our loyal, discerning readers. We have felt every one of your clicks and scrolls in our analytics, and in our hearts, and look forward to the day when you can hold us in your hands.

This issue, we have the inimitable DJ Nozaki, the enigmatic Donny Benet, Note to Self’s Max Olijnyk, Sydney-based designer Georgia Perry and the man in the woods, Warwick Baker. As well as the solo flyers, we have those who prefer double-file: Pageant’s Kate Reynolds and Amanda Cumming, big men on art campus Vasili Kaliman and Jarrod Rawlins, Mitch Brown and Sarah Grieve of Gang Atelier and the modern romantics at Lover. Flying the flag for group love is Sweden’s Little Dragon.

Welcome to Issue 24 of The Blackmail, our final issue in this format. The future is bright, so put on a sun visor and stay current on our blog.

Ten Inches

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:12:29 +0000

Text: Michael Kucyk

Since my first introduction in 2007, my conciousness has been drip-fed and stimulated by the inspirational mixtapes of Japanese underground music luminary Nozaki.

Only known in a small circle due to geographical circumstances and language barriers, those lucky enough to be exposed to the same output have shared the same eye opening experiences. Each of his eclectic sets stand alone, traversing territory as wide as rare private press Chicago house, little-known funky Italo records sourced by hand from the motherland, disco psych-rock and ’90s Star Track r’n'b instrumentals. But don’t be falsely assured – just when you think you get it, Nozaki’s next instalment will take things on an interesting twist. Expect the unexpected. Only expect to embrace it.

A fascinating personality, Nozaki became fluent in Italian and English and traveled abroad regularly to collect records, befriending ’80s cult figures such as Daniele Baldelli and Sangy. For years he dealt choice picks from his house but has since retired from record pushing to start label 10 Inches of Pleasure and explore his own top-level productions, remixes and edits. This month Nozaki will make his first visit to Australia, playing parties in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney. Finally, every one will have the opportunity to enjoy and collectively experience one of Tokyo’s finest secrets!

Michael Kucyk: You learnt to speak fluent Italian in order to travel there and become more knowledgeable about Italo (disco). What does Italy have to offer?

DJ Nozaki: Italia, land of bootlegs… un cafe, due to due, tre nitalia, quattro chiacchiere… Italian life as same as Miracolo Milano!

MK: How did you come in contact with Daniele Baldelli?

DJN: Amici degli amici (friends of friends) style. Mortar records passed me his contact. Although, at the time I was there he was at university learning agriculture.

MK: Was music also your motivation to learn English?

DJN: Just O.J.T. (on-the-job training) style. So Japanese-English milanese alla Cacciatora.

MK: Many of my favourite DJs are from Japan – yourself, Kenji Takami, Wataru, Forces of Nature, Chee Shimizu, etcetera – each very individual and unique. What is it about Japanese culture that breeds such innovative DJs?

DJN: I don’t know directly what is the Japanese culture. I think that the perception of proper culture [is] by outsiders. Insiders try to the best each other, merely.

I know Takimi-san, Wataru-san, Kitazawa-san,Kent-san, Shimizu-san from long time ago. Definitely, they are solid-state survivor. I guess our roots is rootsless-ness. La zingara cultura!

MK: You are musical director of Dorothy Parker, a venue in Tokyo. What is the vibe there?

DJN: Not director – just contract under the resident. The place is space. It is a DJ bar in Nishi-Azabu. I DJ every week from last September. Not a loud system – JBL 4331 – pure audio style. LED device by Yama-Chang and graphic by DJ 1Drink (Keita Ishiguro). A place called RGB (Red, Green, Blue) inferno.

MK: What has been your most memorable night in Tokyo?

DJN: Every night is unforgettable. Latest funny one is that drunken sexy bartender came up to DJ booth and said, “I would like to take sex now!” I just stacking Yoshiyuki Oosawa – sosite boku ha tohouni kureru –approximate meaning is, “And I have no way…” – actually, I had no way…

MK: The club name is a reference to Prince’s Ballad of Dorothy Parker. You also made The Purple Mix, a rhythmic collage of Prince commons, live bootlegs, edits, interview discs and b-sides. Why is Prince such an inspiration?

DJN: You know his music well. I like his music very much. So his music is our other language.

MK: Last year you launched the label 10” Inches of Pleasure. Why is 10” your preferred format?

DJN: 10″ is better than 12″ for Japanese size. Dieci’n'polici!

MK: The first release was Mick ‘Macho Brother’ featuring a Nozaki remix on the flip. It was supported by many DJs including Thomas Bullock, Tim Sweeney and Forces of Nature yet not many people know anything about Mick. Who is Mick?

DJN: Mick is Mick. My man medalist.

MK: Do you have any other releases/projects scheduled?

DJN: Pepe California – Yureru (DJ Nozaki’s Pure Pleasure Control Mix Pt. 1 & 2) (IOIOP/PPC 10″)

Boot Shine Girl EP (Moonlegs 12″)

Marbeya Sound – Sancho (DJ Nozaki’s Mi Manca La Mancha Mix) (Mad On the Moon 12″)

DJ Nozaki – You Shuggie You Done Mix CD (Oh! You Done Records CD)

DJ Nozaki – Tropical Winter Vol.2 Mix CD (-)

MK: You are a giant amongst Japanese men (187cm). Are you looking forward to going shoe shopping in Australia?

DJN: My sister gave me the mission of salvage original UGG Boots.

MK: What do you look forward to most about Australia?

DJN: Reversal vortex.

MK: What vibe are you planning to bring to your Australian parties?

DJN: Moovin’!kickin’!! groovin’!!!keep music strong!!!!

MK: Can you please recommend any Japanese films for Australian’s to see?

DJN: Meshi, directed by Mikio Naruse. Every one of his continuities are beautiful sequences without verbal. He directed films under not only talky but also silent. Also actress is my perpetual girlfriend Setsuko Hara and team Naruse (Masao Tamai, Satoru Tyuuko, Sanezumi Fujimoto and Ichizou Kobayashi) ripest period production!

MIX AREA:

Do As the Cornbeefers Do (PAMMIX009, 2005)
La Esserezza (NEDSIX909, 2009)
HOT10TOT10TROT10 VOL.1 (Noise In My Head, 2010)

Next story: First Show – Kaliman Rawlins

First Show

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 02:49:39 +0000

Text: Melissa Loughnan Images: KALIMANRAWLINS

“Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.” – Dwight Eisenhower

KALIMANRAWLINS is the latest commercial gallery to open in Melbourne. Unlike any other pre-existing gallery in Australia, the space has been converted from a 1950s industrial garage, with a slick steel and glass door opening onto pristine white walls and a ply-lined ceiling designed by ROOM11. The space is also equipped with a library, large stock room and office. The gallery is positioned in South Yarra, just opposite the recently opened Tristian Koenig Gallery on Ellis Street.

KALIMANRAWLINS also tastes like no other gallery — with a menu almost in exact contrast to the famous sausages-in-bread and Grolsch beers of Richmond’s recently closed Hell Gallery. Both directors, Jarrod Rawlins and Vasili Kaliman, have extensive histories in commercial art dealing through other partnerships and solo enterprises in Melbourne and Sydney, through Uplands Gallery and Kaliman Gallery respectively.

Their opening exhibition, simply titled First Show, was an introductory survey of their stable of artists that yielded some sensitive aesthetic comparisons — such as the juxtaposition of Robert Hunter’s Untitled 9/2010, a gentle, layered, predominantly white geometric painting, with an intricately detailed (or ‘modified’) orange ping pong ball from Matt Hinkley (Untitled, 2011).

KALIMANRAWLINS represents a roll-call of early-career to established Australian and international artists including Daniel Boyd, Jon Campbell, Steve Carr, Jon Cattapan, Nadine Christensen, Simon Denny, James Deutsher, Tony Garifalakis, Diena Georgetti, David Griggs, Matt Hinkley, Robert Hunter, Anna Kristensen, Amanda Marburg, Moya McKenna, Tim McMonagle, Manuel Ocampo, Séraphine Pick, Tony Schwensen, Renee So, Glenn Sorensen, Michelle Ussher and Ronnie van Hout — with further announcements to come.

Melissa Loughnan caught up with Vasili and Jarrod to discuss the opening of their new space and upcoming projects.

Melissa Loughnan: Can you give me some background on KALIMANRAWLINS: why you decided to open a gallery together, your shared interests and motivations, your artists, and on the gallery space itself?

Jarrod Rawlins & Vasili Kaliman: KALIMANRAWLINS came about when we were having lunch at a mutual friends’ sheep station in Central Victoria. The whole lunch had this super-entrepreneurial vibe to it (along with very, very nice caviar) with other people making all these really interesting conversations about certain aspects of the art industry in Australia, and it just came to us that opening a partnership was a really good and obvious idea. It had to be that obvious otherwise it wouldn’t have got off the ground. Our shared interests and motivations are obviously running galleries and presenting great artwork. We are both really interested in the history of private galleries around the world, how they operate, and the role they play in the art world.

ML: How would you define your roles at the gallery: do you have distinctly different responsibilities/skills, or is everything shared?

JR & VK: We do have different roles. Jarrod looks after things like tracking down the right wines for our dinners, ordering caviar, stuff like that. Vasili looks after IT and communications. The rest of the things seem to just fall in place. After you combine the experience the two of us have at running a gallery, and working with people like Olivia Barrett, things just fall into place. It leaves a lot of spare time for reading and listening to music. When you eat pate and drink champagne everyday for lunch it starts to become a really nice lifestyle.

ML: Will the new space still have the capacity to host experimental group exhibitions, such as the Espresso Yourself exhibitions that were characteristic of the Uplands program?

JR & VK: Yes, you will definitely see some great, fun, smart group shows. This part of the program is very important to us.

ML: What was your reasoning behind opening in South Yarra?

JR & VK: South Yarra is almost half way between the Simon Johnson store at Chadstone and the Simon Johnson store in Toorak Village, so it makes getting the caviar a lot easier than being on the North side of the river. And Vasili has such a big sneaker collection that requires regular feeding and there are good sneaker shops around here. Also, we like South Yarra, we liked the building, it suited our purposes.

ML: Are any aspects of your gallery fit out modelled on existing Australian or international galleries?

JR & VK: No. The gallery was done by an amazing group of architects called ROOM11. We started with a blank piece of paper, we brought nothing to the process in terms of what we knew or had seen. It was important for us to work closely with the architects and builders to accommodate the needs of a gallery, but we had no pre-existing ideas.

ML: Could you tell me about some of the exhibitions you have coming up at KALIMANRAWLINS?

JR&VK: No. Anticipation is a wonderful thing.

Image credits:

Simon Denny, Supported Video Aquarium Equivalent with School of Fish and Coral Double, 2011, wood, metal, aquarium backdrop, plexiglass with protective plastic, screenprint, television casing, fluorescent lamps, faux aquarium-rock, 161 x 111 x 31cm

Moya McKenna, Lick, 2011, oil on canvas, 41 x 56cm

James Deutsher, Sonny and Isabelle (Prologue: Rita), 2011, steel, chrome, powder coating, wool, bone, digital print on silk, mint, 202 x 96 x 66cm

Glenn Sorensen, Will She (For Clarice Beckett), 2011, oil on linen, 30 x 40cm

Séraphine Pick, Untitled, 2011, oil on canvas, 50 x 40cm

Robert Hunter, Untitled 9/2010, 2010, acrylic on board, 122 x 244 cm

Matt Hinkley, Untitled, 2011, modified ping pong ball, diameter: 3.3 cm

Images courtesy of KALIMANRAWLINS

Next story: Balancing Act – Note To Self

Australian Badlands

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 01:08:17 +0000

Text: Tristan Ceddia Images: © Warwick Baker

I decided I wanted to interview Warwick Baker after seeing his self portrait, ‘Mongolo River,’ in the 2009 National Youth Self Portrait Prize. I don’t know exactly what it was about this image, but I felt compelled to understand more about this character. I caught Warwick, quite a discerning individual, for a brief chat about his obsession with Belanglo State Forrest.

Tristan Ceddia: Where did you grow up?

Warwick Baker: I grew up in Canberra and went to public schools in the Belconnen area.

TC: Do you remember your first encounter with photography?

WB: I have always been surrounded with photography. My dad is a landscape photographer and I used to travel around with him, camping in a early ’70s Kombi Van. When I was a kid I really hated photography. I had a really short attention span so, for something as instantaneous as photography, I didn’t understand why it took so long to take a photo. My dad would often take hours setting up and then taking one photograph.

TC: What was the first photo you ever took?

WB: When I was maybe around 10, I got handed down from my two older sisters a Kodak Instamatic camera. One of the first photos I can remember taking was a photo of burning sugarcane in northern New South Wales or Queensland. I remember my dad cutting me some sugarcane and I chewed on it for a couple of days. I still really love the photo. I didn’t really enjoy or understand taking photos then, I just did it because I had a camera.

TC: You love photography now thought right? How long does it generally take you to take a photo?

WB: I really love taking photos now, I love exploring places to photograph. As part of my new work, the environment and place I photograph involves a lot of prior research so when I finally get to the places I have researched I have a background of its past history and how to confront that. I don’t explore and photograph the environment in a voyeuristic manner. I use medium and large format film cameras for my work. I like to be spontaneous with the medium format camera and mostly hand-hold. I like to show a sense of urgency and movement. The large 8×10″ film camera is very time consuming and cumbersome. It produces incredible detail and depth but it can take anywhere between a quarter of an hour to three hours to complete a photograph. The photographer Richard Misrach, one of my favourite photographers, is so amazing at making his photographs still look spontaneous and almost snap shot-like, and his pictures are made on a large format camera.

TC: As well as art photography, you also work commercially as a photographer shooting record covers and portraits. Does your process differ between commercial and self-motivated work?

WB: My commercial work differs a lot. There is a lot of work I do that I don’t put on my website. It’s shot and then edited the same day, then the files are sent off. I really like doing that as far as work goes, because it is so far removed from my own work and I don’t have to think. Since I got an Arts Victoria grant I can be selective with commercial work, like band photos, because the process is so drawn out and it is really draining constantly having to think of new concepts, sourcing props, getting the band or record label to choose the photos. It really takes a lot of time and energy away from my own work. With commercial work, at the end of the day, you are just making work to please someone else so there will always be an element of compromise.

Right now is the first time I have ever been able to solely dedicate a few months’ full time in developing my new work for my project Australian Badlands. I am really motivated and excited by the pressure to create something by the end of the year.

TC: You must feel much freer not having to rely as much on commercial work. Can you tell me a little bit about your photos of the Belanglo State Forrest?

WB: It’s great to have some temporary time off. My new work involves a lot of travel around Australia and Australia is a very big place. In the past I have only been able to take a week or two off max. Travelling by car in Australia for two weeks could get you from Melbourne to Perth and back with a couple of rest days and that’s about it. I need the time to stay in places for a long time, not just get out of the car, take a piss, take a photo and keep driving.

The Belanglo State Forest photos are a part of my projectAustralian Badlands. A couple of years ago, I wanted to photograph and explore places in Australia that had a tainted history and environments that still hold a dark presence.

I was at my mate from footy, Beno’s, birthday (your friend who was featured in the last issue) and I was speaking to his mate about the project. He recommend a book by Ross Gibson, Seven Versions of An Australian Badland and I bought a copy the next week and I was blown away. It was written about a stretch of the Bruce Highway in Queensland that has endured massacres, land grabs, environmental destruction, floods, cyclones, murders and numerous fatal car accidents. That book has become a big inspiration for the project.

Belanglo State Forest has been a good starting point for Badlands because I remember, when I was a kid, being in the car on the Hume [Highway] from Canberra to Sydney, driving past the exit to Belanglo and just feeling so scared yet having a morbid fascination. This year was the first time I actually visited the forest. I was by myself, late in the afternoon. Although it is used as a pine plantation, trail bike riding and four wheel drive clubs, I couldn’t erase from my mind the seven backpacker murders, the body found last year by trail bike riders and the kid who was axed to death by a relative of Ivan Milat’s. The forest has witnessed so much trauma.

TC: Does the forest set a mood? Is it an eerie place?

WB: When you enter the forest off the Hume, you hit a dirt road. Eucalyptus trees line the edges of the road next to sparse properties, then you hit the entrance to Belanglo State Forest where a sign reads ‘Welcome To Belanglo State Forest Please Be Careful’. The start of the forest was silent and still. The trees are very close to the road, which is very claustrophobic. It was like driving in the city but the buildings are dense tall pine trees. I only drove in a few kilometres. I parked my car in a clearing and walked around and took some photos. I only lasted there no more than an hour. The shadows were dark and cold – I felt a menace in the place.

I went back a second time with friends of mine from Canberra who now live in the Blue Mountains, and we met my friend’s brother and his family for a picnic and bush walk in Belanglo. I thought it was a strange idea but it was really nice. We got there around midday, had a picnic at the rest area and then did some bush walking along the fire trails and then by the end of the day visited the backpacker memorial. I went off and walked down some small tracks into the natural forest of Belanglo and photographed abandoned camp sites, charred trees and dense bush. The forest does have an eerie sadness to it.

I have become really drawn to Belanglo and I want to keep returning. It is such a big forest and I only feel like I have scratched the surface as far as immersing myself in the place, and photographically.

TC: What are your plans for this series?

WB: I will be using a couple of photos from Belanglo for the Australian Badlands exhibition that will be at Lindberg Galleries in Melbourne in February next year. I have been discussing with Dan Rule and Justine Ellis, of ERM books and Perimeter Books, the idea of developing the photos into a book. The photos will work well in a book format because, realistically, I will probably only have two or three photos in the exhibition of Belanglo and I think the place merits to be explained over 30 photos because of the vastness of the forest.

TC: You have a shows in Perth and Melbourne next month, as well as a solo show next February. Are the Belanglo photos for your solo show?

WB: I have a group show in Perth from the 4th of August to the 28th of August at the Perth Centre for Photography. The group show is ‘Charmwood’ and it was shown in Melbourne last year. I am in a group show later this month from the 31st of August to the 8th of September at c3 in Abbotsford, Melbourne – two photos that I think work really well individually, but not necessarily in a series. Australian Badlands will be my solo show at Lindberg Galleries in Melbourne from the 17th of February to the 2nd of March, 2012.

It is very daunting now to have a date locked in for a project that I have been working on for a couple of years. I have so much ground to cover between now and the end of the year. I think having photographic works with a country in the title involves a lot of responsibility. The series feels like a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle and it’s only now vaguely starting to look like something. I have a scrap book visual diary that I stick 6×4″ work prints in and contact sheets as a editing process and the Belanglo photos are probably the only pictures indicative of how I want to approach Australian Badlands, so I still have a long way to go.

TC: A long way in terms of other Badlands locations that you want to shoot?

WB: Australia has so many stains on its past that have not been properly addressed and confronted. It will be very difficult to find an end point to this body of work because it could be an endless pursuit. I am just going to keep researching and photographing places till I feel like the body of work is concise. Murder isn’t the only focus of the series. I also want to photograph places that have endured environmental destruction, that have displaced people and resulted in terminal illnesses from asbestos mining to nuclear weapon testing. I also want the series to have a mysterious Australian narrative running through the photos to evoke how harsh and unforgiving the Australian landscape can be.

TC: Have you seen Andrew Cowen’s photographic series Adelaide 1966 – 1999 He documented a number of suburban locations around Adelaide where murders took place. What do you think makes crime appealing in an artistic sense?

WB: I really like Andrew Cowen’s Adelaide 1966-1999 works. I first saw them a couple of years ago and then again recently in the new Hijacked photo book. I like how contained and concise the photos are to a localised area. There is a quietness to them and subtlety that is often lost in a lot of Australian contemporary photography. It is really important that we are reminded of these events and to re-spark our memory of past wrongs in our local surrounds. American photographers Joel Sternfeld’s On This Site and Taryn Simon’s American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar are a couple of great examples of a similar approach, and it great that there is photography being made in a similar direction in Australia.

TC: With recent Australian movies like Animal Kingdom and Snowtown in mind, what do you feel feeds Australia’s obsession with crime and murder?

WB: Since day one of colonisation in Australia, there has been crime and bloodshed – from convicts to massacres of Indigenous Australians. It’s embedded in the Australian psyche. So maybe that’s a contributing factor to Australian films exploring violence and the darker side.

TC: Where to, post-Australian Badlands?

WB: Post-Badlands I will no doubt be struggling financially, so I will go back to photographing commercial jobs to fund what I would rather be doing. I have a few loose project ideas in my head. I am always taking photos so whatever is sparked, I want it to progress slowly and naturally and hopefully more tame than this Badlands monster is turning out to be.

Warwick Baker is represented by Lindberg Galleries

Next story: The Revelation – Lover

Gang Colours

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:42:38 +0000

Text: Fleur Mitchell Images: Gang Atelier

Gang Atelier is the creation of Mitch Brown and Sarah Grieve. And it’s dangerous. A few minutes of browsing their beautiful online store and you will want to own Every. Single. Thing. After recognising the lack of international specialist titles with a visual slant in the Australian retail space, they have stepped in to fill the gap. Now we have Gang Atelier, crisis averted.

The store is thoughtfully and tightly curated, with items sourced from around the globe. Bringing together a selection of books, magazines and prints from amazing independent publishers like Picturebox and Libraryman. It’s all killer and no filler.

Fleur Mitchell spoke to Mitch Brown about creative partnerships, the demise of the local bookstore and partaking in a little crystal ball gazing…

Fleur Mitchell: Tell me about Gang Atelier, how was the idea born?

Mitch Brown: Initially it was a reaction to the hole we felt existed in the offerings at local bookstores, but rather than complain to each other about what was missing, we decided it was just as easy to bring it here ourselves, and share all the things we love about international visual culture with a local audience.

FM: So aside from the store itself, Gang Atelier is also a creative studio? Tell me about that side of things.

MB: Having worked together for a brief time as designers and art directors at a prominent Sydney music label, it became clear then how essential good relationships are in the creative process… Sarah and I worked well together, and felt a creative partnership was a good idea, so G.A. became a way for us to create design projects with our favourite artists and not necessarily be dictated by commerciality – rather, focusing on successful collaborations with conceptual fulfillment.

FM: What are the kind of titles are you stocking and why?

MB: We have a huge admiration for independent publishers; Brooklyn’s Picturebox are always blowing us away, Libraryman make beautiful books with no detail spared, while we are very proud to introduce the cheerful and perfectly crafted titles of Sam de Groot’s imprint True True True, all the way from the Netherlands. Those projects are driven by individuals with absolute conviction in presenting beautiful work in a handsome package.

As much as we want to present books, we’re hardly limited to that. Artist edition photographs and prints, music and lifestyle products will all come into the store as we progress.

FM: Due to increasing competition online, we’ve recently seen the collapse of major bookstore chains like Borders and small, independent stores are finding it difficult too. What are your thoughts about this shift, having just launched an online store with a focus on books?

MB: Yeah, this is something we’ve been mindful of from the very conception of our project. We, as much as anyone, appreciate the local bookstores who offer specialty books, especially in art and design (speaking mostly about places like Melbourne’s Metropolis, and Sydney’s Published Art) — places we have spent a lot of time and money over the years…

Without ever wanting to take business away from these institutions, our goal was simply to offer things that (as far as we understand) nobody else has. Unique titles that we love, and other stores have no time for.

Being confined to an online presence (at least for the immediate future), we’re fortunate to be able to keep the operation modest, and focus on curating a broad selection of books and objects that are close to our hearts.

FM: It must be fun picking items that you love and sharing them with other people. Do you enjoy searching for new things for the store?

MB: Absolutely, discovering new projects and publishers is essential in presenting fresh material, and it’s the most rewarding part of the process. The main objective of the store is to give these titles a place to fit into whatever the amorphous state of bookstores is these days.

Like a lot of my friends, I’m a self confessed visual culture addict, so putting that research and interest into a new venture only validates my obsession.

FM: How did you and Sarah find the time to get it off the ground, were there many late nights? How long have you been working on this project?

MB: It has been a very long but rewarding process: curating the stock, designing the site, working with our developer, etcetera. Awesome to realise it, and planning upcoming G.A. projects — all while juggling full-time jobs — has been tricky. I guess if you want something bad enough you just make it happen though, right?

FM: The site design itself is beautiful, simple and clean. How important do you think the design of the online space is? Some online stores are really hard to navigate and it seems to take away from the whole experience, it’s just not as enjoyable. What were you thinking about when designing it?

MB: Thank you. As long as it’s functional and people receive their orders correctly, then we’re happy!

FM: Gazing into a crystal ball, where would you like to see Gang Atelier in a few years time?

MB: Much of the same. Hopefully still grateful for the experience. After being forced from Sydney due to extortionate real estate prices, G.A. settles into the Blue Mountains with a 360 degree mountain-view office and crystal cave in the backyard.

Download Dreamtime’s Love Song mix exclusive for Gang Atelier

Next story: Ten Inches – DJ Nozaki

Balancing Act

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:26:14 +0000

Text: Sunday Ganim Images: Sunday Ganim & Note To Self

Max Olijnyk is a man of many talents. He can skate, sew, write and photograph – an incredibly humble guy, and known to be pretty funny. Sunday Ganim sat down with Max recently and, over tea and snacks, they discussed the origins of his creative endeavours, the projects he currently has on the go and how a serious accident a few years ago helped him to achieve a balance between them all.

Sunday Ganim: You make things across many disciplines but I guess I just wanted to start at the beginning. Where did you grow up?

Max Olijnyk: I grew up in country South Australia, in a little town called Rendelsham. It is tiny, 80 people live there, there are no shops, no nothing really – the nearest town is a place called Millicent where my dad was the headmaster of the high school.

SG: Really? Being a small town, you must have gone to that high school, right?

MO: It’s funny – the thing was, before being noticed as the headmaster’s son, I was also the ‘skateboard guy,’ so the people in Millicent already thought that I was from another planet.

SG: I was going to ask you about skateboarding. It seems to have played a huge part in your life, how did you get into it?

MO: I don’t know how I found it. I think I found a skateboard magazine and I became completely obsessed with it when I was about 12-years-old – that was everything for me, I learnt about rap music and punk music and clothes and attitude to everything, it was like one of those portals into another world. I became obsessed with it.

SG: Were you the only kid skating in your little town?

MO: I was the only one. The people in town thought that I was the best in Australia or something, which I couldn’t believe as I was so in awe of the American skaters and I couldn’t even kickflip properly. To me, skateboarding was so amazing and it was so hard that I just practiced everyday.

SG: So did your obsession with skateboarding get you interested in clothing, too?

MO: Yeah, I wanted to look a certain way, emulate the styles that I was seeing in skate mags and videos. The thing is, if I had the money to just buy those clothes then I would have. I showed my mum a skate video one day and told her I really wanted pants from the video and she said, ‘well, you could make them.’ So we went to the fabric store and she helped me with the first pair.

SG: Was she a sewing person?

MO: She was just like how your mum is. She knows how to make stuff. We made the first pair and they turned out really well.

SG: You have a good eye for detail. Is that something that she taught you or you just picked up along the way?

MO: On the weekends I would skate with my friends in Mt Gambier, but during the week I had nothing else to do so I made clothes and zines and videos. I was always good at writing and knowing when something looked right. I think for me it was maybe a mix of having some sort of natural talent and then combining that with skateboarding culture, which is so particular. You can get a real sense of who a person is through the way they skate, or the details of how they put themselves together.

SG: Tell me about Note To Self, your denim label. What’s your process?

MO: I make all the samples myself and come up with stuff in the studio. Then the production sets get made here in Melbourne and I work with the factory getting all the details right.

SG: But the denim you use comes from Japan – how did this come about?

MO: When I was developing Note to Self, I’d just get my denim from Bradmill in Footscray. It was great, you could just go there and get ends of rolls and off-cuts really cheap. Then the local distribution part of that business died down around 2006.

I remember showing a friend my jeans and she suggested I go to Japan and learn about their making processes. It was really good advice, but I couldn’t afford to do that, so instead I started looking into Japanese mills and the way that they do their denim. They still have the really old machines and do it all in the traditional way and they get a really nice product. I contacted a mill and managed to put in an order for 200 metres of denim, thinking I was some kind of big shot, and she replied that their minimums were 4,000 metres! But luckily they liked what I was doing and supplied me anyway.

SG: My brother-in-law has a pair of your jeans from a few years ago and they seem to have stood the test of time. Is quality something you strive for?

MO: Yeah. Well, I think that it’s mainly the material, the Japanese denim I use – it’s a lot more hardy and gets better with time rather than a cheaper product.

SG: Do you make other things, apart from jeans?

MO: I have just done a line of chino pants ‘by appointment’ to a skate brand called Passport. I met Trent through skateboarding in Brisbane, but he is doing the label out of Sydney now. We started talking about doing something together and decided that chinos would be a good one because they are good to skate in. It’s hard to make them in Australia because most of the machinery has gone offshore now and even if you did get them made here, they would be way too expensive to be competitive. We are coming in at the tail end of that local industry, even ten years ago you could drive around and get things made in Melbourne but it’s all changed now. I like being able to just drive to the factory and change over a button or move a stitch line five millimetres over. Now, you just sign off on this thing and hope that it comes back good. Luckily, the chinos did!

SG: What other denim projects do you have on the go?

MO: At the moment I am doing some dog coats – it’s Note to Self ‘by appointment’ to a brand called Best In Park. I have been making them in different sizes in the studio, and our dog Tess is the model in the photo shoot. There are some new jeans being made for Note to Self and I am also working on something for an exhibition at Mr Kitly called Denim. Dell Stewart organised a bunch of people to all make stuff with denim and I am making a pair of custom jeans for Woody Allen!

SG: Really, do you know his size?

MO: Well, I Googled him and looked into how big he is and he is five foot five and pretty slender so I figured it out. But I really love his films, his old films especially.

SG: You seem to be a really curious guy. I remember you interviewed me a long time ago and you emailed through so many questions – does this curiosity of yours lead you to be constantly documenting things?

MO: Possibly, I think so. I am interested in stuff that I like. And when you get a good sense of something, you want to find out more about it. I was the guy in my group growing up skating who was always taking photos and filming everything. I commented to my friend a few years ago that I was a bit tired of making custom jeans for people and he said, “Max, that is what you do, you are the jeans guy!” I got a bit offended and I remember thinking, damn, I do other things!

SG: It’s true: you have your fingers in many different pies, which brings us to photography…

MO: I like photography, you know, I would like to be a photographer, but my approach is way less serious than, say, my friends Conor (O’Brien) or Andrew Long. I guess it’s more the part that comes after taking the photo, like grouping them together and making a book or having a show, that I have never really got my head around. But when I take a photo it’s not like I am randomly snapping, I am thinking and when it all comes together at the right moment and you take your shot it’s really nice.

SG: It seems really personal to me, the way you document and put your blog together, it is all very experience driven and coming from a very personal place.

MO: Penny Modra, who I used to work with at ThreeThousand, always says: “Tell the truth”. And I think that should apply to everything, you know, why lie? It has to be true, it has to be honest. It sounds like I am talking about being non-pretentious, but it’s more than that, it’s getting to the point where everything feels the right way. I find that when I read a book that I really like or looking at a piece of art or eating really good food or whatever, it has that same feeling. You feel it as you are reading it, or looking at it or eating it.

SG: I have a theory about art and generally making stuff, which is that every time I get it right and all the elements line up and sync together you get a certain feeling. For me it’s in my stomach. Do you get the same feeling from skating as you do from making a pair of pants or photographing something well?

MO: Yeah, that is a really good example of why I do all the different stuff I do, that feeling. When I started skating I was never that good at it, I mean I am alright now, because I have been doing it for almost 20 years. It’s almost more rewarding when you’re not a natural at something and you pull it off, it’s a synthesis of everything all coming together at the one time. It’s the same with making a picture or a drawing – when you get it right, it’s so satisfying.

SG: In November 2008 you were airlifted to the Alfred hospital after colliding with a van on your skateboard at the bottom of a steep hill in Rye, Victoria.

MO: It was full on. I think that accident was a terrible thing to happen, but in a way it was also really good. It didn’t completely change everything, but for me to take something positive out of it, it did accelerate me to do the things I wanted to do. Custom jeans gave me a headache and just felt like not-fun work, plus it didn’t make any money, so I back-peddled on that after the accident and got into my writing more.

SG: So where is the focus for the future, in the denim or in the writing?

MO: I work four days a week writing listings for The Age newspaper, plus contributing to ThreeThousand and a few other things, so that’s how I pay the rent. Then on the weekends and my day off, I work away at Note to Self. I always wanted to be a writer, but at the same time it has always been my dream to have a label and do that full time. I would like to have a balance between the two, I guess.

SG: To me you seem to have nailed that nice balance! You’ve got the solitary time involved in making the denim and your writing, but also the social time of interviewing people and documenting your life. Does one benefit the other?

MO: I don’t really consciously do it but I guess, over the years, when one is out of wack I try to fix it. Recently, things are in a good place and instead of being stressed out about things, I can enjoy my time in the studio. That said, I am pretty social person, so if I was by myself all the time I would probably go crazy!

Note To Self

Next story: Unslayable – Little Dragon

Just Say Yes

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:25:45 +0000

Text: Jill Greig Images: Georgia Perry

Georgia Perry is a designer with a penchant for clarity and colour. The content of her multidisciplinary work is varied, but connected by her recognisable aesthetic: a sense of simplicity, and a light and bright execution. Ahead of Georgia’s involvement in ‘A Touch of Class’ for Sydney Design Week, Jillian Greig caught up with her to talk about the creative process, girls in design and hot dogs.

Jillian Greig: First up, why don’t you tell me a bit about how you got into design?

Georgia Perry: I didn’t really think about it – I was just always going to do it I think. When I was little I was always doing arty stuff and I didn’t really know what a graphic designer was until I finished high school, but I always knew that I wanted to do something arty. Then I found out that you could make money by doing design instead of just straight visual art and it was pretty perfect.

JG: So as a kid did you draw a lot?

GP: Yes. I was always making weird stuff and had ridiculous amounts of stationery and textas and stuff like that.

JG: What was your favourite medium as a kid?

GP: Pretty much the same stuff that I work with now – markers and textas…

JG: Your Mac?

GP: Haha…and my Mac. I remember getting in trouble so clearly. Once, in Kindergarten, the teacher gave us a worksheet that we had to colour in and I got into trouble for doing the wrong thing and colouring outside the lines and using the wrong things like bright coloured textas when we were only allowed to use pencil. And it was just like, ‘Nup. Rulebook not for me, I’m just going to do what I want and I don’t want to be in the lines, lady’.

JG: Young and rebellious! Can you tell me a bit about the design you do now for work, with Debaser, and the design you do for fun? Is there a clear distinction between the two?

GP: No, not really. Only in that the stuff I do for work, well, I’d never really worked in a commercial way before. As soon as I finished uni I was doing freelance jobs here and there, but before working in a studio I never had to get stuff to a really finished stage – so getting stuff to production and doing massive jobs that get a million copies printed, that was different.

But where I work I’m actually really lucky because I can integrate my own style because it’s all for the music industry, so a lot of it is really creative and because we don’t do anything corporate like reports or anything like that, it’s all pretty arty, kinda fun stuff. A lot of the time I do get to do the stuff I like – like illustration and colouring-in and drawing and combining them. So there’s not really that much of a distinction. Only that my freelance is probably more purely illustration and then my fulltime job is more of the design.

JG: Your creative output takes many different forms – you dabble in a few different realms – illustration, typography, photography etc. and you’re quite prolific! Do you have a favourite way to work and can you tell me a bit about your process?

GP: It’s kind of weird because I don’t really see the work I do as work, so I do so much different stuff all the time because it’s just kind of…me…living?

JG: Just living my life, man!

GP: Yeah! I’m just living my life! No, I did go to design school but I kind of thought this way before then. I guess it’s like a part of your brain that’s always turned on once you tap into it. So I constantly see new ideas and I think of new things to do all the time. Once that design part of my brain has been activated it’s permanently on. I guess that’s why I always move into different areas and mediums, because I’m always experimenting and thinking of new things I want to try out. Doing what I do, it’s really good because you can always combine everything and I don’t have to purely be an illustrator and I don’t have to purely be a designer. It’s good to be able to do everything.

JG: And what about your process – when you get a new project where do you begin?

GP: It depends what it is. Especially with my fulltime work, it starts with meeting bands or chatting with a client about stuff they really love or stuff they really hate; then visual stuff, like researching on the Internet and looking at shitloads of books. I guess a basic process is kind of the same for each project – you’ll start researching in some way or another and that’s a good part of it too because you could get a new project and all of a sudden you’re looking into stuff and learning stuff about an area you’d never even thought about before.

I recently did this illustration job for this Indian festival and all of a sudden I had to start researching Indian culture and the way things are celebrated there and it was really amazing – but the day before I’d never even thought about it.

JG: Did you see the colour festival? It’s really cool.

GP: Yeah! Isn’t it amazing? I love it because you’ll get a phone call or an email and then you’re put on this new path of looking into something that you’ve never even really thought about before. You don’t know what the next job’s going to be or who’s going to call, so it’s really cool because your path is always being pushed in different directions.

JG: Do you have a favourite topic, subject or theme that you’re exploring at the moment?

GP: Not really. My favourite stuff like that is pretty constant. I like old children’s books and I like really minimal, flat shapes and colours – I don’t really like texture very much.

JG: For the MCA zine fair I saw you working on some zines featuring cute foodstuffs and little characters – do you have a favourite thing to depict?

GP: Oh yeah – like something I’m drawing heaps at the moment? I’m pretty into drawing food at the moment. I’d like to do a recipe book or something similar with someone. I made a zine about junk food – yeah, it’s weird, I don’t know – why did I do that? I’m into junk food and drawing hot dogs and shit like that at the moment. If I’m doodling when I’m on the phone, that’s probably what I’m drawing. It’s weird. Hot dogs, kittens – whatever has come into my life at that point.

JG: It seems to be mainly fun stuff, which is nice.

GP: Yeah. I don’t know, a lot of people say that. I mean I also like to use every colour, all the time. I like minimal Swiss-style design and simplistic stuff, but I like using shitloads of colours. I’m kind of taking that minimal approach but flipping it a bit.

JG: Maxing it out when it comes to the colour?

GP: Yeah, just like I wasn’t meant to in Kindergarten when I got told off. I like stuff to be bright and happy and I don’t like serious stuff really…at all.

JG: Is that a conscious decision or do you just find yourself all of a sudden drawing hot dogs and ice creams and thinking, ‘oh well, I’m doing it again…’?

GP: Yeah! No, it’s not conscious. I don’t know…I’m not a very serious person and I feel like there’s already enough boring, serious stuff in the world and I’d rather just make stuff that’s fun and cute.

JG: So you mentioned that you’d be interested in collaborating on a cookbook. Other than that, what would be your ultimate project?

GP: Well, doing the mural that I’m about to do is pretty ultimate. I’ve never really done anything at that kind of scale before and something that’s so…it’s just out there in the world. I mean, I do drawings and I have a blog and I work for music artists, but I don’t feel like they have the ability to reach the amount of people that a mural would because a mural is something that’s permanently out there in the world, and people will be walking past it.

JG: That was the result of a council grant, right?

GP: Yeah it’s City of Sydney – part of Art and About. So they commission artists every year and give them spots around the city to put things.

JG: Can we reveal the location?

GP: Yeah, it’s not going to be up until later, but it’s Nithsdale Lane in Surry Hills. It’s pretty tucked away but that’s kind of cool. It will be quite a surprise for people I think, because it’s going to be really full-on and bright and it’s kind of a dingy area that I never really knew was there!

JG: Any hot dogs?

GP: No! There’s no hot dogs in there but there will be other cute stuff!

JG: Awesome. So what else are you working on at the moment?

GP: I’m into collage and cutting instead of drawing. So cutting out shapes to make images. Henri Matisse had this theory – I think it was actually called ‘cutting as drawing’ – but he did what is just about my favourite piece of art of all time, The Snail. It’s about 4 metres by 4 metres and has these massive squares of paper arranged into this coil, which is this beautiful, really simple snail.

It’s in the Tate in London. I saw it when I was over there and it totally changed my outlook on making stuff. Assembling stuff into shapes instead of drawing shapes. I am kind of doing that more in my practice at the moment.

JG: You’re involved in a show for Sydney Design Week – can you tell me about that?

GP: Yeah. That’s on Wednesday. It’s called ‘A Touch of Class’. I think the whole theme for Sydney Design Week is about old being new again, so the girls who started this really cool blog called ‘Tough Titties’ asked me to take part. They’re really awesome and they promote females in the design industry because it can be a total boys club – I work with two dudes, all the photographers we get in are dudes, all the freelancers we get in are dudes, retouchers are always dudes – and before these guys, in Sydney I didn’t feel like there was much of an avenue to promote females doing design and other cool stuff.

So it’s really awesome that they’ve started it and they’ll be doing more exhibitions and artist interviews and stuff. This exhibition is about twenty female artists and it’s really going to be good because I like being given an item and just seeing what people do with it. I like going to exhibitions like that where everyone has the same starting point.

JG: And that was a doily, right?

GP: Yes – a giant doily!

You can catch Georgia Perry at A Touch of Class Somedays Gallery, 72B Fitzroy St, Surry Hills. Launch this Wednesday August 3 from 6pm.

Next story: Homme Time – Pageant

Unslayable

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:12:36 +0000

Text: Digby Woods

Here’s a bit of trivia: the oxymoronic Little Dragon took their name from the frustrated in-studio tantrums of lead singer Yukimi Nagano. Thankfully for the other band members, that fire is no longer spewing forth at random but has been creatively channeled into the likes of Ritual Union, Little Dragon’s third, and arguably most eclectic, album.

Although difficult to categorise, their sound is instantly recognisable, drawing deep upon familiar concepts such as love, heartache, renewal and uncertainty. Having earned fans in Gorillaz and Erykah Badu, Little Dragon are set to burn the stage down at this year’s Parklife festival. In anticipation of this, Digby Woods talked with Yukimi about songwriting, recording on the road, Toro Y Moi and Star Wars.

Digby Woods: When asked about the songwriting process, many bands say that they simply get together and make music. How does Little Dragon go about this initial creative process?

Yukimi Nagano: Well, we pretty much do what you described. If you want to simplify it, it is pretty much just getting together and trying stuff and experimenting to see what we can come up with and to try to stay inspired, make sounds and songs that we feel excited about. As passionate as we are about making music, I think the reason we got addicted to it was that we just wanted to have fun and I think that’s still what we want to keep when we write today.

DW: Is there a specific place where you prefer to make music, that is more comfortable, or can you do it anywhere?

YN: I think that we could do it anywhere but we’ve recorded the first, second and now with Ritual Union, the third album, all in our studio in Gothenburg. That’s kind of our space, our security. We can get a little bit lost. We have a huge kitchen, we make food, we hang out, we rehearse there, we record everything there, we used to live there at one point, and it has our history in it. I’m not saying that we couldn’t do it anywhere else, but I definitely feel that it’s good to be in a comfortable zone where you can try stuff and not feel like, “Oh my god, it’s costing me this much to be here,” or, “I don’t want to record something that’s weird because maybe someone is listening who’ll think that’s stupid,” you know? You want to feel completely relaxed.

DW: What is it like for you to record while touring?

YN: We can come up with ideas on the road but I think we still want to record them properly at home in our studio. It feels a bit limited on the road. I feel like 50% of the time I record vocals on the road I want to redo them when I get home. But definitely when you instantly want to write something down when you feel inspired, that’ll happen and we’ll record then for sure.

DW: What kind of equipment/programs do you use in the production process and how has this changed over subsequent albums? Have you upgraded over time, or stayed with more or less the same instruments etcetera that you were first using?

YN: This is definitely a question that one of the guys should answer and not me (laughing), because they each have their own individual set-ups. It’s basically one room with three computers and a bunch of synths and a bunch of junk everywhere, and the ideas come up from the individual corners and by the end of it everyone has added their piece and it’s a song that we’ve made together, but it starts out from one person pretty much.

DW: When creating a song, do you wrap your vocals more around an idea one of the others has come up with, whether Erik or Fredrik or Hakan, or is it vice versa, do they build off you?

YN: It’s definitely the beat first. Generally it’s always a bass line and drums first, and then the melodies and lyrics come afterwards.

DW: Is there anything past or present that you’ve especially had fun experimenting with while songwriting?

YN: I think the process has always been the same but we’re always looking for a new sound, like this new album is based very much on live drums, it has more of an organic sound to it, maybe a bit more minimal. I think Machine Dreams has a lot of layers and a lot of soundscapes and is sort of thicker in the sound, whereas the production on Ritual Union, our most recent album, is more minimal, more resolved.

DW: If you could score any movie, past, present or future, what would it be and how would you do it?

YN: Probably Star Wars. I’m kind of a Star Wars fan. Fredrik has a sophisticated film taste whereas I don’t really watch that much film. I really like A Serious Man, the Cohen Brothers film. I love the Cohen Brothers, I thought A Serious Man was great, but I especially like their early stuff. I thought Fargo was great. They have kind of a weird feeling in them, an atmosphere that feels very realistic but also kind of like a nightmare at the same time.

DW: Are there any artists you’ve been listening to lately that you’re particularly taken with?

YN: I really like Ariel Pink, The Dreams, Nite Jewel. I haven’t listened to Toro Y Moi’s new album yet but I heard some songs from before so I’m really excited to pick that up.

Little Dragon

Next story: Just Say Yes – Georgia Perry

The Revelation

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:11:29 +0000

Text: Millie Stein Images: Douglas Lance Gibson

In 1912, the Austrian artist Egon Schiele penned a letter to ‘Dr. E’ regarding Schiele’s painting ‘Revelation’.

“The revelation of a living being,” he wrote. “A poet, an artist, a sage, a spiritualist, as you will. Have you ever felt the impression a great personality makes on the world?”

On a wall-length bookshelf in the Lover studio, Nic Briand and Susien Chong keep a book of Schiele’s work. Surrounding it are monographs from key creative figures of the recent past (Ed van der Elsken, Kris Kool, Harmony Korine, Poiret) plus the occasional iconoclast (Patty Heart, by way of a 1974 copy of Newsweek).

I don’t know if Briand and Chong have ever read Schiele’s words. In fact, I prefer to think that they haven’t, and that the book exerts a silent and pervasive influence as they spend their days drawing inspiration from great personalities – which, in their case, are simply those that are real.

“I think everything we’ve done has always been through an authentic desire just to connect with people,” says Chong.

“A lot of stuff which has become very standard fare for a brand, like social media and building a culture, like saying, ‘We’ll sponsor this film or we’ll sponsor this girl in a band and give her clothes’ and so on, wasn’t really thought of back when we started. It was kind of seen as peripheral and, in some cases, a waste of time,” says Briand.

“The first people [to whom] we said, ‘Yeah sure, have that top, take those pants’ were real girls. They were working in galleries or playing a guitar and doing a gig here and there. They were just day-to-day, but to us that was more exciting than packaging up a whole thing and sending it off to Paris Hilton.”

In 2001, when Briand and Chong launched Lover at the Bondi Markets, labels did not seek to make extraordinary clothes for ordinary people. Designers were not interested in a quotidian interpretation of their work, let alone the possibility that this sort of interpretation might influence future collections. Scott Schuman had yet to pick up a digital camera, or at least yet to post the results on his blog, and Tumblr was six years away from turning moodboards into a global pastime.

“We laugh because we used to drive to Mosman to go to Kinokuniya, which was quite a small bookstore then,” says Briand. “We bought these very small magazines that were – I mean, it blew our minds – street style. People were being shot in Paris and London – again, they were coming out of the shows… Those things, we pored over them. And they were sealed, too, so you didn’t know if they were going to be good or not. You’d open it and be like, ‘Crap, crap, crap… oh my god!… crap, crap, crap…’ And at that point, one girl would become a muse for an entire collection.”

“And it was a pilgrimage, too,” adds Chong. “Like, ‘next Saturday, let’s drive over the bridge!’”

The life-work parallels and dense layers of reference that seamlessly integrate into Lover’s output continue to fascinate both their customers and the media. That Briand and Chong manage to mine music, film and visual culture for far more than aesthetic value only adds to the mystery.

Perhaps this is why everyone still gets hung up on trying to pin down Lover’s ‘girl’. She is a fictional amalgam, yet her tastes and proclivities are so tangible that it has become impossible to think about the brand without her. She is their muse – the face of a season and of the label in its entirety – but first and foremost, she is a person.

To mark their tenth year, Lover held a show at the Sydney Opera House’s Studio as part of Rosemount Australian Fashion Week in May. It was here that the mythology of the Lover girl reached its greatest height, literally and figuratively: a giant Perspex screen was elevated high above the audience to display her many faces throughout their various campaigns and projects. In a more immediate sense, the literal Lover girls – the models in the show – had their faces beamed around the room before they reached the runway to reveal their look.

“It played out exactly how we’d discussed six months before the show, the way we wanted it to look and what we wanted it to do,” says Briand. “There can be a bit of a stigma attached to Lover that’s very vintage-leaning, pretty and it’s all sundrenched David Hamilton imagery-kind of thing… We felt that there’s quite a modern edge – for want of a better word – to the brand, in the way that we have pushed in terms of technology, the way that we’ve tried to present the clothes and the garments themselves.”

The collection was named for the Chinese fable of the White Serpent, which tells the story of a young scholar who falls in love with a beautiful woman, unaware that her true form is a white snake. A monk, eager to prevent a violation of nature, casts the woman out by trapping her for eternity in Hangzhou’s Leifeng Pagoda.

And when it came to the clothes, it was immediately apparent that magic had gone on. It felt like Briand and Chong had gathered up the successes and lapses of the last ten years and honestly, truly pushed it.

Set to music by Suicide and Spiritualized, Lover presented looks befitting (yes, really) a goddess – albeit a cool, complex, slightly contrary one. Bold red silks and strong shoulders were offset by the most dramatic of white lace dresses, and it all felt very adult. With all due respect to the person she once was, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, the Lover girl was stepping into the shoes of the Lover Woman.

“There wasn’t a conscious decision that it’s going to have more attitude and it’s going to be more sexy and more mature and more whatever,” says Briand. “All it was, was just running on the same thought patterns and the same ideas that we do with each collection, and the same [process of] trying to push the pieces. There was obviously a conscious decision that we’re putting on a show, but that attitude and that maturity, we felt, has been a slow progression through each collection getting to that point.”

“I think that there are facets to any person,” says Chong. “Even though we’ve carved out an archetype or an idea of who the Lover girl is, she can change. And that’s definitely a reflection of where we’re at – because of our connection to Lover and how it pretty much comes, authentically, from us. If you can manage to highlight those other elements of a person’s personality and explore new terrain, but still keep that Lover sense about it… that’s the biggest challenge for us.”

“I think as soon as you become comfortable, you don’t make credible art,” Briand continues. “We were very, very happy with the show, but as time moves on you start to analyse it. All of a sudden it’s: ‘those pants could have been done differently. I wouldn’t have put that look on that girl.’ Some people see that as a negative thing, being so hard on yourself, but it’s purely creativity that makes you do that. You’ve got to be pushing against something. We always think that if we clean up our desks and make everything neat, the ideas will flow. But it’s not until you’re in some weird zone where there are books piled around you and you haven’t eaten or slept properly that your best ideas can come.”

Lover‘s ‘The White Serpent’ is in stores now.

Next story: Gang Colours – Gang Atelier

Donny Be Good

Gabe Knowles — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:10:54 +0000

Text: Gabriel Knowles Images: James Nelson

If Donny Benet shoots to U2-esque prominence or ends up playing to a stadium full of adolescent girls shrieking his name despite not knowing why they actually like him, Hollywood will make a film about him. It will be the first feature about the life of a disco accordionist/jazz bassist.

See, the Donny Benet story has it all. First of all there’s the name, Donny Benet (ben-ay), it rolls off the tongue. It makes you want to pick up the phone, dial, wait a few rings and ask for Donny. I actually do and he answers, sounding quite laid back as he explains that he’s tending to the vegetable garden at his family home in Hurstville, south of Sydney’s CBD. “Snow peas have got to come out soon, they’ve got a bit of fungus growing,” Donny says. “If you stay a bit ahead you’ve always got enough for a nice soup.”

Then there’s the family backstory: Donny’s dad, a famous Italian accordionist, fell in love with the daughter of an accordion repairer, of all people. You couldn’t script that better if you tried. Of course Donny picked up the accordion, but at age 15 the electric bass tempted him away from his dad’s beloved instrument. Benet Senior didn’t always approve but, in keeping with the scripted theme, he’s since come around. Donny reckons that his upbringing gave him the tools he needed to make his debut album Don’t Hold Back all on his own.

“One of the things that came out of that is that I can play a bit of everything, I can play the piano, keyboard, I can play the piano accordion still, I play a lot of bass. I like to create all the sounds myself, so there’s no loops or anything like that. Coming from that background, it’s not the only way I know, but it’s the way I feel most comfortable and productive.”

“The drum patterns are obviously looped but I play everything else,” he quickly clarifies.

Donny’s stint as a solo lounge act in Las Vegas has all the filmic boxes ticked too. A gig arranged by a family friend soon became a lonely experience but Donny is adamant the material he managed to accrue there more than makes up for it.

“I was playing on my own in Vegas but it was a different thing. I was playing in the background and it wasn’t really an appreciative audience, at all. It inspired me to write all the songs on this album. It definitely inspired me in that aspect. That’s why a lot of the songs are written and they’re a bit desperate, it was good to get out of there in a way,” he recalls.

“The desperation was more on a relations level. I was trying to interact with people but everyone has tunnel vision there and their relationships are based around money. You’ve got to do what you do to make it a positive situation and I’m really glad all these songs came out of it.”

The songs that came out of it are in essence a collection of synth-laden, smooth grooves that sound like some early ’80s r’n'b has been melted down with classic disco. Whether or not they’re enough for Donny to make the silver screen proper, only time will tell – in the meantime, he’s taken getting on screen into his own hands.

“There’s also a bonus karaoke DVD of all the songs that Spod made. It’s awesome. It’s also the only album being released right now that has an accompanying karaoke DVD.”

Don’t Hold Back and bonus karaoke DVD are out now through Rice Is Nice

Donny Benet launches Don’t Hold Back in Sydney at Goodgod Small Club with Collarbones and Kirin J Callinan on August 12, 2011 and The Workers Club in Melbourne with Mark Barrage and Electric Smile Band on August 13, 2011.

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