Events / We salute Splendour!
As the final festival devotees gather their bags, pick up their muddy gumboots, and make their long journey home, the hills of Byron Bay seem eerily quiet. Over 17,500 music fans poured into Belongil Fields for the three day Splendour in the Grass event to watch music juggernauts Devo, Sigur Ros, Wolfmother, The Presets and The Cold War Kids do their thing.
Highlights of the bill included a few Australian acts rocking out, with notable performances by The Grates and The Presets with their brilliant new sophmore albums, The Panics, Yves Klein Blue and the ever-so talented Clare Bowditch. Crowd pleasers Wolfmother and Van She had everybody dancing, and The Wombats and The Cold War Kids cemented their popularity with fantastic shows that was a highlight for many. With Splendour 2008 officially over, and the very real possibility that the festival has played its last show in Byron Bay, I’ve have to say, Splendour I salute you.
Tagged: Australian festivals, Byron Bay, music festivals
RELATED
Rocking Under The Rain in Bogota, Colombia
Rock al Parque is the largest open-air free music festival in Latin America, held at the el Parque Simon Bolivar in Bogota, Colombia. This year the main guest, as usual, was the heavy rain. However, more than 300,000 people enjoyed the powerful and eclectic tunes of 45 bands from England, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, America, France and, of course, Colombia, since the aim of the festival is to showcase upcoming local bands. The Philharmonic Orchestra of Bogota is in charge of this unique open party, which has been gathering youngsters from all the corners of this ten million city, and beyond, for fourteen years. Read more
It’s the final, sultry day of Barcelona’s experimental sound-fest, Sonar, and weary punters are gazing listlessly at an empty, smoke-filled stage. Before long, a vocalist, beatboxer and grand pianist stride on, and what follows is a startling and, at times, deeply melancholic cabaret-electronic hybrid, prompting jaws to drop and delighting the drowsy. Meet Khan of Finland: ‘I tell stories about my everyday life; they are songs about love, pain, party and spirituality. I would call it bionic blues’.
Also by KATE SUTERS
From the dusty depths of Western Australia comes the making of another great Aussie band. Tame Impala have just released their self-titled EP and it’s already seducing ears across the airwaves. With a psychedelic sound akin to the rollicking groove of Led Zeppelin mixed up and delicately caressed with the sound of modern day hope and desire, this is an EP that absolutely deserves your attention.
[audio:http://www.moteldemoka.com/moka/rememberme.mp3]
David Holmes’ The Holy Pictures
David Holmes’ fourth solo album has been a long time in the making. The man who is best known for his scoring of films such as Ocean’s 11, 12 and 13, and remixing for bands like U2 and The Manic Street Preachers, took just over ten years to make his latest album. Read more
Twenty-six year old Beth Rowley hails from Bristol, England, but her smoky gospel style creates a beautifully mysterious impression of a dark diva from yesteryear, sashaying across a small stage to a packed crowd. Her debut album Little Dreamer is an enchanting mesh of country, blues and gospel that draws heavily on Rowley’s talents as a singer-songwriter. Indeed, Little Dreamer is the perfect soundtrack to a rainy Saturday afternoon, when you’ve got nothing to do but drink wine and sing along.
YOU'RE SAYING (0)
No comments yet.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Brooklyn-group School of Seven Bells have just released my new favourite album of 2008 — Alpinisms —a slow-building, crackling collection of songs which sneak into your subconscious and spin endlessly like an old, beat up 45. Read more
‘Some people call me the space cowboy, some call me the gangster of love, some people call me Maurice, cause I speak with the pompetus of love’. The pompetus of love?! Really. I don’t know what the heck Steve Miller was on the day he wrote that, but I could sure do with some now. Read more
Oh boy, this is fun. Omaha’s Tilly and the Wall are kitsch-cool-camp-vauderville meets pop-folk-flamenco, with a tap dancer for a drummer and some serious, serious charisma for a calling card.
You’d be hard-pressed finding a designer with a more impressive background than Jessie Hill. While most of us were waiting to outgrow our awkward teenage years, she was already on her way to Los Angeles. Leaving her Sydney home at just seventeen to pursue her love of fashion, it wasn’t long before Jessie Hill made a name for herself, styling cool kids like No Doubt and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Read more
The latest band to make LA proud is tropical-nu wave act Abe Vigoda. These guys are so new and so exciting that even your grandparents don’t know who they are. Yet! They describe themselves as tropical punk, but I like to think of them as nihilistic rockers — no form, no shape, just chaos. If LA’s new breed of punk popstars such as Health, Meiko Meiko and Pocohauntas make you tremble, then this band are sure to get you very worked up.
[audio:http://www.mp3hugger.net/Abe%20Vigoda%20-%20Dead%20City%20Waste%20Wilderness.mp3]
Formed in New York and now based in Rotterdam and Berlin, SMAQ is a collaborative studio for architecture and urbanism by architects Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau. Here they have created an interesting installation called Bad (bath) in the Solitude Palace Gardens in Stuttgart with the premise of creating a usable sculpture which entwines a 1000 metre long garden hose throughout a timber structure. Read more
DJ Spooky — That Subliminal Kid — is just about the deepest crate digger around, trawling the barrels of long-lost record stores for choice vinyl to spin in his wickedly dubby sets. He gave us the inside word last week on his eight favourite songs right now via our sister website, My Secret Playlist. This is what he had to say about Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Panic in Babylon: ‘If there’s anything that the twenty-first century has told us, it’s that dub is the real original hip-hop. Lee Scratch even had to make it clear in 1965 by adding “Scratch” to his middle name. Take that, Grandmaster Flash!’ Read the rest of DJ Spooky’s Secret Playlist.
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Lightspeed Champion performs The Kids unhinged
We met Lightspeed Champion (Londoner and former Test Icicles member Dev Hynes) backstage at Oxford Arts Factory at precisely 4.15pm. Read more
People are always looking to push the boundaries of street art, perhaps fed up with seeing the same (wild) style of graffiti over and over again. So, like Blu and Dan Witz, Julian Beever came into our lives like a breath of fresh air. His work is stunning, mind-boggling stuff: he manages to create a world ‘inside’ a pavement with his 3D pastel illustrations, tricking the eye into believing a dimension exists right below our very feet. Read more
Kristin Baker’s paintings strike the eye like massive Hollywood blockbusters, but have the elegance of delicate watercolors. Read more
The Japanese sure know how to think outside the box. The country that brought us Takeshi’s Castle has come with this equally genius take on modern sport, and it’s absolutely hilarious.
National Geographic Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008
National Geographic just announced the Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008. They’re all stunning, but I’m particularly fond of the one of a frog refusing to become lunch for a snake. It looks like they’re eating each other. My number two is the black-crested macaque hanging out on a beach. Read more
This beautifully soft, handmade and dyed scarf is by the New York-based designer, Ryan Sullivan. They can be purchased through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
Woohoo! We have five copies of the new Faint album, Fascination [Inertia], to give away to randomly selected Australian-based Lost At E Minor subscribers who leave a message under this post telling us about the last time they, ummm, Fainted.
DISCOVER MORE
SO...
TAGS: acoustic music animals animation Australian bands Australian fashion black and white illustrations blogs Brooklyn Brooklyn artists Brooklyn bands cartoons China collaboration colour colourful artwork colourful illustrations comics electronic music flash games folk music Hip Hop installations Japan jewellery London Los Angeles magazines Melbourne New York New York artists New York bands New York illustrators pop music portrait portraits prints rock music San Francisco soul music street art Sydney Sydney bands t-shirts technology UK bands
POPULAR:
- Marc Collin: My Secret Playlist!' - loved 63 times
- Brittanie Pendleton - loved 50 times
- Elaine Biss's feminine charms - loved 25 times
- Ed Harcourt: 'My Secret Playlist' - loved 22 times
- Prefab House - loved 19 times
- Andreco's brilliant visions - loved 18 times
- I Give Up On T-Shirts - loved 18 times
SEARCH: Can't find what you're looking for? Do a search..
IS IT GOOD FOR YOU TOO?
We hope you're enjoying your time on Lost At E Minor, but it’s not over yet. Got something to share? Tell us about it and we'll look to publish it. If you want to have your work featured on the site, we'd love to hear from you. Or if you’d just like to talk amongst yourselves, that’s cool too. Pssst, we also have an online store stocking some of the goodies we feature on the site.
If you're a media agency and want to use this platform to connect with our readership, then drop us a line and tell us about it. Oh yeah, and we do digital consulting for cool brands that want to reach the sort of demographic that visits this site.








