Se press Release hd steve Kilbey (The Church) New Zealand tour July 07
Download 1.73 Mb.
|
| Part Irish and Aboriginal, Carmody has established himself over the past six years as one of our finest singers and songwriters. He has toured the world, co-written with the likes of Paul Kelly and Tim Finn, and committed to tape some of the most devastatingly honest and emotional songs you're likely to hear.
Born in Cairns, Carmody and family moved to southern Queensland when he was four. He grew up around drovers and stockmen before being sent by the Government and the church to a boarding school, which he describes as more like an orphanage. "They were so rigid and cruel to children that I wanted to go back to the old ways," he said. The old ways meant growing up around adults on the land, all of them, as Carmody puts it, "blackfellas". "The curiosity and the imagination of a child was really fostered and nurtured in the black community. In the white community they start them off at pre-school and then kindergarten and it's a control mechanism right until the end when you become an electrical engineer and you become a cog in the consumer society. "I was taught another way: everything is relevant, you have 180-degree vision on everything. Curiosity and imagination were really, really played up and encouraged. I had a different socialisation from most kids in the consumer society." CARMODY came to the recording industry late in life (he was in his mid-30s when he released his acclaimed debut, Pillars Of Society) and maybe it is this lack of desperation for success that has sustained him. He won't do anything to sign the deal. He won't play games with radio stations who still refuse to play his records. Indeed, Carmody licences his albums to Festival Records after paying for recording himself, ensuring the songs will always be owned by him or his family. "They don't tell me what to do," he said. "I don't do demo tapes, I just do what I want. You have to go through the motions if you want to get the propaganda out, but Festival have never got in my road." He said it defiantly, but with no hint of arrogance. In the same breath he added: "As long as it's got the feel and the spiritual base, it'll stand. It won't sell, but it'll stand." Carmody's new solo album, Images And Illusions, is arguably his best to date. Co-produced by the Church's Steve Kilbey in Kilbey's own studio, Carmody has written a group of songs that veer all over the shop, from his images of London to road songs, death songs and an almost cheesy love song. Vocally the performance is quite inspired. "That was a funny one," he said. "I was looking for a co-producer and a studio. I read a few articles about Steve and I liked his attitude to the recording industry for a start, and secondly I found out that he had his own studio. I gave him a tinkle, and his brothers Russell and John sort of knew my work, so he accepted. "Bang! All of a sudden it just happened, and I'll tell you it was a bloody pleasure working with him. We didn't even know we were going to do it until days before I lobbed there. He was in Sweden and we had no contact. I rang him four days before and said 'Is it still on?' and he said 'Yeah, yeah, come on down'." GIVEN Carmody's reluctance at demo-ing material and the relaxed way the album developed, it is ironic that Images And Illusions sounds in part is as if it was painstakingly pieced together. "These excellent musicians just seemed to turn up at the studio," Carmody recalled. "We hardly rang any of them. They heard it was going on, and next thing Boris Goudonof turns up and Linda Neil and Alt . I mean, you'd swear there was about two years preparation gone into it, but it was definitely the dead opposite to that." HEAR HIM Images And Illusions is available through Festival Records. AN
Document shd0000020011026drbq006en SE Green Guide; New Sounds HD Beasties Go Buddhist And Beyond BY Richard Plunkett WC 754 words PD 11 August 1994 SN The Age SC AGEE
PG 12 LA English CY Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd LP
Ill Communication -- Beastie Boys. Capitol 7243 8 28599 2 5. TD
POP culture surfers extraordinaire the Beastie Boys have made their best abrasive, funky and witty music on Ill Communication, their fourth album. Lyrically and musically the three New York Jewish rappers are arch fossickers, sampling a sheep's bleat for part of the beat on B-Boys Makin With the Freak Freak to name-checking Kojak, film-maker John Woo and pianist-singer Dr John on Sure Shot. Its the musical equivalent of the increasingly prevalent habit of skipping through ever-multiplying sources of information. The Beasties show an unerringly wild sense of humor and taste, they are a very different group from their chart- topping days with the thuggish 1986 album Licenced to Ill. Ill Communication continues their development as musicians, as they play their ripe and crashingly heavy funk rhythms with more precision than their punk roots would have them let on. Their previous album Check Your Head was slightly easier going, if only because the shrieking rap vocals of Ad Rock (Adam Horovitz) weren't so in your face. The Ad Rock adenoidal squawk prevents them from being subsumed into general listening content. The conversion of MCA (Adam Yauch) to Buddhism certainly brings a surprising new element to the group - the band that shouted You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Party now sing ``Respect to Shantideva and all the others/Who brought down the Dharma for sisters and brothers'' on Bodhisattva Vow. Its an odd touch of sincerity among the frenzied litter of pop culture scraps. Sometime Anywhere. The Church. White TVD93396. THE transformation of the Church into a studio-based group, after shrinking from a conventional four-piece to comprising only singer and bass player Steve Kilbey and guitarist Marty Willson-Piper, has yielded a dense score of giddy acid rhythms, dreamy lyrics and synthesised washes. Sometime Anywhere is psychedelia updated to incorporate all of the Brian Eno-pioneered electronic ambience with 1990s technology. There is barely a noise on the noise that hasn't been remoulded and smoothed into a wistful soundscape, flowing gently underneath Kilbey's half-serious Guru lyrics. They have almost completely discarded the traditional rock drums and guitar riffery of previous albums, preferring to trance out on the dance floor. Rhythmically they employ drum loops and added layers of percussion that U2 also thought were necessary to stay relevant in the age of dance music on Zooropa. There is no song as irresistible as Under the Milky Way on Somewhere Anywhere, but Steve Kilbey has produced one of his most charming melodies on Loveblind, the current single. Several other songs strike you as worthy studio experimentations that in no case could be reproduced live. Studio albums by bands that can no longer continue touring have a tendency towards lopsided self-indulgence, but the quality of the music on this album and its ability to exude a haunting, cloudy ambience make this album worthwhile. Sometime Anywhere also includes a seven-track bonus disc, including Drought recorded live in Amsterdam (which strikes me as something like the Church's spiritual home city) and a collection of other noodlings by this imaginative duo. I HAD A NEW YORK GIRLFRIEND. Robert Forster. Shock/Kqnkiubein 001. THE lanky, fey and wilfully individualistic ex-Go Betweens singer here fills time before his next album of originals with a pleasingly lighthearted collection of cover versions. His singing and guitar- playing may not be the strongest but it takes Forster's unusual charisma to make a cover of the deeply silly '80s party tune Echo Beach into something special. I Had a New York Girlfriend has a mature, casual feel, helped by the contributions of various members of the Bad Seeds and Dave Graney's Coral Snakes, blues guitar player Charlie Owen and violin wunderkind Warren Ellis of the Dirty Three. Apart from Echo Beach, which would make a great novelty hit, Forster also ploughs his way through the power ballad of all power ballads Alone, by Heart, and the poppy 2451 by Grant Hart of Novamob. Throwing in a few obscure songs by Bob Dylan, one of the Monkees and several others from Forster's extremely broad taste in music, he presents a modest, low-key but enjoyable album. Mostly semi-acoustic, I Had a New York Girlfriend makes a fine album to wind down on, and for Forster to gather himself for another much-awaited set of new songs. AN
Document agee000020011028dq8b00kmu SE Green Guide; Keynotes HD Arresting Cummings Delivers Right Between The Ears BY Mike Daly WC 928 words PD 29 September 1994 SN The Age SC AGEE PG 14
LA English CY Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd LP FALLING SWINGER -- Stephen Cummings. Polydor 523552. TD
THE title of Stephen Cummings's new album is hidden away on a track from the accompanying Live In Lovetown ``bonus'' disc: Beware of Darkness, one of two post-Beatles songs by George Harrison revived in fine style by Cummings. Watch out now, take care, beware of falling swingers is how that song begins, in a mood of languid irony perfectly suited to Cummings, who departed Lovetown (Elsternwick) for Sydney and the production skills of The Church's Steve Kilbey. The result is easily the most arresting album Cummings has recorded, packed with 13 meticulously crafted songs. Kilbey has surrounded the intimate, frequently doubled vocals with a wall of guitars and ambient, intoxicating sounds. The latter's achievement is even more remarkable considering the core musical backing comprises players who appeared on Cummings's 1992 Unguided Tour album - regular guitarist Shane O'Mara, bassist Bill McDonald and vocalist Rebecca Barnard - augmented here by Grant McLennan (guitar), drummer Tim Powell, Kilbey and his brother Russell. The album hits you gloriously between the ears from the outset with a muted, thudding drumbeat, layered guitars, sensual voices and brassy effects on the The Big Room. It follows up with a lazy killer of a pop song in White Noise (co-written with O'Mara) and confidently invades The Church's stylistic territory on September 13 (penned by Kilbey, who shares birthdays with Cummings) until the inclusion of a muted trumpet alters the musical equation. The album's centrepiece is Fell From a Great Height, a classic construction founded on gospel piano and echoing vocal, slowly adding the rest of the instruments - drums and cymbals, bass (Kilbey, although McDonald co-wrote this one), strummed guitars, synths and voices. And I love the way Cummings parodies his own obvious delight at the melodic riff that started the whole thing off. There are strong reminders of the old Steve on What the Eyes Have Made Welcome - you know, late, lonely nights in a deserted bar - with echoing piano by co-writer Abrahams, wafting Kilbey autoharp and Barnard's soft vocal accompaniment. And again, on A River Lies Between Us and 100 Different Ways, both collaborations with O'Mara. Cummings continues to excel at self-revelatory ballads, such as What Was There To Worry About, with its nice balance of past insecurities and present wisdom-in-hindsight, the luxuriant, slow-dancing romanticism of Days Chasing Days and the emptiness of separation on God Knows. The most forceful tracks concern real-life experiences: the first, I Wish That the Show Was Over, wrestles with conflicting emotions at his mother's hospital bedside; the second is an impressionistic recollection of a recent visit to Vietnam - a powerful blend of narrative verse and blues-driven guitars. And then he breathes fresh life into seven no-frills covers on Live in Lovetown, including a reworking of his own, catchy Some Prayers Are Answered (co-written with Andrew Pendlebury), the Staple Singers' lusty gospelling Just Another Soldier in the Army of Love, the guitar- rich country blues of Lucinda Williams's Howling At Midnight and Jesse Winchester's delightful Do It. AN
Document agee000020011028dq9t00rog SE News and Features HD THE SEVENTH CUMMINGS WC 564 words PD 9 October 1994 SN Sun Herald SC SHD PG 137
LA English CY Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd LP IN a recording career spanning almost two decades - with the Sports and then as a solo artist - Stephen Cummings has benefited from many musical lessons. Perhaps the most important, and the hardest to accept, is that an album is simply a representation of where the performer was at - in the sterile environment of a recording studio - on that particular day, at that particular hour. TD
The tape machine sets in stone what is in essence an ever-changing beast. How Cummings sang on a Monday at 5pm is not how he'd sing on Wednesday at midnight or the following Friday at dawn. He said: "I only think of the record as being that moment, and that's it. A lot of songs you will never play as well again as you do on the album, and some you play much better later. It's infuriating, but just to capture something at the time is the thing." What Cummings caught on tape in March this year is his seventh solo album, Falling Swinger. For the first time since the electronically-flavoured Senso in the early 1980s Cummings hopped on a flight from Melbourne to Sydney and bunkered down for a month to record. "It was just a good break," he said. "It was better weather, I could walk around and get away from everything. It was like a holiday, and I was in quite a good mood. I stayed with friends, in a hotel, in the recording studio -which is in Steve Kilbey's house in Surry Hills. It was during the gay Mardi Gras, so it was a totally different experience for me walking around town." And did he find himself in the Mardi Gras mood? "Well, I got into a mardi gras mood. Being in Sydney was like playing truant." Cummings had never met his producer, the Church's Steve Kilbey, before the Falling Swinger recording sessions. Given the Church's penchant for a thick, atmospheric sound, it is hardly surprising that Falling Swinger occasionally has a rather dense quality to it. The first track, The Big Room, sounds like an Echo and Bunnymen out take. Vocals have been double-tracked, effects have been piled on, something Cummings has not indulged in since the Sports. "It was one of those things where we were on the same wave length," said Cummings of Kilbey. "I think he's a year younger than me, but we've got similar reference points. When we talked it was sort of like in shorthand. "He got tough with me when it came to doing the vocals. I usually stick the vocals on at the end, and I do it very quickly. I just do it with the engineer, and I have no-one commenting at all about it until I piece it all together. "On this occasion he took me through all the songs, and he would suggest changing some of the words or suggest singing a different way. "At first I thought: 'Oh give me a break', and then I thought: 'Oh well, I'll do it'. And I got into the spirit of it, and, you know, it improved it." HEAR THEM Falling Swinger is out now on Polygram Records. Stephen Cummings will release a duet with Toni Childs later this month. SEE THEM Stephen Cummings plays Sydney in November. AN
Document shd0000020011030dqa9005y4 SE Metro HD STILL SPOOKED, AFTER ALL THESE FEARS BY STORY BY JACK MARX WC 652 words PD 7 October 1994 SN Sydney Morning Herald SC SMHH
PG 5 LA English CY Copyright of John Fairfax Group Pty Ltd LP
So, Stephen Cummings, what's happening? "Um ... what, right at this moment?" OK. Let's talk about this tour. "Tour?" The shows in Sydney. "Um ... yeah, well, heh heh ... we're doing shows ... yeah ... no ... just sort of doing some shows. Coming to Sydney to um, y'know ... play some shows ..."Well, stop the presses. Speak with Stephen Cummings and it's hard to believe he's a veteran of the Australian music scene, ex-singer with the groundbreaking Sports in the late 1970s and early '80s and bearer of a seventh solo album, Falling Swinger. TD
But, then again, throughout his career, Cummings has never looked remarkably comfortable. "Well, yeah," he concedes, "I'm kind of uncomfortable. It's just sort of an embarrassing thing to be doing, being a performer. Some people are really up-front and gregarious as performers and you'll probably find that they're like that as people anyway. Whereas others are more er ... y'know um ... more ahh ... y'know, ahh ... yes, I'm uncomfortable. "The problem is," he continues, "that some songs are just a bit personal and embarrassing. But, when playing live, I just kind of squint my eyes a bit and get a vague picture and not take anyone's definite details in or it might freak me out. When I was in the Sports, Clive Davis from Arista Records came backstage at one of our shows and said: 'If only you'd open your eyes, you could be very famous.' Well, I tried, but it spooks me too much." Part of this introverted demeanour may stem from the fact that Cummings has never really tarted himself about in the local music scene. "I'm an outcast," he laughs. "That's how it has turned out. I always had my own interests and agenda and I've always tried to stick to that. I had no interest in being a part of the industry as such." All of that changed when Cummings was introduced to Steve Kilbey, singer/songwriter for the Church. Kilbey agreed to produce Cummings's latest album and the result is far and away the best recorded document Cummings has released thus far. Kilbey's touch is unmistakable, taking Cummings's simplistic songwriting style and plunging into the murky production depths so instantly recognisable as Church territory. Falling Swinger is a much more solemn and moody record than we are accustomed to from Cummings and it's not all due to Kilbey. The opening track, The Big Room, features the lyrics: All the wrong things All the stupid fun That I was sorry for Right after it was done While not plumbing the depths of Leonard Cohen, it's a long way from: Oh, gymnasium I go in, I go out I'm working out | (Gymnasium, 1985) Or indeed: I feel better now | (the health insurance commercial in which Cummings can be heard). "Initially I wanted to make an all-piano record with Chris Abrahams and then it gradually got changed, Steve Kilbey got involved; a drummer was rung up at the last minute. It's an old-fashioned concept, making an album. You can make a certain number of records and then, y'know, that's enough. I'm unsure at this point whether I've reached enough or not." This may be the reason why Cummings is making noises about taking a year off from music. "I'm just finishing off a novel. Just for something to do. I'm a bit worried about it being accepted because it jumps genres a lot. It's kind of like a travel book, a father and son book, a family saga, a train journey through Vietnam; there's a bit of romance, a bit of magic, y'know." Stephen Cummings plays at the Harbourside Brasserie tonight and tomorrow night. AN
Document smhh000020011030dqa700m6t SE SHOW
HD Church never needed to reform // ROCK: There have been some defections in the Australian band, but the remaining members say all's well. BY CARY DARLING: The Orange County Register WC 615 words PD 26 June 1994 SN The Orange County Register SC OCR
ED MORNING PG F32
LA English CY (c) 1994 Orange County Register. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights reserved. LP Marty Willson-Piper is not in a good mood. The guitarist with The Church, an Australian band whose psychedelicized guitar pop has earned it a cult following in the United States, doesn't like it when he's asked about the group's recent "break-up." TD
"I don't know why people keep asking me that. I don't know where they get that idea from," he said curtly. Uh, how about from the official publicity bio, dubbed The Church Times? It states quite plainly, "When guitarist Peter Koppes announced he was leaving the band in 1992, founding members Steve Kilbey and Marty Willson-Piper decided to finally call it a day." But Willson-Piper says nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Koppes' exit _ following in the footsteps of drummer Richard Ploog, who left four years ago _ had little effect on The Church, according to Willson-Piper. "Peter left, big deal!" he said. "He wasn't even contributing in the later years. Steve and I went along normally." He maintains little was affected on The Church's new album, "Sometime Anywhere." "We didn't have a band to write with. We went into the studio, and we worked a lot with loops. I played half the bass on it. Steve played most of the keyboards as well. "We just got on with making the record. We're two people who are musicians who can write songs." This most recent schism in The Church is just the latest adventure in the group's efforts to find an audience. After storming out of Australia with the likes of Midnight Oil and INXS as part of the antipodean new wave of the early '80s, The Church at first earned only a cult following in this country. The group made some mesmerizing albums _ including "The Blurred Crusade" (1982) and "Heyday" (1986) _ but could never break the big time. That changed in 1988, when the band, which had been with Capitol and Warner Bros., signed with Arista and released "Starfish." The subsequent single, "Under the Milky Way," became The Church's first bona-fide U.S. hit. However, the slick "Starfish" and its follow-up, "Gold Afternoon Fix," were recorded in Los Angeles with American producers _ experiences Kilbey and Willson-Piper loathed. "I don't know about hanging in L.A. for four months, being threatened, breathing in smog," said Willson-Piper, who now resides in Stockholm. "We listened to `Starfish' (recently), and it sounded unadventurous." After "Starfish," Kilbey, Willson-Piper and Koppes recorded the decidedly uncommercial "Priest=Aura." "One of the best career moves was making `Priest=Aura,' " he said. "The thing with The Church is one day someone will realize The Church is about making interesting music with a mood. If the world doesn't want that, OK, we're in the wrong era. It's like Leonard Cohen; 20 years later people realize this guy is great." Arista may not be willing to wait 20 years for another hit. Yet "Sometime Anywhere" shows The Church blithely going off on its own way, heedless of trends and fashions. Willson-Piper gets livid when talking about Arista's pressure on the group to add two more-commercial tracks, "Authority" and "Business Woman." But he's hopeful. Said Willson-Piper, "Next year, when the goatees are shaved off, The Church will fit in again." ART
BLACK &WHITE PHOTO; Caption: PLUGGING AWAY: The Church's personnel changes, but Marty Willson-Piper, left, and Steve Kilbey continue to write. NS GCAT : Political/General News | GENT : Arts/Entertainment IPD BIOGRAPHICAL INTERVIEW MUSIC RECORDINGS CELEBRITIES POP MUSIC PUB Freedom Communications, Inc AN Document ocr0000020011029dq6q00pfm SE SHOW HD The Church born again as twosome BY CARY DARLING; STEVE EDDY: The Orange County Register WC 613 words PD 3 June 1994 SN The Orange County Register Directory: files -> 2008 2008 -> Preparedness for the Health Consequences of Climate Change as a Potential Influence on Public Health Law and Policy 2008 -> Darryl Heller Dissertation Proposal Draft April 7, 2008 Law, Labor, and Politics: Street Railways in Brooklyn and New York, 1884-1904 2008 -> Anna Palladino Professor Calvert 2008 -> Jails replace schools in the mountain region of guerrero 2008 -> University of Arkansas at Little Rock Plan No 2008 -> This is a list of search engines we (Polson Enterprises) have found helpful from time to time 2008 -> Rnib centre for Accessible Information (cai) Literature review #2 2008 -> Anne louise cohen 2008 -> Time race# Download 1.73 Mb. Share with your friends:
|