INTERVIEW - PHIFE DAWG, A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
Excerpts Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.

Fronting legendary New York crew A Tribe Called Quest alongside Q-Tip and DJ Ali Shaheed, diminutive rapper Phife Dawg (aka The Five Foot Assassin) is one of hip hop’s most influential figures. On the eve of Tribe’s inaugural Australian tour, he clues in MAG’s Dan Rule on overcoming personal struggles in his mission to immortalise rap’s golden era.

Hey, is that Phife?

“Who’s this?”

This is Dan Rule from Music Australia Guide in Melbourne. How you doing?

“I’m good. Hold on one second, hold on.”

Where are you living right now Phife?

“I’m living back and forth from Atlanta and the Bay Area, California. But right now, I’m in New York.”

Back home…

“Yeah, that’s right.”

It hasn’t really been widely publicised out here, but it seems like you’ve been through hell and back in the last few years, with the kidney transplant and going through dialysis and that whole process. I’d love you to take me through some of those last few years and what sort of brought you through. 

“Man, basically my support system. I just took it one day at a time and I pretty much knew I was going to be back; I just had to be patient for once in my life and that’s the road I took, you know, and God and good at the end of the day.”

Sure. I mean, working and doing what you’re doing now, do you feel like you’re a very different man for having been through all that?

“Yeah, definitely. I’m much more humble. Well, I think I was always humble, but I’m much more humble and I learned how to be patient. I think that was my worst quality before the operation; I had no patience for anything. But nowadays I’m a lot more laid back and I kind of let things come to me instead of forcing the issue, you know.”

Talk me through Songs in the Key of Phife in that sense…

“I’m like three songs away from being done with the album. Like you said, it’s called Songs in the Key of Phife, Volume One: Cheryl’s Big Son, Elma’s Grandson. Originally it was just called Cheryl’s Big Son, but just last Wednesday evening I decided to name it Elma’s Grandson as well because that’s my grandmother and she passed away last Wednesday.”

I’m sorry about that man…

“Thankyou. The funeral’s tomorrow so I definitely had to include her because a lot of people have heroes, like Malcolm X – who’s one of my heroes as well – and Magic Johnson and different celebrities of that nature, but my grandmother is definitely one of my heroes bar none, you know what I mean? So I had to involve her one way or the other.”

“So like I said, I’m three songs away from being done and, you know, it’s a record for everybody man. There’s party records, there’s records where you get to evaluate your life and maybe what it should be, things of that nature. I’ve got the, I wouldn’t say ballad, but the little lovey-dove opening, you know, because I am a married man at the end of the day so I understand what it is to be loved and to love in general, you know. All them types of records are on there.”

“I’m definitely more mature than on the last solo album in 2000 or the last Tribe album in 1998, you know, so it’s definitely a grown man’s album, but I’m still definitely a kid at heart.”

I’ve heard you’ve got a whole different bunch of producers on there, even people like Madlib’s little brother Oh No?

“Yeah, I worked with Oh No, he did a track on the album; Ali Shaheed did a track on the album. I have a production company by the name of Riddim Kidz Incorporated and it consists of myself, DJ Rasta Root from out of Atlanta and my man Snack Box and he’s from out of San Jose, California, so Snack did about seven tracks, Rasta Root did about three and I did about two or three. Ill Mind did a track, Oh No did a track… I don’t want to forget anybody… Oh, a guy Bobby Ozuna, he did like two tracks as well.”

“So we had a bunch of fun making the album and in a few weeks we’ll be starting a compilation album because I have a host of artists that I need to put out there to the world.”

I’d heard that you’d been working on straight production for a while, but hadn’t been writing lyrics. What sparked you to begin writing again?

“Good question. Honestly, after taking ill and what have you, I really didn’t want to rhyme anymore. I was thinking about just producing and putting them out, and even after the transplantation took place, I was still in that mind frame where I didn’t want to rap anymore unless it was a Tribe album, you know, and I’ll just put out artists and produce. But then I took a trip to New York and got the bug, pretty much, you know what I mean? My man Khalil out here in New York, he’s our road manager and he’s got a company that is doing a compilation as well and he asked me to do a record for the compilation and I was just like ‘Aiight, play me some beats’ and he played me one beat and I was like ‘Yo, I like that one’. I wrote a verse or two for it and then pretty much just had the bug again.”

“The other person I have to credit to Michael Rapaport, because he kept telling me I needed to do another album as a soloist. He’s directing a documentary on A Tribe Called Quest and while he was filming that we would have different talks about it during breaks and whatever and I just began to think ‘Okay, I should have a little play around with it again’.”

“So it was a combination of going to New York, Michael Rapaport and one of my best friends from St Louis, Missouri telling me, basically, that I had to get back in tune with my music and things of that nature.”

I think one of the reasons people are so excited about seeing Tribe again is that there seems to have been a lull in terms of hip hop lyricism over the last decade. There’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in terms really interesting production crews – like what’s coming out LA at the moment with Flying Lotus, Ras G, Nosaj Thing and all those guys – but we sort of haven’t seen a kind of Native Tongues or Project Blowed or Anti-Pop Consortium rise up in what seems like a long time. Would you agree with that and, I guess, why?

“Honestly, the way I see it, life is a cycle and what comes around goes around. So I think what we represented in the late 80s and early 90s, it’ll come around again. I think you’ll see that kind of hip hop again where the vintage, so to speak, will reign supreme. And not even so much that it’s a competition or like we’re competing with the new school or anything like that, but I don’t think they understand the respect factor that’s supposed to be involved when you’re in this game. I think it’s a fly-by-night thing for them. This industry is so much of a ‘what have you done for me lately?’ type of industry that they overlook the longevity that one would want to have.”

“There’s no more groups like Earth, Wind and Fire, who came out with 200 albums, or The O’Jays or The Supremes or bands of that nature. And I’m not even talking about their brand of music, but their longevity in the game. And being that hip hop is the most fickle of all music – because you can be number one for two months then not heard from for the next 12 – so at the end of the day you have to at least honour your craft, do your best to put out good music and keep it coming. Unfortunately for us, we have to do so much, yet gain so little. It’s not like the NBA where they’re guaranteed their millions, you know. The fans are the reason we eat, so we have to be on top of our game.”

Sure…

“With these rap kids, it’s hit and miss, you know. It’s here on day, gone tomorrow. And they don’t seem to really care. It’s like ‘Lemme get this quick money and lemme just dash out’ and that’s not really helping the music.”

“It’s reminiscent of college basketball, college basketball being horrible because people want to go straight from high school to the league, although nowadays the rules state that you have to at least do a freshman year in college before you go to the league. But to me, that’s not only messing up the college game, it’s messing up the professional game as well because they’re really not learning how to play, you know what I mean? A lot of people will argue that that’s not true, because a lot of the greatest players in the game right now are Coby Bryant, who came straight from high school, Kevin Garnett came straight from high school, Tracey Mcgrady came straight from high school and the list goes on. But there are only two them walking around, not only with a lot of money, but championship rings.”

I’m following…

“I’m not saying that they don’t know how to play, it’s just the championships begin with the team’s front office and to me the front offices of these teams aren’t making wise decisions. They’re just going for the hype and running with it instead of just sitting there and really doing their homework.”

“Winning is a team effort! The front office has to think for the long haul. Everyone else is just thinking for the moment. This is the same thing with hip hop music, but with the artists. The labels really don’t even care anymore. You can look the label as the NBA front office and you can look at us as the players, and unfortunately in the rap business, the labels do not care anymore. They’re not looking for the next best thing; they’re looking for what they can pee back off of. ‘Oh, so and so went platinum with this style, you need to use that style because we’re trying to make this safe money’. They’re not trying to make good money, they’re trying to make safe money and a lot of it.”

Because they’re desperate…

“Exactly, and that’s what’s messing up the game.”

When you look back to the Golden Era, when you guys came up in New York, do you feel like the social and political contexts have changed shape so much now that the music will be forever different?

“I hope something will come up, but at the same time I kind of think it has passed because nobody want’s to do all of that thinking right now. Nobody wants to be told what to do or what should be done in their records or when they’re listening to music, you know. I think it’s better for hip hop to have balance and options. Okay, you have your select group of MCs who are strictly party, party, party, so when you go to the club you’re going to hear them and when you turn on the radio you’re only going to hear a certain calibre of rapper.”

“But back in the day, what was good about hip hop was… Let’s take the Juice Crew for example, one of the first of many crews, you had Kool G Rap who was like the criminal of the Juice Crew. He was NWA all by himself as far as we were concerned, you know what I’m saying, so he had his own way. Then you had Biz Markie who was like the funny guy of the crew, but he could rap his ass off. But you know, he was out to have a good time, so Biz Mark had his own thing. Then you had Masta Ace who was like the brainiac of the crew. Then you had Big Daddy Kane who was like the battle MC/ladies man. You could look at Big Daddy Kane and know that all the girls were sweating on him, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom, but you didn’t want to test him because you knew what he was capable of when it came to the battle rhyme, the metaphors and everything. So all you could do was respect him. Then Craig G, he was the freestyle fanatic and he would just battle you at the drop of a hat, wasn’t thinking about nothing, just spit off the top of the head, and that’s why he’s one of my favourite MCs because he didn’t need no pen and pad to get across what he needed to get across right then and there on the spur of the moment. That’s a great talent to have. Then Marley Marl, who’s one of the greatest producers of all time, as we know…”

“There’s no crews like that no more. Okay, Wu-Tang, yeah, but they’re also from the Golden Era, you know what I’m saying? There’s no more crews like that anymore. Nobody cares anymore, because as long as you’ve got one or two hits you’ll do alright, get nominated for a Grammy (laughs), you know?”

I’d love to ask what we can expect from the Tribe shows and whether you see what you’re doing at the moment as a sort of back-in-the-day reunion or something that has the potential to grow again. Do you think Tribe has unfinished creative business?

“I do, I do personally. I absolutely do. I don’t know whether it’s going to come to fruition though. That’s the only thing I can’t answer. As far as the show, I have not idea what to expect. But that’s kind of how we perform. We don’t really discuss it too much. We rehearse every once in a while. It’s like, two guys live in Jersey, one lives in Atlanta and I live in California most of the time now, so a lot of the time we don’t even discuss it. We just get onstage and handle our business. A lot of the time, that’s the best way for us. Once that music comes on it’s like 1998 all over again.”

Tribe’s relationship to jazz is one of the key things that we all talk about. This freedom of expression and fluidity that perhaps wasn’t there in a lot of hip hop. What do you think of as Tribe’s legacy in that sense?

“I’ve never really thought about it. That’s something that I want to supporters to define, at the end of the day. I don’t really sit there and think, ‘Well I hope the figure this out about us’ (laughs), ‘I hope our legacy is this or that’. I’m just happy to be wanted by the masses. I personally think that that’s nothing but a blessing because we haven’t done a studio album together since 1998, it’s now 2010, and they’re still wanting us to do shows, they’re still wanting us to do albums and that’s a blessing. I personally think that we need to absorb that and count our blessings every day and embark on that.”

“So we’ll see what happens.”

Visit: atribecalledquest.com

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BEATS with Dan Rule
Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010. 

Baths
Cerulean
****1/2 

Though clearly a record of the laptop era, there’s a rare, indelibly human quality to LA kid Will Wiesenfeld’s debut under the Baths moniker. Among Cerulean’s sea of instrumental nuances, shoe-gaze textures and atmospheres, wonky beats and rhythmic structures are some of the most pure, heartbreakingly beautiful melodies you’ll hear. Cuts like Maximalist and Animals see swirlings choir of diced vocal fragments shatter into a clouds of static; tracks like Hall and Plea make for swooning, angelic pop ballads of the highest order. This is an undisputedly postmodern work by kid who’s an old romantic at heart. In a word, stunning. 

Anticon/Stomp 

Jimmy Edgar
XXX
***1/2 

Jimmy Edgar’s hometown is in his blood. The precocious young Detroiter makes music anchored to the pillars of first generation techno, pre-1985 hip hop and bombastic, sexed-up synth funk. That’s not to cast his second longplayer XXX, which follows electric 2006 debut Color Strip, as a purely retrospective affair. Indeed, Edgar’s slick, propulsive synthetics owe just as much to the agile beat structures of IDM and driving groove of contemporary club-based hip hop. It’s a kinetic, tantalising mix. The only issue here is with Edgar’s churlish, sexualised lyrics. Indeed, so obsessed is he with the ‘bedroom arts’ that it almost becomes a heavy-breathing distraction. 

!K7/Inertia 

Giggs
Let Em Ave It
**1/2

Hype can be a voracious beast, and UK hip hop’s latest rapper-du-jour Giggs is well and truly lodged between its jaws. Second solo record Let Em Ave It has been one of the most hotly anticipated joints to come out of the post-grime environment. Unfortunately, that doesn’t defuse its flaws. The main problem is Giggs’ much talked about delivery. While there’s a lot to like about the record’s narrative thread – an at times moving, council estate rags-to-riches tale – Giggs’ deep, husky drawl is void of personality and his lumbering rhyme-schemes tend to deflate even the more engaging of lyrical details. The UK’s answer to Fiddy Cent may well have arrived. 

Remote Control/Inertia 

Skryptcha
The Numbers
****

If there’s one thing that The Numbers says about its author, it’s that he is a student of the golden era. Part of an impressive new generation of Sydney MCs, Skryptcha has crafted an uncannily mature debut here. From the unassuming downbeat groove of Jase-produced opener Good Music, this is a record without bluster or hyperbole. Skryptcha lets his agile mic skills and ear for a hook do the talking. For a kid so young, his beat selection – the stabbing funk of M-Phazes and Domingo’s lush, soul-drenched orchestrations included – is impeccable. Forget short attention spans; Skryptcha is here for the long haul. 

Obese 

Autechre
Move of Ten
****

Less than six months after 10th longplayer Oversteps melted Autechre’s highly abrasive rhythmic clusters into a melange of dense atmosphere and arcane melodic gesture, the UK’s seminal pair of abstract electronic architects explode back onto the airwaves with a new full-length rippling with muscular beats and rhythmic details. Indeed, Move of Ten is about as beat-focused and even hip hop-like as Sean Booth and Rob Brown have been for some years. But the key to this record is balance. Where stuttering, angular rhythms threaten to dominate, the tonal and melodic qualities that marked Oversteps mould Move of Ten into a shape all of its own.

Warp/Inertia  

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THIS WEEK IN ART - POLLY BORLAND: SMUDGE
Published: Broadsheet, August 18, 2010. 

Celebrated photographer Polly Borland’s new body of work at Murray White Room oscillates between intimacy and warped theatricality. By Dan Rule. 

There’s an unyielding ambiguity to the beautifully economical series of photographs that comprise legendary Melbourne-raised photographer Polly Borland’s Smudge. Her purely performative, anonymous portraits seem in a rare state of flux; her subjects drift between genders, between public and private states, between fantasy and reality.

“It’s sort of about this idea of revealing and hiding at the same time,” says Borland, who was born in Melbourne in 1958 and left for UK in the mid 80s, where she has since been recognised as one of the international art world’s leading portrait photographers.

“The pictures are kind of childlike, but there’s something very sinister and seedy about them as well,” she continues. “There’s that real sexual tension in a lot of them that is very un-childlike.”

The faces of Smudge’s small clutch of subjects – the “teenage surfy boy” and the “weird, fucked-up rag doll” – are obscured from view via garish wigs, mutant hair growths, phallic protrusions and stretched stockings smeared with lipstick and blush. A “Denis the Menace type kid” wears a fake muscle-vest; a “clown-y but kind of voodoo-y” man sports a flowing, technicolour wig, giant fake breasts bursting from under his shirt.

“Someone came up to me at the start of the show and said ‘They’re very disturbing, but they’re actually very funny too’,” says Borland, who was one of only eight international photographers invited to photograph the Queen on her Golden Jubilee and whose folio includes portraits of old friend Nick Cave, Michael Hutchence, Cate Blanchett, Kylie Minogue, Gordon Brown, Silvio Berlusconi and Germaine Greer among countless others. “I think he really got it. There is this sense of humour as well as that strange sense of privacy.”

Indeed, by completely concealing her models’ identity via costume and directed performance – a first for Borland – she allows for a very different kind of inquisition. “It’s really about me messing with what’s in front of the camera,” she says. “Because of that anonymity, I’m able to just play and have the model completely give themselves over. It’s almost like I’m photographing people doing things that they would only ever do in private.”

Polly Borland’s Smudge runs until September 11 at Murray White Room.

www.murraywhiteroom.com
www.pollyborland.com

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PVT - ‘CHURCH WITH NO MAGIC’
Published: The Big Issue #361, August 2010.

Church With No Magic
PVT
**** 

PVT are a band with an extraordinary sense of focus. The Sydney and Perth-raised trio’s career – which has survived numerous line-up shifts and a recent name change from Pivot, following a legal challenge from a US band of the same name – has been marked by the unswerving refinement and synthesis of ideas.

New album Church With No Magic is the realisation of a long line of gestures, interests, direction and experiments. It is the Pivot sound, only condensed, reduced and honed.

Indeed, where 2005 debut Make Me Love You partook in an agile expansion of postrock and jazz, and 2008 follow-up O Soundtrack My Heart stripped their aesthetic down to a kind of a punchy, loose take on electronica and krautrock, Church With No Magic rids whole chunks of the PVT sound; namely guitars. It’s an exhilarating, electrifying shift.

Buzzing swarms of synths and arcing, reverb-laced vocals (courtesy of Richard Pike) dominate; tracks are economised to key tonal and melodic elements and layers. Laurence Pike’s hammering drums ring out like gunshots; Dave Miller’s electronic negotiations fracture and reconstruct melodies and rhythmic structures at whim.

The loss of PVT’s vowels has come with the cutting of dead wood.

Dan Rule 

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FABLE OF THE LABEL - XL RECORDINGS
Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.

Fable of the Label profiles iconic labels past and present. This month, XL Recordings’ Richard Russell tells MAG about unwavering self-belief. By Dan Rule.

There’s always been a fluid, transient sensibility to XL Recordings. “I don’t think about music in terms of underground or mainstream or genre or anything, and I never have done,” says label founder and acclaimed producer Richard Russell.

Joining the dots amid the independent London label’s divergent catalogue offers few clues at first. The Prodigy and Basement Jaxx precede The White Stripes, Badly Drawn Boy, Peaches, M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal; Gil Scott-Heron, Thom Yorke and Radiohead share space with chart-topping soul popstress Adele, Ratatatat and Vampire Weekend; stylistic threads and lineages veer off at right angles.

According to Russell, there’s rhyme and reason to the apparent melange. “All I think about the individual,” he says. “Success comes in all different forms and I’ve never wanted to be confined to these notions of success being about critical praise or success being about selling all these records. It doesn’t matter. Success is achieving whatever it is you set out to do, and if you work with diverse people, they’ve got diverse aims.”

It’s an idea that can be traced throughout XL’s history. Rising out of the late 80s rave and acid house scene, the label opened its doors in 1989 with Russell and co-founders Nick Halkes – with whom Russell shared UK chart success as DJ duo Kicks Like a Mule – and Tim Palmer steering the imprint through groundbreaking European techno such as T99 and hardcore rave and drum’n’bass like SL2, Jonny L, plus early releases from label mainstays The Prodigy.

But with Halkes and Palmer parting with XL in the mid-90s, Russell broadened his horizons. “A lot of those early XL releases were really just about 12” single,” he says. “They weren’t about an album or about a career or about a tour.”

“But having said that, the best of those records were the ones that Liam (Howlett, of The Prodigy) made, because he was interested in turning it into something more than that and taking it somewhere else. We spread his wings musically and pushed beyond that electronic scene and that’s what I tried to do with XL.”

“The basic premise was to make it a really, really great platform for people to do exciting things.”

It’s difficult, even for Russell, to pinpoint XL’s signpost releases. While each of the early Prodigy releases chalk votes, he also sees The White Stripes’ self-titled debut, Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in Da Corner, Thom Yorke’s Eraser Head and Radiohead’s In Rainbows – which XL famously authorised to be released online for free ahead of the record’s physical release date – as clear standouts.

M.I.A.’s singular 2005 debut Arular, however, holds something of a special place in XL’s catalogue. “She was someone who really turned up at XL and was like ‘I’ve got something that I want to do’ and I believed her,” he says.

“Someone like Maya can do anything she wants to do. It’s a certain type of personality that can do that and doesn’t really care about what we are told we should be doing.”

And when it comes down to it, that’s where XL finds its grounding. “ “It’s sort of about fantasy, in a way,” he says. “It’s about not listening to others and just following your dreams.”

“The label, where it is now, was a fantasy for me; going into the studio to make a record with Gil Scott-Heron was a fantasy,” he pauses. “Having dreams is the most important thing in any creative pursuit.”

Visit: xlrecordings.com  

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ARCADE FIRE - ‘THE SUBURBS’
Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.

Arcade Fire
The Suburbs
****
(Spunk/EMI) 

The notion of a third chapter in the Arcade Fire oeuvre hasn’t sat comfortably for many pundits. The Montreal collective’s 2004 debut Funeral and 2007 follow-up Neon Bible were so universally celebrated that to many, third album The Suburbs was almost going to be a disappointment by default. Luckily, from the jangling piano, subtly building orchestration and haze-drenched volume of its opener and title track, this hour-long, 16-sketch epic is anything but. Indeed, The Suburbs is a record brimming with swathes of sonic, melodic and lyrical detail. But while Win Butler and co have never lacked artist bombast, this album finds its orientation seems as much in temperance and balance of potentially divergent strands as the booming, baroque projection of ideas. There are some fine examples. The maximalist orchestrations of Rococo and the flurrying strings of duet Empty Room rub shoulders with the funereal phrases and shimmering drones of Half Light I and the odd acoustic strumming patterns of Suburban War, while elsewhere, the elegiac Sprawl I (Flatland) gives way to the pulsing, Kate Bush-esque electronic hook of Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains). Lyrically, too, The Suburbs walks something of a tightrope between opposing forces. Where Funeral mourned the passing of youth and Neon Bible recoiled in shock at world gone mad, The Suburbs sketches a backdrop of palce, resonance and memory. It tells a tale of the vast and the intimate, of proximity and distance, of the sense that wherever you go, you’ll always be anchored to your past.

DAN RULE 

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BLISS N ESO - EVER RUNNING, EVER RISING
Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.

Following the unprecedented success of their ARIA Award-winning Flying Colours, Bliss N Eso have further developed and diversified their sound on new record Running on Air. Jonathan Notley (aka Bliss) tells Dan Rule that, like fine wine, the Sydney hip hop trio are maturing with age.

Of all the potential collaborators or sample sources you might expect to find on a hip hop record, the countrified twang of Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson would have to be among the least likely. 

And Jonathan Notley, the man better known as MC and producer Bliss of Sydney hip hop figureheads Bliss N Eso, is more than aware of the incongruity. “Man, to most people’s minds mixing country with hip hop is a hell of a stretch,” he says in his softened US accent, stifling an almost guilty chuckle. 

“Even the label were really unsure about it being on the record, but we were like ‘Trust us, we know what we’re doing, this is going to work’.” 

He’s referring to Late One Night, a grimey, gunshot break that flourishes into a chorus hook sampled from none other than Chambers and Nicholson’s 2008 hit Rattlin’ Bones. It’s a track that anchors the back end of new album Running on Air and reveals quality inherent to Bliss N Eso’s increasingly far-reaching approach to the Bronx-born art from.  

“The last thing we wanted to do was to create an album where all the tracks sounded the same,” says Notley, who’s speaking from Sydney in the weeks leading up to the release of the album. “We really wanted to paint a nice, wide spectrum of colours and styles and moods, so people could jump in wherever they want and really get something out of it.” 

Trawling Running on Air, it’s hard not to agree. The rasping boogie-rock of tracks like Flying Through the City and hyped, Outkast-esque bounce of Addicted meld with the reverb-lashed blues-rock of Moses Twist and dark, jilting beats of Art House Audio. Examples of staid, conventional rap are scarce on the ground. 

“It’s absolutely important to see the bigger picture,” he says. “We’re all on this planet together and we’re making hip hop for everyone.”

In many ways, Notley’s attitude shouldn’t come as a surprise. The trio – Notley, fellow MC Max Mackinnon (aka Esoterik) and DJ Tarik Ejjamai (aka DJ Izm) – may have burst onto the Sydney underground in the early 2000s with explosive melange of raw boom-bap and gritty, street-level lyrical attacks, but their rise has evidenced a much wider vision. From underground burner Flowers in the Pavement (2004) and breakthrough Day of the Dog (2006), to ARIA Award-winning epic Flying Colours (2008) – which saw them travel to some of the poorest regions of South Africa to record the track Bullet and a Target with a traditional choir – the trio’s sound and palette has expanded to see them emerge as one of Australian hip hop’s most accomplished and widely celebrated crews. 

According to Notley, who met MacKinnon and Ejjamai in early high school after his family moved to Sydney from the US, the trio’s journey has transcended music alone. “I definitely feel like over the years we’ve matured a lot in terms of the lyrics we’re bringing and the concepts we’re expressing, and we were really kind of aware of that when we went into recording Running on Air.”

Tracked in a cavernous house near Hanging Rock in the central Victorian bush, the record drew much of its influence from its surroundings. “It just let us have a bit of peace and quiet and get back to creating and focussing,” he recalls. “I kind of feel like it probably did transcend a bit into the music.”

That isn’t to suggest that Running on Air, produced for the most part by Bliss, man of the moment M-Phazes and wunderkind Hattori Hunzo, lacks the boom-bap punch of its predecessors. To the contrary, so impressive is the record’s hip hop smarts that the group managed to attract guest verses from LA rap heavyweight Xzibit and burning slot from none other than Wu-Tang Clan founder the Rza on the stomping Hunzo beat Smoke Like a Fire.

Suffice to say, it was something of a career highlight for the trio. “We sent him over the track and he really dug it and was keen to get on it and we were just over the moon when we found out,” he laughs. “We’re old school Wu fans, you know?”

“To get like Ghostface or Raekwon would have been amazing, even Method Man, but to get like the motherfucker who started it all, it was jus like, ‘This is history, we gotta make it happen’.”

With Running on Air, you can’t help but get the feeling that Bliss N Eso are doing just that. “There’s the famous quote ‘The wisest man knows he knows nothing’ and it’s very true in my mind,” says Notley.

“We’re learning all the time and I think to kind of close the book on that idea is kind of a step backwards.” 

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AROUND THE GALLERIES Dan Rule
Published: The Age, A2, August 14, 2010.

WHAT Nicholas Mangan: Nauru, Notes from a Cretaceous World
WHERE Sutton Gallery, 254 Bunswick Street, Fitzroy, 9416 0727, suttongallery.com.au 

Nick Mangan’s ongoing study of the tiny Micronesian country of Nauru assumes an almost funereal guise in his new exhibition at Sutton Gallery. Comprising an installation of coral limestone coffee tables, an ink-on-paper drawing and a stunning video work, Nauru, Notes from a Cretaceous World unearths the tale of a once-wealthy phosphate nation’s demise. But while essentially functioning on a level of documentation and record, it’s Mangan’s poetic presentation of evidence – his relics, artefacts and vistas of a broken down island state – that affords this body of work such poignancy. The drawing takes the form of a topography of the island, though the entire interior is left blank, rendered barren and void as if erased. The 14-minute video work captures photographic fragments of this blank world; an almost lunar landscape of coral rock spires, vacant expanses and crumbling infrastructure. The airport’s one runway remains conspicuously unused; communications satellites sit tattered, rusted and torn; beaches are empty but for the relentless pounding of the surf. It is a decaying economic empire. Footage of the dismantling of the once iconic Nauru House plaza on Collins Street acts as the final nail. Mangan’s tables – a reference to a scheme put forward by late president Bernhard Dowiyogo to turn the nation’s mined rock pinnacles into coral coffee tables in a bid to stimulate the Nauruan economy – seem to resonate with both hope and an almost cruel sense of derision. While an attempt to make something out of nothing and reclaim some sense of national identity, they also show the depths to which the supposed minnows are forced to dredge – not forgetting the “Pacific Solution” – to survive in a brutal global economy. Tues to Sat 11am–5pm, until August 28. 

WHAT Steven Asquith: Storm Concepts
WHERE Utopian Slumps, 33 Guildford Lane, city, 9077 9918, utopianslumps.com 

Steven Asquith’s Storm Concepts seem to represent an exchange between history and methodology. While rooted in an altogether dissimilar aesthetic, materiality and palette, the thought behind the Melbourne artist’s series of 14 new drawings seems genuinely contiguous with the landscape tradition. Creating his “clouds” via raw gestures of blackboard enamel spray paint, only to render their expanse with meticulous layers of colour pencil and Posca pen markings, Asquith’s works are cacophony of synthetic tones and textures. Streams of multicoloured rain fall amid lashings of polluted fluorescence; swarms of black clouds entrap webs of fragile colour. The resonance here is psychological as much as it is geographic. Indeed, while one could dismiss his use of materials as a kind of “dude-ist” affectation, Asquith’s spray pack and Posca pens aren’t chosen lightly. When we consider the contemporary realities of the polluted, synthetic, urban landscape, these materials seem far more relevant than paint and brush. Wed to Sat noon–6pm, until August 28. 

WHAT Up Close: Carol Jerrems with Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and William Yang
WHERE Heide Museum of Modern Art, 7 Templestowe Road, Bulleen, 9850 1500, heide.com.au 

This extensive survey of late Melbourne photo-artist Carol Jerrems – alongside Sydney photographer William Yang and American contemporaries Larry Clark and Nan Goldin – makes for an incisive study of the places and company we keep. Known for her prolific output throughout the 70s before her untimely death from a rare form of liver disease in 1980, Jerrems’ intimate photographs of Australian sub-cultures possess a rare spontaneity and presence. There are many highlights. Her 1973 Redfern Life series stunningly captures her uncropped, unedited process, as do the quietly expressive domestic portraits from her 1974 publication A Book About Australian Women. Also engaging is the collection of books and publications from the Australian music scene, which includes a couple of wonderful portraits of Daddy Cool’s Ross Hannaford. By comparison, Larry Clark and William Yang’s collections are a little under-whelming, but the real star of the show here is Nan Goldin. Her 700-strong slide installation of saturated, wonderfully imprecise snapshots The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is an at times amusing, frequently moving window into her world of friends and lovers on New York’s Lower East Side. Unobscured by clear technique or stylisation, it is the photographic medium at its most direct and immediate. Tues to Sun 10am–5pm, until October 31. 

WHAT Still Vast Reserves
WHERE Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, 200 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9419 3406, Gertrude.org.au 

The second chapter in Gertrude’s latest artist exchange program – the first of which was held at Rome’s Magazzino D’Arte Moderna – Still Vast Reserves sees a host artists negotiate ideas of the body and its relationship to social and public space. While Benjamin Armstrong’s phallic glass and wax sculpture, Marco Fusinato’s visual score, Fernanda Gomes’s delicate series of micro-installations and Tom Nicholson’s photo work make for some interesting asides, it’s a video work by Laresa Kosloff that lights up this extensive group show. Roller Disco (2005) is a joy, eschewing a Central Park roller skate dance jam by the removing any trace of sound or colour, and slightly shifting of speed and ratio of the moving image. The results are genuinely engaging, more often hilarious. By nullifying the agent that brings the dancers together, we’re left to silently observe a kind of context-less, boisterous activity, giggling people darting and rolling every which way. Tues to Fri 11am–5.30pm, Sat 11am–4.30pm, until August 28. 

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THIS WEEK IN ART - GILES RYDER: LIFE WITHOUT RITUALS
Published: Broadsheet, August 11, 2010. 

Sydney artists Giles Ryder’s new show at Block Projects poses questions about art’s role in contemporary culture. By Dan Rule.

There’s a genuine polarity at play within the various works and mediums that comprise Giles Ryder’s Life Without Rituals, the last show at Block Projects’ Flinders Lane space before it moves to its new building in Richmond.

Twisting neon lights are mounted to glossy, 2Pak-coated panels and industrial aluminium frames; their refraction throws a softened spectrum of light about the space. Canvases slathered in bitumen paint perch, encased and by glass; a periphery of holographic vinyl catches the available light, creating a peculiar, inviting luminosity.

“The glass catches other elements within the room and the vinyl pulls a world into this seemingly singular object,” says Ryder.

But they are exhibits sealed away from the dangers of prying hands, of dust and damaging elements. The glass acts as an impenetrable barrier; the relationship between the audience and the work is predefined and unchangeable.

“I’m concerned with looking at art, its purpose within the world and art’s historical function and how that’s changed,” explains the Sydney-based artist. “We’re sort of in a grey area at the moment: is art just a consumer item or an object of desire?”

Referencing Yves Klein, Ryder prompts questions of value by framing such industrial materials in a museum-like context.

“I’m really interested in the museum,” he says. “So part of the reason for the framing is this idea of trying to make things last forever and thinking about the museum’s function in that, that status and so on.”

There’s also something of an autobiographical resonance to Ryder’s choice of materials. The artist worked as an industrial painter on Brisbane’s Story Bridge for over half a decade.

“Bitumen paint is basically petrol-based paint used to seal surfaces,” he says “But we all use this material. Artists use it as well, even in oil paints. We all rely on the industries to produce all this stuff.”

Giles Ryder’s Life Without Rituals runs until August 28 at Block Projects.

www.blockprojects.com

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INTERVIEW - M-PHAZES
Published: The Vine, August 11, 2010.

Melbourne-based producer Mark Landon (aka M-Phazes) is a rarity in the Australian hip-hop scene. While slow to be recognised in his home country, the Gold Coast-raised beatsmith has risen to become the first Australian hip-hop protagonist to make deep inroads into the US.

In his relatively short career, the 27-year-old has produced joints for a host of respected US artists – the likes of rap legend Pharoahe Monch, chart-topping RnB vocalist Amerie, Royce Da 5”9”, Kenn Starr, Skyzoo, Oddisee and Emilio Rojas included – and made a name as one of the international scene’s most esteemed young producers. On the home-front, meanwhile, he’s produced cuts for the likes of Bliss N Eso (with whom he won an ARIA for Flying Colours), Phrase, Drapht and a list of up-and-coming rapper too long to count.

With his much-anticipated all-Australian debut record Good Gracious out via domestic hip-hop powerhouse Obese Records and his album launch tour in progress, we spoke to Landon about giving back to the local scene and the real and perceived barriers between the Australian and US markets. 
 

Hey Mark, how are you doing?

Good man. Just working away behind the computer before heading out on tour.

Yeah, I’m interested to see how this tour will work out. It’s a rare thing in Australia for a producer to drop a solo record, let alone tour it.

I guess so. There have been a couple of producer solo records. Like Jase had one out on Obese a few years ago and Plutonic Lab has put out a couple of projects, but the touring aspect of it is definitely a bit different. I think Chasm, from Sydney, did a few shows but I don’t know if he did a whole tour. So yeah, it’s a bit different.

I really enjoyed the record and reviewed it positively, but it was kind of interesting to me that it was so full of local rappers. There was an Australian rapper on virtually every track. Was this record always going to that way? I kind of expected more instrumentals and perhaps some US guests…

Right. Well, I went into the project with nothing but Australian artists in mind. That was kind of the goal I had and I wanted each song to have some kind of fullness to it and not leave too much room. I mean, you mentioned the instrumental aspect, but I really saw this album as a collaboration album, so to have any instrumentals on there wouldn’t have really made sense.

As far as the Australian aspect, it really was what I set out to do. The only exception on there are expats that currently live here, like Nine High and Haunts, who are from England but live here now, so they kind of made it through the filter. It was just sort of about giving back to the Australian scene and doing something different. I mean, it would have been easier for me to just go and get a bunch of international artists, but I think it was just more of a challenge to do it just with Australian artists because I really haven’t worked with that many.

Sure. I guess, there’s that classic scenario where so many Australian crews will go out of their way to try track down a few international guests…

Exactly, and I didn’t want that to be the drawcard. I wanted the music to be the drawcard and I feel like we have the standard of artists in Australian hip-hop where you should be able to hold an album in that regard, without having to ring in for international guests.

You’ve been one of the lead Australian artists to make inroads into the US scene. As someone who has made a bunch of beats for US artists and spent time there, has that really informed the way you think about the international market?

Sort of, I mean if I hadn’t already worked with so many American artists it might have swayed my decision on who to put on my album. Like, I might have gone for a bunch more international artists. I think I’ve reached a point in my career where working with guys from the States isn’t really going to change – I’m always going to be doing that – so for my debut album I just wanted to do something different that nobody would expect. I mean, I don’t think anybody expected an all-Aussie line-up on my album. Like I said earlier, I think we have the standard of artists that can really hold down a whole album. I didn’t feel like I needed to go out and get international collabs so people would buy my record.

At the same time, having that purely Australian presence and that lack of any instrumental tracks, it does really tie record to a specific time and place.

Yeah, I guess that was always going to be the case, being Australian hip-hop as opposed to Australian rock or something. If you put Jet on or someone in the States they won’t sound too different, but with Aussie hip-hop it’s a bit of a different thing. You can’t really mistake them. But I’ve got a lot of projects that I’m working on with international artists and I think for my next production album I might go for a bit more of an international sound, whether it is reaching out to international artists for guest spots or collaborating with a broader range of artists within Australia who aren’t necessarily from the hip-hop world. Like, I think I really want to do something different for my next album and not be tied down to hip-hop in general.

It’s interesting that you mention stepping outside of hip-hop, because on the record and a bunch of your more recent production work there has been a shift towards a more compositional dynamic. These aren’t just grooves or hooks anymore; these are track with a hell of a lot of layers and dynamics. Does that aesthetic kind of mirror how your approach has been evolving?

Definitely, for sure! I mean, my sound has sort of progressed from that of a typical hip-hop producer who used samples and pretty much looped everything from start to finish and didn’t have many change-ups in terms of key and chord progressions. I mean, it’s funny, I always kind of envisioned that I would be this hip-hop producer or this RnB producer who would do that. But I guess in the last couple of years – and I really accredit this to moving to Melbourne and being around such amazing musicians and producers – I actually have found myself shifting towards more of a songwriter/composition/live instrumentation sort of producer and that’s started to take a lot more of my interest than typical hip-hop production is.

I mean, it’s something that I’ll always find hard to escape from, that element of hip-hop in my production…

But that isn’t something that you should be necessarily trying to escape from.

No, no, sure. I’m not trying to escape from it, but I’d love to incorporate different types of musical production into my own style. So that’s what I’m trying to focus on at the moment.

It’s a really positive thing, in the same way that an older Melbourne producer like Plutonic Lab has been able to develop his sound to a point where he can drop a record like that Ivens album…

Yeah, yeah, which was this really kind of underground hip-hop record and then go and do the Jess Harlen record, this full-band soul record. And I think he’s working on a real soulful, sort of ’70s throwback, old 45” vinyl-sounding record with a band. Actually, I think it might just be him and someone else, but it sounds amazing. He played me some stuff when I was in his studio a while ago. But yeah, he’s a perfect example of where I’m heading. Not in the sense of similar styles, but just musicality.

I guess that’s what’s happened with that whole generation of guys we grew up listening to – like Q-Tip and Mos Def and Talib. They’re still making hip-hop but there’s just a more sophisticated musical element to it, whereas Australian hip-hop still really has the straight up and down, rugged aesthetic to it for the most part.

We’re behind on pretty much everything and there’s no exception for hip-hop. People have discovered this ’90s sound of New York and have decided they should try and mimic that, and it’s almost become a little too overbearing for me personally. Everyone who releases a song here, with the exception of a few, sounds like they’re still in the ’90s. I love ’90s hip-hop, don’t get me wrong, but I’d kind of like to leave that era back then. All these groups feel like they need to make that sort of hip-hop just to be real or whatever, but I just look at it as being a bit lazy in my opinion. If you’re not trying to innovate then it loses a lot of the excitement.

I mean, I’ll still make a track like that every now and again, but I don’t feel like that should be your only musical point of view.

Do you think that relative cultural isolation of growing up on the Gold Coast was crucial for you in terms of building your own style?

Definitely! That’s sort of what spurred me onto work with Americans and use their scene over there as my influence and my goal in terms of the way I looked at music. A lot of people in Melbourne, because there is such a thriving scene and it’s been like this for a few years now, people tend to just look to their peers and try and match what they’re doing, whereas I was forced to use the internet as a means of working with people - people in the States specifically - [and it] really sort of forced me to really look at what was happening over there, as the bar I had to reach.

As someone who’s done a lot of work in the US, do you feel that barrier between the Australia and the States is more a perceived one from an Australian perspective?

A lot of Aussie artists settle for what’s good over here, but what’s good over here isn’t even given the time of day over there. You can’t put a producer from Melbourne up against the Justice League or DJ Quick or DJ Premier, who were doing stuff that people are maybe just starting to touch on now 10 or 15 years ago. So I feel like a lot of Australian groups or producers or rappers just settle for being good on an Australian level and feel like they can’t exceed that and so they get engulfed in the local scene. I don’t really believe in that; I believe you should always strive to be on par with the rest of the world, you know.

It’s definitely not a resource or an access issue in the sense that you listen to what’s coming out of LA at the moment with Flying Lotus and that whole Low End Theory scene. There are kids like Shlohmo and Nosaj Thing, who are in their early twenties, with no cash, making amazing beats out of their bedrooms.

That’s exactly right. I mean, my set up is nothing. I’ve got a computer, a midi-keyboard and some speakers. I don’t have any crazy outboard gear. If people are saying that that’s the reason they can’t do this or can’t do that, it’s bullshit. There’s technology out there.

I mean, not to diss the Hilltop Hoods because I love the Hilltop Hoods and think they make great music, but they’re not going to get looked at in the same way as a big artist in the States. Their music isn’t going to stand up in that environment and neither are a lot of the big groups from over here, you know? And I don’t mean to diss anyone – I’m sure a lot of people will take that as a diss, but it’s not – it’s just that the production values are very basic and very thin-sounding compared to a lot of their US counterparts.

I agree entirely. You listen to a lot of this stuff and it doesn’t sound like an international release; it sound’s inherently Australian.

Exactly, like, you listen to something like Jet and that sounds like they could have been from anywhere, but there’s just something with hip-hop in this country where we can’t seem to break free from that Aussie sound. I think maybe the closest to doing it in a major scale is Bliss N Eso and that’s probably because Bliss has an American accent (laughs). But no, it’s the sonics that give it its life; the way it just blasts you in the eardrum. A lot of Aussies don’t quite get that sound and they don’t take the time to try and master that.

Dan Rule

Good Gracious is out via Obese

mphazes.com 

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