Listen Out

Yesterday I went to Listen Out festival with Grace and her two friends Rosie and Hannah, Ailsa and Megan, which was held in Centennial Park. The weather was amazing and though we did have a great day, inner city day festivals are very different to the ones I'm used to at home...! It felt weird to be only there for a day and everything ended really early because of licensing and noise pollution regulations etc.

We did manage to catch some good acts though, Miguel Campbell and Duke Dumont were particularly good and I hate to say it but Disclosure did put on a pretty decent set. Azealia Banks also stormed off stage during her set too as someone through a beer can at her haha! 

Here are some snaps from the day:

Getting lost in the park on the way there

Miguel Campbell

Disclosure

It was nice to be able to chill out at a festival for the day, but sadly it probably wasn't worth the money and I don't think I'm going to bother with any one day festivals again. If I'm going to do it, gotta do it properly I guess!

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Sydney Running Festival

The city was in chaos today as it was the Sydney Running Festival and there were people running EVERYWHERE. There's an organized 10km run, half marathon and marathon and they all end at Sydney Opera House. My bar is in prime location as all the runners run past on their home straight! Getting to work was a right pain though because all the buses stopped on Elizabeth Street and I had to talk down to Circular Quay, darting across the running routes and dodging speedy runners.

Coming down into the harbour

Home straight!

400m to go

Looking out from my bar towards the last leg of the race along the Quay

When I got to Searock it was dead as everyone was being very conservative as it was 10 o'clock in the morning, however things soon picked up a bit as everyone wanted to celebrate and have a drink. Endless runners came in with their medals, looking very pleased with themselves. I happened to notice that most of them were only the 10km runners though... perhaps the half and full marathon runners take their sport more seriously! Anyhow, it was fun to join in with the celebrations and the atmosphere down in the harbour was amazing.

Tally also dropped by for some drinks and I managed to wangle her some oysters for a quarter of the price they usually are! She's celebrating her last week in Sydney as she leaves on Saturday and so she's benefiting from the perks of having a friend who works in a bar...! 

Going to be so sad to see her go but I'm not jealous of her returning to the British winter...

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Piggies!

Harry, Goose and I decided we wanted to go out to dinner to somewhere a bit different, and so my boss suggested going to a dim sim Thai restaurant called the Chef's Gallery on George Street. The restaurant has it's name because all down one side is literally a 'gallery' looking into the kitchen and you can sit and watch the chefs make your noodles. It's a bit like watching a fish tank, but pretty interesting to see them doing their thing! Who knew that noodles were made that way!?

Harry being annoying and standing in the way...

We spent ages looking through the menu and trying to decide what to have, in the end chosing to share a dim sim sampling platter between the three of us, and then Harry and I went for duck noodles, and Goose chose pork noodles. The dim sim arrived in a little bamboo basket and sadly we snaffled them up pretty quick and I didn't get a chance to take a photo....

This is what they looked like though...

Check out the menu, it's amazing: http://www.chefsgallery.com/pdf/menu-dinner.pdf

After our mains we decided to try one of the deserts and we chose these little sesame bun which were shaped like piggies! When they arrived at our table we got totally over excited and took hundred of photos. They were pretty outrageously adorable for a desert though, you gotta admit...

Piggies!

Well, at least we thought they were cute, until we opened them up and THIS happened...

It looks disgusting but it tasted like chocolatey peanut butter and was delish. Shame about the pig poo connotations though....

Afterwards we went for a walk around the city and Goose and Harry, the children, found some balloons...

They were actually having a good time, promise. 

Sydney is surprisingly lively at night, not taking into account your normal club/bar lot, but I guess the summer season is beginning and the weather is getting warmer so from here on in it's going to be rammed with tourists. All the shops will stay open later and at the weekends it's going to be a pretty crazy place to be.

Harry's back off to the Hunter Valley in the morning but I'll see him again in two weeks for more fun restaurant/bar adventures. We're going to make it a fortnightly thing to go and explore what Sydney has to offer. Watch this space! 

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Sound Sick

I got caught unawares this morning. I tumbled out of bed and went to my Electronic Music tutorial and for the first half an hour we listened and critiqued a few people's pieces that were played out to the tute. Then, for the next half an hour, our lecturer got us to play around on an interactive sound website. At first I wasn't really very interested but in my hungover state was quite happy to just faff about on a computer for a while. The piece is by a woman called Katharine Norman and is an interactive sound essay called 'Window'. This is what she has to say about it:

" Window is part of a new series I hope to make about place, and about how listening contributes to our sense of place. Making Place (2013) is a companion musical work for live interactive sound and image/text with piano(s). Made with Processing and puredata software, it was commissioned by duoDort and composed in 2012 with funds from Arts Council England and the Britten-Pears Foundation, and premiered at Sonoritis, Belfast in April 2013 (one piano version) and Falmouth University, May 2013 (two piano version). "

Here's a link to the piece. Have a play around if you fancy, it takes some time to get into it and you kind of have to understand about the logistics of sound editing, but it's interesting anyway. Obviously it's a sound piece, so listen with headphones for the best effect. Her whole project is about experimenting with sound and how it can define and make a place. For this piece, she recorded out of her bedroom window at different times of day to capture the soundscape she heard, and then collaged all the sounds together. You can move through the different times of day and play with EQing the different frequencies of the sound and in effect, make your own soundscape out of the one she has recorded. There's also some accompanying text to read as you move through the piece. I know this sounds all very artsy and kind of a load of BS, and that's how I felt at first, but then suddenly I really understood her piece. Katharine lives in Cambridge back home in the UK and so the sounds she hears, in particular the birdsong, is very weirdly familiar. There was one point in the piece where I managed to get it to sound exactly like our garden at home, by lowering the volume of the traffic and turning up the sounds of the birds, in particular that pigeon noise, and I cannot even tell you how weird it was to be sat in a lecture in Sydney, Australia, and suddenly be utterly convinced that I was back at home. It kinda freaked me out a bit and I just sat there listening to that one bit for ages. SO strange.

We all talked about it afterwards, and all the Australia's said that they enjoyed exploring the work, but that it didn't really do anything for them. Then the lecturer asked me how I felt and I told her about how nostalgic it made me feel and how I couldn't believe how much it reminded me of being at home. Suddenly everyone was looking at me and I felt all weird and sad and I nearly started to cry! Must be something to do with being hungover, you know that weird depressed feeling you sometimes get the next day? Yeah, well, that. I didn't think I was homesick at all but it's funny what can trigger it.

When she let us go I ran off pretty quick and am now snuggled back in bed with strawberries and listening to John Mayer, pretending to be in Skiathos/my kitchen and missing home a bit. I'll be fine later, we're all heading off to the beach this afternoon as the weather's nice and the surf's good, but right now I miss you, fam.

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Moo, Da, Ella and Me on Ella's 18th

Published

I had my internship again today and when I got into the office I picked up the latest edition of The Brag and flicked through, only to find that they published my work last week!

It's only small little bits and bobs I did for each music genre page, like Pop/Rock/Dance etc. but still, I guess that ticks off something from my Bucket List! 

The day was pretty easy and I just did loads of admin for them, and a few more news snippets about upcoming tours and new releases. There's also another intern there who I met who's also at UNSW so it's quite nice to be able to share the workload with someone. He's been there a while longer and is being sent to do some film reviews and stuff this week, so hopefully that'll be me soon!

On my lunch break I spotted this little gem...

...I love this place!

Whilst I was cataloging all the demo CDs and new albums which record companies send The Brag to tempt them to review and put on their website/magazine, I asked Chris what he did with all the CDs and he explained that apart from the ones which he needed this week, I could help myself and take any I wanted. There are boxes and boxes of them I had a rifle through one of the boxes and picked out some which I thought looked good - my decision was totally swayed by the album covers but hey, even if they're shit at least they're fun to look at! I've brought about ten home with me and will browse through them this week, hopefully discovering some cool new artists. Massive bonus getting free music! There's loads of well known artists as well as completely random tiny little bands, so watch this space for anything good I find.

After I finished I went to go see my friend Jesse who DJs at Searock Bar every Friday and Saturday night as he lives really close. He's moving out of his apartment this week and I wanted to see it before it was too late. He lives on the 34th floor and the views are AMAZING. The whole place is literally ridiculous, everything is cream carpets and marble bathrooms and pretty much every bedroom has a balcony. He's moving out because it's way too expensive ($450 A WEEK!?!?!?!) but he's obviously had fun living there for a few months!

The view out over to where I live

So jealous of this view, and he even has a spa on the balcony - say whaaaa!? The flat was looking a bit empty as he and his 3 flatmates were packing up all their stuff, but seriously, it's a crazy place to live. His TV is bigger than my bed for gods sake!

Perhaps, one day, I'll be rich and famous and own my own famous music magazine in Sydney and will live in a ridiculous apartment like this... but for now it looks like I'm just going to have to keep toddling along with my internship and salvaging lost and lonely demos CDs from the bin boxes.

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September Slump

We were warned about this. Whilst we were all dancing around happily in our shorts and walking around in bare feet, remarking on how fantastic the 32 degree heat and sunny weather was, and how we didn't mind the Australian winter one bit, they all warned us about the 'September Slump'. And did we believe them? 

Nope.

But as of the past few days, we sure as hell do. Now I know us Brits are always ones to rant about the weather, but this has been ridiculous. It all began with crazy gale force winds which were so strong that it meant that you didn't have to walk anywhere, you kinda just got blown along, and there was no need to actually go to the gym, just walking back and forth from lectures was enough resistance training thank you very much.

At first it was all warm and quite exciting, like the wind in Pocohontas (that bit when she sings that power ballad and dances through the air. No? Well here you go then...)

Moo, Ella and Maisie, this song reminds me so much of you guys for some reason!?

(Feel educated now? Good.) But then it got very cold and cloudy and then, this morning, IT STARTED TO RAIN. Not only is this just rain, it's torrential rain and it hasn't stopped all day. Mass panic and very obscure outfits have broken out across campus and attendance for all lectures has dropped by at least 10% as no one wants to walk anywhere!

The view from my apartment where I hid all afternoon

It's be horrible and Goose and I are miserable but weirdly nostalgic as we feel like we're back in Newcastle/Edinburgh again. I seriously don't understand how we deal with this weather on a day to day basis usually!? It looks like it's going to rain again tomorrow, but then the rest of the week picks up and goes back to sunshine.

Thank god for that.

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