Amity Affliction Ahren Stringer Interview

Ahren Stringer

The Amity Affliction have been leading the front of Australia’s metalcore scene for the last couple of years, following the success of their chart topping album Chasing Ghosts in 2012. Since this release, Amity have been touring prolifically around Australia and the world. We spoke to their bassist and clean vocalist Ahren Stringer about their new album.

Unlike their first album which was recorded without a producer in a short period of time, their latest album, Let the Ocean Take Me was a lot more refined. “This record was written over close to 8 months I’d say, up to a year. We flew out a good friend, Will Putney, from New Jersey, instead of going to America again, which we have done the last two albums. We just chilled out and did it all in Troy’s studio. It was a really relaxed time, really just chill vibe. ”
Will Putney being the producer, engineer and writer for many popular hardcore outfits including Northlane, Chiodos and Stray from the Path to name a few.

The ocean is a heavily anchored theme in lead vocalist/screamer Joel Birch’s writing, Ahren boiled this down to where Joel lives in Brisbane.
“I live in Melbourne, but Joel, who writes all the lyrics, he lives on the Sunshine coast, so that’s the main reason. I think the way he describes it is that the title of the album, Let The Ocean Take Me is about just how he feels a connection with the ocean. It kind of solves a lot of his problems, you know washes them away. Me, myself, I don’t really like the beach.”

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Gabrielle Aplin @ The Toff

Lizzie Skyllas Photography @lizzieskyllas

Entering the Toff, I saw that people of all genders and age had come to see English singer/song-writerGabrielle Aplin, many of which would have seen her when she toured with Ed Sheeran. I had never heard her play before, and was instantly impressed by her strong voice. There is a unique quality in an English singing voice and I found myself comparing hers to Elena Tonra from Daughter.

After the song finished, she asked the crowd “How are you all going?” to which somebody in the crowd replied “Good, but my phone died today”. This light hearted retort shows how intimate the toff is as a venue and was a great way to start the night.

She then played some sad songs, including Ring Around Roses. I thought the lyrics were a bit cliche, but Aplin could sing any song and make it sound beautiful and melodic.

When she sat down on the piano to sing the Power of Love, because she is short she disappeared behind the crowd. I found myself watching her from somebody else’s phone camera who was recording the whole thing over everybody in front of us.

 

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Josh Pyke Interview

Josh Pyke has been one of the biggest Australian solo-artists of the past 10 years. After four fantastic albums, numerous projects and ARIA awards and nominations, Josh is bringing his indie/folk sounds to the very heart of Australia.

Beginning early June at the Montrose Town Hall outside Melbourne, the solo Lone Wolf Tour will span regional venues all across Australia.
Josh says he is looking forward to take his engaging indie/folk live show to new corners of the country.

“I’m just really looking forward to getting to some places that I’ve never been to before, like Broome and Toowoomba and … I’m playing in a little theater in Pamona, which is near Newford, so, yeah, a bunch of places that I’ve never been, which is going to be really cool.”

Josh will be playing over twenty dates and amongst these small country towns, are venues that Josh has quite fondly played at before.
“Will I be revisiting …? Yeah, there’s some places that I have been to before, Coffs Harbour and stuff like that, and Port Macquarie. Milton Theater I’ve played quite a few times before. It’s always been beautiful. It’s such a beautiful area.”

“There’s a bit of regional circuit that I’ve built up over the 10-12 years that I’ve been touring, and I’m just kind of trying to slowly branch it out even further because particularly as an Australian artist, you can’t just go around playing a couple of Cd’s once a month. When you’re kind of past a certain point, you kind of have to really branch out and get to as many places as possible”

Since his EP Feeding The Wolves, there has been an animal theme throughout the lyrics and album art. Josh explains how this came to be.

“It just happened. It was just how I was communicating my ideas at the time and it was how I was presenting the imagery of emotions and various situations in my life, was the best way I felt like I could interpret it, the emotion, use animals, imagery, and imagery from nature that kind of described those situations. That was what came and actually I just kept on … I just didn’t fight it basically. Just always been part of how I describe situations and I guess like … not just on a … whatever the animal version personifies, anamorphasise emotions, I guess.”

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Live Below the Line Challenge: Day 3

I did a quick podcast update of my experience with the Live Below the Line challenge. If you would like more information or to support me with a donation, click the link below 🙂 It’s for a good cause.

LIVEBELOWTHELINE

 

Splendour in the Grass Mystery Ticket Twitterhunt

Splendour in the Grass

City and Colour, Outkast, Two Door Cinema Club, Grouplove and Violent Soho are only some of the bands I can’t wait to see at this years Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay. When I heard that Splendour were giving people the chance to find a double pass in a mystery ticket hunt on Twitter, I was ready to put my sleuthing skills to the test. I thought it would be fun to record my adventures.

As you can probably tell, I was fairly exhausted running around the city and couldn’t really process my sentences. Here is a quick rundown of my thought patterns.

Clue 1: Deep within the grid, here you can quench your thirst & satisfy your hunger.

This clue lead me to believe that the tickets where somewhere around Melbourne Central in a restaurant or bar, as that is the deepest place within in grid.

Clue 2:  Over 100 years ago, the 5 storey red brick building I’m in was once a factory.

I  didn’t really read this clue properly, and assumed that the building was the red Elwood store in the middle of Melbourne central. However, it of course isn’t a resturant and there is nowhere to quench your thirst and fill your hunger  (unless you bring food in yourself).  My friend Luke Sutton (from the best music website in the world, www.the59thsound.com) gave me the hint of the Austral building on Collins st. So I started sprinting towards there.

Clue 3: You’ll find me in the Street end of a ‘hardware-ing’ lane

This is where my lack of navigational skills let me down. When I checked where Hardware lane was on Google Maps, I didn’t really look at it properly and process that it was in the direction I just ran from. In retrospect, I should have stuck around Melbourne central and waited for more clues before running towards the first clue my friends gave me on Twitter. I’ll be ready for 2015. After realising it wasn’t anywhere near, I bolted down Russel st and ran towards Bourke St and Hardware lane.

Clue 4: I’m relatively ‘Nieuw’ to the Melbourne food & bar scene

Now I had no idea what this clue meant, but my hopes of finding the tickets started to fade. I continued to run towards Hardware lane, sweaty and exhausted. As I reached the st, Twitter announced the winners and that the tickets were hiding in a bar called Nieuw Amsterdam. I felt like Kate Smyth in the 2006 Commonwealth Games marathon, who collapsed just before the finish line due to dehydration and exhaustion. However, she walked away with a silver medal, I walked away empty handed. However, I consider this a practice run for 2015, where I’ll come back as prepared, focused and determined as I will ever be.

On the walk home I found this guy selling really cool little-arty-things:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He told me that he had been making and selling them for 5 years after he taught himself how to make them by reading books. I bought one for my girlfriend, so the trip wasn’t completely for nothing. If you see him around Melbourne, go say hello.

 

Ryan Hyde

 

@ryanhydeau

 

 

Bulletproof, Gluten-Free, Paleo Diet Day 1 Review

Gluten Free Diet

Yesterday, I finally decided to do it. To cut out my precious bread, pastas, cereals (not to mention beer) for three weeks. “But why Ryan”, you say, “why would you stop eating all the delicious things”.

Well, whilst working full-time on a nursery that lets me listen to my headphones, I have been listening to a large array of podcast and Audiobooks to pass the time during the day. One of my favourites being the Joe Rogan Experience.

For those who don’t know Joe Rogan, he is a Comedian and UFC commentator who back in the day hosted Fear Factor. To summarise the Joe Rogan Experience, the shows basically involves Joe and super interesting guests just talking for around 3 hours. I like it because the conversations are always interesting, and I like the way Joe views the world.

-Now back to the gluten-free thing, one really great guest that has come on the show is a the CEO of Bulletproof Coffee David Asprey. Dave is a former computer hacker that wholeheartedly believes in “optimal human performance”; he calls it being “Bulletproof” and has dedicated himself to nutrition and health.

One of the biggest things that Dave and Joe talked about was all the pitfalls of Gluten, which all can be found here with links to documentation. basically, removing gluten and food containing toxic mold from your diet betters your energy levels and mood during the day.

After surfing http://www.bulletproofexec.com/  I have decided to try this diet, along with the coffee and intermittent fasting (no food until 2PM) for 3 weeks.

Dave offers hundreds of articles, podcasts, videos and forums on his website which involves no sign-up fee or money. He does however, sell a couple of products including Bulletproof Coffee and supplements.

What I have been eating.

Breakfast 

Well technically for breakfast I didn’t eat at all, as I wanted to try out Intermittent Fasting. I read on a couple of different sources, that a high carbohydrate breakfast (what I have had all my life) is what makes you crash at about 2-4 PM. I regularly come home from work and either need to sleep or have a coffee, which in the end ruin my sleep cycle and make me feel terrible the next day.

http://athlete.io/5084/why-breakfast-is-nothing-but-a-scam/

http://www.bulletproofexec.com/bulletproof-fasting/

To counteract this, I followed the Bulletproof coffee recipe which is butter/coffee/coconut oil blended together while skipping breakfast. Today, I actually didn’t crash and wasn’t hungry until lunch time. I also still have the productivity now to write this blog post, which is saying something…

Another thing I read is the importance of salt in the morning (which, in most people doesn’t cause high blood pressure) to regulate your hormones in the morning. So before my coffee, I had a cup of water and  nutrient rich dissolved pink Himalayan sea salt. It wasn’t the nicest thing I’ve tasted, but again, I felt better during the day.

Lunch 

After skipping out on food on the afternoon-tea-break and opting to just drink lots of water, I started to get hungry about half an hour before lunch. Being not hungry is a weird occurrence for me as I am the guy that is hungry all the time, eats what he likes and doesn’t put on any weight. Usually I would be starving at around 9AM.

Instead of my usual lunch of heavy gluten foods, including my staple of toasted cheese sandwiches with salami and mayonnaise I had a steak with mashed sweet potato and a salad of spinach, cherry tomatoes and olive oil on the side. I prepared this all last night and it was relaxing cooking my own food, being a person that rarely cooks (cheers mum).

Snacks

At about 4PM I had a couple of sushi seaweed rolls, with white rice and avocado in it. Filled me up enough to get to dinner.

Dinner 

For dinner I had a delicious 3 egg omelette with bacon (yes, you can eat bacon, I know), red onion and garlic. I fried it in avocado oil.

Day 1 Conclusion

Now at 8PM, I feel pretty good. I didn’t follow the Bulletproof diet religiously as I had coffee from our coffee machine and I also put a bit of milk in my sweet potato mash, but my mood and energy levels are somewhat better than usual. This could be from the placebo effect, but we shall see after  about three weeks.

Now tomorrow is the real challenge, as I have my best friends’ 21st and will be only drinking vodka, lime and sodas which isn’t something an Australian ‘bloke’ usually drinks. I am also sort of weary of calling it a diet, as that throws up connotations of fads (Atkins Diet, Jenny Craig) in people’s mind. I also need to be careful on where I bring it up because it does sound like a hipster talking point, straying away from the ‘normal’ diet.

It’s just a trial and error sort of thing really.

ANYWAY, I will probably check back in soon.

Ryan

 

 

Bedouin Sea – Drunken Kings Single Review on The 59th Sound

Bedouin Sea are an indie-folk band hailing from Perth. Their single Drunken Kings is pretty damn catchy from the first melody, which reminded me of Send Me On My Way by Rusted Roots which was on the 1996 movie Matilda.

The band list influences such as Mumford and Sons, Boy and Bear, Jinja Safari and Angus and Julia Stone. You can hear little nuances of these bands within the song such as the bass drum beats and catchy guitar riffs of Jinja Safari and the lull and build up in the middle of the song; a technique used often by Mumford and Sons.

I really liked the song and look forward to listening to their self titled EP. You can find this song on Triple J’s Unearthed page.

You can check out many more awesome reviews, photos and news at the 59th Sound.

Eliza Hull Christopher EP launch Review Melbourne with Haarlo

Haarlo, Stacey Gardiner and Jono Steer

Firstly, this review will be a little different from my normal ones. Because it’s going straight onto my blog, I feel like I can write it however I like without representing a different brand other than myself. So let’s get to it!

I arrived to the Ding Dong Lounge, which is one of my favourite venues in the world to catch the end of Haarlo’s set. What I heard was really damn good. The songs were very upbeat and I was so impressed with vocalist Stacey Gardiner’s voice. In terms of production, they have a nice electronic dreampop sort of sound like an Owl Eyes or Lorde. Check out the video at the bottom of this review.

Eliza Hull’s set was very laid back,  tranquil and consisted of her and her guitarist/beat producer Dylan Hill. I am not usually into really big booming voices, but they were especially impressive in a smaller venue like the Ding Dong Lounge. Especially when she sings those long extended lower notes. I didn’t really know her music beforehand, but the song Ready For the Fall really resonated in my mind because it reminded me a little bit of Volcano Choir. Now that I mention it, she does have a bit of Justin Vernon quality to her vocals. I’d say her style follows suit of London Grammar and Bat for Lashes, but with some more electronic elements.

For Ghosts Hayden Calnin came on stage to help out with vocals. Although it was pretty cool to see some more presence on stage (Haarlo and Tanya Batt who I didn’t manage to catch came on stage later), I didn’t really like the song. It was slightly too repetitive for my liking. The songs I liked the best were just with her and Dylan.

She showed her sheer vocal power when she did a cover of Sinéad O’connor’s Nothing Compares 2U late in the set.

I really enjoyed the gig and if would definitely recommend you check both Eliza Hill and Haarlo out (I will conveniently put some links in the bottom of this post).

The Paper Kites – States Review

The Paper Kites – States (29/09/2013)

Following on from their breakout single Bloom in 2010 fellow Melbourne based folk outfit the Paper Kiteshave just released their debut album States, which has elevated them into my list of great Melbourne based artists.States shows a level of maturity that is impressive for a debut record.  The production is excellent with a great range of different instruments to keep the music fresh.

From organic raw Banjo melodies in St Clarity to 80’s rock guitar tones in A Lesson From Mr Gray, every song is an extension from one another while adding something new or different without overdoing it.

The highlight for me in this album are the laidback bon iver-like harmonies such as the one in never heard a sound.  The song is simply put together, with harmonies working in sync against a classic folk riff and a harmonica.

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Andy Bull – Baby I am Nobody Now Review for the 59th Sound

Andy Bull – Baby I Am Nobody Now (29/08/2013)

Andy Bull has been gracing the Australian music scene for almost 10 years now, but has gained international notoriety with his new singles this year.Following on from the success of Keep on Running that was featured on Triple J’s new music show, 2013,Baby I Am Nobody Now has been seen heavily on both Australian and international music blogs alike.His new sound is flavored with a synth pop vibe which is a little bit different from his earlier singles and EP’s. This sound is nothing new in the music world, however at the moment I think he is pulling it off the better than anyone (apart from maybe Chvrches), which can explain all the success he has been having in 2013.Baby I am Nobody Now is an excellent piece of song writing. All produced by Bull himself, the song constantly changes pace and fun melodies.The lyrics are really easy to understand and allow the listener to construct a story in their head. The themes of the song are following a breakup and the thought process that happens afterwards.

One of my personal favourite songs so far in 2013, I am eagerly awaiting the next album from Andy Bull.

This and many other great reviews, interviews, news and information can be found on www.the59thsound.com. If I were you, I’d check it out.