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Time Out Magazine Sydney Food Awards

Porteño Restaurant and Bar

Sydney, Australia

September 25, 2017

If you do not live under a rock, you are familiar with Time Out Magazine. In essence, Time Out employs a team of expert critics to deliver a credible guide to city life on the market. Each month their team of local editors and experts pour their passion into your respective city’s pre-eminent art and entertainment magazines.

Time Out magazines are highly-curated, best-of bundles of features, original photography and critics’ picks. Each month they curate and package the best of city life, for their audience of social butterflies and cultural explorers, e.g. independent reviews and previews across art, film, food and drink, music, theatre and more.

The Time Out Food Awards is the one night of the year when the go-to guide for everything that is relevant in the city you are visiting recognises Sydney's champions of the restaurant scene.

On September 25, 250 of the city's culinary experts, professional eaters and Time Out readers gathered at the original Porteño site for the 2017 Food Awards celebrating the best of Sydney’s restaurants, from the cheapest of snacks to the fanciest fine dining.

The night began with Champagne from Lanson, followed by a food and beer pairing care of Beer the Beautiful Truth and the Porteño kitchen:  Porteño chorizo, paired with White Rabbit Dark Ale; smoked chicken wings with adobo sauce and arepas with queso fresco paired with the Kirin Megumi; and pumpkin and feta empanadas, vitello tonnato finger sandwiches, corn and saffron arancini, and slow-cooked beef with chimichurri matched to the James Squire 150 Lashes Pale Ale. 

Southern Comfort brought cocktails to the mix, while Alpha Box and Dice supplied the wine times.

The room was packed with head chefs, hot talent, industry legends and a whole lot of people who truly love dining out in Sydney.

Argentine restaurant and host Porteño took home the coveted People’s Choice Award. Ester, was crowned Time Out’s Restaurant of the Year for 2017, reprising its victory from 2014. Danielle Alvarez from Fred’s took home Chef of the Year, and as for who to watch next, the Hot Talent winner was Alanna Sapwell from Saint Peter.

Cornersmith Annandale took out the Best Café award; 10 William Street is home to this year’s Drinks Service Award; and the Japanese-style burgers at Bar Ume nabbed them the Best Cheap Eat award.

Best New Restaurant went to mod-Korean diner Paper Bird in Potts Point; Best Casual Diner went to spicy-smoky Long Chim, who have reignited Sydney’s Thai-food love affair; and the Best Degustation was awarded to Momofuku Seiobo, who make sitting and eating for three hours an even more enjoyable experience than it already is.

Late-night Cantonese palace, Golden Century, took home this year’s Legend Award, mainly due to its past glory.

Following the formal part of the evening it was party time with party tunes spun by DJ Flex Mami.

Time Out Sydney knows how to throw a party to remember and the fact that the awards night has become an aspiration across the board of Sydney’s hospitality scene is testament to its relevance.

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Photos by KAVV

Peter Hook and the Light

Metro Theatre

Sydney, Australia

October 2, 2017

An Evening with Peter Hook & The Light performing the legendary Factory Record’s albums Unknown Pleasures and Closer. Both albums were performed sequentially and in their entirety.

For the uninitiated among you, Joy Division was a grand yet tormented short-lived group whose singer Ian Curtis committed suicide partly because of the pressures of looming fame. 

Released in 1979, Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division’s debut album and features the iconic Peter Saville artwork and the only Joy Division album released during lead singer Ian Curtis’ lifetime.

Its doleful, deep-toned sound made it an opaque and claustrophobic manifesto that became one of the most influential records of its era.

Closer was Joy Division’s second and final studio album. An exercise in dark controlled passion and by some referred to as the crown jewel of post-punk.

Tonight’s sold out show was an appreciation of the Joy Division catalogue with Peter Hook at the helm of the operation with his idiosyncratic low slung bass / guitar and gruffer vocals than Curtis.

The audience swayed along in awe, singing along and celebrating every note, with quite a few older semesters coming out of mosh pit retirement and reveling in the show’s culminating closer “Love will tear us apart”, which has the Metro Theatre explode with a mélange of delight, a swell of emotion and excitement.

An enjoyable and bracing experience for JD and New Order aficionados and a mandatory lesson for anyone who has been punished by late birth yet wear Joy Division gear as part of a high-fashion capsule collection.

Peter Hook and the Light will perform a second show at the Metro Theatre, where they will perform less bleak New Order material as well, paying homage to what formed out of the ashes of Joy Division and what cemented the surviving band members’ transition from niche cult taste to mainstream success and a staple in the catalogue of popular music.

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Photos by KAVV

Dan Sultan

Metro Theatre

Sydney, Australia

September 30, 2017

Dan Sultan’s fourth, more personal, reflective and mature album, Killer, which he recorded with producer and long-time collaborator Jan Skubiszewski in Melbourne, exemplifies that the singer-songwriter has evolved, putting with a broader weighing of life’s ups and downs and introducing synthesizers and drum machines to lift rhythms, and heightening emotions with gospel backing vocals.

In a laid back live environment up front and supported by a full band, Dan’s wider repertoire and raw emotion resonates with a swag of differing ages and tastes that is reflected in the audience: Young and old; aboriginal community and folks that would have founded their way to tonight’s venues via FM broadcasting.

Sultan works his guitar like his heartstrings and breaks up the intensity of his songs with light banter and self-deprecating humour, which makes his audience feel at ease and his offerings relatable - especially when he is both exercising and exorcising his inner demons.

His lyrical explorations and homespun storytelling cover a range of topics including the Australian political climate, imagery of the Australian outback and of course an ample serving of love songs and tunes of longing, which are amplified by the heartfelt ladies adding soulful backing vocals to the mix, infusing even the harder rocking songs with gospel and Motown flavours.

The evening was testament to Dan Sultan furthering the path of Australian music by effortlessly playing the claviature from hard rockers to bare ballads in his signature style, and could not even be dimmed by an unplanned fire drill towards the end of the set.

A night full of passionate soul, rock and blues roots of an Australian artist who has grown to feel more comfortable in his own skin and manages to capture the Australian spirit with credibility.

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Photos by KAVV

Forever Crazy

State Theatre

Sydney, Australia

September 28, 2017

Mesdames et messieurs - Le Crazy Horse de Paris!
Probably world’s best known cabaret, renowned for its diverse range of varietè shows and female performers.
It is not for nothing one of the iconic locations that Mötley Crüe referenced in their anthemic song “Girls, girls, girls”.

Since its inception in 1951, Crazy Horse Paris’ has collaborated with artists as diverse as David Lynch, Miuccia Prada, Roberto Cavalli, Kylie Minogue, Beyonce and Ellen von Unwerth as well as  guest performances with the troupe, including Dita Von Teese, Pamela Anderson, Carmen Electra, Arielle Dombasle, Clotilde Courau and Conchita Wurst.

Forever Crazy was created an an hommage  to Alain Bernardin, the founder of Crazy Horse Paris. It honours and preserve the cabaret’s DNA while taking it a bit further by incorporating modern touches mixed with classic performances. 

The attention to detail is remarkable - not just in terms of offerings in the realm of dance but also in terms of musical deliveries and costumes, which are all custome-made and tailored for each individual performer, with designers including the who-is-who of the fashion world.

The star of the show apart from the classically trained danced is the lighshow, whose mesmerizing sophistication give the production extra bite. Musically the performances are framed by French interpretations of classics and takes on pop songs, e.g. Britney Spears, and raunchy beats.

Two screens with prerecorded action that is often in sync with the respective performance on stage yet at times performed by a different lady bring the action close and personal to the audience in the back.

Artistic creation and women are the focus of the Crazy Horse cabaret and the token male, i.e. Mr Fantastic (Robert Muraine) makes more a comical than tantalizing appearance, contorting his body in every way possible.

Forever Crazy is an electric and playful perfectly choreographed and executed show, with established group routings, e.g. the traditional opener God Save Our Bareskin via Baby Buns and You Turn Me On, that please the crowd.

It makes for an entertaining evening of linear precision, whose perfect execution borders at times at the mechanical, which can at times run danger of going at the expense of sensuality.

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Photos from official website

Dune Rats

Big Top, Luna Park

Sydney, Australia

October 1, 2017

Dune Rats are an Australian outfit from Brisbane, originally formed by Danny Beausa and BC Michaels as a duet with Beausa on guitar/vocals and Michaels on drums.

The band later became a three-piece with Brett Jansch of Bleeding Knees Club joining as bassist.

The Vines’ Brad Heald also made appearances on bass in 2012.

2017 sees the Queenslanders having put international shows and a release from their very own record label between themselves and their eponymous first album full of debaucherous nonsensical sing-a-longs, which documents a transition from a laid back, mellow surfey garagey rock to a more DIY punk influenced sound, infused with more anger, headiness and cynicism.

In a live context, Dune Rats would not need a whole lot of animation to fit into a Simpsons episode: They revel in the Australian art of condensing and stripping things back to its essence. Their sound is reduced to the most elemental and simplistic musical denominators, framed by melodies and bogan-esque pisstaking par for the course on an energetic show for young delinquents, including the obligatory inflatable oversized beer tinnies, which keep bouncing on top of the audience throughout the show. Good messy fun.

Odes to brew – the band has its own lager, a collaboration with Newtown based brewers Young Henrys - and the herb anthem “Scott Green” were enthusiastically received by the youthful crowd, which fed energy back to a self-aware band.

Dune Rats delivered their fun-loving, tongue-in-cheek, catchy tunes with aplomb yet have more to offer underneath the hood than celebrating the art of getting drunk and baked.

With the recent release showing bits of introspection and thoughtfulness, it should be interesting to see what their emissions amount to in the future.

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Photos by KAVV