The Formative Years

Public Image Ltd 

It did not take long after being introduced to the Sex Pistols as a prepubescent that I started to acquire all of their records available at mainstream stores and religiously absorb any information available. Clearly, Sid Vicious was everything one should aspire to when it came to being a punk and served as a role model as far as aesthetics were concerned. Given the superficial shock value of what I loved about John Simon Ritchie and the  immediacy of the Sex Pistols’ musical delivery, I was a bit taken aback when I checked out John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols endeavour Public Image Ltd. 

While I got the anti-rock sentiment and experimental nature of PiL, I was more looking to graduate to Discharge-style bands than a sound that seemed to draw on krautrock, disco, dub and progressive rock to create something new.

Revisiting PiL a couple of years later, I started to develop an appreciation for how far ahead of his time Lydon was when he confidently trailblazed into uncharted avantgarde territory, fusing world music and reggae, as early as 1978 while technically still fronting the Sex Pistols.

Lyrically and theme-wise, songs like "Public Image", "Egomaniac traitor", "Religion" could have been taken from any Sex Pistols album and the live performances were not far off in terms of confrontational and taunting antics, but musically it seemed unlike anything that had been done before with the band focussing on never delivering what the audience might have expected.

In essence, Public Image Limited was much angrier than the Sex Pistols could have ever been, frustrated by the limitations and expectations imposed by their own environment, the music industry and society at large and infused with internally directed anger, frustration and a keen willingness to experiment took the punk sentiment and raw emotion to the next level.

With the post punk foundations set by PiL boundary pushing explorations, doors were kicked open for bands as diverse as Sonic Youth, Talking Heads and Red Hot Chili Peppers to blossom and bloom, making them a timeless band always worth rediscovering for anyone remotely interested in the history of underground music.

What’s Sumatra With You

Will & Co.

I dig coffee – my brain has grown accustomed to the arousal it produces, which results in my feeling passionate about it in a manner that is reminiscent of what Honoré de Balzac penned about and inspired by a cup of quality java. 

A good double espresso in the morning does the trick to catapult me straight into productive mode and when my preferred barista is out of reach, it is vital to have the right ingredients to be able to brewing a good cup myself.

While the process of pressuring H2O through grounded coffee beans sounds easy enough, if stars align re: smell, body, acidity, and the chemical reactions set off by the perfectly calibrated heat of the roasting process, something magical happens no matter if the end results tastes bold, fruity or more complex with nuances of citrus and berries.

While there may be many ambiguous variables contributing to complexity and balance along with what is camouflaged by marketing, every now and then one comes across something truly special when looking for the good stuff.

Enter Will & Co.

With a love for coffee and complimentary skills as the common denominator, the collective known as Will & Co set out to make each facet of the coffee process, from sourcing the best beans through to delivery into cup, the best they possibly can.

Understanding the appreciation of coffee as a holistic whole much greater than the sum of obvious individual factors, Will & Co. channel their alchemy in sourcing, blending and making coffee both with a scientific and artisanal approach. 

Case in point: Will & Co’s ‘Big Dog’ Probat Drum roaster, which with its slower, more controlled approach to roasting brings out complex flavour nuances.

My favourite Will & Co. expression is their signature "Eight-o-Eight" (808) blend of 100% Arabica beans from Guatemalan and Brazilian origins. With a carefully calibrated balance between the Guatemalan beans having  grown at high altitude in rich, fertile volcanic soil between the Agua, Fuego & Acatenango volcanoes in Antigua and the Brazilian equivalent sourced from the tropical savannah regions, the result is a medium-dark-bodied tour de force of floral, slightly acidic aromas dancing on a hazelnutty foundation, which is rounded out via a dominant caramel note.

Three-Oh-Three is Will & Co’s lighter roast with a vibrant acidity, calibrated at a level that allows for nuances on the smoother end of the flavour spectrum to shine, i.e. sweet and buttery layers of caramel that are pervaded by slightly tarty, peanutty and earthy notes, which set the scene for the elongated yet crisp citrussy and zesty crescendo. 

Given the quality of what I have had the chance to sample from Will & Co’s, a visit to their café in Bondi Beach seems mandatory.

The Formative Years

Sun Ra

There are few musical genres that I enjoy more than jazz when it comes to unwinding and blowing the cobwebs out. While it was not certainly not love at first sight and had to be steadily cultivated, listening to jazz and experimental music has become a nurturing and gratifying experience.

One of the protagonist’s that blew my mind and significantly broadened my horizons from an early age on, was one Herman Poole Blount, i.e. the entity known as Sun Ra and his “Arkestra”, as with his theatrical and philosophical approach, it accumulated to so much more than mere music.

Blount perfectioned the alter ego approach by severing mundane and worldly ties early on by incarnating as an alien mythical persona with his focus set on preaching peace.

Claiming that Sun Ra’s output is both prolific and eclectic would be an understatement par excellence as he shaped an idiosyncratic mélange of nearly any genre known to man, informed by a core interest for jazz, a penchant for free improvisation and the usage and adaptation of synthesizers and keyboards as early as when they became publicly accessible.

Having recorded well over a thousand songs, one would be hard pressed to make any recommendations, as not matter how diverse and unique his recordings are, I have yet to come across one that I do not enjoy.

In many aspects, Sun Ra was a prodigious musical talent, a renaissance man and a prototype that was never considered for mass production, who left behind an unrivalled musical and philosophical legacy that kicked into full gear once the psychedelia and beat generation started to embrace and champion him.

Sun Ra claimed that in the 1930s he had an enlightening semi-religious experience with aliens that set him on the path to speak through music and the world would listen. 

And listen I should as I became infatuated with his unique piano playing technique, which was informed by many styles, lest influences of classical composers.

Sun Ra’s oeuvre is often subdivided into three phases, i.e. Chicago (seeing the evolution of big band swing into cosmic jazz), the New York phase (informed by an unbridled will to experiment, free improvisation, unusual instrumentation and the use of new technologies) and the more conventional Philadelphia swinging and energetic jazz based phase. I recommend checking out his emissions from each one of them.

With his mission to elevate humanity beyond their mundane earthbound state, which gave birth to Afrofuturism as a musical tradition of performing blackness that remains relevant as a counternarrative to the status quo today, Sun Ra occupies a unique space in the cultural cannon.

ST. ALi Italian Film Festival 2021

Palace Cinemas

27 October to Sunday, 21 November

Sydney, Australia

There are quite a few film festivals that are being held on terra australis on an annual basis, however, the Italian Film Festival is never not a highlight, which is partly due to the fact that it constitutes the biggest ode to Italian films outside the confines of Italy. The other contributing factor is that it was founded by Cav. Antonio Zeccola who single-handedly planted the seed to create the foundation for Australia’s unrivalled national boutique cinema conglomerate to grow. Given that a film festival could not ask for a better environment than the Palace Cinemas might be one of the many facets that makes attending the festival a pleasure, however, the curation of the high standard of film submissions really brings up its value and the message it sends to its audience. 

With contemporary and classic Italian cinema being the obvious common denominator, each incarnation of the Italian Film Fest offers something new and unexpected, which makes the festival a resounding success.

The Opening Night of the 2021 incarnation of the Italian Film Fest was graced with an Australian premiere, i.e. a new drama charting the lives of a middle-class Italian family from the early 1980s to the current day. Daniele Luchetti’s The Ties is centred around an infidelity, around which the emotional picture spins its yarn and sheds its idiosyncratic light on age-old relationship conflicts. 

A personal highlight of this year’s festival was Fellini Forward: From The Creative Genius Of Federico Fellini.

Having only recently premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and based on an experiment using artificial intelligence, the personal and highly idiosyncratic artistic approach Fellini channelled his alchemy in creating a truly unique combination of memory, dreams, fantasy and desire is being transported into our day and age.

A truly "Felliniesque" experience in terms of extravagant, baroque images being (re-)animated to tell a metaphorical story illustrating the evolution of a maestro in the cinema world and a boundary pushing project in terms of reviving the legacy of a genre-coining artist. 

In many aspects, Fellini Forward perfectly encapsulates the DNA of the Italian Film Festival ( www.italianfilmfestival.com.au ), i.e. bridging classic and contemporary Italian cinema.

Send More Paramedics, Possessor, Prolapse AD

The Dome

London, UK

October 31, 2021

Let me kick this piece off with a little bit of backstory... 

On Halloween 2020, mid pandemic, zombiecore thrash metal legends Send More Paramedics posted a single poster on their site. Simply showing a decomposing hand reaching up from the grave with the words Halloween 2021 written along the bottom. This got fans of the band intrigued and before long rumours of a possible reanimation were circulating. After leaving us speculating for a few months it was announced that Send More Paramedics will be exhumed from their graves to perform a handful of live shows to mark 20 years of the bands reanimation and subsequent first gig concluding on Oct 31, 2021. They would be playing the venue BOOM! in Leeds on Fri 29th and Sat 30th Oct finishing at The Boston Music Rooms in London on Sun 31st. Tickets went on sale in spring this year and due to an overwhelming demand another date, Thurs 28th, was added to the venue in Leeds and the London venue was upgraded to The Dome in Tufnell Park. We, the fans were working ourselves into a frenzy to see the undead four piece live for one last feast before we all got too old to be thrashing about in the pit! So much so I don't think the band themselves realised just how much they had been missed as rumour has it they couldn't quite believe how quickly the dates had sold out. Send More Paramedics originally called time on their career back in 2007, reforming briefly in 2014 for a couple of record company anniversary shows, again in Leeds and London, so it had been a good 7 years since they last played together as a band. I suppose that's nothing compared to the fact that their last studio album The Awakening was released 15 years ago. In between releasing the tickets for this year’s anniversary shows and the gigs themselves SMP completely surprised us all by popping into the studio and recording a brand new album! The Final Feast was self-released on their Bandcamp page in September of this year and gave us 9 new tracks to devour, dissect and familiarise ourselves with in time for the upcoming shows.

The build up to these shows had been growing and before we knew it the dates were upon us. As the first 3 shows took place at the same venue they decided to mix things up by having different support acts every night. They were joined by Block Out The Sun (metalcore), Disstraxx (punk), Eye To Eye (melodic punk), Slimelord (doom metal), Pest Control (crossover thrash), and Video Nasties (horror-based black ‘n’ roll) for the Leeds dates and Possessor (metal) and Prolapse AD (thrash) for the London show.

Early reports of the Leeds dates were incredibly exciting, especially for myself as I was only attending the London Halloween show. This was to be my first live gig for over a year due to Covid and all the restrictions. Even though things had lifted a bit over here in the UK I was reluctant to go to any shows prior to this as I wanted my first show back to be a big one! I was not disappointed! One of the things I love about this band is the fact they dress up like the living dead and encourage their fans to do the same. Pretty much every SMP  show I have attended I have zombied up proudly and this was no exception. In fact a good 75% of the crowd had dressed up for this last show. The Dome as a venue is pretty spacious for a mid-sized building (but unfortunately cursed with a high ceiling for reasons we will come to later), however they took the necessary precautions for the current situation which was reassuring.

The atmosphere was one of excitement and nervous anticipation but the swift arrival of the first act, Kent based 4 piece Prolapse AD soon got the crowd going. Their thrash/death metal with a comedic twist was a cheerful start to the evening. With politically charged song titles like "Dump Trump" and "Pigfucker" making way for other fun titles such as "Black N Decker Pussy Wrecker" complete with a visual aide in the form of a dildo attached to an electric drill (Drilldo??!!) just in case you were unsure of the songs content. Ending their set with the hilarious and very catchy "Digging Up Your Mother". They were a great band to kick the nights entertainment off with. Given a little time to digest Prolapse AD 's impressive stage presence and fast paced set it was time for the second support act. London based sludge/stoner/thrash metal band Possessor took to the stage. This 3-piece band had embraced the fact the it was Halloween with singer/guitarist wearing a glow in the dark skeleton top and their bassist wearing a very fetching floaty dress, which I must say really brought out the colour of his eyes! They produced a varied and tight set of experimental/melodic metal reminiscent of Mastodon. Song titles include "Coffin Fit" and "Notting Hell". Their banter in between songs started off a little awkward but they got more talkative towards the end with the guitarist handing over his instrument to the audience to finish off their last song. 

The time had come for the main event and soon the stage darkened as 3 silhouettes twitched and shuffled their way onto the stage. As "A Crushing Tide" from disc 2 of The Awakening (2006) crackled over the PA, El Diablo took up position behind the drums, Medico grabbed his guitar and X.Undead donned his bass... but where was B'Hellmouth? This question was soon answered as the unmistakable lament of "Braiiinnnnnssss!" was soon heard over the chatter of the crowd and the towering figure of the vocalist came lumbering through the crowd drawn toward the stage. Having found what he was looking for balanced on the drum riser, he grabs the severed head (prop of course) and chows down on some fresh brains before kicking off with crowd pleasing familiar opener "The Hordes". The set from there just nailed it the whole way through. Kind of split into 2 parts the main bulk of the set was a great mix of top tracks from their 3 studio albums: A Feast For The Fallen (2002), The Hallowed And The Heathen (2004) and The Awakening as well as a couple from the newly released The Final Feast (2021), and some well worn live favourites. Anthemic classics "Blood Fever", "Burning The Body" and "Send More Paramedics" were interspersed with the pure thrash speed of "Cannibal", "Nothing Tastes Like This" and "The Unclean". From The Final Feast they chose "Totenkopf" and "Human Capital" which fitted in perfectly well with the older songs and got a great response from the crowd. Ending that part of the set with the hugely popular circle pit inducing anthem from the Tales Told By Dead Men (2005) split EP, "Zombie Versus Shark". 

Then, as this Halloween celebrates 20 years of the band and how it all started from one 5-track demo they recorded way back in 2001 they decided to play the first demo in its entirety: "245 Trioxin", "The Pain Of Being Dead", "Redneck Holiday", "Kingdom Of The Undead", and "Zombified" were old school SMP at their finest. Their final track of the night was always going to be their main anthem "Zombie Crew" from "The Hallowed And The Heathen", this has been the song to end the majority of their shows over the years and it was no different for their final show.

This was an insanely good set list incorporating their standout songs from a vast back catalogue of contenders; it had everything we, the crowd wanted. The added bonus of the new tracks was a great addition to the shows as we will never get to hear these tracks live ever. Adding these 2 new tracks into the set was hugely appreciated by the fans. The band themselves seemed on top form and in good spirits, if that is indeed possible from members of the undead. Having only had 2 practise sessions as a full band in preparation for these 4 shows and then playing 4 shows back-to-back when you haven't done it for years is a brave thing to attempt -- so much could have gone wrong, but it didn't. They nailed it and looked like they were having so much fun in the process. Dogged by a few sound issues to start with, the sound person seemed to have trouble with the bass and vocals on the odd occasion but eventually managed a balance by midway through. I personally think this was due to the height of the ceiling in the building causing these issues. There were some bum notes -- forgotten lyrics and dodgy timing from the band -- but given what I just said about them only having had a couple of practises beforehand this was to be expected. They were few and far between and they dealt with it in their usual professional manner. As always. SMP were very interactive with the crowd, had great zombie related banter in between songs, and encouraged circle pits, with B'Hellmouth often offering up his mic to the hordes to scream along, as well as jumping into the pit himself and crowd surfing. This final show at The Dome was a sellout and the gig was livestreamed across the internet so fans across the world could also witness the final throes of the undead.

Send More Paramedics have come and gone a few times over these last 2 decades and I really feel that this will indeed be the last time that we will see them live. Although this is a sad thing to say out loud they have left us with an epic and lasting back catalogue of insane zombie thrash that I will continue to revisit until my hearing gives out. There was no feeling of sadness when they finished "Zombie Crew," just a great feeling of belonging and honour to have been there with them one last time. Their 20-year milestone has been well truly been celebrated in sincere zombie style and now they shuffle back from whence they came. Be that in the ground or forced back into their metal canisters and barricaded back in their bunker no one truly knows all I know is that their loyal fans will never forget them and in true Bub (Day Of The Dead, 1985) style... we salute you!

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Editor's note: Read our 2021 interview with B'Hellmouth.