Gothic: An Illustrated History
Roger Luckhurst
Thames & Hudson Ltd
Once one looks past the outworn clichés and stereotypes of how “gothic” is commonly portrayed, defining the DNA of the genre proves to a tad more intricate than it seems from a distance, especially since its manifestations …
Night of the Soul
The Cutaway
Sydney, Australia
January, 21 2022
In terms of venues, it does not come more unique than the approximately 5,200 square metres that are raw beauty known as The Cutaway: Given that the below-ground situated, concrete based space is carved …
Thus Let Us Drink Beer
Rocky Ridge and La Sirène
With craft beer brewing booming and having become a veritable business model, it is not further wondrous that operations that started out independently eventually had to rely on outside investments to then have their DNA diluted and mainstreamed …
The Formative Years – Karl-Heinz Stille
As a prepubescent on my quest for interesting new underground music, I was lucky enough to find someone who had been there from the very start, done that and was open enough to graciously let me pick his brain to push me in …
Ottolonghi Test Kitchen – Shelf Love
Penguin Books
Yotam Ottolenghi and his crew that form the collective known as Ottolenghi Test Kitchen is not merely a household name when it comes to chefs infiltrating family homes with their cookbooks and has a faithful cultlike following, but each constituent …
Audio = Ground Zero
The Dilemma with Earbuds
Jabra and Axel Grell’s debut
My transition to wireless earbuds happened organically as my collection of wired EarPods that come free with the purchase of various gadgets eventually gave up the ghost. However, in an ever expanding growing market …
Sticky Fingers
Enmore Theatre
Sydney, Australia
February 5, 2022
It has been five decades since Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers was incepted and as far as their discography is concerned, I deem it to be one of their four masterpieces that really mattered.
If the …
While I loved skateboarding as a prepubescent, these days I appreciate the calm skiing and snowboarding provides along with the opportunity to become on with the calm of nature in “blankets of white as they brighten the night” as Marvin Gaye ever so eloquently croons.
I would never …
Mark Rothko
1968: Clearing Away
Pace Publishing
Since its inception in 1960, Pace Gallery has established itself as a veritable heavyweight on the firmament of contemporary and modern art galleries with nine locations worldwide, which unfortunately I have not had to chance to experience yet in the …
The Necks
Opera House
Sydney, Australia
February 9, 2022
This has been in the making for the longest time, as I have been an avid The Necks aficionado ever since I was first introduced them in the 1990s. Unfortunately, so far I have never had …
Water of Life
Metallica’s Blackened and Waitui from New Zealand
“…fire to begin whipping dance of the dead – Blackened is the end….” - Well, certainly not the end of celebrity and band inspired spirit creations as they are mushrooming at a pace that it proves hard to …
The Formative Years - Kyuss
There is something to be said for music that not only serves as a mere accompaniment but as the sonic equivalent of a psychedelic experience as it makes things infinitesimally better and literally adds another dimension to things.
It must have been …
Thus Let Us Drink Beer
Hop Nation & Cronulla Beer Co.
It must have been a couple of years ago that while on a quest to quench my hankering for a hopped out beer, I came across one of Hop Nation’s delicious emissions the first time. I remember …
The Formative Years – Daft Punk
In the mid-1990s there was a period of time that due to a love interest, lead me to Paris every other weekend, where we often ended up at warehouse parties. It was there that I was first introduced to French electronic music and …
Thus Let Us Drink Beer
Stomping Ground and Heaps Normal
Traditionally, the Collingwood region in Victoria has always been a hotbed for craft breweries, a fact that had a tangible impact on the nomenclature of Stomping Ground Brewery, which not only gave the region an innovative boundary pushing …
The Formative Years – Queen
There are few bands that had a tangible impact on me to the extent that Queen did with their dramatic and anthemic songs, before I fell prey to the allure of punk rock, which is many ways is no less dramatic and decidingly less …
The Umbilical Brothers
Opera House
Sydney, Australia
February 18, 2022
The entity known as The Umbilical Brothers have become an internationally acclaimed tour de force, having performed in close to fifty countries with their idiosyncratic brand of humours that is based in equal parts on …
The Formative Years - Atari Teenage Riot
I have always loved my first Atari ST computer, so even if Atari Teenage Riot had not fused anarchist and radically socialist views with screamed vocals and gabba techno to create their idiosyncratic melange of what became known as digital hardcore, I …
What Maketh A Great Barber?
In less enlightened times, there used to be an outworn paradigm where male grooming was perceived to be effeminate, bougie or high maintenance and barbershops were associated with being located in backstreets with the clientele being mainly middle-aged men.
Thankfully this has fundamentally …
The Formative Years – Nate Dogg
When one Nathaniel Dwayne Hale shuffled off this mortal coil about eleven years ago, the realm of hip hop not only lost an iconic legend but an immensely charismatic trailblazer that helped to create the foundation for how successful the idiosyncratic G-Funk and …
