Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2016 i Rolling Stone Australia

Ginger Snap I CAN FORGIVE YOU MANY things, ROLLING STONE. I could even forgive putting the Boston Bomber on the cover. But Ed Sheeran? Sure, he’s sold a gazillion records, but since when has that been an indication of quality? Don’t forget, a million flies like shit. Stephen Hewson, Clifton Hill, Vic FINALLY! A COVER OF ROLLINGSTONEI feel proud to carry on the bus! Thanks for putting Ed Sheeran on the cover, and for taking us backstage with him in the UK. In this age of here-today-gone-later-today pop stars and autotuned pop starlets, how refreshing to find an artist who writes from the heart, and seems so unaffected by fame. Katrina Swift Clearview, SA The Vinyl Straw ONCE AGAIN THE RECORD companies have missed the mark. I refer to the…

SITTING ON A COUCH IN THE MAS- ter bedroom of his new $33 million Miami Beach mansion, Phil Collins doesn’t look like a man gearing up for a huge comeback. The 64-year-old just had surgery to repair nerves in his back, and even sitting up is a monumental challenge. His voice is soft and groggy – that is, until conversation turns to his future plans. “I’m no longer officially retired,” he says, growing animated. “The horse is out of the stable, and I’m raring to go.” Collins hasn’t played live since 2010 – and hasn’t recorded in more than a decade. “My kids are 10 and 14, and they want to see what their dad does,” he says. “They were in nappies when I was last on the road.” Last…

RIHANNA AND KANYE MAKE AN ART PROJECT “It’s hard to actually put them all on the same album,” Rihanna said of the eclectic songs on Anti, her upcoming first album in three years. Kanye West executive-produced the LP, and the snippets and leaks that surfaced (as well as the cover image, a piece by artist Roy Nachum built around a childhood photo of RiRi) suggest an arty left turn for the R&B superstar. JON DOLAN TOBY MARTIN’S SOUND OF THE SUBURBS The Youth Group frontman’s latest solo album was facilitated by Urban Theatre Projects. Written in and inspired by the multi-cultural Sydney suburb of Bankstown, it features local musicians who play traditional Arabic and Vietnamese music. “I wanted to recognise the diversity of Bankstown – and what Bankstown sounds like…

ON DECEMBER 1ST, ROGER Waters released a CD/ DVD set commemorating his three-year-long tour of The Wall – and he says he has new appreciation for why the Pink Floyd classic has endured. “People are just beginning, as they sleepwalk through imperial capitalism, to realise the law is being eroded, the military are taking over commerce, and the corporations have taken over government,” he says. “And that we the people no longer have a voice. The Wall, to some extent, is asking the question ‘Do you want a voice?’” Waters recently made headlines for his longtime role as a critic of Israel, drawing protest outside of a Long Island gig. He checked in one afternoon, offering sharp words for Howard Stern, Donald Trump and us, too. Now that you’re done…

The guitarist and producer is hard at work on a new Chic album, which he calls “the most self-indulgent thing I’ve ever done” – but he took time to tell us about five songs that changed his life. Elvis Presley “Blue Suede Shoes” My grandmother gave me a pair of blue suede shoes and told me, “Dance for the family!” I liked the song. I loved the shoes. The Doors “The End” It starts out like a fugue, then the tempo goes out of control. I remember taking acid with Dr. Timothy Leary, and this song was all I kept hearing. The Beatles “A Day in the Life” The song goes on a journey. The composition felt challenging and rewarding. I practiced it on guitar until it sounded perfect. Jimi…

‘The Happy Guitar’ A young, cheerful Cobain plays a jaunty folk-blues number on acoustic guitar like he’s holding down the stage in a mid-Sixties Greenwich Village coffeehouse. When Morgen says you can hear Cobain smiling on the early tapes, this is what he means. ‘Rehash’ Cobain revs up the distortion for a riff that suggests Black Sabbath in their prime and pushes his voice up to a manic, shredded falsetto. But there is a genuine song – clearly indebted to Cobain’s Northwest-punk idols the Melvins – coming through the turbulence. At points, Cobain shouts “Solo!” and “Chorus!” where he plans to put more noise and ideas later. ‘And I Love Her’ The grunge-rock avenger often cited as the John Lennon of his generation covers this Paul McCartney ballad – originally…

‘Drugachusetts’ A fantastical H.R. Pufnstuf-style kids show is the setting for a succession of drug freakouts. Moral for young viewers: “Always know your dealer.” ‘Titannica’ Cross jumps into a vat of acid after listening to his fave metal band but lives to meet his heroes. “I played your song ‘Try Suicide’ right before I tried suicide!’ ” he gushes. ‘Civil War Re-enactments’ A Ken Burns-style doc about Civil War re-enactors who are forced to battle Trekkies and Renaissance Faire attendees who show up at the same field. ‘Pre-Taped Call-In Show’ Cross hosts a talk show “where we tape all our calls a week in advance”, and becomes an increasingly frazzled prisoner to that deranged premise. ‘Marilyn Monster’ A shock rocker tapes a training video for Marilyn Mozzarella’s Pizzarella Pie Parlor.…

Abbey Road is without a doubt the world’s most famous and revered recording studio. Responsible for some of the biggest albums ever recorded in the UK, and home to some of the most inventive audio engineers over its long history, Abbey Road has also put its considerable weight behind a number of schools in countries such as France, Germany and the UK, imparting the combined wisdom of the studio via its Abbey Road Institutes. After successfully setting up shop in Melbourne’s Southbank, Abbey Road is already undertaking student admissions, and recently announced that its Sydney home will be none other than iconic recording complex Studio 301 in Alexandria. 301 will continue to cater to recording artists whilst running a full-time Music Production and Sound Engineering course with Abbey Road. The…

28 Approximate number of illegal Darknet black markets online 70 Percentage of Darknet sales that consist of pot, Ecstasy or coke 9,386 Estimated number of unique vendors on the Darknet 35 Number of vendors selling more than $1 million of illegal product $150-$180 million Total annual sales on all Darknet markets combined $475,000 Average sales per week on Silk Road during March 2012 $300,000 Average sales per day on Silk Road during summer 2013 $7,000-$30,000 Average price of a gun on the Darknet’s largest illegal market for weapons…

Kurt Cobain Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings Universal This powerful collection – a companion to the HBO documentary Montage of Heck – plays like Kurt Cobain’s phantom memoir. Director Brett Morgen went through 200 hours of cassette tapes to find these song sketches and demos. Some of the 31 tracks will resonate only with deep Nirvana scholars, and the album could be seen as stretching an incredible legacy a little too thin. But it’s surprising how much of it is compelling, even revelatory – including a pair of acoustic instrumentals (“The Happy Guitar”, “Retreat”), the gruelling “She Only Lies”, and Cobain’s last recorded song, “Do Re Mi (Medley)”. As in the film, the feedback loop between Cobain’s tormented upbringing in Aberdeen, Washington, and his pained genius is revealed starkly.…

Pope Francis Wake Up! Believe Digital Pope Francis’ message of peace and economic justice has been an inspiration to millions of people all over the world. How’s his music? Um . . . infallible! Wake Up! sets his speeches and prayers (in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and English) to pop, rock and classical compositions performed by Italian session musicians, several with roots in the country’s Seventies rock scene. You can hear that influence in the tubular synth noodling that opens “Annuntio Vobis Gaudium Magnum!” Other songs nod to Francis’ South American background. The only song in English, “Wake Up! Go! Go! Forward!” is the most rocking, riding heraldic metal riffs and a fire-tongued solo into a sermon on activism. Usually, the music – some of which is quite lovely – veers…

After years of being a niche item, Bluetooth speakers are everywhere, from bedrooms to the beach. Now a new breed of wireless systems is pushing the technology (and volume levels) to new heights, offering rock-solid sound and an array of gee-whiz features, whether you’re updating your stereo system, building your own home theatre or just jamming on the go. Want hi-fi sound without the cables and floor speakers? Need a speaker you can take on the Serengeti? Or just want something to charge your phone? Read on. The Next Level Sonos Play 5 RRP $499 per speaker familiar with the Sonos Play family speakers will probably think what to expect from the lat- incarnation of the Play:5. They’d be wrong, as this is a major step-up, even for a company…

“The Beatles were the forerunners of the music video,” says Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who directed many of their videos. “They made them because they didn’t want to schlep around to the TV stations miming their songs. They were so powerful, the TV stations would take their product rather than not have them at all.” The new deluxe 1+ DVD/Blu-ray collection is a treasure of Beatles footage – promo videos, TV appearances and rare clips, plus unreleased footage and commentary from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. Here are four of the fabbest moments. ‘I Feel Fine’ 1965 The Beatles trooped into Twickenham Film Studios on November 23rd, 1965, to grind out five quickie promo videos. They took a lunch break for “I Feel Fine” – and instead of miming with their guitars,…

LAST NOVEMBER, SCOTT STAPP called his son’s school to report some shocking news: “I’ve uncovered that the core of ISIS is within my own family,” he said in a voicemail. “Please call me immediately.” The call, which Stapp never explained, was one of the most disturbing incidents in a pattern of erratic and paranoid behaviour for the former Creed frontman – so troubling that his wife, Jaclyn, demanded he move out of the house they shared in southern Florida. Stapp spent about a month driving aimlessly around the country and posting unhinged videos to Facebook. In one, he ranted, “There are people who have taken advantage and stolen money from me, and they’re trying to discredit me.” In a phone call around the same time, he went on to suggest…

Talk about worlds colliding: the day after launching his latest project, a children’s book and album called Alexander the Elephant in Zanzibar, Grinspoon’s Pat Davern jetted off to Townsville to start touring in support of Cold Chisel. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” he laughs of the conflicting schedules. Davern first got the idea for Alexander the Elephant from stories his father would tell the guitarist’s daughter. He decided to write an album based around the Alexander character, to which artists such as Megan Washington, Alex Lloyd and Fergus Linacre and Alex Laska of Kingswood have lent their voices. That, he says, was the easy part. “Building the narrative and getting the story right took a long time,” he explains. “I knew the way I wanted the story to…

Uppercut Deluxe Men’s Grooming Product $74.99 Uppercut Deluxe makes strong holding product for real men Heineken Lager Who can resist a frosty can on Christmas day? And Heineken cans even come in Christmas colours (may just be a coincidence). Steen Jones Skateboard $99.99 ’Sail Away With Me’ is a limited edition skateboard by Brisbane based artist, Steen Jones, known for his work at the Rolling Stone Live lodge. Apple Thief Cider Cans $13.99 (4 pack) Apple Thief’s Pink Lady cider won an Australian Cider Award, and now it comes in a can. Perfect for summer! Records For Dad Christmas CD releases for Dad are usually thin on the ground, but this year there’s a bonanza of titles that should keep Dad fighting for control of the stereo.…

The Song I Fell In Love To Hall & Oates “I Can’t Go For That”, 1981 “I’ve been drinking at my wife’s restaurant for years, and the night I asked her out, which was only a few years ago, she nodded ‘yes’, and then we got a lock-in at the restaurant, dancing to Hall & Oates songs. And then we noticed staff leaving and we were the only two left there. Hall & Oates is still a code for something I can’t tell you about.” The Song That Makes Me Cry Randy Newman “Losing You”, 2008 “I brought it to my dad when he was having triple bypass surgery, and he also had bowel cancer, and I listened to that with him when he was very frail. It’s…

WHEN BUDDY GUY is in town, he leaves his house in Orland Park, Illinois, around 7:30 p.m. and makes the 40-kilometre drive up I-55 to downtown Chicago, listening to B.B. King’s Blues-ville station on satellite radio on the way. He drops his big white Lexus in his usual prime parking-garage spot, then walks down the block on Buddy Guy Way to his club, Legends. Tonight is a little slow; just a few people from the Hilton across the street, eating at scattered tables on the checkerboard floor. Wearing a white Legends baseball cap, a Hawaiian shirt and a bracelet engraved with NOTHING BUT BLUES, Guy stops and looks around for a minute, flashing a big grin, his gold-and-diamond-capped teeth sparkling. He takes a seat at his stool in the corner…

Kenya In January, journalists and human rights leaders launched AfriLeaks, a whistle-blower site to expose corruption in Africa – home to three of the top 10 worst-ranked countries for free press, according to the Press Freedom Index. The service relies on Tor to ensure the anonymity of its sources in Kenya and across the continent. China The Great Firewall, the Chinese government’s efforts to block or censor the Internet, has been used to stop political dissidents from using Tor. But China faces a dilemma – it can’t shut off the Internet completely. “China has to walk a fine line because they can’t get their corporations off the Internet,” Dingle-dine says. Russia Freedom fighters in Russia use Tor to access banned sites, but the “Safe Internet League”, backed by the country’s…

Grimes Art Angels Remote Control On her 2012 breakthrough, Visions, singer-producer Claire Boucher (a.k.a. Grimes) was an indie-rock fan’s platonic ideal of a pop star – blurring moody electro and moodier R&B in music that she made herself on Garage-band, turning the underground into her own diva stadium, all while implying that actual pop success was something she could take or leave. Since then, she’s signed to Jay Z’s management firm Roc Nation, toured with Lana Del Rey and moved from Montreal to L.A. But the big news on her fourth album is how much she’s upped her game as a writer and a singer, giving her music new polish and resonance. Art Angels has a sharper, sleeker sound that sneakily suggests she made the leap to working with big-name…

Jack-Of-All-Trades Peachtree Nova 220SE Digital Amp RRP $US1,599 Audio nerds will lose it for this jack-of-all-trades amp that provides up to 350 watts per channel of power to any system and has a built-in digital-to-analog converter for optimising lossless audio from streaming or hi-def services like Pono or TIDAL. Those in the know reckon that a good digital to analog converter is worth its weight in gold. Sculptural Turntablism Rega RP10 Turntable With Cartridge from $US6,495 This skeletal turntable looks cool, but there’s a method to the madness: Stripping away unnecessary mass means less vibration for sweet-sounding vinyl. Rega have been making hi-end turntables the traditional way for decades, so when they decide to mess with tradition, you know it’s for sound technical reasons. The additional cartridge (needle) will be…

Run, Alicia, Run Alicia Keys had already run one marathon in her life – in 2007, in Greece – and swore never again. So when her brother urged her to join him in the New York City Marathon, “My first instinct was ‘hell no’,” said Keys, “but [then] I thought, ‘Why not?’ ” As part of her training, Keys meditated, listened to Eckhart Tolle books and ran for about an hour a day. She finished in a respectable five hours, 50 minutes: “What got me through was seeing incredible runners with prosthetic legs or a man leading a blind runner. This was the surge of strength I needed!” BOWLER’S BANQUET After hanging out with Jack White at Third Man Records in Nashville, Mick Jagger squeezed in some bowling. “Don’t ask…

Bonnie Raitt’s new studio album, Dig in Deep, won’t be out until February, but the singer-guitarist has already received her first rave review. “I got an e-mail from Jackson,” Raitt says, meaning her friend Jackson Browne. “He said, ‘I love the way you use the band as a band. It really sounds cohesive.’ ” The LP title comes from a line in the opening stomp, “Unintended Consequence of Love”. It is also Raitt’s allusion to how she and her longtime studio-and-road band – guitarist George Marinelli, bassist James Hutchinson and drummer Ricky Fataar, with recent recruit Mike Finnigan on keyboards – “have become a unit that can dig deeper,” she says, “into the grooves.” Two covers come from the Eighties, freshened with blues-rock swagger and Raitt’s torrid slide guitar: INXS’…

THERE IS THE RE- clusive young man laying down early acoustic versions of his songs into a cassette machine, the giddy adolescent making silly-voice radio ads for his new band, and the keen experimenter building sound collages and storms of guitar distortion. There is also the serious writer recounting an early suicide attempt with performance-artist resolve, the unabashed romantic covering the Beatles’ “And I Love Her”, and the besieged rock star singing about his anguish and insecurity from the edge of oblivion. They are all Kurt Cobain. And they are all on one record: the soundtrack to Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, writer-director Brett Morgen’s HBO documentary about the late Nirvana singer-guitarist. Released by Universal last month in a variety of formats, including a 31-track deluxe edition, Montage of Heck:…

A FEW YEARS AGO, CHRIS Martin was feeling “depressed and overwhelmed”. He was in the final stages of his 10-year marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow, and he felt increasingly insecure about the music he was making. “I wasn’t looking at things in a healthy way,” he says. Then a friend gave him some books, including Man’s Search for Meaning, a memoir by psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, and a volume by the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. Martin says one poem, “The Guest House” – which suggests “inviting in” dark thoughts – helped him get through the period around his divorce. “It kind of changed my life,” he says. “It says that everything that happens to you is OK. The idea is to accept what happens to you and not run…

ON JULY 15TH IN PITTS- burgh, David J. Hick-ton, a grey-haired U.S. attorney in a crisp dark suit, stepped out before an American flag to announce the feds’ latest victory against online crime. “We have dismantled a cyber-hornet’s nest of criminal hackers, which was believed by many to be impenetrable,” he said. “We are in the process of rounding up and charging the hornets.” By the next morning, more than 70 people across the world had been charged, arrested or searched in what the Department of Justice called “the largest coordinated international law-enforcement effort ever directed at an online cybercriminal forum”. After an 18-month international investigation led by the FBI, known as Operation Shrouded Horizon, hackers on a site called Darkode were accused of wire fraud, money laundering and conspiring…

Bruce Springsteen The Ties That Bind: The River Collection Sony “Woulda made a great single album.” That’s been the lazy fan’s rush to judgment since the double-LP dreamtime of the White Album and Exile On Main St. A million blogs and playlists are devoted to proving it now. Still, funny how wrong they all sound. In the shadow of the Clash’s flawless London Calling, Bruce Springsteen caught some flak for The River in 1980. The raucous frivolity of “Sherry Darling”, “I’m a Rocker”, “Ramrod”, “Cadillac Ranch” and especially (ooh-ooh I got a) “Crush On You” fell foul of the pause button on many a righteous cassette. As it turns out, the Boss already had his answer to the “What if?” question. The unissued single version of his difficult fifth album…

Neil Young Bluenote Café Warner Fans, critics and bean counters tend to agree that Neil Young misplaced his mojo in the 1980s. His label sued him for making dud records, and though he won that day in court, it took til Freedom for the broader jury to concur in ’89. This latest revelation from his vast ArchivesPerformance Series hails from just prior to that popular renaissance, culled from 10 months touring his ensemble blues album, This Note’s For You. It’s not the first to suggest that his Eighties hiccup was purely studio related, but it is the most persuasive proof that his blistering focus as a live performer never waned. The raw, horny fanfare of “Welcome To the Big Room” sets a tone that bites more than it swings. Young…

Troye Sivan Blue Neighbourhood EMI At just 20 years of age, the South African born, Perth raised Troye Sivan is already a prominent player in the scene of career-hopping millennials. Until recently he’d been coasting as a famous YouTube personality with over four million channel subscribers, as well as being a budding actor (he starred in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and as the title character in the successful South African franchise Spud). But to be cynical and dismiss Blue Neighbourhood as bottled zeitgeist music from another child star is to be wilfully short sighted, for its charms are many. At its core, Sivan’s soft and honeyed vocals command attention, filled with the kind of heady and unchecked emotions that can only be mustered up by someone at age 20. It hovers…

What’s the least-complicated, best-sounding system I can get? Ditch your old receiver for the PS AUDIO SPROUT ($799; psaudio.com), a 50-watt-per-channel amp that excels at handling sources both old (vinyl) and new (digital, via Blue-tooth, USB or coaxial); the compact chassis hides a phono pre-amp, a headphone amp and a DAC. Then build out your system with the BOWERS & WILKINS CM5 S2 ($1,600 a pair; bowers-wilkins.com), a space-defying bookshelf speaker with an uncommonly rich midrange, thanks to its tough composite drivers and one-inch tweeters separated from the cabinet via a ring of cushioning gel. I want to get back into records but ditched my old setup. Where should I start? All you need is a turntable with a built-in phono pre-amp, plus powered speakers. Plug the AUDIO-TECHNICA AT-LP120-USB ($300;…

The last record I bought It was mine [MomentaryMasters] when it came out! I always buy my albums when they come out. I like to see the whole experience. Even when they have pre-orders I’ll pre-order my record just so I can see what it’s like for a fan to get it. If there’s any mistakes I can go yell at someone! [Laughs] I’ve been doing that always: I download it, I pre-order it, and I buy it on vinyl. Did the shop assistant recognise me? No, they had no idea. They actually even had it stocked as the artist was Momentary Masters, not Albert Hammond Jr, that was funny. My last meal would be If you’re on death row, I wouldn’t want a big burger and be all farty…