stuartbuchanan.com

SAVE FBI - SIGN UP & RECEIVE A FREE ‘DISORIENTATION SESSION’ MIXTAPE

• Sign up or Donate to FBi Radio during the Disorient show on Thursday 2nd July and Thursday 9th July 2009 (9pm-11pm Australian EST), and get a free ‘Disorientation Session’ mixtape.

Right now, FBi Radio is calling for help from its listeners.  Since day one, back in August 2003, FBi has been one of the very few 100% independent radio stations in Australia.  FBi is an incorporated not-for-profit organisation, with a board voted by the listener community, a dedicated and thoroughly underpaid staff team and hundreds of volunteers.  All of these people are united with one common need: a community-generated media channel that is undiluted by commercial music, commercial opinion and commercial advertising - a truly rare commodity in today’s marketplace.

But when the Global Financial Crisis came to town, FBi was hit hard.  Being independent is great in terms of editorial and creative freedom, not so great when you don’t have a rich mogul or a vast, educational institution to fall back on.  And let’s be clear - FBi doesn’t have any government funding to fall back on either.  They receive around 5% of their income for the Government as a direct offset to the enormous commercial fees imposed by the people who look after the antenna, but no more than that.  For six years, FBi has survived on the generosity of its sponsors and its listeners - both of which felt the pinch when the economy collapsed, and donations & sponsorships for FBi tailed off markedly in the first quarter of the year.  So much so, that the future for FBi started to look bleak.  There will always be a way to save the 94.5 broadcast licence - but an FBi broadcasting via a coathanger from the back of a ute (to a radius of 3km) serves very few people, certainly not the current community of listeners, musicians, artists and Sydneysiders that make FBi what it is today.

So, the appeal is on right now - Save FBi.  If every listener pledged to become a financial supporter, FBi would be around for ever and a day.  As it stands, only 2% have chosen to do so.  Whether we like it or not, we do seem to live in an era when music is considered something of a free commodity - and if we don’t pay for MP3s on our hard drive, why would we pay for music on our radio?  Well, FBi is more than an iPod - FBi lives and breathes.  FBi is a community of smart, creative, thought-provoking human beings, people just like you and me - and that makes FBi one of the best places for us to discover a true diversity of contemporary Australian music and culture. In a word, FBi is community.

And the subset community of FBi broadcasters have their work cut out for them this week and next.  We’ve been drafted in to help the station raise money during our shows.  FBi knows that whilst there are many ‘general’ listeners who listen to FBi throughout the day, there’s also specialist shows (like ‘Disorient’) that have their own community that gathers around them.  If you’re reading this, perhaps that’s you.  Perhaps you listen to Disorient, or you used to listen to my previous show, Fat Planet, when it ran for many years on Sunday afternoons.  If so, hopefully I’ve shared something that means something to you or turned you onto something new.  Hopefully that means you won’t mind me asking for a little payback.  Becoming a financial supporter and saving FBi costs seven bucks a month, four for concessions.  Not much at all.

In return you’ll get:

• a warm ever-lasting glow, safe in the knowledge that you’re part of a rare and passionate community of people who orbit around FBi, and that your cash helped in some way to help keep FBi on air.
• every week, FBi gives aways prizes, such as tickets and CDs and other merch, and only you as a supporter are eligible to win.  Most supporters who pick up the phone to enter these competitions do win something at some point, it’s not hard.
• during this particular drive, FBi has a prize draw - so you’ll go in the running to win two flights to London with V Festival tickets, or two business class flights to Los Angeles.  Literally, a trip of a lifetime.
• And a special bonus, just from me, you’ll get a free copy of the ‘Disorientation Session’ mixtape - compiled exclusively for the current FBi Supporter Drive. It’s copyright clear (no piracy!) and features tunes from AGF, Growing, Filastine, Salem, The Craters, Dalt Wisney, Inverness, Villa Diamante, I Buried Paul, The Peronists, Atomhead and many many more - eighteen tracks in all.

I’ll be giving the mixtape away free to all listeners who sign up (or upgrade / renew) as FBi Radio Supporters during the Disorient show on Thursday 2nd July and Thursday 9th July 2009 (9pm-11pm Australian EST).  All of FBi’s specialist shows have ‘target numbers’ for new supporters, hence my naked bribery to marshal you into supporting Disorient.  Hopefully I’ll be counting you amongst one of those numbers come Thursday night.

• CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP OR DONATE ONLINE (VIA CREDIT CARD OR DIRECT DEBIT)

If you do need any more persuation, check fbiradio.com for more info on FBi and their call-out for much-needed financial aid.  Thanks for reading, and (I hope) for becoming a Supporter - and helping to save this vital little radio station in these unsteady times.

DISORIENTATION SESSION Disorient’s Mixtape For FBi
Tracklisting

1. Dalt Wisney - Sci-Fi Dot Fiends [Pakistan] 2:03
2. The Craters - Samba Party [U.S.] 2:40
3. Ghoul - Fuck Math [Australia] 1:54
4. Salem - Brustreet [U.S.] 5:02
5. 7VWWVW - Mammal Theme [Scotland] 5:55
6. Villa Diamante - Tonolec vs Kromestar [Argentina] 2:56
7. Berrettaz - Pense A [Côte d'Ivoire] 2:44
8. AGF aka Antye Greie - Disturbia [Germany] 4:07
9. Filastine - B’talla (feat. Rabah) [U.S.] 3:10
10. I Buried Paul - Favola [Brazil] 3:17
11. Fletcher - Dreadlox Dub [South Africa] 6:17
12. The Peronists - Cumbia Maligna [Argentina] 3:39
13. Atomhead - Unsuspecting Broken Receiver [Belgium] 2:09
14. Growing - Green Flag [U.S.] 6:16
15. Sleepmakeswaves - Exits To Nowhere [Australia] 3:41
16. Rothis Bournias - Last Days Part Two [Greece] 7:07
17. Inverness - Bats [Brazil] 3:13
18. Flica - Mid [Malaysia] 4:53

Note: All music on the mixtape is licenced via Creative Commons or has otherwise been made freely available by relevant artists & labels. If you like what you hear, please support the artists -visit their site, buy their music.

Cover image by Irving Liaw (under CC Licence).

MIXTAPES: DATABASS ECLECTIC AUDIO (1997)

Music played a large hand in the genesis of Thee Data Base, the zine that I co-edited with Alan B back in the 1990s.  And whilst music was well represented in the content of the zine itself, it was actually the electronic / experimental music scene around us in Glasgow and Edinburgh that galvanised us into some form of action in the first place.  It was clear that this particular type of music at this particular time had brought disparate people together in search of something ‘else’ - a refuge from the musically barren 80s and the rebirth of ‘Britpop’ in the mid 90s.

It struck me that a compilation of local music would be a logical extension to the zine and to our irregular club / performance nights.  We put a call out in one of our issues and received a healthy reply from the community.  Of course, these were the days pre-broadband and even pre-CDR, so the best solution for distribution was the mighty cassette tape.  I compiled fourteen tracks from the submissions (and added in a couple of our own for good measure) and designed the sleeve artwork (above).  Alas, our zine venture came to a natural end before the cassette could be released, and faced with issues of cost, time and a little thing called ‘life’, the ‘master’ cassette was put into a box and forgotten about.

As I launch into another compilation venuture, New Weird Australia, I’m posting this of something of an interesting counterpoint - Old Weird Scotland perhaps?  If I recall correctly, the bands featured here are mostly all Scottish acts, all operating around the late 1990s.  The main exception is Involution - a very early project from American producer Kush Arora who befriended us by long distance at the time.  Kush has since gone on to work with or play alongside Negativeland, The Bug, Flying Lotus, Warrior Queen, Blevin Blectum and Thievery Corporation.  (Note, the Involution here is not to be confused with a Cevin ‘Skinny Puppy’ Key project of the same name).

I don’t recall what became of anyone else here, however that doesn’t detract from the quality of the work - ranging from the proto Anticon vibes of Cassius Clay Inc to the drone work of Heehawhairhead, or the 808 squelch of Alan’s Re:Search project to the primal screams in the live recording of Roddy Hunter’s performance piece ‘Infant Inside’ - and there’s also Stephen Beer’s beautiful Brian Eno-esque electro lullaby and the white-boy, lo-fi bedroom take on Dionne Warwick’s ‘Walk On By’ from Natural Born Chillaz. The closing track is a screwed version of a poetry reading, designed to signify the launch of a slo-mo project I intended to work on - needless to say, this still remains my only ‘No-Fi‘ recording to date.

DOWNLOAD: DATABASS  ECLECTIC AUDIO (1997) | download zip file

Tracklisting:

1. RUBY JUNE Doodle
2. CASSIUS CLAY INC. The Rosy Cross
3. ESOFERRIC Deletia
4. HEEHAWHAIRHEAD The Great & The Grey
5. RODDY HUNTER Infant Inside
6. RE:SEARCH Non:Ecludian Rhythm Pattern
7. CRUX Gravel
8. INVOLUTION Sculpted Presence
9. STEPHEN BEER Underwater Camera Work
10. HAND OF POB Oil & Water
11. TAGNUT Purge
12. FOENE Tape Extract
13. NATURAL BORN CHILLAZ Walk On By
14. NO-Fi When I’m Dead

MIXTAPES: DISCONTENT MIXTAPE TWO (2009)

The Discontent Mixtape series is an irregular series of compilations, designed to give readers of my music blog an extreme intro into the Discontent world - a collection of tracks that have appeared on the blog in recent times. For this, the second volume, I’ve included a few tracks that didn’t quite make their way from hard drive to blog, and so are included here for the first time (Mutamassik remix, Ras G, Psychic Ills, Xiao He and Entertainment For The Brain Dead).

All the tracks have been published freely online by artists or labels, so feel free to post the link or distribute the mixtape. If you do, please also link back to www.discontentblog.com.

Discontent - Mixtape Two | rapidshare download

1. White - Build A Link [China]
2. Three Trapped Tigers - 1 [England]
3. These Are Powers - Life of Birds [U.S.]
4. Mutamassik - Commo The Rag (Claws Costeau’s All Dirty Remix) [Egypt]
5. Kid606 - Mr. Wobble’s Nightmare [Venezuela]
6. Ras G - Shinelight [U.S.]
7. Psychic Ills - Fingernail Tea [U.S.]
8. Underlapper - Meanderthal (Cleptoclectics Remix) [Australia]
9. Lloop - Lei-tzu [U.S.]
10. Vorad Fils - Android Creche [Australia]
11. Growing - Green Flag [U.S.]
12. Cauto - Despertar [Spain]
13. Xiao He - After Time [China]
14. Entertainment For The Brain Dead - What You Get (Part Timer Remix) [Germany]

Discontent Mixtape One remains available here, featuring Fever Ray, Harmonic 313, Mi Ami, Hudson Mohawke, Salem, Filastine and more.

INTRODUCING… VIA WORDLE

If you’re new to this blog, here’s a quick visual overview of what happens beneath this page:

Generated by Wordle [Click to view Larger]

NEW WEIRD AUSTRALIA

My latest project is titled New Weird Australia.

New Weird Australia is a forthcoming free compilation series of new, electic and experimental Australian music. Compilations will be made available to download via www.newwweirdaustralia.com on a bimonthly basis.

Australia has a long and vital history of experimental music, however until the birth of the internet age, this rich seam of avant-garde audio remained largely confined to its geographic borders. Over the last ten years, emerging Australian artists have found new avenues and new audiences thanks to international digital distribution, and New Weird Australia seeks to continue and extend that paradigm with a regular release schedule and accessible format.

The first volume in the series is slated for release in late June 2009.

ARTISTS: New Weird Australia is seeking expressions of interest from Australian musicians and audio artists actively pursuing an agenda of experimentation and innovation in any form or genre. Please email info@newweirdaustralia.com if you are interested in featuring your music on a forthcoming release, and provide links to your music for review. Agreed tracks will be licenced for use in this series only, and your existing copyright and licencing agreements (copyright / left or otherwise) will not be affected.

DESIGNERS: New Weird Australia is also seeking expressions of interest from graphic designers, visual artists, photographers and others working within the visual medium to develop cover art for each volume in the series. Please email info@newweirdaustralia.com if you are interested in featuring your work on a forthcoming release, with relevant links.

PROMOTION & FEES: New Weird Australia is a ‘zero-cash’ project, developed on a strictly not for profit basis to promote new Australian works. Compilations are distributed via this web site free of charge, and no financial arrangements will be entered into. All works remain copyright of the artists. New Weird Australia will channel its own resources and funds into promotion of the project on third party sites, online media and (where practical) print publications. Fundraising efforts may take place in order to pursue such promotional campaigns, all profits from such activity will be channelled directly into promotion.

ABOUT: New Weird Australia is managed by Stuart Buchanan and Danny Jumpertz.

Having presented ‘Fat Planet‘ on Sydney’s FBi Radio and managed its companion blog for five years, Stuart Buchanan now presents the international, experimental music show ‘Disorient‘ on FBi and edits a new blog with a similar ambit, titled ‘Discontent‘. He is also Executive Producer of the Creative Sydney project and records music under a number of aliases.

Danny Jumpertz has hosted music radio shows since 1982, with stints at 2SM, 3RRR, Triple J and most recently FBi. Danny received a music degree in 2000 from Southern Cross University, and was appointed music producer for SBS’s Whatever Music project (2001-2004). In 2000 Danny kick-started indie label Feral Media with an EP from his band Plankton. Since then, Feral Media has released over 55 albums, EPs and compilations. Danny’s current bands are Clairaudience, Alpen and Assemblage.

VOID FBI FUNDRAISER, 20TH JUNE 2009

This Saturday (20th June), I’ll be DJing at VOID’s FBi fundraiser alongside Harmonic 313 and a large bunch of DJs from Void, FBi, Headroom and more. Here’s the blurb:

For the past few years, the Sydney dubstep scene has been one of the most exciting underground scenes in a long time, with musicians and music fans from a whole range of musical backgrounds getting behind this vibrant and exhilarating style of music. For over two years now the place to experience this scene has been VOID. Starting in 2007, Void has been there every single month with an amazing slew of international and local dubstep artist, showing how far dubstep has become from starting out as a purely “London thing”.

The work FBi has put into the local dubstep scene has been phenomenal. From mentioning Void pretty much every time a dubstep tune is played, to letting our visiting DJs unleash their tunes on Sydney via the famous Midday Mix. We can’t imagine a dubstep scene, or any underground music scene without FBi.

FBi exploded onto the Sydney music scene in 2003 with a mandate to play 50% Australian music, half of that from Sydney bands. In the six years that have followed, the station has given a voice to the people of this city, and a platform to the artists, actors, musicians, djs, designers, promoters, producers, film makers, straights and eccentrics. All of us.
In 2009 the station finds itself facing significant financial challenges. The Global Financial Crisis has hit the station hard and FBi needs to raise one million dollars to stay on air and maintain the quality service that it has provided since 2003.

In an unprecedented and massive demonstration of support, the music community is pulling together to lend their support to the station via a series of fundraising gigs throughout June. All proceeds raised will go towards saving the station.

SAVE FBi – get out to the VOID night and support your station.

What a line-up for $15!
Over two rooms at the all new 202 Broadway! Saturday June 20th / 9pm – 3am

Basement
0900 1000  Andrew Maxim
1000 1045  Max Gosford
1045 1130  Victim
1130 1245  Garage Pressure
1245 0130  Harmonic 313
0130 0300  Ro sham Bo

Bar
0900 1000  Westernsynthetics
1000 1115  Monkfly
1115 1230  Jonny Faith
1230 0130  Stu Buchanon
0130 0300  Lorna Clarkson

Event on Facebook: facebook.com/event.php?eid=91041749042

INTERVIEW: SPEAKEASY (2009)

Sydney writer and broadcaster Lee Tran Lam recently interview me for the tenth issue of her beautiful Speak-easy zine. Without wishing to descend into a mutual ‘love-in’, Lee Tran commitment and dedication to the local music and culture scene is astonishing, and it’s clear that she does this quite sincerely ‘for the love of it’. Aside from her growing zine back cataglogue, she also presents the all-Australian music show ‘Local Fidelity‘ on Sunday nights on FBi, runs a food blog ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being Hungry‘ and has just compiled a new CD as a fundraising exercise for FBi. Introduce yourself at either of her blogs to hunt down a copy of the zine, which also features interviews with Eliza Sarlos, Daniel Boud, Even Books, Jonathon Valenzuela and many more, alongside a stunning selection of images from in and around the city.

Q&A WITH STUART BUCHANAN
Speak-Easy #10, May 2009

Stuart Buchanan will forever be blazed in my memory as the first DJ I know to play ‘Young Folks’ by Peter, Bjorn & John (I remember the exact moment I heard it in my Ashfield flat and I had to stop everything I was doing). This was about a billion years before it was on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and blitzing people’s mobile ringtones. This is really just one facet of Stu - he is super-ahead of everything without being one of those braggy sorts who has to go on about trumping the zeitgeist all the time. In fact, he’s ultra-modest even though he ends up achieving things like ‘The Guardian’ newspaper crowning his (then) music blog as one of the best in the world.

Stuart currently hosts ‘Disorient’ on FBI 94.5FM, runs the ‘Discontent’ music blog and is Executive Producer of Creative Sydney - a festival that seems genuinely exciting and energising, all about firing up local ideas and artists (rather than flogging author merchandise, as certain staid festivals seem to pivot on). He’s one of the smartest eggs I know, I’m glad he is in the EP chair for this.

Can you tell me your first memory of Sydney?

Either the first weekend, or shortly thereafter, I went to a gig at Space3 on Cleveland Street and saw very early appearances from Spod (accompanied by a dancing Toecutter) and The Emergency. It was rough and crammed and fantastic. It proved straight away that there was great worth to be found beneath the veneer.

Can you tell me what first attracted you to Sydney - was it the “weather and beaches” chestnut?

I met my girlfriend (laterly fiancee, laterly wife) in London. We had both spent around six years in the city and, despite it being an amazing place to live, we both knew it was time to move on. She was a Sydneysider, born in Surry Hills, and she wanted to move back home. I’d never been to Australia, but Love forced my hand and I made the move.

The main thing I didn’t bargain on was the effect that tourism had on the city. Having lived in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London, I fully understood just what an influx of tourists can do to a city (especially during Edinburgh Festival season where the population literally doubles), but I was shocked at the amount of what felt like ‘no-go zones’ for residents. Each of those other cities very much had a sense of self, that tourists were secondary to the equation, and that the cities didn’t have to compromise. Here, it felt like countless concessions had been made to tourism - whole spaces at the heart of the city like Darling Harbour or The Rocks were almost entirely devoid of Sydneysiders, and that felt completely backwards. The people of Sydney were made to feel like they didn’t own the city - the net result being, when tourists visited those places, they got a completely false impression of what the city was actually all about. They’re marshalled off to their walled garden, their exclusion zones, where they can get a great a picture of the Bridge or the House, but they’re not experiencing a real sense of what the people of Sydney have to offer.

How hard / easy do you think it is to be creative in Sydney? What are the most interesting creative projects you’ve come across?

It’s hard to say to put that in context, as I’ve been here just over six years. I hear people talk about very lean years for music and culture in the late 90s and early part of this decade, when pubs kicked out live music and the city lost some of its soul. I never lived through that, but it feels like it might be easier now than it was then. Support networks such as 2SER, FBi, alternative press and, more recently, online avenues such as blog culture and Facebook, have done a great deal to creat and maintain connections between artists and audiences. But they’ve also done a great deal to inspire people who otherwise would never of thought of themselves as creative, or who thought that Sydney was not the place to pursue a creative career.

As for as “interestingness” goes, the group I come back to time and time again is Feral Media label & the Sopp Collective design group - a beautiful blend of local music and Scandanavian design, from Newtown and Chippendale. They constantly surprise me with something new and something beautiful. Whilst it would be easy to fall back and exploit the signature sound and look they’ve developed, I love their dedication to pushing themselves forward.

I dj occasionally for the Uber Lingua collective and I’m always inspired by the size and diversity of the community that they always seem to attract. Club nights by their very nature attract a very singular type of person, people who gather together around a certain code. Uber Lingua is one of the few club experiences where there is no code. Many different styles of music and culture are represented, hence you’re always guaranteed a new and unexpected experience. That’s something that can’t always be said for most of the city’s club nights, where you’re going there to get another taste of what you already know.

What’s your favourite depiction of Sydney in a song/movie/novel/artwork/blog/any-bit-of-pop-culture?

The Naked City crew on FBi often play Tommy Leonetti’s “My City Of Sydney”, and it always make me chuckle - a Sinatra-like croooner warbling on about “that little church steeple in Woolloomoolloo”. I find myself singing that line when I’m doing the dishes or driving in the car, and I have absolutely no idea why.

How much has your idea of Sydney been remapped since having kids?

I obviously go places and do things I wouldn’t otherwise have found, and thus you see a completely different side to the city. It means that I rarely spend any weekend time in the city centre, that instead we hunt down larger, often more interesting, outdoor spaces further out. And because children get bored very, very quickly - I’m always having to find somewhere new.

If you had to create your soundtrack to Sydney, it would sound like ….

The life of a radio presenter is a blessing and a curse - I’m blessed to be drenched in so much fine music, but cursed to rarely ever return to albums after one or two listens. There’s always a pile of new music to listen to. So my soundtrack for Sydney is constantly changing and rearranging, and never the same twice. And as a relatively recent arrival, I don’t have a lifetime of city experiences that are bound up in local music. This month I’ve been listening to Sydney bands such as Ghoul, Underlapper, No Art, Seekae and Telafonica, but ask me again next week and it’ll all be different.

BROADCAST: SLANG TANG INTERVIEW EDITION - FEVER RAY (2009)

Following the release of their critically acclaimed and award-winning album ‘Silent Shout’, Swedish dark-electro duo The Knife took time out to pursue their own individual projects. Olaf Dreijer worked on an original soundtrack for the opera ‘Tommorow In A Year’ by Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma. His sister, Karin Dreijer Andersson, instead opted for a solo album, under the name Fever Ray. Whilst occupying similar sonic territories to The Knife, ‘Fever Ray’ introduced a personal and intimate side to Karin that was hitherto unseen.

In this Interview Edition of the Slang Tang podcast series, Stu Buchanan talks to Karin about the Fever Ray project. Talking from her home in Sweden, Karin discusses the genesis of the project, her continuing exploration of electronic music and the impact of motherhood on her creative work.

DOWNLOAD: Slang Tang Interview Edition: Fever Ray (April 2009)

Subscribe to future podcasts via iTunes or similar Podcast program: feed://slangtang.libsyn.com/rss.

This interview with Fever Ray was originally broadcast on Disorient on Sydney’s FBi Radio.

WEB: ZERO-G AGENCY (2001-2007)

img: prototype design for part of RHCP web site landscape

Having professionally produced a number of sites for many performing arts organisations in the UK under the auspices of my ‘day job’ (Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Royal Court Theatre, Old Vic Theatre, Bush Theatre and many more), by 2001 I was being increasingly called upon to develop sites for a number of different clients outside of work hours. As a strategist and producer, my technical skills were not up to scratch, and the scale of the jobs coming my way was getting ever more complex. Thus, I bit the proverbial and formed my own web agency - Zero-G - bringing in my (soon-to-be) wife Robyn, and other friends and freelancers to work on an ‘as required’ basis. Under this methodology, zero-G never became a full-time concern - it was a home-grown agency (literally) that existed according to demand.

One of my earliest clients was the UK band Goldfrapp. I first started working with them in 2002, alongside two artists, Steve Claydon (formerly of Add N to X) and Neil Chapman. Alison (Goldfrapp)’s direction was clear - to develop an online enviroment that existed as a parallel-world manifestation of the creative vision and themes that she was investigating with her music. Steve & Neil laid out some initial landscape concepts, which Robyn then developed into a fully-fledged flash environments. For its time (early 2003), it was a novel and rich user experience, filled with Easter Eggs and other nuggets squirreled away for diligent fans to find. In 2003, we were delighted to find ourselves nominated for, and ultimately winning, the MTV Europe Award for the Black Cherry site - beating Madonna and Marilyn Manson in the process (view archive site online at goldfrapp.co.uk/goldfrapp.html). Our work with Goldfrapp continued through the release of the Supernature album, for which we designed and deployed a new site environment, accompanying mini-sites, flash cards and games.

As a result of our Goldfrapp work, we received a call from the manager of the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 2005. Apparently, Anthony Keidis had been suitably impressed with the Goldfrapp site and wished for something similar. Over the course of four months, we employed a team of designers and developers to build a site that would match the Goldfrapp experience and would sit over their existing online fan club infrastructure. The trials of working with a legacy system, and relying on a team of New York developers to deploy our vision and our code, sadly meant that the site never quite lived up to our original vision. A variant of the site lives online today at www.redhotchilipeppers.com.

Other zero-G Agency work included screensaver developments for Depeche Mode, site and e-cards for The Delays, site and flash-animations for Gronland Records and Kid Confucius) as well as work for the performing arts in the guise of Siobhan Davies Dance Company, London Philharmonic Orchestra and once again for the Royal Court.

WEB: FAT PLANET (2004-2008)

In August 2003, I started broadcasting the Fat Planet show on the (then) newly-birthed FBi Radio in Sydney.  FBi was set up to take a unique view of Australian music, to reposition both the city of Sydney and the country as a place for new, original and innovative sounds - and to tarmac over the notion that we were good for nothing more than Kylie Minogue, INXS and Men At Work.  When I was approached to do a ‘world music show’, I opted to toe the line on exactly the same philosophy - to reposition the notion of ‘world music’, and promote innovation and experimentation from unlikely locations.

Of course, the whole concept of ‘world music’ is in itself a paradox - it is a marketing and sales term, designed for ingestion by Western audiences.  ‘World music’ means nothing to consumers in South America or Africa.  Not only that, but it is quite insulting to apply such a broad and meaningless term to well-developed and flourishing local music industries.  The term also generally implies indigenous and traditional sounds, and as I was quick to discover, most countries falling in the ‘world music’ category consider indigenous music in much the same way that Westerners treat their folk heritage - as something to be acknowledged, but mostly unrepresentative of the current musical climate.

Back in 2003, music was only starting to be distributed online.  Most labels and artists had a general mistrust about duplication and piracy, and had yet to wake up to the web’s full potential. Luckily, there were a few vanguards around the globe taking advantage of the medium - often from the most unlikely of places.  Those vanguards naturally became staples on the Fat Planet radio show - music that was unreleased in Australia, often only released in its country of origin, but nonetheless music that was refreshing, challenging and utterly compelling.

As so much of the show’s pre-planning was spent trawling the web, I inevitably started to post a few links on my personal blog, zero-G.  The first tracks went online in January 2004 (Finland’s Lacklustre, Wang Inc from Italy and South African Portable taking early honours) and, a couple of months later, the content shifted to its own URL at fatplanet.com.au. Although this was something of an organic and common sense process, it was also partly inspired by the early pioneers of the mp3 blog who had started shortly prior - Fluxblog, Said The Gramaphone, Music For Robots and, primarily, Swen’s Weblog, a curation of mp3 links from artists that had appeared in The Wire magazine.

Over a five year period, the Fat Planet site went on to feature many hundreds of artists, exposing new sounds and styles often for the first time in an English-speaking environment.  Fat Planet was also one of the first to expose emerging genres and feature tracks from scenes such as baile funk, kuduro, congotronics, balkan hot step, baltimore, cosmic disco and Boston bounce.  Artists who received some of their early blog-love on Fat Planet included M.I.A., Ghislian Poirier, Juana Molina, The Knife, Filastine, Konono No.1, Frikstailers, K’naan, Mutamassilk, Edu-K, Esau Mwamwaya, Para One, Villa Diamante, Jahcoozi, Cardopusher, Sibot, Stacs Of Stamina, Tetine, Bostich, DJ C, Ramallah Underground, Sweat X, Peter Bjorn & John, Mochipet, Datarock, Annie and many more.

In January 2008, the Fat Planet blog was featured in the UK’s ‘Guardian‘ newspaper in Chris Salmon’s column ‘Click To Download’.  In referencing a number of mp3 blogs from all over the world, Fat Planet was dubbed “Best Blog for world music“.  The Guardian called the blog: “a fantastic melting point of cutting-edge international sounds; be it Danish rap-techno, Argentinean cumbia, Israeli dub or Chinese hip-hop. The range and quality of the music Buchanan tracks down is astonishing”. (read the column online).  Time Out also reviewed Fat Planet in 2008, calling it “a stunningly diverse range of music from all corners of the globe”.

Fat Planet’s growth was also paralleled by (and arguably helped to foster) a growth in the apprecitation of non-English speaking music.  So much so, that by mid-2008, the territory mapped by Fat Planet was mapped by many.  Without particularly being able to define it in precise terms, I felt that a mission had been accomplished.

However, as time pressures and other commitments grew, my ability to maintain frequency and quality was faltering.  Rather than allowing Fat Planet to grow stale and wither, it was clearly time to press pause.  Without too much fanfare, the blog closed in July 2008, the radio show shortly thereafter.

However, this was by no means the end of the story, nor the end of the journey into international eclecticism.  Next up: Disorient & Discontent.

Archive: www.fatplanet.com.au/blog