{"id":6568,"date":"2010-03-23T15:24:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T04:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stuartbuchanan.com\/new-weird-australia-interview-in-the-brag\/"},"modified":"2021-01-31T05:07:54","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T05:07:54","slug":"new-weird-australia-interview-in-the-brag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/2010\/03\/23\/new-weird-australia-interview-in-the-brag\/","title":{"rendered":"New Weird Australia Interview in The Brag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nA\u00a0full page feature on New Weird Australia in The Brag magazine, previewing the Sydney gig featuring Paint Your Golden Face (pictured), Alps, Caught Ship and Karoshi. \u00a0If nothing else, the article proves once and for all that swearing is cool. \u00a0‘Fart’, however, is borderline.<\/em>
\nFull article:<\/em><\/strong>
\nStu Buchanan\u2019s name is unfamiliar to most, but he could be one of Australia\u2019s most important champions of innovative music. After a three year stint as the general manager of FBi Radio<\/a> he moved on to a new role, but his heart stayed in the same place \u2013 wrapped tight around the eclectic sounds of a subculture that hides in our country\u2019s far-spread nooks and crannies. In May of 2008, Stu launched a free digital compilation series called New Weird Australia<\/a> \u2013 a thoughtfully curated exploration of original ideas, challenging sounds, sublime atmospherics and experimental pop. Volume Five of N.W.A has just been released, with a showcase of new music planned for Saturday night. I called him up to talk about what he\u2019s doing, why he\u2019s doing it, and where it\u2019s all going.
\n\u201cNew Weird Australia is a not-for-profit initiative that\u2019s designed to support experimental Australian music,\u201d Stu explains. \u201cAnybody pushing their genre or cross-genre to somewhere new, experimental and interesting; so \u2018weird\u2019 as in, unusual and unexpected and innovative.\u201d Kind of sounds like he\u2019s talking about a straight hour of unlistenable nu-wave art-noise but thankfully, the compilations are surprisingly engaging. \u201cIf you call something experimental, people immediately assume it\u2019s going to be too difficult or inaccessible for them to be able to just sit down and enjoy. But when people get exposed to it, invariably the opposite is true.\u201d
\nBy trawling through the vast array of new \u201cweird\u201d music popping up in basements, bedrooms, warehouses and websites, Stu and the project\u2019s co-curator, Danny Jumpertz of innovative artist-run label Feral Media<\/strong>, have filtered out some of the best in interesting Australian sounds \u2013 Kyu<\/strong>, Karoshi<\/strong>, No Art<\/strong> and Ghoul<\/strong> amongst others. By offering them up on a free digital album, the aim is simple: \u201cIt\u2019s not to say, \u2018hey people, we should all be making experimental music\u2019 \u2013 that stuff has always existed. The aim is to try and put it all into a different context that\u2019s slightly more accessible.\u201dNew Weird Australia, and the FBi Radio show of the same name, is also a way of bridging the geographic divide that separates different artists who seem to be working towards the same goal.
\nPower in numbers, people \u2013 Australia is a difficult country for local bands to crack. Whether it\u2019s a cultural cringe, tall poppy syndrome or a simple long-ingrained reverence for anything that comes from overseas, we just aren\u2019t paying as much attention to what\u2019s going on around us. Stu agrees: \u201cIt\u2019s like this tidal wave from Europe and America that just overcomes anything that\u2019s happening here, and I just don\u2019t understand it\u2026 You know, for every fucking Animal Collective<\/strong> or Grizzly Bear<\/strong>, there\u2019s a band here that\u2019s better.\u201d Arriving here only seven years ago from the UK, Stu has a cross-cultural comparison to throw in. \u201cThere\u2019s this weird thing in Australia where anything international is rarified in some way; it\u2019s put on a pedastal that just doesn\u2019t exist in the UK. The UK celebrates its own at least as much as it celebrates stuff from overseas \u2013 but here the equilibrium seems kind of strange.\u201d
\nBuchanan thinks it could have something to do with the Australian music industry itself. It\u2019s true that for the most part, the past string of ARIA winners haven\u2019t done much to advance our standing as a global player in innovative, exciting music \u2013 and Lisa Mitchell<\/strong>\u2019s recent win of the $30,000 AMP award has been decried by many as a triumph of mediocrity. \u201cIf we look at any band that we consider to be truly influential in a really kind of creative and interesting way in Australian music, they\u2019ve never been celebrated,\u201d Stu says. \u201cSevered Heads<\/strong>, for example. Probably one of the most innovative bands to influence electronic music in the world\u2026 But here in Australia, they\u2019re relatively invisible and to me that\u2019s criminal. Those guys in particular should be in a hall of fame.\u201d
\nPerhaps it also comes down to our isolation. In order to push something overseas from Australia, you have to invest a lot \u2013 and to be comfortable investing, you have to be sure it will work, right? \u201cYou\u2019re right, and I think that model has been true for a while \u2013 but it\u2019s changing!\u201d He explains that the network of people he\u2019s focused on aren\u2019t actually working within the traditional operating systems, distribution networks or the mainstream press. \u201cWe exist outside of it, and because we exist outside of it we\u2019ll always survive. People say, \u2018if you want to play SxSW you have to go through this guy, and go here, and do that\u2019 and it\u2019s like \u2013 fuck that. We\u2019ll find another way. All those old paradigms are no longer dominant.\u201d
\nStu takes a refreshingly hopeful view of the present and the future \u2013 in particular, of the pressures artists are under; economic downfall, filesharing technology and reactionary copyright laws to name a few. \u201cThe minute you put a barricade up against somebody, it\u2019s an invitation for them to try and route around it. The more barriers you put up, the more creative people become\u2026 so I think in some ways you\u2019ve gotto be grateful for the idiot stance of the record companies in the late 90s \u2013 they\u2019ve given us a great gift!\u201d
\nNew Weird Australia has recently joined the ranks of the international Free Music Archive<\/a> – an interactive library of legal downloads begun by WFMU<\/strong>, and curated by left-field tastemakers worldwide. I ask what\u2019s planned for the future. \u201cThe next compilation is going to be very genre specific, which will help us take a bit of a refresh. And, unsurprisingly to anyone who\u2019s been watching what we\u2019re doing, one of the next steps will be to set up our own label. We want to kick that off this year for sure\u2026\u201d
\nMeantime, the message is clear. \u201cYeah, there are all those overseas bands, and yeah they\u2019re hip, and every time they fart they\u2019ll get an interview about it. Of course those guys are good at what they do \u2013 but just around the corner, at a warehouse three blocks away from you, there\u2019s something going on that\u2019s better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0full page feature on New Weird Australia in The Brag magazine, previewing the Sydney gig featuring Paint Your Golden Face (pictured), Alps, Caught Ship and Karoshi. \u00a0If nothing else, the article proves once and for all that swearing is cool. \u00a0‘Fart’, however, is borderline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451,453],"tags":[595,924,275,1245],"class_list":["post-6568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-weird-australia","category-writing","tag-brag","tag-interview","tag-new-weird-australia","tag-press","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6568"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15845,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6568\/revisions\/15845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}