Gen-Xer, Douglas Coupland, is presenting the Canadian radio lecture series--The Masseys--this year and they are to be given in the form of a fictional novel. An excerpt is here.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Paradise
I had vague 1990s memories of the Melbourne-based band, Paradise Motel: noir, cinematic, slow, heroin-tempo soundscapes. But on the recommendation of a mate I took a proverbial punt and caught them last night on their Hobart leg of a national tour. They were a chakra-opening revelation.
The experience was supported by the venue decor: Sirens Ballroom up on the second floor in a wedding cake ceiling-rosed, vinyl-floored ballroom with plastered roof trusses, and a secreted balcony looking onto the stage area all creating a 1930s ambience, Berlin-esque. The support act was negligible: uninventive, melancholic, folk strains that suffered from a lack of guitar figures that broke from dull repetition.
The Paradise Motel, however, launched into "German Girl", building their soundscape slowly, seductively, before a spine-opening, crystalline shock entered the ballroom. I was smitten. At times they sounded like a acid doused waking dream. At others like the warm rocking of the womb.
As if the Triffids ran headlong into the Bad Seeds in the court of Nico.
The experience was supported by the venue decor: Sirens Ballroom up on the second floor in a wedding cake ceiling-rosed, vinyl-floored ballroom with plastered roof trusses, and a secreted balcony looking onto the stage area all creating a 1930s ambience, Berlin-esque. The support act was negligible: uninventive, melancholic, folk strains that suffered from a lack of guitar figures that broke from dull repetition.
The Paradise Motel, however, launched into "German Girl", building their soundscape slowly, seductively, before a spine-opening, crystalline shock entered the ballroom. I was smitten. At times they sounded like a acid doused waking dream. At others like the warm rocking of the womb.
As if the Triffids ran headlong into the Bad Seeds in the court of Nico.
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