The Brag

If Imogen Heap sounds like she’s buzzing with ideas on record, wait until you hear her speak. The dynamic, award-winning and boundary-pushing artist seems almost incapable of sitting still – which makes for an excellent interview. Heap is returning to Sydney for a performance at Vivid LIVE and for Vivid’s Song Summit conference, where she’ll deliver a keynote speech about the processes behind her dazzlingly diverse range of compositions. She’ll be bringing six months worth of custom-made songs with her, which were created with the help of her extensive online fanbase using a diverse range of mediums including sound, text and vision to inform her songwriting process. This collection, currently entitled ‘Heapsongs’, is a continual work-in-progress that will result in an album that almost every listener will have been involved with in some capacity. It all seems utterly exhausting – but for Heap, it’s endlessly fascinating.

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Posted: May 15th, 2012 under Brag 462 (May 14), Interviews, Music, Vivid LIVE 2012.
Tags: Imogen Heap, Jonno Seidler, Music, Sydney Opera House, Vivid Live

For most artists, being heavily pregnant is a suitable justification for not touring at all, never mind making an arduous journey halfway around the world. But such distractions don’t seem to apply to Shara Worden. In early 2010, the frontwoman and chief songwriter of My Brightest Diamond was asked by curator Brian Eno to perform at the second annual Vivid LIVE. She arrived seven-and-a-bit months pregnant with her first child, to rip up Sydney Opera House with her epic meshing of chamber music and soaring pop.

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Posted: May 15th, 2012 under Brag 462 (May 14), Interviews, Music, Vivid LIVE 2012.
Tags: All Things Will Unwind, Benjamin Cooper, My Brightest Diamond, Sydney Opera House, Vivid Live

Zola Jesus Opening Up By Alasdair Duncan The music that Nika Danilova makes as Zola Jesus is compelling to say the least. A classically-trained vocalist, she took a detour into the world of synths and now makes sweeping, strange electronic records. Her most recent release, Conatus, was one of the finest of last year, combining [...]

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Posted: May 15th, 2012 under Brag 462 (May 14), Feature Music, Interviews, Music, Vivid LIVE 2012.
Tags: Alasdair Duncan, FBI Radio, Forces, Light Asylum, Nika Danilove, Sydney Opera House, Vivid Live, Zola Jesus

By the time you read this, we will know whether or not the rumours are true. A few weeks ago, Afro-futurist pop-funk-soul auteur Janelle Monáe tweeted a link to a SoundCloud post about a “Prince rehearsal… watch out Australia!” The Australian music media went nuts – the assumption made sense, given that Monáe (who owes no small musical debt to her fellow pint-size pop pioneer) and her ArchAndroid Orchestra had previously opened for the Purple One overseas, and will be in the country at the same time as him, performing in Sydney for Vivid LIVE. (The first show on Prince’s Welcome 2 Australia tour is Sydney on May 11; only one date, May 26 in Brisbane, clashes with Monáe’s Vivid schedule.) But when asked directly about opening for Prince, Monáe is coy almost to the point of defensiveness, repeating the same line to several journalists: she can only confirm May 26 and 27 at the Sydney Opera House.

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Posted: May 15th, 2012 under Brag 462 (May 14), Feature Music, Interviews, Music, New, Vivid LIVE 2012.
Tags: Caitlin Walsh, Janelle Monae, Sydney Opera House, The ArchAndroid, The ArchAndroid Orchestra

For Arthur Cayzer, better known as the dubstep performer Pariah, a change of scene to the countryside promised plenty of creative stimulation. “I’d been in London for about six years,” he says, “and one day I looked around at my apartment and thought it’d just be nice to have a bit of space and see what I can come up with, you know?”

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Posted: May 15th, 2012 under Brag 461 (May 7), Interviews, Music.
Tags: Benjamin Cooper, Blawan, GoodGod Small Club, Music, Pariah