Do NOT go looking for that video. If you see a video of Charlie Kirk, scroll away immediately. Do not subject yourself to it. If you hear the word “counting” come out of Charlie Kirk’s mouth, close your eyes and exit the app immediately. Force-quit it. Do not open it again for twenty minutes, go and unironically touch grass.

TW: Trauma, mental health, specific forms of death

24 years ago, I experienced what would become my earliest formative memory. Perhaps I could’ve had other, earlier ones, but they were erased, or corrupted in some way, by one of the worst things to happen in my lifetime.

In 2001, I was awoken by the TV in the lounge room, since it was just on the other side of my bedroom wall. This wasn’t normal, the TV shouldn’t have been up so loud. So, I walked out to ask Dad why, who sort of shrugged me off and didn’t really answer me. I might be wrong, but I think this was the night that my Mum was also in hospital because of a serious car crash; I remember being worried in general. I looked at the television to see a building on fire. For what felt like seconds, but was closer to an hour, I became still in place, transfixed, as I watched a passenger jet plunge into the building next door, people jump out of windows from 350m up in the air, and panicked, everyday people run for their safety as one of the tallest buildings in the world plummeted to the ground. I was seven years old.

From then, the internet became a global phenomenon and I grew up attached to it. Limewire, for those who don’t know, was a file-sharing service which people used to illegally download movies, music, and all sorts of other things, which is what torrents are now. The difference is that you would search directly in the Limewire program and download the results. I, being well into music, downloaded a metric fuckton of it, and even used it to download music videos because… well, I wanted to own them and YouTube wasn’t that good at the time.

Of course, though, the internet has never been free of trolls. I’m not talking rick-rolling or the “trololol” guy, though. I mean I would download what I thought was going to be the film clip for Smooth Criminal by Alien Ant Farm, and I’d get an actual video of someone being decapitated, or shooting themselves, or being set on fire, or being killed or abused. In 2006, it wasn’t AI or good special effects; it was real videos of real people actually dying, put on the internet in a way that would fool someone who wasn’t expecting it. Sometimes, it was the footage of 9/11. Sometimes it was classified military footage. I saw it all; I even found out that some sick fucks had a (now-defunct) website called Pain Olympics, on which all those videos could found, watched, celebrated, discussed, or what have you. An absolute cesspool of gore and schadenfreude that the Saw franchise could only ever dream about being.

I was numb to them within a month, and just previewed the file as it was downloading to see if it was going to be what I actually wanted. I see a German shepherd instead of Eminem, I stop downloading the video. For some of them, the more heinous ones, I’d even memorised the file sizes, so I just knew to not even attempt downloading them. I was twelve years old and had already seen too much. I wasn’t the only one, either. I was in primary school, talking to other kids my age and younger during our lunch breaks, about that horrible video of someone being stabbed in the neck, and how we could all avoid them.

September 11, 2025. Twenty-four years after the attack on the World Trade Center, the start of America’s “War on Terror,” the beginning of my formative memory. I wake up, and scroll Facebook to see that some dude I’ve never heard of in my life has died. Turns out I’d seen a few videos of his, and I didn’t like him because I vehemently disagreed with his politics, and scrolled away wondering why the algorithm would feed this to a nonbinary antifascist. This man would turn out to be Charlie Kirk, who had just been assassinated. I read the circumstances, I read his last words, I read some quotes of his, I quietly form my own opinion, I get on with my life. I then scroll Instagram some time later, and am served up a video of Charlie Kirk speaking at an event. “This must be relevant,” I think to myself. I then watch as Kirk is shot in the neck. The world being the way it is, I wonder if the video is AI-generated, so I watch it again. It is not. This is real. The realisation hits my brain as the video loops for the third time. It has been over fifteen years since I’ve seen anything like this, but I was trained for this. Something echoed through my subconscious, like twelve-year-old Ben was telling me how to handle this. I know exactly what I need to do, and I do it.

I scroll away.

An hour passes before I start to question what the fuck just happened. This should be fucking traumatising me. I should be angry, or crying, or scared, or throwing up, or reacting in some way, but I’m not. I simply scrolled off it and viewed something else. What I saw was not okay, and I should feel, in a sense, violated. But I don’t. The trauma I hold from 9/11, the trauma I hold from being unwillingly exposed to illegal video content, prepared me for the day when it would happen again. And that is not okay. Why the fuck should I have to be prepared for that in 2025? How did my life end up at a point where I could see someone be murdered in cold blood, on a screen just centimetres from my face, and think “oh, ok” and move on? It is so far from okay, and nobody should think that way. Thankfully, some things have changed.

And so, we reach my point.

There are a lot of people I have befriended, via Twitch, art, music, games or otherwise, that are too young to remember 9/11. Some were born after 2001, making them too young to have access to Limewire and some of the initial horrors of the internet, those teething years before we had Facebook and YouTube.

I beg you, young person who almost definitely hasn’t read this far, I will reiterate: do NOT go looking for that video. If you see a video of Charlie Kirk, scroll away immediately. Do not subject yourself to it. If you hear the word “counting” come out of Charlie Kirk’s mouth, close your eyes and exit the app immediately. Force-quit it. Do not open it again for twenty minutes, go and unironically touch grass. If for some reason you are subjected to it, immediately go and play a complex puzzle game with simple rules, like Tetris, for 20-60 minutes, and then go about your day. Science says that’s enough to disrupt the trauma from imprinting on your conscience. If that’s what it takes to not let it set in, you should absolutely do that.

Whether you think you can handle it or not, viewing this kind of content can do some seriously weird and fucked up things to your brain, and you do not need that. Not now, and especially not when the rest of the world is also on fire. You need your wit as intact as possible, don’t let this be what tears it apart.

Please be safe; not just physically, but mentally as well.

We’re popping over to South Australia today, where we hear Zara Chantelle. Zara is a songstress from Adelaide who started gigging at age 15, getting into professional gigs (of which she has now done a few hundred). There’s a reason I’m doing this review; I know, Ben, where are the Tasmanians? Well, I think this is almost close enough. There is a real Tassie kind of feeling in Zara Chantelle’s music.

Her newest track “Happiness” has her lamenting toxic relationships, channeling freedom and growth, and as she puts it herself, “capturing that post-heartbreak clarity when you realise leaving was the best thing you could’ve done.” And it comes across well in the lyrics of this track.

While she writes rather casually, there are some fantastically eloquent phrases in here, from the opening line, “her low self esteem is more than it seems,” through to some high-emotion phrases like “I could be a better boyfriend than him.” These moments do occasionally feel let down by some cliché wording at times (the opening line being followed with “her brown hair, her soft stare”), and the occasional unresolved idea; that “better boyfriend” line has so much power, I wish it had either been left alone to simmer by itself, or really punched in with some force.

There are some genuinely HUGE moments in this track. The instrumental is all the best things about pop-rock: building, vocal space, culminating in a final chorus that makes you want to scream the words at your bedroom wall. The way Zara has layered the harmonies twists the emotional aspect of this song into being more palpable, and almost gives the feeling of a sense of belonging and support. Maybe it’s the strength in numbers vibe, because once the lyrics layer over each other with that final, gut-punching cry, “I wish he’d just listen to me,” that feeling becomes almost euphoric. Hell, I’m sitting in a library right now struggling to keep quiet because I just want to be a part of this feeling, but I can feel the eyes of those bigwigs at the borrowing counter staring me down in anticipation.

The production in this track is beautifully done. I feel the need to mention the vocal reverb just before the final refrain, truly allowing the song to build up into that last moment. The instrumental is engaging throughout without feeling restricted or overpowered, which is my main gripe with pop music: there is a wonderful balance and sense of respect here.

Nothing is over-the-top, and it makes the whole song feel catchy. I’ll leave you with this thought. The drums in this track propel the song forward so well. They feel almost rock-gospel, and perhaps that’s what makes this song work so well. This is the gospel of Zara Chantelle: this is her truth, and she is damn well making you listen.

This track will work really well for fans of Maddy Jane, G-Flip, Missy Higgins and even Taylor Swift.

As you wished in your lyrics, Zara, I hope he listens to this too.

RATING: 7.5/10

So yeah, this is not about a Tasmanian band or thing, but I do like other things too, which I’m sure shouldn’t shock anyone. I’m never really pressed to write about something though, unless it is especially interesting… and oh boy, is this new Skrillex album interesting.

It has been a hot minute since Skrillex (Sonny Moore) burst into the limelight with Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites (which is now 15 years old, sorry to say). We’ve seen many facets of this talented man, from his early beginnings featuring as a remixer on Bring Me The Horizon’s Suicide Season: Cut Up remix album, to his signature “brostep” sound that captivated electronic music audiences for a decade, right through to his collaborative work alongside artists like Diplo, Damien Marley and even The Doors. It’s no surprise that we have a solid album in 2025 from this legend of the scene.

The album in question, named “F*ck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol But Ur Not!! <3” after some graffiti near Sonny Moore’s Los Angeles studio, is comprised of 34 rather short tracks totalling about 46 minutes, running through as one track in a radio-style concept. The sounds throughout are the most comprehensive cross-section of Moore’s career, giving nods to brostep, drum and bass, and even sampling the vocals from his track Summit, coming from his Bangarang EP. But for all the talent, the features and the half million blow-you-away moments on this release, there is one standout thing about this album: Shadoe Haze and his fucking adlibs.

Shadoe Haze is a 54-year-old radio presenter, most well known as the voice behind the classic “Damn, Son, Where’d You Find This?” trap sample. Skrillex managed to not only track him down, possibly on his website that I will link below this article, but got him to put some of his classic adlibs on the album, and some not-as-classic ones. Now, I know I could use the words “placed” or “peppered,” but I have specifically chosen these next words very carefully to convey what I mean: This album is littered with adlibs from Haze, almost at random, with very little context other than the general theming behind the album: Skrillex is dead/dying/captured. Perhaps well placed with the knowledge that this is Moore’s last album with OWSLA and Atlantic Records, but still seemingly random. And good lord, do they very quickly become extremely fucking unhinged. So much so that I’m giving you a countdown of my top ten most unhinged Shadoe Haze adlibs from this album.

10. ”I sold my soul to give you this song.”

Not only is this said at random, but it’s in there twice. The first time feels reasonably innocuous against the rest of the random adlibs we’d heard to that point, but once we get to the beautifully produced rave tracks featuring Dylan Brady from 100 Gecs, the adlib is interrupted by this creepy little chortle before some heavy EDM beats kick in and make you immediately question and then forget what you just heard.

9. “Are you scared? Well you shouldn’t be!”

No, and now I’m wondering if I should’ve been. There’s been a few references to Skrillex’s death by the time this pops up, so perhaps this one is supposed to be soothing. I don’t feel soothed, Shadoe Haze. I feel more on edge now. Am I safe?

8. “Reject society, return to nature!”

This is a Skrillex album. This is hard-hitting EDM, dubstep, and various electronica. So I had no idea how to feel with Haze just popping through to say “reject society, return to nature.” I mean, it is followed by some bird sounds and a calmer moment but… Why? What’s in nature? Is that where Skrillex’s body is?

7. “We killed Skrillex. Listen to this song, and we’ll tell you where to find the body.”

Okay. We’re at track three here. Not even two and a half minutes into this experience, and we’ve got a confession. If this were an investigation, we’d be on the right track with the questioning. But all this does, as a listener, is raise more questions. Skrillex is dead, they killed Skrillex, this song almost immediately afterward refers to a music leak… It secures the narrative, if that’s what they’re trying to do.

6. “Call the fire department; we just nuked the building.”

This is one of Haze’s final moments on the album, and it feels about as random as the song title being Mosquitotouille. There are a few references throughout the album to “nukes,” “Nuke Radio” and the like. Again, setting narrative, but when you’ve got as many sounds, producer tags, adlibs and samples as you do, it is easy to miss stuff. If you’ve heard this out of nowhere, you’d be forgiven for wondering what the fuck it had to do with anything, and what exactly a fire department is going to do about a nuclear bomb.

5. ”My life is in shambles.” / “I have severe depression.”

The song Biggy Bap has a few interesting moments, and more than a few samples and tags, hence why this is a double entry. After a seemingly endless 54 seconds of constant buildup, we get the second of many Haze adlibs: “This beat drop has been seized by Atlantic Records, and has been replaced with silence”. Then crickets, then another short buildup into the song proper. The second drop has feature artist Wuki talking about a “one little microwave meal for one type dubstep beat” followed by the inexplicably suitable Haze adlib “my life is in shambles.” This is shortly followed by the words “I have severe depression” just randomly placed over some of the music. Somehow, this isn’t the most unhinged this song gets. We’ll get to that.

4. ”Good Skrillex, that’s a good boy!”

This is almost par for the course now, but we’re given this, again, at complete random. So what’s the go? Is Haze forcing Skrillex to produce music for him? Is this to fit in the narrative? Either way, it feels uncomfortable. The phrasing and the tone makes it feel sinister, and hearing “good boy” in a sinister way gives me the ick.

3. ”I heard that snare took him two years to make.”

This… is fucking hilarious. Anyone who has made electronic music knows how important a good snare is, and how hard it is to choose or blend one. Hell, we’ve got riddim/dubstep producers out here using gunshots as a snare layer to give it some crack. We’ve got people who are genuinely obsessing so hard over how a snare sounds. Hearing this nearly had me on the floor, especially when it followed a snare that only occurred for one hit on the entire album. To be fair, it was a nice snare.

2. ”I have Skrillex trapped in my basement; play this at full volume, or I’ll put him in the hole.”

And we’re back to Biggy Bap. This one appears about twenty seconds into the track, after Wuki talking about how “you’re not even supposed to be hearing this shit.” Then, with that classic radio voice, Shadoe Haze announces this, almost as a threat. Should you play it at full volume? Yes, absolutely, the track is fantastic and touches on the first moments of dubstep breaking into modern culture. But if you’ve got any traces of oppositional defiance, it raises an ethical quandary; do you want to enjoy the song, or do you want Skrillex to be put in the hole? What is Shadoe Haze’s setup at home? He’s got a basement, AND a “hole.” It’s this song that makes you really question what the fuck is going on here. But, even then, as unhinged as this statement is, it is nothing compared to number one on this list.

1. ”Smoking is bad for your health, especially when it’s your own flesh you’re smoking.”

… WHAT? No really… WHAT? Why did he say this? Why is someone smoking their own flesh? What? WHAT? HUH? I genuinely have nothing to say about this, really. I was blown away by this adlib, and I don’t know how to even begin explaining it. What’s more, it doesn’t get any less unhinged from this moment. This track, Druids, is followed by the events of Biggy Bap. This statement is Shadoe Haze at his most unhinged, peaking the weirdness with one of the strangest, most out-of-pocket producer tags I’ve ever heard in my life.

FUSYTUAWBUN!!<3 (what an acronym) is, from start to finish, an insane and almost polarising experience, which stops short of the final track. That final track, Azasu, is the longest track on the album, and contains a credits sequence in which Shadoe Haze namedrops all 52 artists that contributed to the album (with the exception of Moore himself), as well as the studio and “the unknown graffiti artist who vandalized our wall.” Haze, as unhinged and ridiculous as his appearance on this album was, did not disappoint; he even dropped a “damn, son, where’d you find this?” in Hold On.

The album itself is really quite good, but presents the classic issue of the concept album; run-through songs that can’t be separated well enough for individual listening. I’d listen to the Dylan Brady collabs (Zeet Noise and Booster) quite happily on their own, but they’re not built that way. The opening track, Skrillex Is Dead, even has Haze saying “DJ Smokey recommends you listen to this album from start to finish, thank you for not skipping.” I don’t quite know how I feel about electronic concept albums in the context of people like Skrillex, but it works; it’s just let down by its inability to be picked apart for its best bits, as audiences for this genre are want to do.

By the way, if you’re wondering where you can find Shadoe Haze, he has the most typical web presence you could expect from a mid-50s man on his website “awesomevoiceguy.com,” where you can even hire him yourself. Absolutely nuts. Maybe I should get him to do a DNR promo…

Rating: 7/10

Standout tracks: Zeet Noise, DNB Ting, Morja Kaiju VIP.

TRANQUILITY UNKNOWN - BROKEN|SILENT

Album Review

Ben Barwick

22/03/2025

I’m not entirely sure what it is about the Northern Tasmanian coastline that provides the perfect environment for some of the most wonderfully produced and heaviest-hitting metal to come out of the state.

Maybe there’s something in the water, maybe they’re importing it on the Spirit of Tasmania. But it has happened before, and it is happening again.Some years ago, we saw the birth, rise, and eventual export of Alpha Wolf, a hardcore band that has gone from writing an EP in little old Burnie to being nominated for a Grammy against Nirvana and Kate Bush, ultimately losing out to John Fucking Lennon. So, with Sabian Lynch and Co. taking that success over to Melbourne, who is left to carry the torch for Tasmanian hardcore?

Enter Tranquility Unknown.

Tranquility Unknown, led by vocalist Logan Crack and backed up by some of the most talented musicians that side of the Big Potato at Sassafras, have been slamming riffs for a few years now, releasing their debut single Scriptures of the Lost in 2020 (on Halloween, no less). And that track is how their debut album BROKEN|SILENT opens up. The track immediately brings Logan’s vocals into the spotlight over an atmospheric soundscape, which leads the band through some stellar deathcore before hitting an insanely beautiful melodic section with a soaring guitar solo that brings that atmosphere back to the forefront.

Before you know it, you’re halfway through the title track, thinking “this could almost be prog.” That’s what I was doing, anyway; the way these guys lead their tracks through, the pacing, the switch-ups… it is reminiscent of progressive metal legends Meshuggah and Born of Osiris. We are taken, first-class, to Riff City in tracks like Death Appetence, we are given a guided tour of the pure breadth in range of Logan’s gutterals through Last Breath… There are even a few softer moments. In the lead single, Descent (another member of riff city in which the lyrics mention the album title, huzzah), it makes sense in the context of the song to have some singing in the chorus, but overall, it’s basically the only hint of melodic vocals we get on the album, making it a little jarring. Had this been a guest vocalist, it could’ve made a little more sense. I’m certainly not saying it’s a dealbreaker, but the album would be no less without it, and I did occasionally find myself wondering if it could have even been done a little more, during moments like the first melodic break in Last Breath.

The album culminates in an insane, three-track epic: Titan’s Flight, Titan’s Wrath and Titan’s Fall. There are some beautiful moments on this album, but without a shadow of a doubt, the opening moments of Flight and the dying moments of Fall are the most illustrative, evocative and well-considered sections of the album. Throughout this set of tracks, we hear some incredible rhythm play, bassist Nathan Whittle is finally given a moment to shine on an album full of guitar solos, gorgeous after-production, and some really interesting sonic parallels drawn between the vocal and guitar performances.

And then, the album is over, after a mere 34 minutes. I’ve mentioned this before, about albums leaving us wanting more. The difference here is that what they’ve created is so well rounded, that it leaves me wanting to experience more, rather than wishing it ended later. There does still feel like a small hole where there could’ve been more, but it remains to be seen how the band will follow up the album release, and whether or not that hole will be filled with music videos, b-sides, or a successful run of shows; the latter of which is their current play, with a schedule promising shows in Hobart, Devonport and Launceston.

BROKEN|SILENT is a reminder.

Tasmanian deathcore is still very much alive and willing to clear your sinuses of all the airy, folksy stuff those outside the realm of musical interest in Tasmania would expect to hear.The mantle left by Alpha Wolf hasn’t just been kept warm: Tranquility Unknown has set it ablaze. I truly hope their upcoming Tasmanian tour sells well, and those stoic defenders of the metal scene show up and appreciate what these guys are bringing to the table. Get out to the shows, listen to the album, and enjoy yourself.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Death Appetence, Titan’s Fall

RATING: 8/10

THANK FUCK ITS OVER:

A Silence Louder Than Fireworks

Ben Barwick

4th January, 2025

And the crowd goes… contemplative.

Let's be honest.

2024 was a flaming shit-heap on fire, covered in shit, set alight with flaming turds of fire. We've all been saying for years that “this has been the worst year of our lives,” but I think it is more than safe to say that the last twelve months were indefatigably horrid from start to finish. Just in my house alone, we had multiple deaths, lost a beloved pet, had separate serious health issues, lost a few of who we thought were good friends (not dead, just no longer friends), lost jobs, and it all started with a car accident that occurred no more than half an hour before the fireworks leading into 2024.

The car accident is kind of funny to think about now. In my cheese-and-leftover-ham-induced stupor at the end of 2023, I managed to hit not one, but two wallabies that were trying to create a smaller third wallaby in the middle of the highway. One went underneath the car, the other decided to join us for the fireworks, and hitched a ride in my radiator. Certainly not the bang they intended to see out 2023 with, but a significant bang nonetheless. Being wedged in the front of my car kept the coolant in until we parked, at which point Reginald (the wallaby) decided to let all of my coolant out on a brisk walk. Car was undrivable thereafter. We were stranded in a hotel car park until a tow-truck collected the car, and more of our friends collected us.

What's the funny part? Well, we drove through the CBD thinking that BOTH wallabies were left on the highway without realising one was a hitchhiker, Reginald's baby gravy melted the paint on my number-plate, and I got to ring in the new year watching the fireworks with my wife, one of my best friends, and Garry, the RACT Roadside Assist man (I almost missed him, this year… I hope he's well).

By the end of January, after more shitty news and a myriad of white-Australia-based annoyances, everyone was ready to write off the month and get back into the start of the year with the fresh promise of February. The weather didn’t lean off, and the news became filled with Israel, Gaza, Russia, Ukraine, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and everything else that made us all extremely depressed and socially listless during 2023. Then, when March rolled around, my father-in-law passed away. This is something that would be made worse by the death of our beautiful little canary, Piet, and echoed later in the year by the death of my grandfather. The tone is set. 2024 is spoken for.

By the end of July, we succumbed to the agreement that when anything bad happens, it just makes sense. Hope was forced to become resilience, happiness became a nicety afforded only to lucky people, and “it can’t get much worse” became “what’s next.” I waded through the year until my breaking point was reached in September and I experienced what was, genuinely, the worst week of my life.

When I talk about 2024 with people, the sentiment seems to be the same; this was fucked, I reached my breaking point, loved ones died, the world is socially and economically imploding, etc., etc.. Everyone has experienced what therapists around the world could describe either as “the busiest year of my life” or “hella money payday baybeeeee.” Halloween rolled around and the countdown began. Christmas decorations were in stores on the 28th of October, Santa and his elves sitting across the aisle from ghosts and spider skeletons (which, by the way, is fucking stupid for an animal that doesn’t have bones).

December comes, and goes very quickly. The cheese void turns us into calendar-denying, food-stuffed, capitalistically-confused zombies, until the 30th of December. There’s a buzz in the streets. It’s nearly over. The day is coming, the moment is arriving. Everybody descends on Royal Park, Home Point, Riverbend and Kings Bridge to celebrate together as the moment arrives, but nobody counts. The wait is over, and it couldn’t come soon enough. And as a low murmur of “Happy New Year” slowly ripples through the factions of crowds, and the first of a series of exploding fireballs fills the sky, everybody does… nothing.

There is not a single word. Several minutes of fireworks go by, harshed by the occasional woop of a middle-aged woman who spent her day replacing her red blood cells with red wine. Even the children don’t cry, laugh, or shout in excitement. Just bang after bang, some fizzles and whistles, and a silence that seemed louder than the literal explosions in the sky.

The finale echoes against an array of siloes that have been turned into a reasonably ugly hotel. A tired, yet painfully wary applause sweeps across the river, and someone audibly says “welp, thank fuck its over.” The trek home begins, as thousands of people funnel down the main streets in their cars, the children discarding their glow-sticks into the rear footwells of Kia Sportages and begging for a Maccas run. Thousands. In the years since COVID-19 reared its fugly arse, this is easily the most people I’ve seen at a NYE event. The streams of cars filling three lanes of traffic, the queues at McDonalds spilling out onto the road, the Shibuya-style scramble of pedestrians going to bars and pubs… it all makes the earlier silence seem even quieter.

That is when it hits.

It is pure relief. It is hope. It is the collective sigh of exhaustion that could’ve dissipated the gunpowder smoke. It is over. The year is complete, we are on a new calendar and the world can reset.

It makes me wonder why we give the Gregorian calendar so much responsibility to designate when bad can finish and good can start. It is purely a marker, we could start and end anywhere. But we have spent the last nearly 450 years making our resolutions, living out traditions, and bookmarking whole sets of 365-366 days as good or bad. In July, I went to Victoria to celebrate my 30th birthday, met a new friend, caught up with a best friend, reunited with an old friend, and had the absolute best week. That little holiday was the most fun I’ve had in some time. However, it was completely overshadowed and generally bookmarked as “bad” because it happened in 2024, and that’s not fair; especially to my wife, who organised the whole adventure (I love you, and I really did enjoy myself). This is simply the effect 2024 had on us all; we were constantly kicked while we were down, and the bruises persisted so brightly and boldly that we didn’t notice the ice.

To introduce some of those from the previous paragraph; the new friend, Lucía, is the best friend Josh’s partner. Lulu is from Venezuela, where at new year, they practice the “12 Grapes” tradition. Before midnight, you write 12 wishes for the year ahead, share them with the people you’re spending New Year’s Eve with, and with each bell strike at midnight on January 1st, you make those wishes, eating one grape per wish.

As the mob of tired families trudged their way through the parks, our group (myself, my wife Karsha, Josh, Lucía and Emily, another best friend) sat quietly eating grapes, sending our wishes into the ether. As we finished this and began our own respective trudging, I realise that we are walking toward my car, the car I arrived in; my fully intact, wholly present, 100% unwallabied car. It wasn’t a wish of mine but perhaps it is a good omen, a sign that things to come aren’t going to be absolute dogshit.

There is also the possibility that I didn’t learn anything. I’m comparing a day to a day, purely because it’s been 366 days since I lost my car to a fucking wallaby (literally). It has been a year, which means nothing. Why do I put so much stock in the fucking calendar? I don’t know if I have an answer to that, or any way to resolve it, but it is something I’ve decided is not a priority to work on. What I will work on is learning, experiencing and loving, but especially the learning.

So what did I learn, then? What did 2024 teach me?

It taught me that my breaking point may be set further than I once thought, or perhaps that my breaking point has reached a personal best and it will now take more to destroy me.

I learned to start trusting the places I inhabit more. I read this on a toilet wall, something along the lines of “trust a place, try trusting it for a while,” which I think I can credit my wonderful friend Zara with (edit: Zara has let me know it was our wonderful friend Emily Rose. Thank you ER).

I discovered that forced resilience goes a long way to making the rest of the world a lot less harsh, something I learned after doing a lot of driving for Uber Eats over the last 12 months.

And I learned, whether I wanted to or not, that wallaby cum is an acceptable substitute for paint thinner.

Genuinely, I hope 2025 is kinder, gentler and full of adventure for everybody reading this (well… everybody in general). Lucía went home, Karsha went to Fiji, Josh and Emily are here for a few more days, then once they leave, I’m off to Sydney for a bit.

Experience and kindness are the orders of the year. Interpret experience as you will, but for fuck’s sake, the world has been disgusting enough, treat everyone with kindness.

Have a happy and safe new year.

Cancelled:

The State of the Scene

Ben Barwick

10/04/2024

Everything ever is over. Sorry.

… I felt for a moment that I could end this article there and then. But like that busker from the Brisbane St mall in Launceston who kept getting booted out every day in 2010 for playing Pink Floyd deep cuts without a permit, I will persist.

As a country, we already lost a lot of festivals. Falls Festival, Big Day Out, Stereosonic and Soundwave all went the way of the GSM blips in our computer speakers, and we moved on to other festivals. But now they’re going too. Groovin’ The Moo, Splendour in the Grass, MONA FOMA, Sydney NYE, all cancelled. Party in the Paddock have today dedicated themselves to some dates for next year, and Good Things is expected to make an announcement about 2024 dates soon enough.

As Party In The Paddock has just said themselves, “it’s a tough time to be a music festival.” And why is that? Obviously COVID-19 never helped, but I believe there’s a much bigger disease at play, and that disease is money… yeah, that’s right, the economy. In a world where tasty cheese is at least $10/kg, people who are of festival-going age are struggling. If the price of cheese is going up, so is everything else: insurance, electricity, staff wage, venue fees, travel costs, equipment hire, cleaning... And because that cheeky lil’ number on the checkout screen keeps going up, the people providing services need more money, so they put their own cheeky lil’ numbers up. On and on it goes.

Add all those costs together, and you’re just about at the budget a festival would’ve been at about 10-15 years ago. Notice anything? No bands. Now add in enough bands to create hype and deem it as a festival. 30 bands, what are you paying them? Who are they? Do you want to draw people in with headliners from across the ocean? The Wombats will set you back at least $75,000. Slipknot costs over $300k. Lil Nas X, $1.5m. Don’t even ask about Taylor Swift, who was projected to make a net $440m for her Australian tour (Forbes, 2022).

Hmmm, why are all these festivals cancelling? Is it because they have to charge through the roof and are pricing out their clientele just to have a “wow” moment? So maybe we just… do less, right? Pandemonium Rocks festival is going ahead this year, but they’ve just slashed Placebo and Deep Purple from their lineup, alongside some other decent acts, likely because they just cannot afford them. It feels like quite a damaging thing to do, especially for an already fairly embattled festival (Nine, 2024). But what choice did they have?

So what’s to do? What happens now? What’s the solution?

Oh, I don’t know, if only there were 30 young bands hanging around in your local area who are willing to play muddy fields for the cost of a slab… oh wait. Hold up. Just a second. Woah there pal.

One thing I’ve noticed is this idea that playing a festival in your hometown is exclusive and a hard-to-come-by thing. PITP do it right, they get a shit-tonne of local acts to play alongside big names like Genesis Owusu, G-Flip and The Darkness, but what about the rest of these festivals? Why don’t we have more grassroots festivals in Australia, and why aren't these bigger festivals more dedicated to hosting more bands from the local area?

I don't know about you, but so many of the bands I listen to do this for the love of music. They want to be musicians even though they know how hard it's going to be to break through, yet Splendour and Groovin’ do the bare minimum in throwing bones to these acts that would likely be happy to play for a six-pack and an artist's pass. I sometimes feel like walking up to event organisers and saying “hey, here's 10 local acts that will fill the gaps in your schedule. No need to pay me, give them $100 per person.”

Does it not make sense to support the lands you work on? Does it not make sense to save the money you're spending on someone's reputation to instead increase the reputation of the people around you that work hard for basically nothing?

Or has the industry truly lost its heart, and only works to the beat of a dollar sign while treating fan service like a slot machine?

Hear me when I say:

I truly believe these festivals getting cancelled isn't a loss to our scene.

I truly believe the loss occurred when top-dollar became a motivation and the greed of success replaced the love of music.

I truly believe that local scenes need more major representations at these well-known events.

I truly believe music should be a lot less about money and a lot more about passion; in fact I don't know if money should be a factor at all.

Take a note from Party In The Paddock.

Local acts ARE your scene.

Treat them that way.

The first half of this article is in part one - go find that first!

So what is to be done? “I don’t fuckin’ like Doja Cat, I like real music,” I hear you shriek out of the driver’s-side window of a rusting 2001 Toyota Camry, trying to compete with the volume of Enter Sandman by Metallica which is on it’s third play for the day. I’ll tell you what you can do. You can, with absolutely no due respect, get the ever-loving fuck over yourself.

Doja Cat is popular now, but is not the be all and end all of music. You can still listen to whatever you want. And, in the same vein, JJJ is not the be all and end all of radio stations you could listen to. Nostalgia has swallowed you, and like… that’s fine, but that doesn’t give you the right to rain on anyone else’s parade. You can choose to listen to the same shit for the next 30 years if you want, but the rest of the world doesn’t have to choose that. The rest of the world is moving on to different things like Flume and Dom Dolla while you’re out here in Facebook comments saying “JJJ just isn’t the same anymore, they never used to play any of this pop shit.”

What y’all seem to forget is that Doja Cat is number one because she was voted by majority to that position. Nirvana was number one because, and get ready to cringe in your britches, Nirvana were popular. So were The Cranberries, so was Joy Division, so was Augie March, so was Franz Ferdinand. In ten years, we could add “so was Billie Eilish, so was Flume, so was Doja Cat.” Some toddler from today will win the Hottest 100 in 2040, and Gen Z is going to be saying “JJJ used to slay for real, but now? It’s giving yuck.”

A quick aside: I worked with a Gen Z girl for a little while and I contextually learned a lot of their slang… there is no reason we should be getting all fucked up about it. Them saying “slay” is no better than when we used to say “swag,” or that fantastic period of time where we all unironically said “lol” as a word instead of laughing.

The easiest solution is to just listen to old music, right?

Wrong, but I totally get why you would think so. Old music already exists, you already like it, just listen to that… well, that is where nostalgia becomes ignorance. New music is released every minute of every day, using every song from every genre and every generation as inspiration. A brand new band could be writing your new Enter Sandman as we speak, but you’ll never find them because nostalgia is blinding you. Pink Floyd is great - so check out All India Radio. Never heard of them? Probably because you weren’t looking. They did a wonderful cover of “Set The Controls for the Heart of the Sun,” and plenty of original spaced-out psych stuff. You should really check out more of their stuff.

And herein lies the solution; nothing has to be popular to exist to you, nor does it have to be subcultural, so go and find your own new music! You can sort through everything to find exactly what you want; Spotify playlists, JJJ Unearthed, AMRAP, community radio stations, gigs... All it takes is you putting in a search term in Spotify and listening to something new on your way to work, or chucking together a playlist in JJJ Unearthed while you play a game. AMRAP is a wonderful place, because so many hidden gems are in there… a lot of shit too, not everyone can be a winner (personal opinion). But even then, I wouldn’t know half the music I do if it weren’t for AMRAP. My favourite Tasmanian artist, I Think They Hate Me, was one I found on AMRAP, and they are now one of my favourite artists in general.

I can imagine that someone somewhere is the kind of person to call trans people "pronoun snowflakes" and then get sad when a vague non-identity in an article written by some goblin with no real credibility becomes relatable, and I don't want to alienate anybody including them, so I'll start shutting up now.

I guess what I want this all to boil down to is this;

Don’t let a popular music countdown dictate what you should listen to, but don’t let your nostalgic tendencies dictate your views and opinions on new music. Don't shit on artists for not being to your specific taste, and don't shit on radio stations or their presenters for not catering to your musical needs on a whim.

And most importantly, let other people like what they like. If that is Doja Cat, great. There is no use having a sook about it if the majority wanted her at number one… you’re outnumbered, and they aren’t listening to you. They’re listening to JJJ: a radio station that they too will probably come to resent in 10 years, unless they decide to take reason with them into the future, and leave nostalgia in the past.

Now go.

Go forth and listen.

> JJJ Unearthed

> AMRAP

</opinion>

HOW THE HOTTEST 100 RUINED MY LIFE:

A Millennial Musician’s Guide to Turning 30

Ben Barwick

10/02/2024

“And the winner of this year’s Hottest 100 Countdown is… Zombie by The Cranberries!”

If I weren’t womb-bound at this point in 1994, I’d have been ecstatic. What a track, narrowly beating out the hugely controversial but insanely good “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails and a two-in-a-row stint by The Offspring. Such an amazing year for music, if I do say so myself!

Well... of course I’m saying that. I was born then. People like the music from the year they were born. That’s a given. Or, at least, that’s how we are raised to be. There is a serious penchant for the nostalgic that gets pushed on us right from the moment we are cognisant enough to piss in the right place. “I remember when I was a kid, I used to play with army men toys like those,” “back in my day we didn’t have computers, we had to go outside and if we weren’t home when the sun came down, we’d get smacked,” “there was none of this doof-doof crap when I was little, nobody learns the organ anymore.” Fair cop, that’s all true, as far as I know or care.

The most dangerous thought is the idea that we should do something one way because we’ve always done it that way. That leaves no room to grow, evolve, learn, become better people, like new things or come up with new ideas. Unfortunately, we’ve had this way of thinking for way too long. When Zombie by The Cranberries hit the top spot in the Hottest 100 of 1994, I’m willing to bet that someone in their 30s who grew up listening to The Beatles, Ziggy-era Bowie, and Tom Jones was looking up from their melamine dinner-plates, screaming “why?! What has music become? It’s all so sad and distorted and noisy! And this stupid voice! And who the fuck is Nine Inch Nails?”

Tom Jones got number nine that year, and to this day, you can still hear “ya joking, shoulda been higher” echoing through the last remnants of muzak-filled shopping centres that softly blow in the harsh, ever-warming winds of suburban Australia. You would then have heard the whirring hum of a cassette player hiss through a home-made tape of top-of-the-pops radio rock, emanating from the kitchen bench of a modest four-bedroom home in Ipswich, QLD that they had purchased five years earlier for $94,000.

Now, pretend that the Hottest 100 started much earlier. I can imagine my grandfather hearing Ziggy Stardust hit the top of the charts one day, and instinctively cramming 40 years of swing-flavoured wax back into his ears as a coping mechanism. It’s a funny thought. I write it in jest.

Well strap in, bucko, because this is us now.

In the year of our lord and saviour Taylor Swift, the top song for 2023 was Paint The Town Red by Doja Cat. Had I heard it before the countdown? No. Have I heard it since? No, I have in fact gone out of my way to turn it off. Is it insanely popular on TikTok? Absolutely it is, I have been informed. Did I have a knee-jerk reaction about this song being the end of good music? Fuck yeah, I did! What a crock of shit! Did nobody hear all the cool alternative shit that came out this year? Sleep Token, the new TISM material, Pierce The Veil covering Karma Police for Like A Version… Granted, Sleep Token’s “The Summoning” hit in at number 83, but that went viral on TikTok too! Shoulda been higher, right? Triple J used to be the alternative station! They never used to play that pop trash like Doja Cat and whatever a Dom Dolla is!

But here is the thing: did I calm the fuck down and get over myself? Yes. I did. Because guess what? The Cranberries were popular in 1994. So were Nine Inch Nails, Silverchair, The Offspring, Nirvana and every other band that appeared in the countdown that year. That has never changed. The bands have always been popular. When did being a musical elitist become a full-time job for JJJ listeners? Why should we be so incensed about popular dance music and pop music (fun fact: pop is short for popular) being in a countdown of popular songs? More to my point, why did it swallow me this year?

Nostalgia. That’s why.

That army man reference from before? Yeah, it was there for a reason.

Back when I was born, Nirvana was in the Hottest 100, experimentalists like Nick Cave, Bjork and Severed Heads were doing interesting things at the height of an experimental period of music, and modern punk was starting to forge its way out of the dingy football clubrooms of the small towns of the world. Back in my day, I used to play RuneScape and listen to Silverchair’s “Neon Ballroom” back before it was called Old School RuneScape and Daniel Johns went fully off his tits on whatever he got himself into.

Human nature dictates that we be nostalgic. Music soundtracks our lives. Our nostalgia has a soundtrack, and we impart those memories along with those songs onto our young. Human nature has us thrusting our, unbeknownst to us, kinda shitty music taste onto our children and expecting them to appreciate it… and we don’t cave. We know what we want to hear, even from early on. We’re certainly influenced by our parents, I got Queen from Mum and Alice Cooper from Dad, and as far as I know, perhaps hyperpop duo 100 Gecs were inspired by the progressive non-standards set by acts like Queen and King Crimson. But I can tell you with serious confidence that 100 Gecs will never be in my parent's playlists. And, I can also tell you with potential confidence that 100 Gecs won’t be in my children’s wheelhouse. “Dumbest Girl Alive” is going to sound to them the same way The Eagles’ album tracks sounded to me: absolute dogshit.

But you know what we’re gonna do? We’re gonna show our kids 100 Gecs. We’re gonna show them Doja Cat, Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj, and they’re going to be horrified. And they’re going to show their kids bands made of people who were born this year, and THEY will be horrified. And we’ll ask ourselves what is wrong with the culture we grew up with, and decide, collectively, that everything was perfect in our day. Nothing was bad about Billie Eilish! She introduced the mainstream to horror-pop, which was a big step that led to a bit of darkness creeping into the real world! “Am I out of touch? No, it’s the kids who are wrong” (Principal Skinner, 1994).

The truth is, the ridiculousness of 100 Gecs, or indeed any other hyperpop producer/s, wasn’t around when our parents were. The sonic darkness of “Bury A Friend” by Billie Eilish wasn’t a thing. Evolution happens. Did you know that our fingers get pruney in water so that we can grip things in the water, but that wouldn’t have happened centuries ago because we have genetically evolved as humans since? Did you know computers weren’t around in the 1930s? Did you know hyperpop wasn’t invented until like twenty minutes ago? It’s true! And we wouldn’t have acts like Doja Cat topping the Hottest 100 without technology being the way that it is, without TikTok allowing rapid-consumption content, without modern recording techniques and synthetic production.

If music never evolved, we’d still be listening to free jazz in dive bars. If we stopped at Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll,” we wouldn’t have The Timelords’ “Doctorin’ The Tardis” or Kanye West’s “Black Skinhead” (I don’t care if it was never confirmed, I’m calling it)... and I think we can all agree that it is a good thing that we have not settled on letting Gary Glitter, Confirmed Nonce, be the only person to use that drum beat.

This platform has a character limit, and I hit it, so...

go to part 2.

I Think They Hate Me.. :( - microMACRO

Released: April 29, 2023

Ben Barwick

04/06/2023

Musical risk-takers, as I’ve found over the last few years, are pretty much everywhere. Whether successful or not, for every Focusrite Scarlett set on the market, there’s 15 songs that have been played on any given midi controller and washed through a VST, and an unused condenser microphone sitting in the bottom drawer of a desk that wasn’t quite built correctly. Once in a million producers, however, we will float across a project that is experimental, sonically ground-breaking, conceptual and best of all, cohesive.

For me, that has been I Think They Hate Me.. :( or, for the sake of Google Docs not chucking the shits, just I Think They Hate Me. Starting the project in 2022, project lead Cassandra Hollow has already smashed out four albums of pure, electronic goodness, all of which feel as though they’re answering the question “how does an island of ageing populous 300 kilometres off the coast of the creative hub of the country respond to its darkness?”

The answer has proven to be a brooding gamut of albums that were all released over the course of 12 months: Afraid of Dying Alone and Insane, Hopelessness, Similarity, and most recently, microMACRO. This has formed a body of work that echoes the feeling of walking through the melancholic ridiculousness of takayna/Tarkine Forest, or that of passing crumbling buildings in a semi-dystopian cityscape with Hogs Breath Cafes, Country Roads and government offices shoved into them while “retaining their heritage,” whatever the fuck we choose to believe that is.

Further than that, these albums reflect a distinct sadness that I feel like I can relate to. Being nonbinary and recently diagnosed with BPD and C-PTSD, Hollow’s music feels like a friendly and understanding hug. The most recent album, microMACRO, feels like the truest version of the biography statement, “introverted electronic music for introverted electronic people.” There is a loneliness within this record that can maybe only be truly understood by an introvert; an expansive, sprawling dreamscape filled with everything one has experienced, that simultaneously spirals into void. Sitting in the car before walking into a supermarket; the waiting room of a doctor’s office; the time between times in which nothing happens bar thought… a frequently occurring, more accessible version of limbo.

Musically, microMACRO is a masterwork of synth exploration and experimentation. Hollow wanders through industrial electronica, taps into synth-wave and draws in inspiration and instrumentation that makes obvious a penchant for nostalgia and memory without venturing into already well-trodden territory. Beautifully sparkly synths backed by crunchy, distorted and deliciously warped basslines pervade each track on this album. It almost isn’t possible to speak to an individual song within a work this cohesive.

There are certainly some describable moments, such as the industrial percussive elements we get on MACROwave, or the vaguely middle-eastern theremin-like section heard on Amnesia? that was reminiscent of Melbourne-based dark-electro band Sirus’ last album. The final track on the album, Christmas.. delivers an epic, 14-minute synth odyssey filled brim with arpeggios, heart-touching soundscape work, and a gut-wrenchingly emotional overtone that synth music generally lacks. Listening to all the albums back-to-back in one sitting could certainly signify this track as I Think They Hate Me’s magnum opus.

STANDOUT TRACKS: bleakSIM, Amnesia?, Christmas..

RATING: 10/10

VERTICOLI - The Echo

Released: November 9, 2022

Ben Barwick

17/11/2022

As the Covid-19 pandemic released its initial chokehold on this little island called Tasmania, we began to see more and more of musicians and bands that had been somewhat dormant, yet never forgotten in the minds of fans across the state. One such act, Verticoli, came through with an EP and a few covers (including Alanis Morrisette’s “You Oughta Know” which, as you can imagine, sounds fantastic).

Eventually, this nipaluna/Hobart based trio shook off the dust and set amps to 11 which, following a few single releases, has led to the new Verticoli album, The Echo. I don’t know what it was about isolation, or the looming threat of unsanitised hands, but these hibernating bands have come out swinging hail-Mary from their caves, and nothing said could be more true of Verticoli.

I was straight away greeted with a punk-kissed alt-rock onslaught in the form of the opening track “Undercover,” which plays out seemingly as a love letter to early 2000s Aussie alternative rock bands like Grinspoon. This was a hell of a way to open an album, and was thankfully carried on through other songs like the second single “True Love” and the short-but-sweet “Surrender.” The fifth track, “Sailor,” gives us a softer moment reminiscent of early Silverchair and Radiohead twisted into a melancholic acoustic-driven number.

I do wish that the songs were longer, but I also feel that maybe that’s a good thing. It was this approach of running a ten-track album just over half-an-hour that had me endlessly re-listening to Sydney-based Autosuggest’s 2019 album Tame Harm. I also wish there was a little more resolution. The title track and final song on the album, “The Echo,” is a strong piece of alternative rock, some of the best Tasmania has seen in some time, but it felt like a very sudden end after listening to the rest of the album. That said, the beauty within the stripped-back and emotional outro to the song somewhat makes up for it.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Sailor, Undercover, Alive, The Echo

RATING: 8/10