After the absolute shitstorm of 2020, you’d have thought 2021 would hopefully deliver some sort of reprieve. After losing pretty much every avenue of income last year, English band Shame pinned all their hopes on 2021 being the year they could thrive, via touring their new album Drunk Tank Pink. Slaving away through last year…
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COVID-19 and lockdown delayed the release of Illy’s sixth studio album The Space Between by eight months. Although for an album three years in the making, a bit of patience wasn’t too much to ask for both artist and his fanbase. He’s dropped plenty of singles in the meantime. Melbourne-based Illy, Alasdair Murray, hadn’t put…
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A woman adjusts to her new urban landscape. A slaughterman comes to terms with the death of his wife. A rodeo ringer blows into town, wreaking havoc. These are just a handful of the eclectic characters, locations, and stories that come gloriously together in Leslie Thiele‘s recent collection Skyglow. Bouncing from the past to the…
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LANKS is the solo project for Will Cuming. Cuming, an Australian native but now residing in Brooklyn, NY is a producer and multi-instrumentalist. He has been working on a double-album, Spirits Pt. 1. and 2. Pt 1. was released late last year and features exclusively guest vocalists. Pt 2. sees LANKS taking control of the…
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Gold Coast-trio daste. are about to release their first single of the year, “somebody like you”, a beautiful uplifting tune, and we are thrilled to be premiering it today. This is the second track to be released off their forthcoming debut album dusk/dawn, due out mid-year. “somebody like you” follows on from “either way”, which…
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It goes without saying that within the realms of the horror film, setting plays a large factor. From the Bates Motel – and, by extension, THAT shower – in Psycho to the murderous New York dwelling of The Amityville Horror, places of habitation are often their own character if utilised precisely enough. In The Rental,…
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This morning the shortlist for the 2021 Indie Book Awards have been unveiled. The twenty-four shortlisted books, the best books of the year as nominated by Australian independent booksellers, now go on to vie for the coveted Overall Indie ‘Book of the Year’ for 2021. A panel of judge will choose the winners in each…
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Three years have passed since Square Enix abruptly cut ties with Hitman 3 developer IO Interactive. The good news is that there appears to have been some measure of reconciliation. Though IO is self-publishing Hitman 3 in many territories, Square Enix is the publishing partner for Hitman 3 in Oceania. Without getting into specifics, reconciliation…
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Singer-songwriter Julien Baker continues to tease her forthcoming album Little Oblivions, treating fans to new single “Hardline”. The new single, the first track on the new album, further showcases the more expansive sound that Baker has opted for on the forthcoming album. It’s bigger, bolder, but at the same time, so clearly a Julien Baker…
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The genre defying and ARIA Award winning artist Illy has returned with his sixth LP, The Space Between. Released on Friday, the album is the culmination of over three years of persistence, grind, and continent hopping. Illy split the album’s recording sessions between his hometown of Melbourne, and studios around the world, including, Los Angeles,…
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Norwegian experimental singer Sturle Dagsland continues to tease his forthcoming self-titled debut album, set for release early next month – February 5th. The latest single to be lifted from the album is “Dreaming”; a track that showcases the album’s more ethereal side. It’s positively serene compared to the previously released “Kusanagi” and “Waif”; which highlighted…
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In the dead of night, the Witchfinder General’s men came to Kelso and snatched away Art’s mother. Narrowly avoiding being taken herself, Art was left with nothing but a sword, her mother’s trusty book of remedies and salves, and her faithful horse Lady. It’s not much, but with the forest to guide her, she sets…
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The SXSW Film Festival has announced its opening night headliner as the 28th annual event prepares to announce its complete film lineup on February 10th, 2021. Serving as the opening night headliner will be Michael D. Ratner‘s Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, a powerful YouTube Originals documentary event that explores the aspects that led…
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Globally acclaimed Queensland contemporary circus group Circa have delivered a sequel to their ground breaking 2017 show Humans. Humans 2.0 is a ‘love letter to humanity’, exploring trust, vulnerability and the extremes of human ability. Those extremes are of evident immediately, as the cast of 10 begin with outrageous feats of acrobatics. At times it…
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WA alt-rockers Birds of Tokyo have done plenty in their 15-year existence, but a symphonic tour is something completely foreign and new, so frontman Ian Kenny admitted they were “shitting bricks” with their first few shows at the idyllic Perth Concert Hall over the weekend. Birds of Tokyo’s symphonic tour commenced on Thursday night with…
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Autocannibal presents a dystopian circus exploring the nature of sustenance. Isolated as the only remaining human in a world bereft of food and water, our protagonist battles a sea of junk and plastic, avoiding the obvious reality that there’s only one thing remaining for him to truly eat. Mick Jones is a versatile performer, delivering…
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Given that 2020 was unable to give us the Marvel titles we had originally anticipated thanks to a certain pandemic – both Black Widow and Eternals were set for release – WandaVision has somewhat of an extra layer of pressure added to it, now that it is officially both the first taste of the MCU…
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Academy Award winning actress Regina King‘s feature film directorial debut, One Night In Miami, is arriving this week on Amazon Prime Video. An adaptation of Kemp Powers’ acclaimed stage play detailing a fictionalised meeting between Malcom X, Muhammed Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a Miami hotel room in 1964, the film has been…
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There are few things that will turn a woman to becoming an outlaw faster than the threat of being hanged as a witch. So it is for Ada, the protagonist of Anna North’s latest novel, Outlawed. Described as a mash up of The Handmaid’s Tale with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Outlawed takes place in “the year of…
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Yesterday brought a tease about an Indiana Jones game at Bethesda. Today we have a Star Wars game landing at Ubisoft. It would appear the new LucasFilm Games division is on a bit of a roll. Announced in an interview with Wired, an untitled, open-world Star Wars project is underway at Ubisoft Massive, creators of…
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“Hello Perth, this is Bergen calling.” Perth and Writing WA will be featured, along with ten other international locations, in LitFestBergen’s Literature Live Around The World on February 12th. One of the few positives that has come from the global Covid-19 pandemic, is the increasing use of the virtual. In 2020, Literary Awards and Book Festivals…
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It took the new LucasFilm Games division just 24 hours to announce a new Indiana Jones game. The still-untitled game has landed at Wolfenstein: The New Colossus developer MachineGames. Its parent company Bethesda, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft, shared a teaser video on its social media accounts. It then clarified that the game is still in…
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In America 1964, the audience is introduced with its four main players. Renowned boxer Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) had just defeated Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion of the world; Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is still fighting for the cause for Black people; pop musician Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom…
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Withings have always made the more beautiful watches when it comes to fitness trackers, sticking closer to a more conventional design that doesn’t look like you’re wearing anything too high-tech on the wrist. Withings watches are simple, elegant, and feature-rich, and the ScanWatch is undoubtedly their best offering yet. And that’s no surprise, hype has…
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This coffee machine is smart. And there is perhaps no smarter created to date, reimagining the do-it-all semi-automatic machine to make it more accessible for a great variety of coffee drinkers, whether they have barista experience or not. And while it is quite pricey, that’s a valuable thing to have for the office or the…
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As evident in fellow AU critic Harris Dang’s TIFF review of Shadow in the Cloud, this film’s connection to disgraced screenwriter Max Landis is understandably a hot-button subject. Whilst I won’t go into the necessary detail, I’m certainly not making light of the allegations brought towards him, but given the fact that co-writer/director Roseanne Liang…
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How we take care of the air in our homes has shot up in terms of priority this year. We’re used to sucking up all the dirt and potentially hazardous particles from our surfaces with a high-powered vacuum cleaner, but prior to 2020, it wasn’t as widespread to consider how we go about maintaining the…
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Vida Goldstein’s surname might have been used to denote a federal electorate, but she’s hardly a household name. This trailblazing woman was a steadfast women’s rights advocate who toiled away in Australia and abroad in the early 20th century. Jacqueline Kent‘s new biography chronicles this inspiring lady’s work in the social justice and political spheres. Kent…
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A camera just over 5-inches long has no business being this good, and yet the DJI Pocket 2 is perhaps the best pro-quality camera made with such a small, flexible profile. It’s part of DJI’s renewed focus on becoming the highest quality provider of action cameras, and they nail just about everything they could while…
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After the masterstroke that was the Find X2 series, Oppo is in a very good spot within the smartphone market. Chinese peer Huawei is still battling away with its advanced hardware but Google shut-out, which definitely helps, plus the brand has now expanded their ecosystem in Australia, which includes Oppo Watch and Oppo Enco Earphones….
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