As far as New Year’s festivals go, Beyond the Valley is bringing out the big guns and making itself a proper contender for one of the best going, unveiling their line up for 2017 today. When you see the likes of ScHoolboy Q, The Presets and Stormzy on the top line of the bill, you know it’s going to be great. An…
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Festival of the Sun returns to Port Macquarie this December, looking to sell out quickly too, if previous years’ ticket sales are anything to go by! Long regarded as one of the east coast’s most popular festival events, Festival of the Sun hasn’t changed its blueprint one iota. Still completely BYO, FOTSUN has retained its family…
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Non-headliners ruled Splendour in the Grass this year, and if anything defined the festival for 2017 it was that interest is shifting towards locals who are giving it their all, swiftly outshining headliners for what has become the proving ground for many a homegrown musician over the years. As a festival, Splendour is one of…
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While most people wait to start their Splendour weekend on Friday, plenty of festivalgoers – especially the campers – know that heading along to the festival’s official kick-off on Thursday is well worth it. This year even moreso as Red Bull Sound Select came on board to curate a program at the Mix-Up Stage that…
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Got your Splendour schedule locked in? You might want to leave a few spots open. One of Australia’s biggest and best music festivals is a gold mine when it comes to discovering new music or watching that mid-card act completely own the entire festival and make you wonder why they weren’t top-billed in the first…
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Earlier this week, we unveiled our list of the 20 Best Albums of 2017 so far – as voted by our team – with The Smith Street Band reigning supreme with their acclaimed album, More Scared of You Than You Are of Me. Breaking things down even further, today we throw the spotlight on some of the…
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The national ‘Fire Sign’ tour that has seen Remi, Sensible J and Sampa The Great collaborate on continues to Hobart this weekend before finishing up north in Darwin come July 8th. The reviews and chatter that have emerged in the wake of completed shows around the country so far have been positive and driven by enthusiasm – these…
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In what could easily be described as one of the most exciting co-headline tours we’ve seen this year, hip-hop heavyweights Remi Kolawole and Sensible J (collectively known as REMI) and Sampa The Great joined forces this winter for the Fire Sign national tour. The duo are no strangers to collaborating, most recently teaming up for…
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They’re fresh off the back of some well-received shows in the UK and are currently looking down the barrel at a huge collaborative tour back at home. It’s only right that in the middle of it all, there should be some new music featuring the soulful triumvirate of Sensible J, Remi and Sampa the Great. “Fire Sign” is…
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Now the dust has finally settled on The Great Escape for another year and a flight back to Australia beckons, I’ve been loading up my flight playlist and have come to land on my top eight artists from my time out in Brighton. Of course, there were some shining artists I’d known about prior, while…
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Ah, The Great Escape. Snipping at the heels of its American counterpart, SXSW, the British festival – established for music discovery – has grown considerably in recent year, drawing thousands of music fans and industry professionals out to Brighton to watch hundreds of established and emerging bands from the world over showcase their sounds in a variety of…
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The Great Escape festival returns to Brighton and Hove this year, bringing with it over 450 new and up and coming bands. Here at the AU, we love Australian music, and couldn’t be prouder of the Aussie acts that have been selected to perform, in the midst of such a sheer volume of talent. Honourable mentions to…
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The Great Escape brought its A-game to the first official day of proceedings out in Brighton this Thursday. The rain did not deter the delegates and punters from embracing the sheer wealth of live music to be absorbed across the wide variety of music venues within the city. While the SOUNDS AUSTRALIA Sound Gallery showcase…
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The Sounds Australia crew return to the UK for The Great Escape this year and once more, they have curated some incredibly showcases for the British to see what the Australians have going. Two showcases have been planned for Brighton – the Sound Gallery returns to Komedia on Thursday, May 18th, while the Aussie BBQ hits…
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Sampa the Great‘s reputation precedes her now. The Sydney-based artist recently found herself at the Red Bull Sound Select Studios in Paris laying down the brilliant touches on her highly anticipated HERoes Act 2 EP with LA producer Rahki. Also collaborating with the Grammy winning songwriter and artist Estelle, Sampa has channeled some effortless groove and and maturity within her…
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Sampa The Great has continued to raise the level of buzz surrounding her forthcoming EP HERoes Act 2, with the release of a brand new single in “Everybody’s Hero”. The song saw the Sydney-based artist head into the Red Bull Sound Select studios in Paris with Estelle and producer Rakhi (Syd, Kendrick Lamar) to lay down the glistening track that once again,…
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Bad Friday has become a Good Friday tradition in Sydney, boasting incredible local lineups since it burst onto the scene in 2010 at the Annandale Hotel. This year’s lineup – with DMA’s and The Jezabels at the top of the list – is easily their strongest yet. Though it was the performances that scattered the…
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With a long weekend ahead of us, many places will be shutting for Good Friday – this isn’t the case when it comes to the Sydney crew throwing the eighth edition of Bad Friday. The all day block party takes over Marrickville on Friday and man, is the line up a stellar one. Headlined by DMAs and…
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This week, we learned that the nominations for the 2017 APRA Music Awards have been unveiled, with some of our great songwriters being recognised for the fantastic year of music they had through 2016. As such, Flume leads the nominations (perhaps unsurprisingly) with four, while Sia follows closely behind with three noms to her name. Julia Zemiro will…
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A hundred new artists have been added to this year’s line up for The Great Escape out in Brighton, UK in May. Widely regarded as the biggest festival in Europe for new music discovery, we’re stoked to see the likes of Sampa The Great, Tired Lion, Slaves, Marika Hackman and more join a stellar group of artists from all over the…
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Our Top 20 Singles from 2016 represent not only what was a strong and diverse year in new music, but they also presented themselves to be solid indicators of the trajectories of some of our favourite new artists. From NGAIIRE‘s “House on a Rock” to B Wise‘s “No Questions”, through to huge international hitters in Childish Gambino‘s “Redbone”…
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Yesterday, we brought you an extra little look at the AU Award nominees for Male Artist of the Year – a reflective on how those six artists have flown on our radar through the year and why they’ve been nominated. Today, the focus turns to the ladies as we take a peek at the 2016’s…
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With just a few weeks left in 2016, the Australian music industry is by no means slowing down and heading into any type of hibernation for the holidays. With our summer festival season just ramping up, the last few months seem to have been all about celebrating some amazing talent doing amazing things both in the studio…
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How do I even introduce Zan Rowe to those who aren’t familiar with her (how!?), where do I begin? She has been a friend to many over her years at triple j, introducing so many amazing artists to so many people, guiding us to new areas in our musical tastes, and helping everyone start the…
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Nearly two years of work by two Melbourne artists, photographer Michelle Grace Hunder and filmmaker Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore, has culminated in the powerful, multifaceted Her Sound, Her Story. It’s a project created as a response to the conversation observed surrounding women in the Australian music industry, documenting more than 40 female artists who have, or…
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The nominees for the National Live Music Awards have been announced around the country today, with 51 categories being unveiled across the board. Winners are to be announced on November 29th at events being run nationally, with both national and state-specific categories being voted on by a judging panel of industry professionals from right around Australia….
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Sampa the Great has been an artist we have loved seeing go from strength to strength through 2016. As her music has spread to more audiences around the country and her live shows have continued to build, Sampa emerged as a frontrunner in this current crop of young artists stepping up to the plate with some brilliant lyricism…
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Sampa The Great continues to be celebrated (and rightly so), with the artist being named the recipient of the inaugural Corner Award! The award, presented by the iconic Melbourne live music venue, will see Sampa perform a special headlining show at The Corner on November 4th, with the first 150 ticket purchases set to receive a…
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In its 13th year in 2017, the St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival returns with some names that have graced its stages before breaking out overseas, some names who will be making their Laneway debut and some names that come with a solid whack of international hype backing them. We already knew that A.B. Original and Nick Murphy (FKA Chet Faker) would be on…
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With BIGSOUND serving up a live music lineup that no doubt brought solid highlights across all genres this past week, we were lucky to spend some time with some of the artists who performed some bloody amazing shows over the course of the event. Photos by Zakarij Kaczmarek. SAMPA THE GREAT An artist who came to BIGSOUND with a lot of…
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