Monday, April 27, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
trash maths review in skateboarders journal
yes strange but true,
review by ben michell
Trash Maths 1, 2, & 3
As a general rule zines and maths text books suck balls. Big hairy syphillitic balls. yeah that's right, one's with syphillis on them.
So how is it that a zine posing as a maths text book is bordering on absolute fucking genius? It could be that your maths text book was never written with a dedication inside the front cover declaring it to be, "more mathematics for the lazy, the marginalised and the down at heel citizens of the world, it's ok I'm here to help."
Or it could be that all those stupid examples from math texts using trains and council workers digging holes are just useless and boring to boot? Not to mention barely credible - have you ever seen a council worker actually working?
Whereas Trash Maths uses real life and somewhat believable situations like this one about our new 'friend' Ahmed.
Ahmed is an illegal immigrant and gave his 'boss' his passport so he could work off his fare. If he needs to make $5000 for a ride in a shitty, leaky boat to Australia and his 'boss' is paying him $2.50 an hour, how long will Ahmed have to work before he gets his passport back?
See, maths isn't so boring when real life situations are used. Inherently more memorable than all that shit about trains travelling in opposite directions too. Who gives a shit about trains anyway? Your slightly retarded cousin doesn't count, I don't care how much he knows about fucking trains. *
I'm sure there's been some research done on how kids retain learning much better if it's fun and Trash Maths is nothing if it ain't fun. Which must be said is worlds away from any maths text book let alone poxy zine you've ever read. This includes the one your zitty sister is crying over in her bedroom right now, wallowing in her Smiths-induced stupor.*
Which is how Sheryl the masseuse spent her lonely teenage years before realising she could get $75 for every client. If Sheryl has 5 clients a day and pays 10% GST plus $20 to the house per job, how much will Sheryl make in a week?
As if that bitch pays tax, and if you take into account "Lonely Ron" one of her regulars, Sheryl could clear at least $1500 a week.
So that brings us back to our new 'friend' Ahmed. It would've taken him 2000 hours to get his passport back. But Ahmed is a hard cunt from Beirut who ended up stabbing his boss and taking his passport back by force.
* I don't mean to keep hanging shit on your family but you must admit your sister's zine is pretty lame and I challenge any one to show me someone who loves trains that isn't 'feeble minded'
For more general trash go take a look at www.dualplover.com
review by ben michell
Trash Maths 1, 2, & 3
As a general rule zines and maths text books suck balls. Big hairy syphillitic balls. yeah that's right, one's with syphillis on them.
So how is it that a zine posing as a maths text book is bordering on absolute fucking genius? It could be that your maths text book was never written with a dedication inside the front cover declaring it to be, "more mathematics for the lazy, the marginalised and the down at heel citizens of the world, it's ok I'm here to help."
Or it could be that all those stupid examples from math texts using trains and council workers digging holes are just useless and boring to boot? Not to mention barely credible - have you ever seen a council worker actually working?
Whereas Trash Maths uses real life and somewhat believable situations like this one about our new 'friend' Ahmed.
Ahmed is an illegal immigrant and gave his 'boss' his passport so he could work off his fare. If he needs to make $5000 for a ride in a shitty, leaky boat to Australia and his 'boss' is paying him $2.50 an hour, how long will Ahmed have to work before he gets his passport back?
See, maths isn't so boring when real life situations are used. Inherently more memorable than all that shit about trains travelling in opposite directions too. Who gives a shit about trains anyway? Your slightly retarded cousin doesn't count, I don't care how much he knows about fucking trains. *
I'm sure there's been some research done on how kids retain learning much better if it's fun and Trash Maths is nothing if it ain't fun. Which must be said is worlds away from any maths text book let alone poxy zine you've ever read. This includes the one your zitty sister is crying over in her bedroom right now, wallowing in her Smiths-induced stupor.*
Which is how Sheryl the masseuse spent her lonely teenage years before realising she could get $75 for every client. If Sheryl has 5 clients a day and pays 10% GST plus $20 to the house per job, how much will Sheryl make in a week?
As if that bitch pays tax, and if you take into account "Lonely Ron" one of her regulars, Sheryl could clear at least $1500 a week.
So that brings us back to our new 'friend' Ahmed. It would've taken him 2000 hours to get his passport back. But Ahmed is a hard cunt from Beirut who ended up stabbing his boss and taking his passport back by force.
* I don't mean to keep hanging shit on your family but you must admit your sister's zine is pretty lame and I challenge any one to show me someone who loves trains that isn't 'feeble minded'
For more general trash go take a look at www.dualplover.com
VIALKA review in MULTIBEAT
VIALKA - "Succès Planétaire International" (dualPLOVER)
Wow! This time around, the Vialka disc finds itself cozy against a piece of black felt wrapped in gorgeous photography (Wenxi Xiong, you win!) and cool, abstract art. Yup, here they are again - so glad to see somewhat wistful-looking pictures of these globe-conquerors, confident in their new madness... even a new swank logo! It's almost as if they're trying to lull you into a posture of comfort, to be utterly obliterated by the waiting tones on the record.
Premiers Pas opens with some incredible brass... What, a tuba? Gay and lovely... Strange blasts of frothy vocal nonsense... Flute brilliance -- moving from chanteuse to big, russian-style choirs. Oh man, they're at it again - and their musical chops are better than ever.
The new-heavy-heavy rock moments are new (to my recollection) and Boros is sounding better, stronger, faster on the vox - he sounds a bit like Jello Biafra now, which is awesome. The surf-gypsy moments are lovely and confusing... especially with "yahoo!" staidly yelled over top... and then funk! All this with synthesizers buzzing along at the edge of perception as well... Distorted vox clips all over the place... The end of 100% Hello is a glitch destructo clip-art fest which one shouldn't try to decode - just let it do to you what it wants to.
One For The Road starts with a yummy-fuzzy Boros high-life guitar tone and shuffle-a-gogo with Frecheville drumming the bounce to the cosmos. It's hard to say what of this is Pro Tools and overdubbing, but the drums are sounding astoundingly tight. What group would bother with such regulated tightness on such a mad trip? Whether it's editing or immaculate playing, it sure packs a punch.
This duo, being effervescent world traveler magis are clearly operating on a different frequency, but rocking their chops most days and nights has translated into a recording monster-engine. I actually wrote something similar, on reviewing their 2005 release "Curiosities of Popular Customs", and it's hard to believe how much they've further tightened up on this record.
The odd verbal 'shit, i fucked up' and similar are amazing, almost like Easter eggs among the vortex... Here they leave lots of room for solos and shared musical moments and cool little tricks. Good Riddance features minimalist tuned perc and guitar sequence-type arpeggiated motives which circle and develop - this feels distinctly African, but the inspiration might come from anywhere. The only other type of omni-world-music like this I can think of is generated by Dead Can Dance, where any ethnicity becomes 'every' ethnicity or perhaps The Great Ethnicity. The eerie sense of a cosmic Other is threatened by looming presentments of thrash metal and then ends on a major seventh: very weird. Not music for normal folks, to be sure.
Do What Now? starts like a high-life remix (actually based on a traditional Shona mbira piece) and then ends up a pointed, more dangerous rock-out with chanting - incomprehensible and still catchy as hell. Interjected guitar rush-rock-outs are ever present. I think the one word for this record is "illusive".
The bass drum hits in Dutar remind you that what you're listening to is not only really fucking weird and cool, but also exquisitely engineered - the mix, with all its strange smattering of sounds is packed with character and all the parts occupy a nice, funny realm of their own, making up a highly listenable mix of musical gnomes. Technically, this should be impossible music to listen to, but the mix goes a long way to helping the brain make sense of things. It must have been very challenging to mix and master this stuff - kudos to Bob Drake (recording) and whoever did the mastering. It also seems Drake was responsible for the editing; clearly, hands-down, a true genius at the controls. The mixing treatments and edits are so subtle across the board - seemingly impossible for a project of this scope and complexity.
Always Against brings up an interesting point: the listener disappears out of complete avant-garde abstraction for a moment to settle into what appears to be a vivid and powerful mood - quite devoid of the manic, painted blobs of half-jokingness. So the thought is: wow, if Vialka were to sit down to take us through a 'conventional' musical, static-for-four-minutes experience, or a whole record of that... What would happen? Would Vialka, without the miasma, still be Vialka or would Vialka evaporate? With the intensity and the truth of this powerful moment, one realizes 'shit this band is actually exquisite and might be hiding really intense and beautiful songs' - which, of course, is not the point of Vialka. Is exposing this fact the demolishment of the Vialka entity? The very fact that the question is raised is likely proof that Vialka is doing its job. Viva Vialka!
Hole in my Bucket pretty much drives the point home - the true international experience is a world full of crazy hillbillies on fire. Vialka has seen the world - and that's what they've written. Trying to be legit and weirdo at the same time, Frecheville's warbling songbird tones - luscious singing apparently lost and re-found in the 1930's - make you melt. (You've got to want to be a fly on the wall during this married couple's arguments!) Boros as muttering Henry (Henri) is beyond great - if it doesn't make you want to listen to the whole album AGAIN and twice as loud, I'd be very surprised.
With a record like this, you don't highlight 'good songs'... this is one of those records, perhaps like those of Frank Zappa, where you say, 'wait, wait, here comes this part!'... and then mouth sing it and gesticulate to get the point across. My favourite album moments: Premiers Pas @ 2:39 is one of the best screams in recorded history. 100% Hello @ 2:03 ... I count the seconds until this gets sampled by hip-hop funksters. Always Against @ 3:33 is an intense bass-driven rock out with monster fills that progs too and fro. Frecheville's flat coaxing of Henry is fun and mental.
Vialka has presented another incredible ride through an astounding and confusing musical space - it will demand your concentration, and you won't be able to concentrate on anything else once you put it on - by far their best compositions and recording to date. Let's hope dualPLOVER can further disseminate the genius of Vialka to a wider audience than the world-weary tot-toting duo has already done by themselves.
Karl Mohr
Multibeat
www.multibeat.com
April 14, 2009
Wow! This time around, the Vialka disc finds itself cozy against a piece of black felt wrapped in gorgeous photography (Wenxi Xiong, you win!) and cool, abstract art. Yup, here they are again - so glad to see somewhat wistful-looking pictures of these globe-conquerors, confident in their new madness... even a new swank logo! It's almost as if they're trying to lull you into a posture of comfort, to be utterly obliterated by the waiting tones on the record.
Premiers Pas opens with some incredible brass... What, a tuba? Gay and lovely... Strange blasts of frothy vocal nonsense... Flute brilliance -- moving from chanteuse to big, russian-style choirs. Oh man, they're at it again - and their musical chops are better than ever.
The new-heavy-heavy rock moments are new (to my recollection) and Boros is sounding better, stronger, faster on the vox - he sounds a bit like Jello Biafra now, which is awesome. The surf-gypsy moments are lovely and confusing... especially with "yahoo!" staidly yelled over top... and then funk! All this with synthesizers buzzing along at the edge of perception as well... Distorted vox clips all over the place... The end of 100% Hello is a glitch destructo clip-art fest which one shouldn't try to decode - just let it do to you what it wants to.
One For The Road starts with a yummy-fuzzy Boros high-life guitar tone and shuffle-a-gogo with Frecheville drumming the bounce to the cosmos. It's hard to say what of this is Pro Tools and overdubbing, but the drums are sounding astoundingly tight. What group would bother with such regulated tightness on such a mad trip? Whether it's editing or immaculate playing, it sure packs a punch.
This duo, being effervescent world traveler magis are clearly operating on a different frequency, but rocking their chops most days and nights has translated into a recording monster-engine. I actually wrote something similar, on reviewing their 2005 release "Curiosities of Popular Customs", and it's hard to believe how much they've further tightened up on this record.
The odd verbal 'shit, i fucked up' and similar are amazing, almost like Easter eggs among the vortex... Here they leave lots of room for solos and shared musical moments and cool little tricks. Good Riddance features minimalist tuned perc and guitar sequence-type arpeggiated motives which circle and develop - this feels distinctly African, but the inspiration might come from anywhere. The only other type of omni-world-music like this I can think of is generated by Dead Can Dance, where any ethnicity becomes 'every' ethnicity or perhaps The Great Ethnicity. The eerie sense of a cosmic Other is threatened by looming presentments of thrash metal and then ends on a major seventh: very weird. Not music for normal folks, to be sure.
Do What Now? starts like a high-life remix (actually based on a traditional Shona mbira piece) and then ends up a pointed, more dangerous rock-out with chanting - incomprehensible and still catchy as hell. Interjected guitar rush-rock-outs are ever present. I think the one word for this record is "illusive".
The bass drum hits in Dutar remind you that what you're listening to is not only really fucking weird and cool, but also exquisitely engineered - the mix, with all its strange smattering of sounds is packed with character and all the parts occupy a nice, funny realm of their own, making up a highly listenable mix of musical gnomes. Technically, this should be impossible music to listen to, but the mix goes a long way to helping the brain make sense of things. It must have been very challenging to mix and master this stuff - kudos to Bob Drake (recording) and whoever did the mastering. It also seems Drake was responsible for the editing; clearly, hands-down, a true genius at the controls. The mixing treatments and edits are so subtle across the board - seemingly impossible for a project of this scope and complexity.
Always Against brings up an interesting point: the listener disappears out of complete avant-garde abstraction for a moment to settle into what appears to be a vivid and powerful mood - quite devoid of the manic, painted blobs of half-jokingness. So the thought is: wow, if Vialka were to sit down to take us through a 'conventional' musical, static-for-four-minutes experience, or a whole record of that... What would happen? Would Vialka, without the miasma, still be Vialka or would Vialka evaporate? With the intensity and the truth of this powerful moment, one realizes 'shit this band is actually exquisite and might be hiding really intense and beautiful songs' - which, of course, is not the point of Vialka. Is exposing this fact the demolishment of the Vialka entity? The very fact that the question is raised is likely proof that Vialka is doing its job. Viva Vialka!
Hole in my Bucket pretty much drives the point home - the true international experience is a world full of crazy hillbillies on fire. Vialka has seen the world - and that's what they've written. Trying to be legit and weirdo at the same time, Frecheville's warbling songbird tones - luscious singing apparently lost and re-found in the 1930's - make you melt. (You've got to want to be a fly on the wall during this married couple's arguments!) Boros as muttering Henry (Henri) is beyond great - if it doesn't make you want to listen to the whole album AGAIN and twice as loud, I'd be very surprised.
With a record like this, you don't highlight 'good songs'... this is one of those records, perhaps like those of Frank Zappa, where you say, 'wait, wait, here comes this part!'... and then mouth sing it and gesticulate to get the point across. My favourite album moments: Premiers Pas @ 2:39 is one of the best screams in recorded history. 100% Hello @ 2:03 ... I count the seconds until this gets sampled by hip-hop funksters. Always Against @ 3:33 is an intense bass-driven rock out with monster fills that progs too and fro. Frecheville's flat coaxing of Henry is fun and mental.
Vialka has presented another incredible ride through an astounding and confusing musical space - it will demand your concentration, and you won't be able to concentrate on anything else once you put it on - by far their best compositions and recording to date. Let's hope dualPLOVER can further disseminate the genius of Vialka to a wider audience than the world-weary tot-toting duo has already done by themselves.
Karl Mohr
Multibeat
www.multibeat.com
April 14, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Wmfu's Free Music Archive
dualpLOVER is excited to announce that it has been asked by the revered wmfu to be a curator for its brand spanking new Free Music Archive. since the invitation i've been going nuts uploading parts of the dualpLOVER back catalogue see.http://freemusicarchive.org/label/Dual_Plover/
as a curator for the site i want to concentrate on the australian underground with an obvious emphasis on the types of music dualplover knows and loves. and will be uploading more stuff in the coming months.
if interested contact us.
in the meantime join the site it's far more fun than facebook and you'll be able to access tons of incredible music, but please don't forget to tip your favourite artists.
more on the archive below
The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. The Free Music Archive is being directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America. Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet.
Every mp3 you discover on The Free Music Archive is pre-cleared for certain types of uses that would otherwise be prohibited by outdated copyright law. Are you a podcaster looking for pod-safe audio? A radio or video producer searching for instrumental bed music that won't put your audience to sleep? A remix artist looking for pre-cleared samples? Or are you simply looking for some new sounds to add to your next playlist? The Free Music Archive is a resource for all that and more, and unlike other websites, all of the audio has been hand-picked by established audio curators.
The Free Music Archive is a platform for collaboration between WFMU and a group of fellow curators, including KEXP, dublab, KOOP, ISSUE Project Room, and CASH Music. The site combines the curatorial approach that these organizations have played for the last few decades, with the community generated approach of many current online music sites.
Inspired by Creative Commons and the open source software movement, the FMA provides a legal and technological framework for curators, artists, and listeners to harness the potential of music sharing. Every artist page will have a bio and links to the artists’ home page for users to learn more about the music they discover via the Free Music Archive. We also seek to compensate artists directly. Artist, album and song profiles will contain links to buy the full album from the artist and/or label’s preferred vendor(s). Users can also “tip” an artist if they like what they hear, sending a donation directly to the artists’ PayPal account. Artist profiles include tourdates, encouraging users to step away from the glowing computer screen and see some real live music.
While the Free Music Archive is free and open to anyone regardless of registration or other requirements, written and audio content is curated, and permission to upload/edit content is granted on an invitation basis.
Monday, April 6, 2009
VIALKA: Succès Planétaire International, Edge Radio Recommended (ERR) release for the period of 06.04.09 - 19.04.09.
Tasweigens who want to win a free copy of our new Vialka release, Succès Planétaire International should tune into edge radio for the next two weeks as its featured as their ERR (Egde Radio Recommends) release for the period of 06.04.09 - 19.04.09.
http://edgeradio.org.au/
the band as always are on tour here is their current schedule at the time of writing.
06/04 - Derby/GB @ The Mist
07/04 - Glasgow/GB @ The Twisted Wheel
08/04 - Hull/GB @ The Adelphi
09/04 - Bristol/GB @ The Croft
10/04 - Brussels/B @ Nova Cinema
11/04 - Kirchdorf/A @ Gasthaus Redtenbacher
12/04 - Linz/A @ Stadtwerkstatt
13/04 - Ottensheim/A @ Verde Albero
14/04 - Beltinci/SLO @ Ambasada
15/04 - Ljubljana/SLO @ Menza Pri Koritu
16/04 -
17/04 - Faenza/I @ Clandestino
18/04 - Italy
19/04 - Terni/I @ Fat
20/04 - Italy
21/04 - Bari/I @ Bohémien
22/04 - Italy
24/04 - Athens/GR @ Mixanourgeio
25/04 - Thessaloniki/GR @ Point Blank
26/04 - Skopje/MK @ Indie Pub
27/04 - Sofia/BG @ Fans
30/04 - Istanbul/TR @ Peyote
01/05 - Batumi/GE @ Seashore Boulevard
02/05 - Kutaisi/GE
03/05 - Tbilisi/GE @ Vakis Park
06/05 - Yerevan/ARM @ Ulikhanyan Club
07/05 - Yerevan/ARM @ Ulikhanyan Club
08/05 - Kyiv/UA
09/05 - Donets'k/UA
10/05 - Dnipropetrovs'k/UA
11/05 - Kharkiv/UA @ Churchill
13/05 - Rivne/UA
14/05 - Uzhhorod/UA @ Cactus
15/05 - Prešov/SK @ Christiania
16/05 - Rožnov pod Radhoštěm/CZ @ Vrah
17/05 - Prague/CZ @ Chapeau Rouge
18/05 - Brno/CZ @ Vegalite
19/05 - Trenčín/SK @ Klub Lúč
20/05 - Bratislava/SK @ A4
21/05 - Zvolen/SK @ W-Club
22/05 - Budapest/H @ Kamra
23/05 - Timisoara/RO @ Setup Club/Underground Timisoara Festival
24/05 - Belgrade/SRB
31/05 - San Martino Spino/I @ Musica Nelle Valli
24/07 - Antalya/TR @ Wake Up Now Festival
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Lucas Abela article in Signal to Noise.
Signal to Noise,issue #53 | spring 2009.
Amongst the huge music geeks I know, only a very few have developed a taste for noise. It’s a bit puzzling, since you'd expect that over a half-century, noisicians could have popularized some basic semantics through sublimation if nothing else. Sometimes I wonder whether noise is at risk of extinction. Enter Lucas Abela, an outlier in noise history for creating a window (no pun intended) into noise love for uninitiates as much as vets.
Under the Justice Yeldham moniker, Abela is most infamous for playing panes of broken glass with his mouth. The sheet is amplified by a contact microphone which picks up the vibrations of his lips against the surface. This signal is manipulated further by a slew of pedals. For his quarter hour show, Abela grunts, squelches, hisses and farts with face pressed to pane as he gradually destroys the instrument. Afterwards, scattered glass, spit and blood cover the floor.
Abela has attracted global attention and, from my experience, has made noise's esoteric content more accessible. "One of the most important things when I play," he tells me, "is that you can see the relationship between my actions and the resulting sounds. This is something that's been missing in a lot of contemporary music practice, whether it be lap-toppers or platinum selling singers." With one multifaceted device, Abela offers a compelling physical analogy to his music.
Abela began as an experimental "turntablist", destroying records on high-speed industrial motors with unconventional styli. He met some success here, in particular through a questionable Otomo Yoshihide remix which Yoshihide himself admired. The always-ahead Bananafish requested a very early '97 interview after Abela's first release, A Kombi – Music to Drive-by, a recording of his old VW van's death shudders amplified through its shoddily grounded stereo.
Over the years Abela has amplified sword fights, sucked on amplified metal skewers, performed while bouncing on an electroacoustic trampoline and played amplified dick piercings by touching his collaborative "partner" to complete their circuit. Then at one concert in 2003, he saw a pane of glass in a corner and thought he should play it. "When I first noticed the sheet, it was instinctual to pick it up and try it out."
After his initial discovery, he began to focus on the glass exclusively, touring the show extensively across the globe. Over the years he has come up with a myriad of glass playing techniques which have seen this noise instrument become more and more musical. To show off this aspect, he has decided to form his first 'real' band while living in Beijing. The band, Rice屎Corpse, (which comes from the literal translation of 屎, the Chinese character for shit) with Yang Yang on drums and Li Zenghui on piano, have already recorded the album 'Mountain' and at the time of writing are conducting a 10 city tour of China.
Abela also co-runs Dual Plover records, which he founded in 1995 and funds by cheaply mass-producing CDs for other labels. Dual Plover primarily features fellow Australian artists such as Naked on the Vague, Toxic Lipstick and the mysterious Volvox, but also includes a few international submissions as well, most notably from Deerhoof, Merzbow and Kevin Blechdom.
Although Abela's breakthroughs can be revelatory for the less-than-enthused with noise, his translations can be a double-edged sword. He often has to combat a reputation as the avant-garde's freak show. "Early on at a show in Belgium someone described my set as being like GG Allin, an artist I personally feel no affinity with, he’s all shock tactics without any real content. Basically a really bad rock band with a lunatic as a singer. I'm not interested in such infamy. It would be all too easy to play the psychotic sadomasochist role with what I do, but that's not me."
Abela does often bleed heavily from cuts on his mouth, not to mention from smashing the pane against his forehead and biting off shards with his teeth. I sat next to an audience member who got cut pretty badly from flying glass as the rest of the spectators stared with wide eyes and slack jaws, cringing as Abela slid his lip against a sharp edge.
But anyone will admit they saw a lot more than gore. As violently intense as Yeldham's act can get, he isn't above the classic Kindergarten silly-face on glass with farting sounds to match. This is one of the stranger audience reactions - looks of horror followed immediately by laughter. Moreover, as improvised noise is often sloppy and uncontrolled, it was surprising to see what precise and varied sounds Yeldham produces by pressuring different areas of the glass and manipulating his pedals. It's in these varying textures, Abela insists, that his primary interests lie.
"If you listen, you should be able to hear a vast range of sounds which I'm able to conjure from just a random piece of broken glass. That should create enough wonder in people without the blood and saliva, but people always tend to focus on that. Glass is the most perfect material I had ever come across on various levels, most especially aurally. Not only does it sound unique, it's also very warm and responsive to my nuanced vocal techniques. Visually, it's humorous and powerful all at once and psychologically it strikes nerves within people, making it a wonderful three-pronged attack on the audience's senses."
Abela also insists that his music is not violent and that contrary to popular belief never screams into the glass or purposefully cuts himself. The energy is the same kind you would expect from a high-flying guitar or saxophone solo. "I prefer a live delivery every time. I may not have the range of sounds a lap-topper can achieve but I enjoy my limitations and personally think it's more liberating to create music organically with such limitations and a finite amount of possibilities than to have to choose between infinite musical decisions on a sterile platform."
The nonchalant origins of the act proved typical of Abela as I got to know him a little better. It's difficult to speak at length about Abela's music because he tends to avoid waxing philosophical. It's as if any high-reaching claim about his music would evoke an "uhhhh...well, it's not really that complicated. I just get up there and play." Abela's nonchalance sometimes comes out in hilarious ways. I've never seen anyone jump up as quickly as Abela to dance to Dee Lite at a party. Even better is that he knows all the words to Britney Spears' Toxic.
As intense as Abela's performances can get, he maintains an unpretentious stage presence, determined to prove his normalcy. If the audience were expecting a psychopath to back up the legends, it found something unexpectedly normal. Abela combats the gore and horror of his act with an attitude saying, "don't get too worked up, it's really not that strange.”
by Nathaniel Roe
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