August Update

Published by boz at September 11, 2009 in updates. 1 Comment

August has been a little more of a quiet month with lots of tying up loose ends on existing projects and preparing for upcoming ones. It’s been mostly housekeeping, and there was plenty of it to do. I’m not going to bore you with the details. Instead, here’s a little taste of what’s on the cards coming up over the next few months:

Daniel Crooks - IntersectionDaniel Crooks – still from Intersection #5

  • A new music/sound work for Daniel Crooks. He’s installing a large work in a new building down in Melbourne’s Docklands precinct. See image above.
  • Sound design and music for a new Australian feature film, again riding shotgun with Mr J. David Franzke.
  • An album of soundtrack fused rock for post-pagan power rituals hosted by the power elite. David Thrussell has something to do with this as well – naturally.
  • A live show with Mr. Jeremy Dower where I’ll be breaking out the MIDI sax to add some snuffly colour to what I can only describe as hi-fi down-tempo jazz for the 8-bit generation. Mr. James Cecil will also be taking a deck chair and MIDI hand-drum out onto the jazz patio with us.
  • A return to contemporary dance land with the ladies and gentlemen of Chunky Move. Ben Frost will be hanging about bringing his experiences of making love to Icelandic glacial forms to bear on some sonic architectures for the dancers.
  • A bit of a snazzy PA and live performance with Dr. Philip Brophy. He’s still a punk ass bitch and he’s opening a video installation next to a body of water in downtown Melbourne. It’s for a festival, don’t you know?
  • A fair bit of live sound for the return of the What is Music? festival, in both Sydney and Melbourne.

And more besides….

C’mon daylight savings! I’m ready for you now.

July Update

Published by boz at August 12, 2009 in updates. 0 Comments

July has been one busy month!


Panorama taken at the Melbourne Planetarium while Nat Bates and I were mixing Our Living Climate.

The show for Melbourne Planetarium is finally done! Nat Bates (sound design) and I are really happy with how it’s all turned out. Here is a little mix sample of some of the music for the show.

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The show will be running at various times from August till November. Check this page for details. It’s also likely that the show will continue to run for sometime after that, as the Planetarium regularly rotate the various shows in the program. Also keep your eye out for Stories In The Stars another show that I made the music and sound design for with David Bridie. The show is about Indigenous Australian astronomy, specifically focused on the Boorong people of Central Victoria.

The Red Tree launched their LP, “I Am Not Bird” at the Evelyn on the 31st. Head to their MySpace to hear some tracks. They were also feature artists on JJJ Unearthed. They’re heading out on a national tour shortly, so check their web-site/myspace/twitter/etc…


Click the LP cover above to listen in iTunes.

July also saw local composer/musician/producer/engineer/spooker James “Wilkinsound” Wilkinson in the production room mixing and mastering music he’s just completed for a new computer game. The game is being made in Melbourne by Transmission Games, and is yet to be released, so I can’t tell you anything about it except that James’ music is an awesome collection of block rocking beats. For those of you that don’t know James’ work, his excellent record Post is available via Preservation Records.

James “Wilkinsound” Wilkinson listening to mixes in my room at Jack The Bear’s

Liquid Architecture was also on in July. For those of you that don’t know about Liquid Architecture, it’s a national festival dedicated to “Sound Arts”. This means it takes in and shows a broad range of work being made in both sound and music here in Australia, as well as featured work from overseas artists. Generally, L.A. shows feature artists who are taking a more experimental and avant-garde approach to music and sound. This year marked the 10th year that the festival has been running for and I’ve been involved with the live sound in Melbourne for the festival for 6 years. I also sit on the board for the festival since it became an incorporated body last year.

This years festival was an interesting one, but probably not one of my personal favourites. This may sound to some like it was a bad thing, but not necessarily. If you are going along to take in music and sound of this kind, you have to do so with an open mind – many times the work you hear is surprising and invigorating. Other times this is not so much the case, but when people are experimenting with sound and displaying this to an audience, it’s not uncommon to come away either loving or hating what you just hear. One of the great things about L.A. concerts and shows is that you rarely come away going, “Meh.” Anyhow, all of the concerts happened without any technical problems and all of the performers seemed satisfied with the sound system and the technical aspect of their performances.

In the mastering room Clare Bowditch came in to master her new single, mixed by Cornell “QUA” Wilczek at his awesome and fresh new studio Electric Dreams. Not sure when that one is hitting the streets in Australia, but keep your ears peeled!

That’s all for now!

June Update

Published by boz at July 10, 2009 in updates. 0 Comments

June’s been pretty hectic. I got very sick at the beginning of the month. There’s been a fair bit of that going round Melbourne – swine flu and all that. Middle of the year always seems to be a busy time for me. Here’s what’s been happening:

David Franzke and I have been spending most of our time working away on darklovestory, a film directed by Jon Hewitt and written by Jon with his wife actress Belinda McClory. A version of the film has just been shown in Perth at the Revelation Film Festival. Another short film that I mixed earlier in the year, Carrot was also shown at Revelation.

Dave and I are taking care of the entire soundtrack on this movie, which means plenty of work and quite a few interesting challenges. I spent quite a bit of time early on cleaning up dialogue. The film was shot entirely on location in Kings Cross on Super 16 film. We only have dialogue from the shoot and it was all pretty noisy as you could imagine – lots of traffic noise and unwanted room noise across most of the film. ADR is not an option, and I’m not a huge fan of re-recorded dialogue anyhow. I had to go looking for a tool I could use for cleaning up some of this stuff. I ended up using the amazing Izotope RX thanks to an awesome recommendation from Cornell Wilczek (aka Qua). I’ve used a bunch of different noise reduction tools in the past, but not recently. What this software package was able to do for the dialogue in this film is nothing short of amazing. It’s really changed the sound of the film for the better!

We’re continuing to work on the film over the next couple of months most likely. It’s possible that the next stop for the film will be overseas festivals in Korea and Canada. We’re both pretty happy with where it’s all heading. I’ll keep you posted in future updates as things develop.

Also this month I’ve been busy working further on music for the Melbourne Planetarium show The Living Climate. Nat Bates (who’s doing the sound design) and I are getting pretty close to finishing and the show will be completed by the end of July.

Also, semester one finished at RMIT, so I was busy dishing out the grades. For all my students reading this – don’t worry, you probably passed!