what rhymes with chaos?

Eighty Nine now available everywhere and everywhen

 



My contribution (as well as the other stories) from the Eighty Nine literary mixtapes anthology are now online. You can read them for free here, (you cheapskates), and then purchase a copy from the site or amazon if you want to hold it in your hot little hands. 

The writers participating in this anthology were each given a song from 1989 and instructed to link it to a historical event from that year and write a speculative fiction story. I'm not kidding, this was the best prompt I have ever been given. You can read reviews and such on goodreads here if you like to have other people form your opinions for you. Personally I just use an Indian outsourcing service. 

"Hey Krishna, what did I think of the new Ian McEwan book? Overly verbose huh? Self-indulgent pompous tripe? Well, sounds a bit harsh, but okay, if you say so..."

Ball Park Music review (for Rave Magazine)



 

View and comment on this article on the Rave website HERE. 

Ball Park Music / Northeast Party House / The Jungle Giants

The Zoo - Sat Oct 15 The Jungle Giants open proceedings by serving up a sonic selection of fun and friendly guitar pop that is summery enough to convince an Eskimo to invest in a pair of board-shorts and a badminton set. Next, six-piece dance rock outfit Northeast Party House unleash a swathe of thick fuzz bass-lines and twin guitars drenched in delay. Some of their songs are uncomfortably reminiscent of Bloc Party, but the second half of their set reveals some original material that really lifts the roof. If these guys aren’t huge in the near future, I’ll eat my hat. Of course, my hat is a novelty hat constructed from nachos, but nevertheless… Ball Park Music greet a rapturous crowd by opening with Literally Baby, the first track from their recently released debut album, before segueing straight into Rich People Are Stupid and then announcing, “Hi Everybody, we’re The Jezabels.” At the end of their first five minutes on stage tonight they’ve already displayed an impressive mix of skilled musical performance and ridiculous humour. By the time they hit All I Want Is You the crowd is more than ready to participate in a good ol’ fashioned clap-along, which is followed shortly thereafter by a trombone-led cover of Marilyn Manson’s Beautiful People. Throughout their set BPM give the impression that they are having even more fun than the crowd, (if that’s even possible). The band closes with the obscenely infectious iFly, Sam Cromack deciding to conclude a consistently brilliant evening by pouring a bottle of red wine on the crowd. It’s the kind of move that would be career suicide in any other line of work. Tonight, however, it seems nothing but appropriate. JOSH DONELLAN

 

Australian Poetry Slam review for Rave Magazine

Taken from Rave magazine 11/10/2011. View the original article at the Rave site here.  INFORMER ARTS: Australian Poetry Slam 2011

TUESDAY, 11 OCTOBER 2011

JOSH DONELLAN reviews The Queensland Finals of the AUSTRALIAN POETRY SLAM. If you ever needed proof that the library is the coolest place in the known universe to hang out on a Friday night, then here it is. Yeah, that’s right, the library. You know, the place where they keep those collections of squashed dead trees covered in ink that people used to look at before they invented the Internet? That place. The State Library tonight hosts a multifarious crowd (hipsters, hippies, suits, hip hop heads) that is outdone only be the diversity of the performers. Tonight’s poetry slam finalists are gathered from all over Queensland and represent sufficiently varying demographics wide enough to cause a marketing consultant to need a quick lie down and a sip of fashionably overpriced bottled water. Hostess Tessa Leon exudes enough charm and energy to power a small village as she introduces the first of three rounds of finalists to a warm and receptive audience. The first portion of the evening sees a few slightly nervous performers take the stage, primarily favouring traditional ABAB rhyme schemes and sweating a little in front of the spotlight. It’s not until the final performer of this round, Anaua M., steps up and unleashes a rapid-fire verbal assault that things get really interesting. His blistering analysis of social and political issues is the first in an array of jaw-droppingly good performances. Following the first act, Ghostboy With Golden Virtues step onto the stage and begin an action that could be more correctly described as large-scale aural seduction rather than performance. Using an impressive array of instruments the band weave a series of stories over dark sonic landscapes. They certainly aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like your tea drenched with hallucinogen then this is a band that will keep you wanting more. Ghostboy spends perhaps more time off the stage than on it, stealing hats, performing lascivious dances and generally causing marvellous mischief. The second round of performers are potently impressive, perhaps the best single line of the evening belongs toCandy B, who proclaims: “I too have thought / ‘your body is wrong and the pants are right’ / do not believe the hype.” Darkwing Dub’s yelled ‘maximalist’ piece takes the cake as the most hilarious performance of the evening and Mark Lowndes’ vitriolic political poetry is artfully executed, resulting in an explosive round of applause.  Following a second set from Ghostboy With Golden Virtues the third and final round commences. Standout performances include 14 year-old Georgie, who takes the microphone with prodigious confidence and skill, as well as Mantist, who provides the most hip hop-influenced piece of the evening in the form of a clever dissection of modern materialism. Tessa announces tonight’s winners – Anaua M. (runner up) and Mark Lowndes (first place) – before an enraptured crowd disperses into the evening armed with poetry letters found in the bathroom and badges proclaiming ‘Bring Back The Art Of Seductive Conversation.’ The Queensland Finals of the AUSTRALIAN POETRY SLAM were held at the State Library of Qld on Friday Oct 7. www.australianpoetryslam.com

Eighty Nine now available for pre-order

The Eighty Nine anthology is now available for pre-order within Australia. This compilation features my contribution The Story Bridge, guaranteed to be the most hilarious sci fi story you'll read about attempted suicide all year. It is highly recommended that you purchase between 5 and 500 copies at your earliest convenience.

 

 

1989: a cusp between decades.

The year the Berlin Wall came down and Voyager went up. Ted Bundy and Emperor Hirohito died. The birth of the first Bush administration and computer virus.

In San Francisco and Newcastle the ground shook, in Chernobyl it melted. Tiananmen Square rocked the world and Tank Man imprinted on the international consciousness. Communism and Thatcherism began their decline, Islamic fundamentalism its rise.

It was the year Batman burst onto the big screen, we went back to the future (again) Indiana Jones made it a trifecta at the box office and Michael Damian told us to rock on.

Based on a play list of 26 songs released in 1989, Eighty Nine re-imagines the social, political, cultural and personal experiences at the end of the decade which gave the world mullets, crimped hair, neon-coloured clothing, acid-wash denim, keytars, the walkman, Live Aid, the first compact disc and MTV.

 

Rhinoceros in Love (reviewed for Rave magazine)

(view and comment on this review posted on the Rave magazine site HERE)   TUESDAY, 04 OCTOBER 2011 Rhinoceros In Love is quite possibly the best Chinese quasi-musical tragi-comedic love story featuring a rhino I have seen this year. Although the use of subtitles displayed on a narrow elevated screen sometimes made following dialogue difficult (and made the monolingual contingent of the audience resemble spectators at a vertically-oriented tennis match), this was unquestionably a captivating and idiosyncratic piece of work. The story follows a young Rhino keeper named Ma Lu who is frustrated by the restraints and compromises of conventional society and yearns for a life filled with love, passion and universal truth. The play eschews following a traditional narrative progression and instead alternates between a series of monologues, bizarre musical comedic interludes and dream-like sequences. Writer Liao Yimei has stated that the play is not intended to focus purely on story, but to act as a parable for the human spirit, the power of belief and the pursuit of dreams and ideals. Ma Lu becomes engaged in the relentless pursuit of the beautiful but infuriatingly fickle Ming Ming, who has sworn her love to another man who treats her cruelly and yet remains the unyielding focus of her romantic attention. Ma Lu, who possesses a supernaturally strong sense of smell, falls head over heels for “the girl who smells like photocopier.” While his friends try and convince him to join them in the pursuit of more easily attainable frivolous sexual conquests, Ma Lu remains resolutely focused on Ming Ming, delivering a series of poetic professions of love in the face of reason. A rhino forgets the grassland. A water bird forgets the river. A man in hell forgets heaven. A leg amputee forgets a brisk walk. To forget is what a normal person does. But I’ve decided…not to forget.  Rhinoceros alternates between these screamed supplications to the heavens and farcical comedic scenes featuring the larger cast. It is the play’s ability to successfully swing between these two disparate forms that allows Rhinoceros to escape becoming a cheap melodrama and instead present itself as an abstract examination of the human spirit in all its extremes. The hilariously entertaining ‘Love Tutorial’ scenes, where the characters learn how to express feelings through pop songs and Hollywood cliché, are performed with lively comedic panache. In an early scene, the character known as Toothbrush takes centre stage and eagerly exclaims, “Let us fly high in the skies of hygiene!” The lights of the third act open to a stage filled with water, before Ma Lu’s final monologue is delivered beneath a torrent of artificial rain, ending Rhinoceros In Love with a beautiful yet tragic final image. It a scene rendered all the more heart-wrenching by the girl in the next row who decides to snap a picture of it on her iPhone. Perhaps she should have avoided lighting up the seats around her and instead followed Ma Lu’s advice, deciding to never forget. JOSH DONELLAN