HEAR & NOW FESTIVAL

Sunday 25th January, Australia Day Weekend

Midday – 10pm, Riverstage, Brisbane
HEAR & NOW: 100% AUSTRALIAN LINEUP FOR AUSTRALIA DAY WEEKEND

Brisbane’s Aussie day festival Hear and Now will return for its second coming on 25 January 2009. With a killer all Australian lineup the grassy slopes of the Riverstage and Botanic Gardens will be the only place to be over the long weekend.

Promoters Fuzzy and Ten Pound Crew have dug deep to bring Brisbane the absolute best Aussie talent, so that this Australia Day you’ll have even more reasons to bring out the green and gold.

Festival goers far and wide rated last year’s Hear and Now as their favourite summer festival (and best long weekend to boot).

Hear & Now 2009 is sure to be even bigger and better than ever before, and here’s a few reasons why:

PNAU
SPIDERBAIT
REGURGITATOR
THE HERD
KATE MILLER-HEIDKE
VAN SHE TECH
GRAFTON PRIMARY
THE STAFFORD BROTHERS (feat. Timmy Trumpet)
BLUEJUICE
BANG GANG DJS

+ Much more to be announced!
Hear & Now will run in the Brisbane Riverstage and Gardens from Midday till 10pm, with tickets to this annual festival on sale Friday 5 December from Ticketmaster (Phone 136 100) www.fuzzy.com.au, www.tenpoundcrew.com. Be warned, tickets are strictly limited and are priced to sell out! First Release $59+bf.
This event is proudly supported by Triple J.

PNAU Bursting into the Australian music consciousness in 1999 with their debut album Sambanova earning them widespread critical acclaim and an ARIA, Pnau have enjoyed a meteoric rise, with their latest self-titled LP confirming their status as one of this nation’s finest proponents of electronic music. Singles Wild Strawberries, With You Forever and Baby have taken the world by storm, even sealing the rather public adoration and personal support of Sir Elton John along the way. Pete Mayes and Nick Littlemore have proven their mastery in consistently producing simple, intelligent, mega-catchy hooks, in addition to full, fat beats and basslines to produce a sophisticated musical ambience that is second to none. Their records sit comfortably in any collection, while their sound goes just as well in the club as it does in your grandma’s loungeroom. In a live format, when their sounds are combined with juicy, mind-blowing graphics, the atmosphere they create has to be felt to be believed. Make no mistake – this is not music for lovers, Pnau is for lovers of music.

 

SPIDERBAIT What happens when you combine a singing drummer, a painter bassist who doesn’t smoke and a partying-guitarist? You get Spiderbait, the all-conquering, inimitable trio from the southern NSW town of Finley, who over the last fifteen years have left an indelible print on the fabric of Australian rock. With no fewer than 6 studio albums behind them, the last of which, 2004’s Tonight Alright, went platinum on the back of the colossal #1 smash Black Betty and sent total sales careering past the ½ million mark, Spiderbait have proved themselves to be one of the few stayers in this era of truncated careers. What’s their secret? In the words of garrulous drummer Kram, “we are just happy to be in a band together…and we’re playing better than ever.” And now, fresh off the release of their 22-track Greatest Hits, Spiderbait are sure to send Riverstage into a frenzy this Australia Day weekend with one of their notorious, blistering live performances.

 

REGURGITATOR Emerging out of Brisbane’s energetic live scene in the mid-‘90s, Regurgitator (or ‘the Gurge’ as they have come to be affectionately known) quickly established themselves as Australian indie icons. Their 1994 album Tu-Plang earned them both nationwide fame and a cult following thanks to singles Kong Foo Sing and I Sucked a lot of Cock to Get Where I Am. Their 1997 follow-up Unit with tracks such as Polyester Girl and ! (The Song Formerly Known As) then received incredible amounts of airplay. Somehow managing to fuse punk, funk, electro, pop, metal and rap (sometimes all at the same time), the boys have been a mainstay on the indie-pop scene and a proud Australian export with significant international success. The Gurge have hardly rested on their laurels, however, with 2007 seeing the release of Love and Paranoia, their seventh album, coming from it the singles Blood and Spunk and Romance of the Damned.

 

THE HERD Formed in 2000, the straight-talking crew of The Herd are fast approaching legendary status in the Aussie hip-hop scene for their mix of killer grooves, smooth, thought-provoking flows and sharp political comment. Having bombarded the radio airwaves with tracks like 77%, The King is Dead and Redgum cover I Was Only 19, the lads have grabbed their fair share of headlines – both for their powerful music and for some good old-fashioned shit-stirring, much to the delight of their fans. They have a reputation as one of the country’s finest live acts and with an unconventional performance set-up consisting of two MCs, acoustic, bass and electric guitars, piano, accordion, clarinet, laptops and MPCs, The Herd is an experience that you owe it to yourself to experience at least once.

 

KATE MILLER-HEIDKE Curious and Curiouser! Brissy-bred Kate Miller-Heidke burst into the public consciousness in 2006 and has quickly become one of Australia’s most exciting and excitingly quirky musical talents. Beginning her musical existence as a trained Opera singer, Kate chose the road often travelled and took the plunge into pop music – making one rather individualistic path of her own into the genre and has never looked back. Her 2007 debut album Little Eve went Gold, received four ARIA nominations and led to an 18 month national tour before having the incredible privilege of going back around the nation in support of the iconic Cyndi Lauper. Her second studio album Curiouser “radiates a newfound sense of mutual certainty” – a wonderfully theatrical collection of works that can only be described as captivating, colourful and energetic. Her live performances are engaging and eccentric, with Kate known to thrown in a cover or two of people’s favourite Britney Spears or good ‘ol Johnny Farnham. To properly understand the phenomenon that is Kate Miller-Heidke, however, no amount of adjectives seem sufficient for as she says: ”I find it hard to describe my music with words. You’ll just have to listen”.

 

VAN SHE TECH The electronic bastard child slash sonic annihilation unit of Aussie rockers Van She – fantasy lovers of any self-respecting fan or critic – Van She Tech have over recent years built for themselves an equally impressive squadron of groupies around the world with their remixing and DJing superpowers. Nick Routledge and Michael Di Francesco have pumped out a list of re-workings longer than Inspector Gadget’s arm for artists as impressive and diverse as Daft Punk, Utah Saints, Das Pop, Feist and The Klaxons. With such a huge arsenal of top quality material and a reputation for cutting sick on the decks all that’s really left for you to do is grab a partner, swing them round, do the do-si-do and make sure to get your knees up. Oh and get loose. Very loose.

 

GRAFTON PRIMARY The Garden brothers, Joshua and Ben, and drummer Robbie Mudrazija aka Grafton Primary, are the trio behind some of the best Aussie electronica to grace the airwaves in the last 12 months. With their poetic fusion of digital and analogue ideas and future echoes, Grafton Primary live by their motto to “educate, motivate, liberate” and in the process have delivered the ode to love, science and pop, Relativity, and the empowering, philosophical anthem I Can Cook, in an ultra-classy fashion.

 

STAFFORD BROTHERS The notorious Gold Coast DJ/remix/production partnership Matt and Chris Stafford are spreading the brotherly love – in the form of driving, thick basslines, catchy vocals and sweet electro melodies to lose yourself to. Having been signed to Ministry of Sound and toured their Electro House Sessions compilation nationally, as well as mixing the past two Wild compilation. In addition to their own productions, countless remixes for artists such as Princess Superstar, Sunfreakz and Audio Thieves have been doing the club rounds and storming up the charts, meaning the boys have enjoyed no shortage of exposure nationally. With their talents also taking them as far afield as Miami, Las Vegas, London, Manchester, Dubai and Ibiza, The Stafford Brothers are bringing their talents home once more and we know you don’t need a second invitation to tear it up with them.

 

BLUEJUICE Too straight for funk, too groovy for indie rock and too sweaty for pop, Sydney five-piece Bluejuice are an excellently unclassifiable party machine. So much so that even hybrid descriptions like ‘punk-hop’ fail to properly catch the magic of their unique blend of down tempo hip-hop, ska-tinged pop and pounding disco. In the words of their producer, it’s like “Lil’ Jon playing in a rock band”. Woo. The boys tore up the airwaves with their colossal single Bluejuice receiving the second highest rotation on Triple J in 2007, with follow-up tracks The Reductionist and Phantom Boogie from their debut album Problems also doing more vigorous trade than a Navy brothel. Having played at Australia’s biggest and best festivals and toured nationally with The Paper Scissors, the boys have built a reputation for themselves as a highly-energetic and unpredictable live act that is not to be missed.

 

BANG GANGDEEJAYS Forever searching for – and finding – new ways to disgrace themselves and put both their and those around them’s lives in danger, the Bang Gang Deejays have proven time and again than an inability to function normally in society is no barrier to creating the best and most destructively awesome parties across the land and – worryingly – around the world. Despite leading their lavish lives by playing other peoples’ records, they actually do it rather well – as exhibited clearly by their recent compilation D is for Dancing, E is for Disco, they actually do it rather well. Further evidence of this is the fact that they have been able to corrupt virtually a whole generation of ravers, and subsequently destroyed all of their lives too. So jump on board the loose funky Bang Gang party dragon with captain Ajax and his merry band of Jaime Doom, Gus da Hoodrat, Dangerous Dan and Nolan Nolan in their quest for world domination…or destruction.

 

SAMPOLOGY Brisbane wonderkid and turntablist extraordinaire Sam Poggioli, better known as Sampology, burst onto the scene and through a combination of hard work and raw talent, earning himself the status as one of Australia’s finest and most creative forces on the wheels of steel. From a base passion for hip-hop, Sam is a genre-hopping chameleon, being known to play everything from breaks to disco to funk to drum and bass to house, with such abilities earning him support gigs for artists such as Grandmaster Flash, DJ Qbert, DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist, Pendulum and The Freestylers. Whether he be cutting and scratching it up as a DJ or looping and sampling as part of a totally live hip hop show alongside human beatbox Tom Thum, or through a more recent move into his own productions and remixes, the future for this virtuoso talent seems incredibly bright.