Review and Photos: Victoria Nugent
Shockwave Festival 4 June 2011
[Photo credits: Victoria Nugent] |
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In 2009 in the outback town of Blackall, a youth festival was born, celebrating creative arts and providing young artists in western Queensland with a chance to perform. Since then, the festival has slowly grown and on Saturday a crowd of 500 turned out for the day.
Against the backdrop of a dead tree draped with pink and yellow papier mache light bulbs, a range of regional musicians took to the stage starting from the mid afternoon, with the entertainment continuing until around 8:30pm. |
First to take to the stage were Blackall brother sister duo Rodzentwo. Consisting of Naomi and Dylan Dolinski, the duo took their name from the Polish word for sibling, a nod to their grandfather’s Polish heritage. The pair formerly played in another band, Xstatic, with their brother Damien, and Saturday marked their second performance as Rodzentwo.
Naomi provided crisp, clear vocals whilst Dylan was proficient on percussion, with Melinda Wells joining the duo to add acoustic guitar to the mix.
The group performed pop covers including Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and Hinder’s Lips of an Angel.
They were followed by Longreach teen Stevie Naylor performing Evanescence’s “Call Me When You’re Sober”. Naylor’s distinct voice carried the song, with the backing music needing more depth to create a more well-rounded performance. Some slight technical interference also hampered the flow of the song.
[Photo credit: Victoria Nugent] |
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Coleman Wakefield then took to the stage with Naylor providing backing vocals briefly, before Wakefield’s solo rendition of several songs including Kisschassy’s Dinosaur.
Wakefield played competent but uncomplicated acoustic guitar, and sang with mournful husky vocals. – His introduction of each song sometimes lacked clarity, but he made up for it by being clear voiced musically. |
[Photo credit: Victoria Nugent] |
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Also performing were vocalist and guitarist Ashley Donald, and keyboardist Emily Cameron. The duo launched with a talented rendition of Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles”, with Cameron showing considerable skill in providing smooth, dynamic keys. Throughout their set, Donald showed off a sweet nymph-like soprano voice, tackling imbuing songs like Regina Spektor’s “The Call and Paperweight” with sweet sadness. |
It wasn’t only teenagers showing off their talent with primary school student Caitlin James shining with a powerful voice with a well-developed range. James sang songs of her own composition, with personal and raw lyrics about topics close to her heart such as the death of her grandmother.
Dalby mother and daughter duo Melinda and Bree Wells wowed the crowd with a range of accomplished covers, starting with The Cranberrys’ “Zombie”.
Daughter Bree took on the main vocals in this and many other songs, having a more distinctive and haunting vocal quality.
[Photo credit: Victoria Nugent] |
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Melinda’s vocals were higher in pitch and more technically proficient as one would expect from the difference in practice years, as well as having a more classical, well rounded sound.
Melinda also provided acoustic guitar and performed some solo songs, including original song “Broken Eyes”, written by former Blackall resident Lisa Goodman about a teenager’s struggle with a broken home life. The song was full of furious energy, heartfelt lyrics and a plaintive chorus. |
The acoustic segment of the afternoon finished with the return of Dylan Dolinski to the stage for an energetic, if slightly long drum solo. Using percussion instruments and items found in his shed, Dolinski slammed through a solo that showed off a variety of different techniques.
After the acoustic sets, it was time for dance troupes from around the region to shine with performances from Dance Blackall, hip hop crews from throughout the region, the Retro Pixies Dance Crew of Ilfracombe, the Edrine Keegan School of Ballet from Roma and Brisbane dancer Storm Teina.
Live music recommenced on the main stage with a reduced grouping of Longreach band Minor Details kicking things off. Coleman Wakefield took to the stage once more with Callum McDonald in a short set which included a competent cover of Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars”.
Brisbane hip hop artist
Candy Bowers was next in the line up with an excerpt of songs from her one woman show “Who’s That Chick?” Starting with a parody of Selwyn’s “She’s a Rich Girl” entitled “She’s a Brown Girl”,
Bowers bounced through humorous hip hop songs centring around her life an ethnicity. This included rapid-fire number “Blasian” where she referred to her ethnicity as part black, part Asian. Her performance was energetic and amusing with plenty of deliberately over the top booty shaking punctuating her witty hip hop tunes. In another notable piece
Bowers combined segments from a range of songs to create a mish-mash of music from black musicians, artists and songs with which
Bowers said that she often found herself grouped, performing short musical snippets from the Lion King, Aretha Franklin, Macy Gray and Sneaky Sound System. To end her set,
Bowers performed the title song of her show, “Who’s That Chick?” a loud, jumpy song with attitude by the bucket load.
[Photo credit: Victoria Nugent] |
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Next up was a battle of the DJs between Brisbane’s DJ Nick C, using old school turntables, and Isisford’s DJ Sweet Beats, who preferred to use more recent technology to create beats. This was a fascinating performance, but one that was difficult to appreciate if you didn’t have a front row view of the action. Although the set was technically proficient, it lacked cohesion and was more valuable visually than musically. However, the set did serve the purpose of educating people about DJ techniques in an informal manner, as the crowd gathered right up close to observe what was happening. |
The live music concluded with a set from Charleville metalcore band Mary Celeste, whose energetic and aggressive music divided the crowd. The band performed original songs with unfortunately difficult to understand lyrics. Although the band encapsulated their chosen genre well, they were an unusual choice as the headline act, as their rather niche tunes failed to capture a large part of the crowd, which starting thinning out before the performance finished.
Overall the music program showcased a range of talent, from more honed acts as well as less experienced ones. Disappointingly all of the sets were extremely short, with the crowd often getting into a performance just to have it finish rather too soon. However, the day stood out as a chance to bring live music to the central west with many young artists getting the chance to make their debut performances in front of a very receptive crowd.
Review and Photos: Victoria Nugent
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Angus and Julia Stone @ The Tivoli, Brisbane – 25 September 2010 with Luluc – Live Review
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