Sydney’s music scene is still feeling a little down and out these days, what with all of the venue closures gripping this vibrant city. That’s why this news is just so damn beautiful. A piece of the city’s musical heritage is back from the dead with The Lansdowne Hotel reopening its doors over the weekend. After a near 90 year run, the historic venue closed shop back in 2015 following the introduction of the lockout laws, as well as a number of other setbacks.
Jake Smyth and Kenny Graham of Mary’s/Unicorn Hotel fame have teamed up with The Annandale’s Matt Rule to breathe new life into one of Sydney’s lasting mid-sized venues, following the demise of the Newtown Social Club. They have moved the live music portion upstairs and kept downstairs free for daily trade i.e. punters who just want to play a game of pool and throw back a Mary’s Burger pizza (as you do).
To announce their resurrection, the guys decided to throw a four-day-long party featuring a bunch of absolutely stellar names, including The Preatures, Palms, The Pinheads, Skegss, and Sydney’s own supergroup A Band.
Comprised of Elliott Hammond and Michael Tramonte (The Delta Riggs), Thomas Champion (The Preatures), Paddy Cornwall, Seamus Coyle and Freddy Crabs (Sticky Fingers), they belted out a slew of covers along with some special guests, including Royal Headache’s Tim “Shogun” Hall, Gideon Bensen, Hayley Mary of The Jezabels and Johnny Took (DMA’s) on slide guitar duties.
We snapped up all of this and Skegss at the tail-end of a massive Sunday lineup, flawlessly closing out the four-day bender.
Needless to say, we’re stoked to have The Lansdowne back and are looking forward to a sweaty mess of new memories.
A Band
Skegss
Photos: Dani Hansen
One of the best live bands going at the moment, The Delta Riggs have just released their third full-length album Active Galactic and are heading around the country with newly solo Preatures ex-pat Gideon Bensen and coastal boys The Vanns. We caught the action live in Sydney.
The Vanns
Gideon Bensen
The Delta Riggs
Photos: Dani Hansen/Howl & Echoes
The rockers and rollers from The Delta Riggs have made a mammoth announcement today, making official their brand new album. Titled Active Galactic, it marks their third album and the long-awaited follow-up to 2014’s fantastic Dipz Zebazios.
New material looked to be on the horizon for The Delta Riggs after the release of the incredibly funky Surgery Of Love earlier in the year, a single they’ve just wrapped up a national tour for, but few could have predicted just how soon we’d hear an album’s worth of new stuff from the Riggs. Wonder no more, we’ll be getting our ears on that record in just a few weeks.
The finished record promises to traverse a myriad of different genres and, as Surgery Of Love has demonstrated, still stick with the vintage rock and roll sound that has won The Delta Riggs so many fans here and abroad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQYYq4KGVA&feature=youtu.be
You can pre-order Active Galactic now and by doing so, go in the running to win a heap of sweet prizes, including activities with some of The Delta Riggs themselves (cooking with Monte and creating a one-off piece of art with Simon sound like great fun), as well as getting access to one of the very exclusive and very secret Active Galactic launch parties out there.
As if a brand new record wasn’t enough and without showing any signs of fatigue from their tour just gone, The Delta Riggs will be taking Active Galactic on a galactic-sized tour of the country. 20 separate cities all feeling the love from September. We absolutely cannot wait. The full list of dates is below:
Fri, Sep 23rd: Prince Of Wales, Bunbury
Sat, Sep 24th: The Rosemount Hotel, Perth
Thu, Sep 29th: The Whalers Hotel, Warranambool
Fri, Sep 30th: The Gov, Adelaide
Sat, Oct 1st: Karova Lounge, Ballarat
Sun, Oct 3rd: SSA Club, Albury
Thursday, Oct 6th: Kay St, Traralgon
Fri, Oct 7th: The Grand Hotel, Mornington
Sat, Oct 8th: Westernport Hotel, Phillip Island
Wed, Oct 19th: Academy Nightclub, Canberra
Fri, Oct 21st: The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Sat, Oct 22nd: Torquay Hotel, Torquay
Thu, Oct 27th: Woollongong Uni, Woollongong
Fri, Oct 28th: The Metro Theatre, Sydney
Sat, Oct 29th: The Big Banana Festival, Coffs Harbour
Fri, Nov 4th: The Entrance Leagues Club, Bateau Bay
Sat, Nov 5th: Mona Vale Hotel, Mona Vale
Thu, Nov 10th: The Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
Fri, Nov 11th: The Triffid, Brisbane
Sat, Nov 12th: Sol Bar, Sunshine Coast
Active Galactic is out August 26th via Inertia.
Image: James Adams
The Delta Riggs are back with a new track and you better believe they’re throwing parties to celebrate. The first offering from the band since last year’s Dipz from the Zong EP, the guys are back in full force with Surgery of Love and a video that should probably come with an photo sensitivity warning for how flickering and fantastic it is (take this as yours)!
Giving off otherworldly vibes seemed to be the aim of it all, with the band going so far as to describe it as having “a lot to do with space teleportation,” when talking to Triple J last night. Front-man Elliott Hammond went on to say that “We have a theory there’s a replica of ourselves on a different planet that are in a band also called The Delta Riggs… if we can get to their bodies we can look back on our own lives and try and tweak things.”
The track itself is a percussion-heavy, funked out experiment that has rock and disco meet part way spectacularly and will serve as the opening track on the band’s upcoming third album. Written on the road, the album itself was recorded in just nine days. Maybe putting together an LP in under two weeks would be what prompted those tripped-out, out of body theories?
They’ll be hitting their much travelled road once again later this month on a tour fittingly titled Back To Earth Parties, and will be taking mates The Pretty Littles as well as I Oh You DJs with them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQYYq4KGVA
Back To Earth Dates:
Fri June 24: The Fat Controller, Adelaide (Tix)
Sat June 25: Howler, Melbourne (Tix)
Thu June 30: Jam Gallery, Bondi (Tix)
Fri July 1: The Imperial Hotel, Sydney (Tix)
Sat July 2: Brightside, Brisbane (Tix)
“We’ve become accustomed to feeling uncomfortable” – An Interview With The Delta Riggs
Image:
Aside from being great Australian bands, what do The Delta Riggs, The Creases and Closure in Moscow have in common? The terrible misfortune of having their worldly possessions stolen, that’s what.
Late last month, The Delta Riggs guitarist Alex Markwell has his guitar, pedals and new pedal board stolen from his car in Melbourne. Not to mention glass shattered everywhere and a window needing repair. Earlier in October, The Creases’ bassist/vocalist Jarrod Mahon‘s East Brisbane home was broken into and his laptop, mixing desk and guitars were stolen. Now, after playing a sold-out show in London as part of the European tour for their album Pink Lemonade, Melbourne band Closure in Moscow found that a bunch of their personal equipment been stolen, too.
Played a sold out show in London tonight. Also got rolled and got all our passports, clothes, laptops and some personal equipment stolen. Oh the highs n lows of being a band. Fuck.
Posted by Closure In Moscow on Tuesday, 10 November 2015
Adding to the list, they found they were also no longer in possession of their passports, laptops and any clothes other than those they were wearing. The full list of stolen items is pretty extensive and adds up to around $8700AUD.
So here is a full rundown of what we lost toa.) give you an idea of the damageand b.) allow you to keep your eyes…
Posted by Closure In Moscow on Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Their tour is scheduled to continue, but it’s no doubt a huge dampener on the whole thing. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but one would hope that an outcome similar to that of the Smith Street Band‘s stolen (and then recovered) combo amp occurs for all the bands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq6YsdVoi0w
Can we all just, you know, not steal stuff? Please keep an eye out for any and all possible belongings that may belong to these bands, and report any suspicions to your local authorities. These are not just trinkets, but tools for these people to make their livelihoods. Without their guitars, they cannot make the music they work so hard on. Without their laptops and other technological items, said music is potentially lost forever. Being in a band and trying to make it work is hard enough, but this awful act of cowardice makes life even harder. Moral of the story: don’t be a dick.
Without a doubt, one of 2014’s most exciting discoveries was The Delta Riggs. From their 2013 release of Hex.Lover.Killer, they have worked relentlessly and become one of the country’s most hyped exports. Touring constantly, they somehow managed to release their follow up album a year later in the form of Dipz Zebazios, which saw the guys pushing themselves well and truly out of their comfort zones to deliver a genre-blending album encompassing psychedelia, brit rock, pop and even a bit of hip-hop. They’ve toured Australia, Europe and the UK, supported Kasabian and are now touring with the Foo Fighters and Rise Against before they head over to the US for SXSW. After that, they’ll be back for Groovin’ The Moo – no rest for the wicked!
We had a chat with frontman Elliot Hammond, who after expressing his concern for how dangerously hot Brisbane was that day (“It’s so fucking hot, I don’t know how you manage! It’s very dangerous living in these conditions!”) let us know a bit more about his thoughts on playing in a stadium, what he does in his downtime (not much) and building a tiki bar for Groovin’ The Moo!
Are you excited for The Foo Fighters tour?
Yeah, we are! We just came from Tasmania, and we did a festival there which was a nice little warm-up for it. It’s really exciting!
These crowds would be the biggest you guys have played at…
Maybe, yeah. We did a stadium a few years ago but this one will be bigger!
Is it strange or exciting to be playing to such a massive audience? I guess the Kasabian tour was pretty big too so you’ve certainly got that experience!
I was more excited about the Kasabian tour if I’m gonna be honest, I’m more of a fan of that band. This is a whole different machine though. We aren’t really doing anything different to prepare ourselves, we just kind do what we do. The only thing that’s different is we’ve got more amps, so we will be much louder! Rise Against are on the bill too so we’re going to see if we can be louder than them!
I’m always unsure about stadium shows because they don’t have the same kind of intimacy or connection with smaller shows – what do you think about that?
Yeah, fully. I have done some stadiums before, and I completely agree. The crowds are so far away and it’s a completely different style of show. When you’re playing small club shows and the crowd is right there, you can feel that energy. The capacity of the Brisbane show is like 55, 000 people so to project that energy that far is a totally different kettle of fish! I don’t know how do that. I think you need lycra.
I saw Eminem there, and you’re right – it is massive!
Was he in lycra though? Was Slim Shady in lycra?
No, I don’t think he was
Well how’d he do it then?!
I actually left early and went to the pub anyway, so I can’t be sure what he was wearing.
Really? You don’t like Eminem?
I went to see Kendrick Lamar, and when he finished I realised I didn’t really like Eminem so I left with my friend and drank beer until it finished!
That’s way classier, going to see Kendrick Lamar. You made the right decision!
You’ve already got a pretty packed year with this tour, then SXSW, then GTM – do you guys have any downtime?!
We don’t have a weekend off until May. We had a week and a half of downtime and I just went home. I live with my girlfriend but I was just being super boring, just trying to not go out. I didn’t take any calls from my friends because I knew I’d end up at a bar, so yeah I was pretty boring. When you go away so much, when you get home you just want to bum around the house because you never get to do it. You don’t have any responsbilities. Rudy has been recording a couple of different bands though, he’s an engineer. He has been pretty busy. He looks quite fatigued!
I wanted to talk about your album now, Dipz Zebazios – it was quite critically acclaimed. I loved it, it was definitely one of my favourites from last year!
Oh thanks!
That’s alright! There is quite a noticeable difference in musical maturity between that and Hex.Lover.Killer though – did you WANT to be more mature?
“Mature” *laughs* You make it sound like an aged cheese!
Well, you’re all grown up with this one! Wouldn’t it be great if we could all just be carefree and not care about it, but then maybe we wouldn’t have critically acclaimed albums!
Well that’s strange because I actually think that the first one is darker and more serious than the second one. The new one is more carefree and more of a party record! With the first one, we had years and years of songs to choose from, but when we did the second one we just started writing it immediately after Hex.Lover.Killer. The songs came around in about 6 months. As far as maturity goes, I don’t know if it’s that or if it was just us trying to push ourselves out of our comfort zones. I mean really out there and be really uncomfortable. That was an unsettling thing for the band and a lot of times, it was good but it was bad.
Why was it bad?
It was bad because we had people that were involved in it starting to question what we were doing. People were so far out of their comfort zone that they kind of didn’t get it. Other people could see it and see the direction it was going in and told us to stick with it. Tristan, who was playing in the band for a few years, he admitted to me he couldn’t really see where it was going. He couldn’t see the end goal. But sometimes you just have to keep pushing, and pushing through until it makes sense.
Exactly right. I think you are one of the rare bands to have an awesome second album. You’ve debunked the myth about the second album!
Yeah, well it’s the awesome second album which is the precursor to the fucking epic third album!
You’ve gotta keep pushing now! How much further can you get out of that comfort zone?
Well, it’s easy now! We pushed ourselves so far out of our comfort zones that it’s not a challenge. Well, it’s all a challenge actually but we’ve become accustomed to feeling uncomfortable and that’s something any artist, no matter what capacity, should do. If you’re feeling unsettled, you’re usually onto a good thing!
I specifically loved No Friends – the hip hop influences are so rad! Will there be a Delta Riggs rap album in the future?
Well we’re about to release a record for Record Store Day, and it’s got about six or seven unreleased tracks that didn’t make it on Dipz– it was like we had to write those songs to find the sound of Dipz. There is a really aggressive hip hop track on there. Actually, the majority of it is very hip hop. If No Friends is your bag, this is going to go into your second bag. You’ll have two bags in your hands and you’ll be walking around not knowing what to do with yourself!
Can you freestyle?
No… Can you?
No, I can’t either.
Were you going to ask me to freestyle?!
If you could, maybe!
No, I’ve got nothing.
What would be your rapper name?
Transient Thief. I’m trying to think of something more badass than that. I never really got into gangster rap, I can’t really relate to that. I’m more into Jurassic 5 and that sort of stuff. Stuff that has more of a community message rather than talking about how many cars you’ve got in your carhole!
I saw you at the Kasabian tour last year, and I’m going to the Townsville Groovin and I personally can’t wait to see you guys at a festival!
Actually, I think I saw you at the Kasabian tour last year! Were you in the top balcony to the right?
No, that must have been my twin?
Well I didn’t see you then. Maybe you should make yourself more identifiable next time!
Well, I think I actually met Rudy afterwards in The Valley! He was looking for somewhere to go, but I was going home.
Oh, everyone’s met Rudy.
It was a Tuesday night and it was just dead, and he was asking me where he should go, but just nothing was happening. He was like, “This city is lame!”
That sounds about right. He always lands on his feet. He’s like a cat!
Here’s a fun fact about Groovin the Moo, our editor-in-chief, Lauren, is actually the godmother to a baby boy conceived at GTM 2013.
No way! That’s awesome! We’re trying to get this idea across the line to be running a full-fledged tiki bar on stage for our set at Groovin’ The Moo.
Do it!
We’re trying to! It’s almost been approved. It’s hard, we’re using imported products and different special equipment. Have you ever seen the Michael Jackson This Is It DVD? Because he passed away before that tour, it was canned, but there was all this state of the art equipment left over. So through auctions, we’ve managed to purchase some of this equipment.
Woah!
I’m talking about cherry pickers and advanced technology that hasn’t been seen by the eyes of the Australian public yet. Hopefully if we get all that stuff over in time, we’ll build a tiki bar! Are you following me?
Yeah, totally! That sounds unreal! I’m going to try and sneak backstage and get in on this!
Well if you get a pass, you can have a drink!
Remaining Foo Fighters tour dates w/ Rise Against and The Delta Riggs
Feb 26 – ANZ Stadium
Sydney, NSW
Feb 28 – Etihad Stadium
Melbourne, VIC
Mar 02 – Derwent Entertainment Centre
Hobart, TAS
Mar 04 – Coopers Stadium
Adelaide, SA
Mar 08 – nib Stadium
Perth, WA
Tickets HERE