Music I've been into lately

I started writing a post for this months ago (featuring depressing winter music) but as one would expect, what I've been listening to has changed since then. Here are half a dozen artists/bands/songs I've been smashing lately during this weird in-between hot-cold-rain-drought summer (alphabetised according to Artist name). I guess my taste is always somewhat dark-ish but there's a bit of a mix of genres etc*

A Place to Bury Strangers - To Fix the Gash in Your Head

So I've been real shit at keeping my to date with music and stuff for at least half a decade or something, I can't believe I hadn't listened to these guys since recently (and as a consequence, missed their Sydney gig earlier this year). No surprise why I like these guys - noisy-as dance-able post-punk with distortion on distortion. That noise. My ears are pretty much never happy unless they feel like they've been strained through a grater. Jokes aside though, these guys are pretty sweet. And I have a strange fixation with drum machines.

Abbe May - Karmageddon

We randomly stumbled upon this badass lady from Perth one bored evening when searching for a gig to go to. She was fantastic live, juggling vocals, guitar and a drum machine with the intermittent help of a guy on saxophone and a sheep skull. Interesting mix of electronic elements with a dark blues rock-influenced songwriting style (especially evident in some of her older stuff, I think). I vaguely remember one of her songs mentioning kicking out her old drummer and replacing them with a drum machine because they didn't believe she had it in her to make it as a musician - and to that, I say a big "fuck yeah!"

Florence and the Machine - Cosmic Love

Spent a night last month dancing in the rain to sweet tunes while Florence Welch pranced around the stage like a possessed elf. It was fantastic. She was a fantastic performer, and really brought this song to life  in a way that even this melodramatic music video can't. Before the song, she told a story about how she wrote this song while in the throes of one of the worst hangovers of her life. This song is one of the most beautiful takes on the pain of being in love, and makes me feel ashamed about my hangovers in comparison, where my productivity generally comes in the form of puke.

Goat - Hide From the Sun

Saw these guys live a couple of days ago. It was amazing. I don't even have the words to describe. Who can say no to a weird masked psychedelic Swedish artists' collective led by a guy called Mr Goatman who is supposedly a member of a commune under a voodoo curse?

Sleater-Kinney - New Wave

Combining two of my loves - Bob's Burgers and riot grrrl! And soon to be joined by another one of my loves (hi Melissa!), who I'm going to see these guys with in Feb (reliving our teenage BDO days haha). So much excite! Admittedly, it's been years since I've given these guys a proper listen, so I've been dusting off (digital) albums I haven't listened to much since high school, as well as giving their new album a spin. The only thing that disappoints about their new stuff is that it has much less of Corin's banshee screeching, which I felt gave their angrier stuff more sense of urgency.

Anyway, five is enough for now.

*Who am I kidding? I only ever listen to alt rock >_<

Crappy and out of date

Wow I'm shit at this blogging thing. Here's what I've been up to in the 1.5 months since my last post:

- Got over shitty cold #1 and had less than a month of not resembling a huge mucus-trailing slug before being felled by another shitty cold. Am currently on 2nd week of slithering around feebly, trailing sputum in my slimy wake

- My tomatoes have blown up into a crazy tomato jungle and I don't really know what to do with them

- Periodically overfeeding a box of worms

- Started Spanish lessons (because failing at 2 languages is just not quite enough)

- Entered a Mario Kart 64 tournament and failed due to drunkenness

- Presented a poster at a conference, also going to another 2 conferences this month ('tis the season?)

- So much dentistry. I don't even want a mouth any more

Stir Crazy

I've had a pretty awful cold for the past 3 weeks or so, and haven't really left the house apart from to go to work and for various errands. I've only got the lingering tail-end of a cough left to fight off now, so hopefully I'll be able to go out and do something fun this long weekend. Meanwhile, here are some random things from inside my apartment.

The only vaguely active thing I've been doing is some gardening in the corner of our balcony which gets a bit of sun. I'm trying to be good with remembering to water things, but it's anyone's guess how long I'll be able to keep these little guys alive for. My negligence is notorious when it comes to things that don't vocally nag me to feed them. Thank goodness for flatmates who are less slack than I.

Beers at South Head

A couple of sunny Sundays ago, we ventured across the city to Watsons Bay/South Head. After a confusing start (in which we nearly trespassed on a navy base and then almost fell on a small child while climbing down a dirt track), we managed to work our way past the throngs of tourists taking pictures of middle-aged men's junk on the nudist beach and secure ourselves a secluded clifftop spot  (far from any pale buttocks cheerily quivering in the cold ocean breeze) in which to enjoy some afternoon beers (because day-drinking is the best*). There are a bunch of neat things at South Head, including the cute candy patterned Hornby Lighthouse (build after more than 100 people died in shipwrecks off the coast in the 1850s) and a bunch of old gun emplacements and tunnels, not to mention awesome views over Sydney Harbour on one side and east towards NZ on the other.

Watsons Bay is super easy to get to, only about 20 minutes by ferry from Circular Quay, and the South Head Heritage Trail is an easy walk which can take anywhere between 15 minutes and a whole afternoon depending on how strongly your inner meerkat urges you to play in the tunnels.

* Disclaimer: don't try this at home or elsewhere, kids. Climbing up and down cliffs to drink illegally in public is for stupid irresponsible adults like us, not sensible people who don't want to fall to their deaths and/or be fined^. 

^ Seriously though, if you insist on drinking in public, you'll probably be fine as long as you're not trying to get totally wasted and aren't making a dick of yourself and/or littering.

I'm on a thing

Our group had a paper published recently - go Kelly! We had champagne at a meeting at about 10am, because that's how we roll. I feel a bit bad that my name is on it because I did next to no work on it - just optimised some primers. However, not gonna say no to upping my publication record! 

City Lights

I really am the most terrible blogger. Once I let one week slip by without a post, the others just sneak right along after and by the time I notice, it's already over a month since I last touched any photos! The worst part is, I have all these posts planned in my head but I never get around to setting fingers to keyboard or remembering to take my camera with me when I go out. I'll try to be better, but only time will tell if trying is enough.

Following on from the topic of my slackness, I finally got around to looking through my photos from Vivid several months ago. Vivid is a festival held annually in Sydney in May/June where the city is decked out in interactive light-based art displays. Most of the major landmark historical buildings are lit up, and the displays change every year.

This is the third Vivid I've been to, with the first being the week after I moved to Sydney - a great introduction to a new city!

They really outdid themselves withe the Customs House building this year, with vines breaking through the brickwork and bursting into an exuberant display of the magic of nature.

This year, they also extended the light displays to Chatswood, with a nautical theme incorporating one of my favourite creatures, the jellyfish!

Despite all my complaints about Sydney, stuff like this makes it a pretty interesting place to live in.

Drunken Restaurant Reviews #2: Kammadhenu

We headed out to Newtown one cold and rainy night in search of some delicious spice-laden food to assist our bottle of wine in warming us up, because there's nothing like a good curry to make you sweaty and disgusting and satisfied (three adjectives for which I aim in all things in life). King Street is dominated by Thai places, while Indian places are few and far between (I think there are like a total of three Indian/Nepalese/Malaysian-Indian places on the whole street). We chose Kammadhenu using the very rigorous scientific process of basically walking into the first Indian restaurant we came across, because we are very lazy. The extremely purple interiors exuded the kind of slight scunginess usually associated with cheap deliciousness and questionable service, both of which we received in plenty.

The waiter brought us wine glasses while I mentally gave praise to Dionysus that we brought our own wine instead of having to resort to their wine selection, which consisted solely of that awful one with the picture of birds on it that you can get for about $6 at any liquor store. I gulped back my first glass as I gazed in despair at the menu - so many delicious-sounding things! I look helplessly first at Jeremy, then at the super religious cow on the front of the menu, hoping that one of them will offer me some spiritual salvation. Or, you know, just help choosing what to eat, which is arguably more important. My stomach gurgled as the wine splashed in, and it sounded like "pooooorrrrrtttttteeeerrrrrttttttooooooo....." - the belly has spoken, so potato it is.

Masala Dosai - $9

Wow this thing was long. Like longer-than-Jeremy's-hairy-forearm-in-the-background long. I'd filled up with more wine in order to try and stave off my hunger (it didn't work, pretty sure my stomach lining had started dissolving by then). Thankfully, this delicious tube of soft soft lightly spiced potato wrapped in a paper-thin crepe arrived to save my gastric mucosa from dying a sad, lonely and wine-soaked death (much like the one which I will likely one day succumb to). All the best things in life somehow incorporate carbs and sauce, so carbs wrapped in carbs dipped in chutney ranked pretty highly in my list of "good things that happened to me today". This dosa was big enough to be a light meal for one, and I'll definitely be back for more next time I get a bit peckish while wandering around Newtown. Together, we polished this off in about 1.7 seconds.

Lamb Rogan Josh - $13.90

Average. Don't bother.

Manchurian Chicken - $12.90

This dish is pretty much why multiculturalism is awesome - great things happen when one culture puts their own spin on food from a different culture. A weird delicious hybrid creature with aspects from both, yet tasting like something unique gets created. Such is the oddness of the chimera that is Manchurian chicken. I'm not the biggest fan of sweet and sour, especially the way it's done outside of China (i.e. in order to accomodate for the weird-ass tastebuds of white people). However, the addition of spices and a more curry-ish texture, while cutting down on the sweetness makes this dish awesome. This was a pretty decent take on the Manchurian - the chicken was nice and vaguely crispy outside, and the sauce was very flavoursome. Jeremy's mind was blown by the existence of Indian-Chinese food. Or maybe he's just really easily impressed while drunk.

Overall, food not too bad for the price, service as average as what you'd expect, and we managed to get pretty drunk and may or may not have gotten sidetracked on our way home and had several more drinks at a pub and severely regretted it the next day. Next time, I may or may not just get 3 dosas instead.

Seriously though, eat a dosa.

Kammadhenu Newtown
171 King Street, Newtown
(02) 9550 2611