So, first up some solo Raven. This is (most of) a piece without a name that I created for the Goodbye Sarajevo event at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival.

And here's a possibly bewildering excerpt from the Bown/Hollo duo, sometime after Ollie dropped the tempo of the piece and warped everything. You can't really hear the way the beats are synchronised with the cello loops, but hopefully it's pretty at least:

Joe has a great promo page over at The Gate site with some handy blurbs on the musicians. Note the location: 42 Langston Pl, Epping is basically right across from Epping Station. 25 minute train trip from Central Station. Get on it!

I love making radio and I love creativeness, so DJ mixes are a natural for me. The last one I did was freeform in terms of theme, and I tried to give it a great flow despite great diversity.

There's certainly a lot of diversity here too. I've taken the theme of Home literally — it's 20(ish) tracks, every one of which has the word "Home" in its title. Other than starting with "Leaving Home" and ending with "Coming Home to the Sun", the flow is purely music-driven. I've allowed a lot of the songs to go pretty long, because it's meant to be a bit of a journey and it's entirely self-indulgent. Full tracklisting below.

Download it here:
Home – journey by DJ mix [53:50 / 92.4MB]

[00:00] The Chemical Brothers – Leave Home
[01:45] Blitter vs Hrvatski – Nuclear Cats Get New Home
[03:50] Colin Stetson – Home
[06:08] Various Production – Home / Various Production – Home (edit)
[09:51] Pop Will Eat Itself – Home
[13:15] Hood – Home Is Where It Hurts
[16:59] Clint Mansell – We're Going Home
[18:28] Depeche Mode – Home (Jedi Knights Drowning In Time Remix)
[19:50] The Flashbulb – Hometown UFO
[22:48] David McComb & Adam Peters – Don't Go Home With Your Hard-on
[26:08] Broadcast – Message From Home
[28:00] Savath + Savalas – Journey's Homes
[29:22] John Fahey – Poor Boy Long Ways From Home
[31:40] Shearwater – Home Life
[35:58] The Twilight Sad – That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy
[39:45] Peter Broderick – Not At Home
[42:23] b.fleischmann – A Letter From Home
[43:28] Block Party – Where Is Home? (Burial Remix)
[45:27] Arthur Russell – Home Away From Home
[46:07] David Holmes – Coming Home To The Sun
(with thanks to Leonard Cohen & Phil Spector for bonus bit)

Here's a slightly ugly way of playing in page via Mixcloud, because Soundcloud are waaaay too assiduous about pursuing copyright:

(see above for download link!)

And here's the blurb and tracklisting. Please enjoy and if you do, please spread the word!

Peter Hollo takes you on a world tour of his current musical listening – plus a few classics that slipped in because they sound so good.
Sounds you might hear on his late Sunday night show Utility Fog on Sydney's FBi Radio, plus an as-yet-unreleased remix of his infamous FourPlay String Quartet.
We we we so excited.

[00:00] Omara Portuondo – La Sitiera
[01:42] Atom™ feat. Tea Time – Love Story
[03:01] Die Antwoord – Fish Paste
[03:26] They Might Be Giants – The World's Address (Joshua Fried Remix)
[04:40] Colin Stetson – Fear of the unknown and the blazing sun feat. Laurie Anderson, Shara Worden
[07:02] Shit&Shine – Fuck You Folk Singers
[08:47] NoMeansNo – It's Catching Up
[10:33] Himuro Yoshiteru – Start It
[13:04] B.Dolan – The Reptilian Agenda
[14:59] Sage Francis – Dance Monkey
[16:24] Chilly Gonzales – Never Stop (Rap) / Never Stop
[18:29] Chilly Gonzales vs Busta Rhymes – Dangerous (from Chilly Gonzales' Pianist Envy mixtape)
[20:36] The Bad Plus – Never Stop
[24:12] PIVIXKI – Konx
[24:55] Igorrr – Brutal Swing
[26:13] Simo Soo – I Smashed My Face (Collarbones remix)
[27:42] Collarbones – Closer
[29:58] James Blake – Footnotes
[32:25] FourPlay String Quartet – You've Changed Your Tune (Cleptoclectics remix) [forthcoming]
[34:47] <ends>

They also kindly asked me to bring my cello along, and even though I was perhaps there more as a representative of FourPlay than as Raven, I played a rendition of "It's too fucking hot, but we've still got melody". You can view it on their site, and it's also on their excellent YouTube channel:

I shortened the piece a bit for radio, but you get the idea. No laptop involved in this one, just looping. The full recorded version can be found on the stumble ep.

More importantly for the Raven-ous side of things, The Night Air has taken over the evenings for January (at least 8:30-10pm or something), and Brent Clough has invited me to play a set, so listen in around:
9pm, Friday January 7th
to hear Raven playing live on Radio National! I think I'll play about 3 tracks and have a chat as well.

On Saturday, November the 6th I am very pleased to be playing at the album launch of one my favourite Sydney sound artists, Gail Priest. Also playing are Jon Watts and Sounds of Homes (an Endgame Records supergroup with Shane Fahey, Tegan Northwood and filmmaker/performance artist Honi Ryan). Should be fantastic.
Facebook event here, for those that way inclined.

On Friday, November the 19th I'm playing at one of the best new monthly events to appear this year, Sound Series (Facebook group). Also held at Hardware Gallery, Sound Series features impeccably-curated lineups by Romy Caen of sound art & experimental musicians from Sydney & interstate. Also playing on this night will be Melbourne's wonderful cinematic postrock group The Spheres, (sadly they can't make it!) Brisbane's guitar-pickin' laptopiste Anonymeye, Ivan Lisyak and others.
Facebook event here.

Second is a huge event which all involved are hoping that, um, people come along to! Featuring the wonderful Ollie Bown of Icarus, now based in Melbourne, along with Shoeb Ahmad and Evan Dorrian of Spartak and Adrian Lim-Klumpes of 3ofmillions.
This semi-ad hoc quintet will perform in various different duos, trios, and as a full group, improvising around cello, piano, guitar, drum kit, many pedals and laptops, along with Ollie's algorithmic rhythms and responsive computer programs.
Support will be from the glitchy hip-hop of Cleptoclectics.
Best of all, the setting is the wooden-paneled surrounds of Megaphon Recording Studios, at Floor 2, Building 8, 70 Edith St, St Peters.
Facebook event here.

Shoeb put together a special FREE download compilation for this show, with almost all exclusive tracks. An unreleased Raven track and tracks by the other performers can be found here – download now!

Outside of Sydney OMG, on Friday the 22nd of October I'm playing another solo gig, this time in Canberra. Courtesy of the aforementioned Shoeb Ahmad, it's part of his series of sound gigs at the Street Theatre, and should be awesome. Will update with further details, but also playing will be a string quartet by Julian Day, and the beautiful piano post-rock of Sophie Hutchings (with yours truly on cello).

And finallllly, on Friday the 19th of November I'm playing at the Sound Series at Hardware Gallery, 263 Enmore Rd, Enmore. This is an awesome gallery space and they hold fantastic gigs there, so it's highly recommended – plus of course I'll be playing!

More details as they come for these later gigs, but that's a good ol' summary.