Tonight I’ll be back on the radio, tune in around 10:30 to hear what I’ve got to say about the Tour de France. You can listen to 101.5 FM on your radio, or listen online at http://radio.adelaide.edu.au/

A couple of new announcements today, Ed Kuepper is finally coming to Adelaide for his first full show since releasing the brilliant Jean Lee & The Yellow Dog. He’ll be bringing the Kowalski Collective (Jeffrey Wegener & Peter Oxley) with him as well. Kuepper has just finished a tour of Europe supporting Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Even though he hasn’t been to Adelaide for a while I did catch him in Sydney at the end of last year and in Melbourne for the Don’t Look Back series, and I can’t recommend this highly enough, don’t miss out.

Also only just announced, the New Pornographers are going to play at the Gov in October.

JULY

• 9th Baseball, Snowman and Hit the Jackpot at Jive.
• 11th Hit the Jackpot launch their new cd at the Jade Monkey with Skeletons, Les Goolies and Shame Spiral.
• 20th The Sea Thieves play with Mr Wednesday at the Grace Emily.
• 31st The Breeders at Fowlers.

AUGUST

• 4th Devo at Thebby Theatre.
• 6th Robert Forster at the Gov.
• 15th Ed Kuepper & the Kowalski Collective at the Gov

SEPTEMBER

• 6th Holly Throsby at Jive.
• 27th Parklife Festival with Diplo, Dizzee Rascal, Blackalicious and lots more.

OCTOBER

• 10th The New Pornographers at the Gov.

On the Stereo

• Ed Kuepper & the Kowalski Collective - Jean Lee & the Yellow Dog 2cd (Hot)
• JPS Experience - Precious 7″ (Flying Nun)
• Davy Graham - Folk, Blues & Beyond cd (Fledg’ling)
• Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! cd (Mute)
• Blectum from Blechdom - The Messy Jesse Fiesta cd (Deluxe)
• Blevin Blectum - Talon Slalom cd (Deluxe)
• Plaid - P-Brane EP (Warp)
• Various - Box of Dub 3LP (Soul Jazz)
• Kode 9 and the Spaceape - Dubstep Allstars Vol.3 cd (Tempa)
• MF Doom - mm… Food cd (Rhymesayers)

JULY

• 5th Rafael Toral at the Jade Monkey
• 9th Baseball, Snowman and Hit the Jackpot at Jive.
• 11th Hit the Jackpot launch their new cd at the Jade Monkey with Skeletons, Les Goolies and Shame Spiral.
• 20th The Sea Thieves play with Mr Wednesday at the Grace Emily.
• 31st The Breeders at Fowlers.

AUGUST

• 4th Devo at Thebby Theatre.
• 6th Robert Forster at the Gov.

On the Stereo

• Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea cd (Spunk / Drag City)
• Sun Ra - Lanquidity cd (Evidence)
• Ornette Coleman - New York is Now cd (Blue Note)
• John Coltrane - Olé Coltrane cd (Atlantic)
• Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity cd (ESP)
• Vandermark 5 - Acoustic Machine cd (Atavistic)
• Various - An England Story 2cd (Soul Jazz)
• Nurse With Wound - Homotopy to Marie cd (United Jnana)
• Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band - 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons cd (Constellation)
• Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden cd

Yesterday in the Oz: Airport Overload as passenger numbers set to double.

I was quite surprised at this, particularly in the context of the week’s other airport related news -
there have been instances of airlines cutting back services, and talk of discount airlines going bust, if fuel prices stay high. For anyone familiar with peak oil then the expectation is that fuel prices will be getting quite a bit higher yet and we won’t be seeing big increases in air passengers. On top of this, if serious steps are made to deal with global warming then we can expect it to raise the price of flights as well to reflect their true to cost in terms of environmental impact.

I found the report referred to in the article here, and see that they do take these factors into account in Chapter 5 - Sensitivity Analysis. Here they consider two scenarios as alternatives to their main forecast, one with cheaper flights and one with more expensive flights, and find that the effect on the overall passenger numbers is not huge. This is, admittedly, not my area of expertise but I do have some problems with it. The “peak oil” scenario has a 50% increase in fuel price. This seems very conservative for a peak oil scenario, particularly in the light of recent trends in the oil price. It appears that this scenario involves only changing the cost of airfares in the model. Other effects, as we have seen this week, are that airlines may cut back the number of flights as some become uneconomical. Also, especially in Australia, there are not that many players involved. If some go bust, then the lack of competition has further effects on prices beyond simply the price of oil. Perhaps even more importantly, under a peak oil scenario it is not just the cost of flights that is effected. The cost of pretty much everything goes up. When, as is already starting to happen now, people have to use up more of their income on things like travelling to work, and food, then it can be expected that they have less to spend on luxuries like flights.

So basically, I have no problem with the model predicting a response to a 50% increase in airfare but I think that the future is rather more uncertain than that.
On a related note, check out ABARE’s encounter with Senator Christine Milne in Senate Estimates recently. Make sure you read the linked transcript, it is quite an eye-opener. Their “peak oil scenario” is that it might happen in 30 years and will have no effect on oil prices in the near future.

Via Decomposing Trees I’ve heard about Independents’ Day on July 4, a celebration of independent record labels. As part of it you can vote for your favourite Australian independent releases here. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the greatest Australian album ever is listed even though it is slightly obscure in that it never got a stand-alone cd release (the tracks have all appeared as part of a compilation though). In fact it has been out of print for a long time since Prince Melon records went out of action some time around 1982-83 when the Clowns signed to Hot, but it does seem that they are now back in action with a new live cd.

Back to the poll - nice to see two excellent Ed Kuepper solo albums listed too, but I would have liked to have voted for his latest which is as good as anything he has done in his solo career.

This Tuesday SBS are showing the film The Story of the Weeping Camel as part of their Hot Docs series, though it is not exactly a documentary, as some scenes are acted, but they are acted by the “real people” who are the subjects of the documentary, nomadic herders in Mongolia. I don’t like to give away too much detail about movies (I like to know as little as possible before seeing a movie, however this can sometimes have disastrous consequences), so I won’t say much more, just that it’s a really beautiful story that is well worth your time.

There’s some new music (or reissues of old music) coming out that are looking good.

• Pitchfork report that there is a Steinski double cd compilation coming out. The first collects together a bunch of his stuff (including collaborations with Double Dee) that is otherwise rather hard to come by. I’ve heard about lots of these tracks but never heard them, in particular I think they were a big influence on Coldcut. The second disc has his “Nothing to Fear” mix, I have a version of this on vinyl but judging from the track listing there’s lots more on the cd.
• The new album by the Silver Jews is due out next month, called Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. To put it simply the Silver Jews are one of the best bands ever. When they first gained attention they looked to be something of a Pavement side-project (due to the involvement of Stephen Malkmus, Bob Natanovich and Steve West), but it was David Berman who was the driving force, and while I still love Pavement, and SM’s solo stuff as well, the Silver Jews have moved up to be one of my favourite bands, in the top the level occupied by the likes of the Laughing Clowns, Sonic Youth and Autechre. So I guess it’s clear that I’m keenly awaiting the release of the new album.
• Another new release of interest is exitingARM by Subtle. Subtle came to my attention due to the involvement of members of Themselves (and the recommendation of Peter). They released 4 eps names after the seasons which were brilliant, taking in a dizzying array of styles. When they moved on to releasing albums they seemed to bring all of it together into a unique mix of rap, rock, electronica and more. They deserve more attention than they get (though if you check out metacritic you’ll see that the critics have certainly been kind). The new one is there third full length album, and completes a trilogy. Also worth mentioning is a lower profile release, Yell&Ice , which includes a number of collaborations on remixes/alternate versions of tracks from second album For Hero: For Fool. I hadn’t heard much about it but found it in Missing Link in Melbourne and have been very impressed by it. Apparently there was something similar for the first album but I’ve never come across it. Hopefully the new one will do well enough for them to tour here, I’d love to see them live. It wouldn’t be the first time to Adelaide for Dose One and Jel, they played, together with Sole, at Enigma Bar back in 2001.

I was very impressed by Philip Jeck last night. Also Headdress of Neon Flames were still in fine form after a long break from gigs. There is another big one coming up at the Jade, Rafael Toral from Portugal.

A couple of other items of music news:

1. this afternoon there is a show about Sonic Youth on ABC2 at 4pm
2. On the June long weekend there will be one of the regular cd & record sales at the showgrounds.
3. Rumour has it that the Sea Thieves will have another show coming up soon

MAY

• 29th - DJ Krush at Electric Light.
• 31st - Really Good in Theory 3 with the Avant Gardeners, Cities Roamed by Cannibals, No Through Road, The Family Hour (with Henry Wagons), The Monies, Jon Dale, Cameron Wood, Kynan Lawlor at the Irish Club.

JUNE

• 5th - !!! at Rocket Bar.
• 15th - Holly Throsby at the Jade Monkey.
• 20th - Guy Blackman, Hit the Jackpot, No Through Road and Shame Spiral at Rocket.

JULY

• 5th - Rafael Toral at the Jade Monkey.
• 31st - The Breeders at Fowler’s Live.

On the Stereo

• Philip Jeck - Sand cd (Touch)
• Rosy Parlane - Jessamine cd (Touch)
• Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of 2cd (Kranky)
• Charalambides - Likeness cd (Kranky)
• Charalambides - Joy Shapes cd (Kranky)
• The Sea Thieves - Hiding in the Shade cd (Pouring Rain)
• Seefeel - Quique 2cd (Too Pure)
• Various - Staedtizism 2 cd (~scape)
• Kurt Weisman - Spiritual Sci-Fi cd (Important)
• The Dead C - Future Artists cd (Bada Bing)

Note that this gig also sees the return of Headdress of Neon Flames.