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MUSIC

With Christmas done and dusted, I wanted to share the videos we shot for our Babyfreeze Christmas EP.

The first was Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight).  This was the only one that maintained the black and white, moody/creepy visual aesthetic we’d begun this year.  Like everybody, I’d dug the Way To War video a hell of a lot, and wanted to have a crack at something similar.  Adding a Christmas theme seemed a delicious subversion.

Shopping centres are desperation magnets at the best of times, and feel even sadder at Christmas. The Another Lonely Christmas video was a two hour shoot at the Canberra Centre.  I wasn’t sure if we were going to be escorted out at any point, but after filming for twenty minutes undisturbed in Top Bargain, our confidence grew.  People kept apologising for walking into shot, which was exactly what we’d hoped for.  This video was the most fun to edit, in no small part to due Nick’s touching performance.  I’m also extremely pleased with the music production on this – the others veer away from the quote-unquote Babyfreeze Sound, but this one is absolutely perfect.

Which brings us to Christmas Number One – we filmed this minutes after playing The Phoenix (the first shots were in the carpark behind the pub – I put the guitar in the car and took out the camera). Nick had the concept in his head, and roped in the extras.  It’s got mad energy, likely because of the speed of the shoot.  I don’t think this took more than an hour, which is how I like to do it – there’s no wasted reels, everything we shot made it into the video.

It was a tremendous challenge given the time constraints (I was headed overseas – I had to leave the videos uploading on my computer when I dashed to the airport).  That said, I’m already excited about the possibilities for next year.



'Everybody In The House Come On And Let Me Hear You Say Old Saint Nick!' It was the best I could come up with in the moment, but I swear we had the whole crowd up and going with it.

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20121214-113153.jpg Right after the set we ran out into the alley and shot the video for Christmas No 1. By the time you read this our cockamamie scheme to make three new tracks and three new videos in ten days with a big Christmas show in the middle will be complete. Sorry for getting you into this Luke.

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20121214-114100.jpg Photos by Thomas L'Adam.



This year's Corinbank festival was postponed by almost seven months due to Apocalyptic weather conditions, so there was a greater-than-average sense of anticipation leading up to the first weekend of December. Corin offers an amazing, family-friendly setting in the forest and a host of awesome local and touring acts.

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20121214-110742.jpg This was a bittersweet show for us, however. After almost five years of exemplary service, this was Nick 'Nick Peddle' Peddle's last gig with Big Score. The rest of the scene has finally caught on to the fact that he's one of the best drummers in the world, and he played with no less than six (!) different bands over the course of the festival. He's now forced to strip his operation back to the bands that have the most career momentum, and a sketched-out jam act like Big Score definitely doesn't fit the bill.

20121214-111838.jpg Nick, we set you loose into the greater world beyond, your wings still wet from the womb, your four eyes blinking from the glare of your own bright future. All the best, you Magnificent Son Of A Bitch! Photos by A-Thom The Wonder Bomb!



We at Camp Cracked Actor have been inserting more and more new tracks into our sets in anticipation of our new record.

20121213-230953.jpg We should be the first cab off the rank at Sam King's brand new Studio, I am Merloc!

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20121213-231120.jpg Photos by Adam Thomas.

I meet with the NFSA and You Are Here this Wednesday.  Since last time, I’ve pulled together a ‘first draft’.   It consists of 14 tracks – the longest is three minutes, the shortest is 10 seconds.  Save three ‘set pieces’, all of the music recurs or is revisited at least once over the length of the film.

Sunshine Sally

Presently, it’s all there but refuses to gell.  That’s partly because I recorded with whatever came to hand.  Some pieces are full midi compositions, mixed in Ableton; others are sung into a dictaphone, an unplugged Fender for accompaniment   Just having all the tracks played at the same quality should shore it up.   I’m also debating placing it all in the same key, for consistency’s sake.

Sunshine Sally - trainer

Originally, I intended the soundtrack to be entirely instrumental.  Seeing Harold And Maude this week changed my mind, and I’ve written two songs I’m extremely pleased to include.  At this stage, I’m happy with about 70%.  I’m prepared for changes once a band becomes involved, but mapping so much out this early gives me time to tweak, substitute, and make peace with tracks before even reaching the rehearsal room.

Sunshine Sally



So after months of writing, rehearsing and tearful grappling with social media, The Last Prom grand finale has taken place. My long- held ambition to stage a live narrative concept album has now passed into cockamamie reality. And by every important measure, it worked. All thanks to the most incredible group of artists and performers I've ever worked with, and one stellar crowd.

20121121-150149.jpg On the night, we had to wait for the Canberra Youth Orchestra to finish there rehearsal before we could even begin to set up, leaving us with just 3 hours to transform The Ainslie Arts Centre into Aleister Crowley High School. We were still getting sound check done when the crowd began to arrive, but luckily my amazing friends The Sinbirds (pictured below) covered our asses by performing a warm-up set in the carpark.

20121121-150709.jpg After that, the entire night was almost derailed when our smoke machine set off the fire alarm (shout out to the local firefighters for their quick response time). Nerve-racking, but nothing could have derailed my excitement by then. People had come! Lots of people! And they'd come in costume, with their own characters, ready to fully immerse in the story world. I was overcome with gratitude, and high on the absolute faith that I had in my band. Ladies and Gentlemen: War! Famine! Pestilence! Death! And myself, The Antichrist!

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20121121-151309.jpg Over a breathless and surreal 50 minutes we played 10 songs (that had never been played to an audience before) and told the story of the Antichrists's tragic love story with Death. I managed to pull off my lines to an acceptable standard, but most of the dramatic heavy lifting was handled by our director Joel Barcham in the role of the SOCE teacher and Ali MacGregor and Bib Cain as The Muses Of The Apocalypse.

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20121121-153126.jpg Julia 'Death' Johnson definitely had the toughest role, singing co-lead in all of the songs while assaying her transformation from Death to Death-disguised-as-mortal-girl to Death-as-prom-queen-of-the-apocalypse. She was completely amazing, despite the failure of her keytar strap to fit over her shoulder carapace (your standard performer issue).

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20121121-153812.jpg Once the show concluded, the real main event was the epic after party set by Dead DJ Joke, who's been a critical part of The Last Prom experience from the start.

20121121-154708.jpg There's already some voices calling for us to restage the show, but I'll have to sleep for a good hundred years before I can think about that one. Meanwhile, I'll post more photos and a couple of reviews soon. All photos by the star of The Aleister Crowley Student Newspaper, Adam Thomas!

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Eked out some time today to work on Project Z (we’ll have an official You Are Here event name soon…).

Out of the five hours of material I received, I’ve chosen to work with 1922 silent film Sunshine Sally. Set in Sydney, it’s got engaging characters and a lot of fun, breezy scenes.

Before I can score it, I first have to edit it down.  The surviving copy (the one I’m working from) is 60 minutes long, and is missing the entire ending.  To work around that AND edit it to 20 minutes has meant a major restructure of the narrative – I’ve done away with the subplots, five main characters (including a love interest), and some cool lifeguard rescue scenes that just weren’t going to fit.  As is, with some new intertitles, it should flow nicely.

I’ve also been able to shave a few seconds here and there by topping and tailing scenes.  Compared to today, movies of the 20s came into scenes early and left late.  Cinematic language was being invented as they went along – we now need far less information to process what’s going on.

It blows my mind that I’ve been given a chance to edit footage from 90 years ago (to the month).

More soon.