Illy

Guest Playlist: Illy shares songs from the artists who changed his life

The genre defying and ARIA Award winning artist Illy has returned with his sixth LP, The Space Between.  Released on Friday, the album is the culmination of over three years of persistence, grind, and continent hopping. Illy split the album’s recording sessions between his hometown of Melbourne, and studios around the world, including, Los Angeles,…

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Sturle Dagsland

Interview: Sturle Dagsland on his debut LP, creative process, and recording with huskies

Norwegian experimental singer Sturle Dagsland continues to tease his forthcoming self-titled debut album, set for release early next month – February 5th.  The latest single to be lifted from the album is “Dreaming”; a track that showcases the album’s more ethereal side. It’s positively serene compared to the previously released “Kusanagi” and “Waif”; which highlighted…

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The Forest of Moon and Sword

Book Review: Join Art on the quest to save her mother in Amy Raphael’s middle grade folk tale The Forest of Moon and Sword

In the dead of night, the Witchfinder General’s men came to Kelso and snatched away Art’s mother. Narrowly avoiding being taken herself, Art was left with nothing but a sword, her mother’s trusty book of remedies and salves, and her faithful horse Lady. It’s not much, but with the forest to guide her, she sets…

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SXSW Film Festival 2021 announces opening night headliner and other premiere highlights

The SXSW Film Festival has announced its opening night headliner as the 28th annual event prepares to announce its complete film lineup on February 10th, 2021. Serving as the opening night headliner will be Michael D. Ratner‘s Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, a powerful YouTube Originals documentary event that explores the aspects that led…

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Sydney Festival Review: Circa’s Humans 2.0 is a slick, edgy and contemporary production

Globally acclaimed Queensland contemporary circus group Circa have delivered a sequel to their ground breaking 2017 show Humans. Humans 2.0 is a ‘love letter to humanity’, exploring trust, vulnerability and the extremes of human ability. Those extremes are of evident immediately, as the cast of 10 begin with outrageous feats of acrobatics. At times it…

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Live Review: Birds of Tokyo’s symphonic tour with WASO is a raging success

WA alt-rockers Birds of Tokyo have done plenty in their 15-year existence, but a symphonic tour is something completely foreign and new, so frontman Ian Kenny admitted they were “shitting bricks” with their first few shows at the idyllic Perth Concert Hall over the weekend. Birds of Tokyo’s symphonic tour commenced on Thursday night with…

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Sydney Festival Review: Autocannibal is a gruesomely funny exploration into our apocalypse

Autocannibal presents a dystopian circus exploring the nature of sustenance. Isolated as the only remaining human in a world bereft of food and water, our protagonist battles a sea of junk and plastic, avoiding the obvious reality that there’s only one thing remaining for him to truly eat. Mick Jones is a versatile performer, delivering…

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First Impressions: Marvel’s WandaVision on Disney+ marches to the beat of its own bold, sitcom-celebrating drum

Given that 2020 was unable to give us the Marvel titles we had originally anticipated thanks to a certain pandemic – both Black Widow and Eternals were set for release – WandaVision has somewhat of an extra layer of pressure added to it, now that it is officially both the first taste of the MCU…

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Interview: Actor Aldis Hodge on working with Regina King in One Night In Miami and the importance of the film’s release

Academy Award winning actress Regina King‘s feature film directorial debut, One Night In Miami, is arriving this week on Amazon Prime Video.  An adaptation of Kemp Powers’ acclaimed stage play detailing a fictionalised meeting between  Malcom X, Muhammed Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a Miami hotel room in 1964, the film has been…

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Outlawed

Book Review: Anna North ventures into the feminist Wild West in Outlawed

  There are few things that will turn a woman to becoming an outlaw faster than the threat of being hanged as a witch. So it is for Ada, the protagonist of Anna North’s latest novel, Outlawed.  Described as a mash up of The Handmaid’s Tale with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Outlawed takes place in “the year of…

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Ubisoft Massive

Ubisoft Massive building open-world Star Wars adventure

Yesterday brought a tease about an Indiana Jones game at Bethesda. Today we have a Star Wars game landing at Ubisoft. It would appear the new LucasFilm Games division is on a bit of a roll. Announced in an interview with Wired, an untitled, open-world Star Wars project is underway at Ubisoft Massive, creators of…

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LitFestBergen

Perth to feature in LitFestBergen’s Eurovision-style literary event

“Hello Perth, this is Bergen calling.” Perth and Writing WA will be featured, along with ten other international locations, in LitFestBergen’s Literature Live Around The World on February 12th. One of the few positives that has come from the global Covid-19 pandemic, is the increasing use of the virtual. In 2020, Literary Awards and Book Festivals…

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Indiana Jones

Bethesda teases new Indiana Jones game from Wolfenstein dev

It took the new LucasFilm Games division just 24 hours to announce a new Indiana Jones game. The still-untitled game has landed at Wolfenstein: The New Colossus developer MachineGames. Its parent company Bethesda, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft, shared a teaser video on its social media accounts. It then clarified that the game is still in…

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Film Review: One Night in Miami is a thematically powerful and emotionally riveting chamber piece

In America 1964, the audience is introduced with its four main players. Renowned boxer Cassius Clay (Eli Goree) had just defeated Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion of the world; Muslim minister and human rights activist Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is still fighting for the cause for Black people; pop musician Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom…

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Withings ScanWatch review: medicale grade ECG major step forward for health tracking

Withings have always made the more beautiful watches when it comes to fitness trackers, sticking closer to a more conventional design that doesn’t look like you’re wearing anything too high-tech on the wrist. Withings watches are simple, elegant, and feature-rich, and the ScanWatch is undoubtedly their best offering yet. And that’s no surprise, hype has…

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DeLonghi La Specialista Maestro review: The best semi-auto coffee machine money can buy?

This coffee machine is smart. And there is perhaps no smarter created to date, reimagining the do-it-all semi-automatic machine to make it more accessible for a great variety of coffee drinkers, whether they have barista experience or not. And while it is quite pricey, that’s a valuable thing to have for the office or the…

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Film Review: Shadow in the Cloud in an off-kilter, bi-polar horror film that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before

As evident in fellow AU critic Harris Dang’s TIFF review of Shadow in the Cloud, this film’s connection to disgraced screenwriter Max Landis is understandably a hot-button subject.  Whilst I won’t go into the necessary detail, I’m certainly not making light of the allegations brought towards him, but given the fact that co-writer/director Roseanne Liang…

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Philips Air Purifier Series 3000i AC3033 review: it’s time to think deeply about air quality

How we take care of the air in our homes has shot up in terms of priority this year. We’re used to sucking up all the dirt and potentially hazardous particles from our surfaces with a high-powered vacuum cleaner, but prior to 2020, it wasn’t as widespread to consider how we go about maintaining the…

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Vida

Book Review: Jacqueline Kent’s Vida spotlights a determined woman’s campaigns for social justice

Vida Goldstein’s surname might have been used to denote a federal electorate, but she’s hardly a household name. This trailblazing woman was a steadfast women’s rights advocate who toiled away in Australia and abroad in the early 20th century. Jacqueline Kent‘s new biography chronicles this inspiring lady’s work in the social justice and political spheres. Kent…

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DJI Pocket 2 review: Almost perfect tiny camera can do a lot with very little

A camera just over 5-inches long has no business being this good, and yet the DJI Pocket 2 is perhaps the best pro-quality camera made with such a small, flexible profile. It’s part of DJI’s renewed focus on becoming the highest quality provider of action cameras, and they nail just about everything they could while…

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Oppo Reno4 5G Review: Smart compromises make this mid-ranger a solid 5G option

After the masterstroke that was the Find X2 series, Oppo is in a very good spot within the smartphone market. Chinese peer Huawei is still battling away with its advanced hardware but Google shut-out, which definitely helps, plus the brand has now expanded their ecosystem in Australia, which includes Oppo Watch and Oppo Enco Earphones….

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Fujifilm X-S10 Review: An Enthusiast Camera Worth the Investment

Aimed at photo and video enthusiasts, Fujifilm’s new consumer offering the X-S10 is all about fast continuous shooting speeds, vlogging tools and making shooting easy. But how easy? That depends on how well you know your way around a camera body. A small-ish, light-ish interchangeable lens mirrorless camera, the Fujifilm X-S10 sports the same 26.1MP…

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My Best Friend's Murder

Book Review: Polly Phillips’ debut My Best Friend’s Murder hooks you in from the first chapter

There have been a number of big commercial thrillers which explore the dangers that hide inside ordinary homes and behind seemingly innocent faces; but none have been quite so relatable to me as the debut novel by Perth-based writer, Polly Phillips. My Best Friend’s Murder follows aspiring journalist Bec, who finds herself in her thirties,…

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Film Review: Promising Young Woman is a delicious indulgence that will make your stomach churn

With an often bright, candy coated aesthetic that masks a darker, more poisonous taste inside, Promising Young Woman, Emerald Fennell‘s bold debut, is the type of delicious indulgence that will ultimately make your stomach churn. Headlined by a career-best Carey Mulligan (her performance sure to be a consistent contender come award season), Promising Young Woman…

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Fujifilm X-T4 Review: A Camera that Can Do It All (Almost)

Fujifilm have designed the XT-4 to be a great all-rounder – a strong mirrorless offering in video and stills shooting, rugged and robust, visually aesthetic and high powered. It offers a 26MP sensor, 20 frame per second shooting with autofocus, 4K video up to 60p and high speed video for up to 10x slow motion…

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Beowulf

Book Review: Maria Dahvana Headley breathes new life into an old classic in Beowulf

Beowulf is one of those stories that a lot of people think they know. That’s because it’s an iconic work of early English literature. Not only that, there have been countless translations and adaptations in the intervening centuries since the heroic tale was first uttered by a bard. Amongst its translators and adaptors are some…

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The Awful Truth

Book Review: Adrian Tame’s The Awful Truth celebrates journalism, larrikinism and fanaticism

Adrian Tame certainly understands the adage, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” The English-Australian journalist has notched up over five decades in the business working in Australia, the US and the UK. In his fourth book, The Awful Truth: My Adventures with Australia’s Most Notorious Tabloid he gives us…

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Passenger

Interview: Passenger on getting drunk, being vulnerable and playing a sad clown

Passenger will release his 13th studio album, Songs For The Drunk & Brokenhearted on January 8th. Penned by Passenger – aka Mike Rosenberg – when he was newly single, the album features that raw and authentic vulnerability that Passenger’s global fan-base has grown to love. Fans from all over the world will have the opportunity to…

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Anticipated Books 2021

The AU’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021: Jan – Mar

2020 you are done! Well, close enough!  With the New Year only days away we decided it was time to look forward and see what literary treats we have in store for us in 2021.  With so many books published each week, month and year, this list can only serve as a snapshot of what’s…

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Interview: The Dry actor Joe Klocek on playing a young Eric Bana and the collaborative mood on set

Joe Klocek may not be a household name yet, but after his starring role in The Dry it’s likely Australia’s latest star has been born.  In the lead up to the film’s anticipated release, our own Peter Gray zoomed with the rising actor to discuss his comfortable casting process, the collaborative mood on set, and…

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