[les] ARTISTES

It's been a super hectic month. December feels like a life-time ago. A blur of late-nights and sultry evenings. And [mostly cheap] wine.

Now we've landed in Two Thousand and Fine.

Over the twenty-four hours of New Years Eve/Day I interviewed probably about 20 local Australian + international artists, at Shore Thing and Field Day. An intense but fun way to end and start the year really. I'll publish the links to Fuzzy TV when the packages are edited - so you can see everything for yourself. But here's a basic run down on The Things I Learnt:

At the beginning of each interview, in order to test audio levels we ask the artists to tell us what they ate for breakfast. Most of them started with a short answer 'didn't eat breakfast', but if pushed to discuss their last meal, they could all talk AT LENGTH about the finest details. To a point that some of them talked for perhaps 3-4 minutes about the subtleties of mustard.

Also, what's with it? Almost every artist has a 'record label project'. And a bunch of them are budding fashion designers too.

Boys Noize is the nicest fella you'll ever meet. He and Jens from Digitalism went to school together and when he left his job in record store he recommended Jens for the job. Taught him everything he knows/gave him his first break. He also loves Good Charlotte [...sorry, no the last two points are a joke. Good Charlotte have totally bitten his style, ripped the skull - a work of a German artist - motif that he's been using for years and put it on the cover to their most recent 'remix' album.]

Calvin Harris has given up alcohol. I'm inspired - he has lovely skin. He's also got another big collaboration in the pipeline for next year, to work on his next rekkid. Which is going to be a 'dance/pop thing'. But he wouldn't say with who.

Walter Meego both have degrees in languages. Colin studied Spanish. Justin did a degree in Italian and also takes a lot of photographs.

The Canyons are set to be huge. Their set was really well received. They're lovely down-to-earth do-it-yourself fellas who play vinyl and dig crates.

Late of the Pier 's live show felt like a crazy warped drunken sea-shanty. Sam loves Australia and climbing trees. Potter is really into Chaucer. Faley is wanting to spend the year driving their record label, Zarcorp a bit more. They're into realising interesting 7" with artists they like. They love Erol Alkan and Cut Copy and can talk at length about either. Boredom is what drives their creativity. Just don't tell them they're cool.

Jamie Lidell loves birds, especially parakeets. He also loves poached eggs. During our chat he said he wants to do a collaboration with a whole lot of Jones'. Think Sharon. Grace. Quincy. Tom. He's going to call it Jones Inc.

A-Trak has a very good sense of humour.

Gus from Bang-Gang had a busy 2008 - the highlight of which was a mad experience in Russia, narrowly missing trouble from the Russian Mafia.

Side note: when you get all the Bang-Gang boys together things quickly get loose. Very loose. [Although this probably comes as no surprise.]

Bag Raiders are either stalkers/festival megalomaniacs/about to be huge. This is the 3rd time I've interviewed them at a festival since Parklife in October. They'd played 5 gigs in less than 24 hours by the time we chatted yesterday. Frig.

Yo Magesty are warped. Jwl B is all about fresh air on her titties at shows. [She takes her top off] and she has plenty to say to haters.

Hopefully I'll have updates on Santogold and Busy P next week.

Other highlights/charmers: The Presets, Ajax, Ladyhawke, DJ Medhi. Jens from Digitalism.

Total disappointment: Switch.