Writings belong of David Finnigan

Why you do it.

9.56pm on Friday 31 July, somewhere deep in the northern fringes of the Cancers. It’s a solidly superior week, and I’m stoked to be skulking in the skull of David Finig cause he’s a lucky kid. Let me give you a quick rundown:

Tonight I gave a short seminar on playbuilding and devising practice at the opening of the Australian National University Theatre Society’s 24 Hours of Theatre festival. Five teams are creating entirely new plays from scratch over the course of 24 hours during which, I believe, it is forbidden for them to sleep. I’m one of the judges at tomorrow night’s presentation - in the meantime, it’s being monitored through hourly updates on the 24 Hours of Theatre blog. I am utterly onside with the intent and approach of this festival. Word to Duncan Ragg and Andrew McBain for stringing it together, and many thanks for bringing me onboard.

In another age the members of NUTS would have been part of a pitchfork wielding mob; now they make theatre.

Following that, I trampled to the Front Cafe in Lyneham to give a feature set at the Traverse Poetry Slam’s 3rd birthday celebrations. It was packed with good human beings and good poetry and I did a piece about Hiroshima and another piece containing all the open-mic performances stapled together. Many kinds of fun: word to Jules and Bonnie for making magical things happen every month.

10 Days of AWESOME.

In other news, I am the Assistant Editor for the new 10 Days of Science blog, created as a part of NSW and ACT’s National Science Week. You can roll that way to read a selection of sharp-witted articles on the nature of science, edited by the redoubtable Kate Hennessy.

Goofbang cover image by Arran Mckenna.

And last of all (well, for now) the first issue of Goofbang has been launched! Goofbang is a free digital zine featuring music, writing, video and visual art, curated by the animal who is the enigma who is the artist and polymath Nick McCorriston. Drawing contributions from Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Newcastle artists, Goofbang is an ongoing project, so if you’re interested in contributing, go there.

That’s all for now. There are other projects on the boil: World Interplay in several weeks, the Crack Theatre Festival in early October, the endless (glorious) tail-chasing of funding applications, and somewhere in the middle there are nights like tonight when everything is rad.

Finnigan and Brother

Finnigan and Brother is the duo of siblings Chris (guitar/FX) and David Finnigan (words/radio/visuals). Living in close quarters all their lives, they have written together, created theatre together and cooked together, but only in 2007 did they start recording together. This is how it works:

Their recordings combines Chris’ fast-flowing and bony song-structures (Meddle-era Pink Floyd via Underworld and Stars of the Lid) with David’s scattered story-poems, contributions lovingly coaxed from the FM/AM airwaves, and lo-fi psychedelic visuals, feverishly captured by the in-built recording devices in tape dictaphones, Sony Walkmen and cheap mp3 players.

In 2007, David and Chris were two parts of the music/performance/visual art/cooking experiment that was Fight Fire With Knives, and in 2008 they joined forces with laptop artist Paul Heslin to form Diplodocus. As a duo, Finnigan and Brother first performed live at the 2009 Multicultural Fringe Festival in the Cancers. Their work featured in the launch edition of digital zine Goofbang, and their music has been featured on Sydney’s FBI Radio by New Weird Australia and Sunday Night at the Movies.

The following is a selection of Finnigan and Brother’s output from the last three years, downloadable for free as mp3. If any of this takes your fancy, please feel free to drop a line and invite us to your city to play.

Finnigan and Brother - FBI Radio live set (Aug 2010)

In August 2010, Chris and David were invited to perform live on Sunday Night at the Movies, a weekly sound-art show on Sydney’s FBI Radio. The set consisted of two pieces: a 90 second version of The Goddamn Kings of Leon, and the premiere performance of an extended piece entitled Solar System.

finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon / interview (FBI radio 2010).mp3 (6.1mb)
The extended psych-epic boiled back to a minute and a half of bare bones and gristle. Followed by Chris and David in discussion with host Brooke Olsen about their partnership as Finnigan and Brother - how does this creative collaboration work?

finnigan and brother - solar system (live FBI radio 2010).mp3 (12.6mb)
A prison-break story in which the earth escapes from its orbit and runs from the sun out into the dark. This 20 minute multi-part epic combines natural history lessons, religious propaganda pop, deconstructed sound poetry and high-octane action sequences (breaking into the aquarium and punching the fish!).

Finnigan and Brother - Golden Globe (Dec 2009)

At the end of 2009, Chris and David assembled in a North Sydney apartment for two days to record a new selection of material. By superb coincidence, those two days saw the city gripped by the most severe heatwave in a number of years. The end result is that in all the footage and stills from the Golden Globe sessions, Chris and David are shirtless and look like a pair of skinny Aussie hip-hop fans.

finnigan and brother - you can’t all be right.mp3 (3mb)
A 105 second slice of philosophical discource floating on the back of a sharp riff. A commentator on the Youtube clip for the song remarked, ‘There was not suggestion on Mormons at all save for the end general application of all religions.’ A wise and inciteful review.

finnigan and brother - golden globe.mp3 (24.4mb)
The title track for the December 09 sessions is an oozing psychedelic jam trading off between Chris’ crawling acid-rock and David’s slow-spinning liquid circles on the overhead projector. The tune is cool, but you have to check the video for the proper magic-mushrooms-effect.

finnigan and brother - medical drama.mp3 (15mb)
Music for a tense medical drama. The climax of an episode. Long panning shots of the hospital. The patient is wheeled into the surgery. The doctor is sweating - he hasn’t performed surgery in five years - and he’s drunk. But there’s no-one else. The nurse offers him a tray full of fresh instruments. The doctor refuses. From his back pocket he produces a scalpel. Blunt. Dirty. Rust spots. Leaning in, he makes the first incision… Check out the video for this song.

finnigan and brother - choir in a nightclub.mp3 (4.9mb)
The ethereal delights of a radio station broadcasting disco somewhere on the FM band, mixed with jagged guitar and meditation balls.

finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon.mp3 (25mb)
Opening with a re-enactment of the Kings of Leon’s loveable onstage meltdown at the 2009 Reading Festival, then expanding and evolving into a gentle but unstoppable psychedelic epic. Check out the video for this song.

finnigan and brother - deeper than the deepest ocean.mp3 (19mb)
An eerie analogue soundscape and the surgical dismemberment of clear water on the overhead projector. This one really benefits from being seen as well as heard - check out the video here.

finnigan and brother - two tracks in the snow.mp3 (4mb)
A stumbling tour of the fragments left over on the face of the earth.

finnigan and brother - the network performed very well.mp3 (9.9mb)
The radio is a fickle instrument, depending on what’s flooding the airwaves. Sometimes you strike gold first time. Check out the Youtube video for a good example of how David’s radio and Chris’ guitar work together in a live jam.

Finnigan and Brother - Golden Globe videos
One of the key instruments in the Golden Globe sessions was the overhead projector, responding to and influencing the music through the vivid images emerging and evolving organically from David’s lo-fi VJ/shadow-puppetry. Check out clips for the following tracks on Youtube:

finnigan and brother - medical drama
finnigan and brother - golden globe pt 1
finnigan and brother - golden globe pt 2
finnigan and brother - mr crab
finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon pt 1
finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon pt 2
finnigan and brother - the network performed very well
finnigan and brother - deeper than the deepest ocean pt 1
finnigan and brother - deeper than the deepest ocean pt 2
finnigan and brother - you can’t all be right

Finnigan and Brother - Sampled Works 20009

A collection of pieces from across ‘09, recorded in snatches when both Chris and David were in the same city.

finnigan and brother - definitely drop to that.mp3 (5.3mb)
Bleak and melancholy guitar melody winds a trail through a tangled forest, accompanied by flickering meditation balls and dry-twig percussion, at last turns into a story sampled from Hans Baumann’s I Marched With Hannibal about the sacking of the city of Sarantum by the Carthaginians and their war elephants.

finnigan and brother - robespierre.mp3 (3mb)
Text by Chris, taken from The Proxies, the Mappalujo co-written by David and Chris in 2003. You can read the full text of the work here, but the important thing to know is that this chapter details the daily business of a newly installed revolutionary government, set to warped and fragmented guitar.

finnigan and brother - people who’ve never surfed.mp3 (2mb)
High-octane white-water euphoria, boiled down into an adrenaline-charged 2 minutes of words lifted from some anonymous surfing manual and music lifted from the smooth face of a left-hander rising out of a 3 metre swell. Fuck yeah.

finnigan and brother - one of the primary reasons god permits pain in our life.mp3 (0.6mb)
This always seemed like a complicated issue, but this guitar/christian radio jam unravels the mystery in less than a minute.

Finnigan and Brother - Not Face (July 2008)

Absolutely the finest one-take only Finnigan and Brother jam there has ever been. In winter 2008, crouched in our older brother’s garage, the ebbing waves of static and elegant drifts of music and conversation captured by David’s FM/AM radio synch uncannily with Chris’ clicking beat-driven guitar loops and minimal solos. The whole piece runs for 32 minutes, broken into four 8 minute slices here for your convenience. If you’re going to listen to any extended Finnigan and Brother piece, this should be it, but if you only want a sample, start with pt 2.

finnigan and brother - not face 01.mp3 (7.4mb)
finnigan and brother - not face 02.mp3 (7.4mb)
finnigan and brother - not face 03.mp3 (7.2mb)
finnigan and brother - not face 04.mp3 (8.8mb)

Finnigan and Brother - Sampled Works 20007-08

This is a collection of highlights gleaned from Chris and David’s first 24 months as a duo.

finnigan and brother - i saw myself.wav (1mb)
One of the earliest and still most effective (according to us) Finnigan and Brother recordings was made before Chris possessed a loop station, FX pedal or electric guitar, and before David owned a computer with an inbuilt microphone. Featuring an old acoustic, a pair of meditation balls and a poem by Beat Poet Lew Welch, I saw myself was recorded using the dictaphone function on a cheap mp3 player, and sounds all the better for it. Dig.

finnigan and brother - guitar lead and finger with headphones.mp3 (3.8mb)
Chris plays a live guitar lead with the tip of his finger, David muffles and distorts the sound from a pair of earbud headphones using his hands.

finnigan and brother - three tigers in a swamp.mp3 (5.8mb)
A poem drawn from the vivd depths of stoned paranoia, soundtracked by a rising tide of icy guitar drone.

finnigan and brother - headphones and meditation balls.mp3 (2.1mb)
Radio playing through a tiny pair of headphones and two small metal balls with bells inside. Sometimes the simple experiments are the most successful.

bitterly books

I feel proud to claim that I was an early appreciator of Bitterly Books. This is a series of book reviews by the superbly tongue-in-cheek Bitterly Indifferent, an American poster on the POE-News forums which I frequent. For a long time, Bitterly Indifferent’s reviews of second-hand self-help books and guides to New Age spirituality have been the best thing on the forums; now they have their own home. Go there. Delight.

The recent review of Communicating with Orcas: the Whale’s Perspective by Mary Getten is a well of fucking genius, but philistine that I am, I can’t go past the review of When Godly People Do Ungodly Things: Arming Yourself In An Age Of Seduction by Beth Moore.

Bad Slam set

On Tuesday 21 July I will be performing a set as a what-do-you-call-it ‘Feature Poet’ in Canberra for the Bad!Slam!No!Biscuit! evening at the Phoenix Bar in the Civic Interchange. This is exciting for me tonight because I have finally settled on exactly the content I’m going to perform. If any trainspotters happen along past this site who will also be at the slam on Tuesday, here’s a heads-up which hopefully won’t ruin it for you. For anyone else, this is purely for your interest. In no order, I will be performing:

Max Barker - a text message which I received from Max a fortnight ago
Dirty Dancing - ‘…and most of all, I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling for the rest of my life…’
Hadley - not telling
Steve Reich - Come Out
Tim Flannery - The Future Eaters
DOGMATRON - Looting the Aquarium
David Finig - Platypus Fever
Dreamworks / Warner Bros - Preview for The Island

I will be performing the preview for this horrible looking movie

Armchair critique

I realise that very few people will stumble past this blog on the hunt for intelligible political commentary, and that is as it should be. I am neither wise nor informed. But, through the vagaries of chance, birth, fate et al, I do follow the writings of Portopolitico on his Armchair Critique blog. I direct your attention there for his recent writings on ‘The Failings of the Green Lobby’:

Another key problem is the narrow perspective within which climate change stories are argued and reported. When the media do articulate the dangers of climate change, it is almost always through the threat of sea level rises or ice caps melting or polar bears dying at some distant point in the future. There is almost always a failure to extrapolate from these sea level rises the agricultural disasters and likely military confrontations that will inevitably result. Energy lobbies can always extrapolate the rising energy prices and probable job losses that will result from carbon mitigation schemes, but environmental lobbies never extrapolate just what a sea level rise means. The media often extrapolate sea level rises to mean higher insurance premiums for beach house owners which is ridiculous because in reality by the time the sea is lapping at your front porch it would be the least of your concerns.

Severe water shortages and the forced relocation of many communities away from the increasingly uninhabitable equatorial regions will almost certainly result in mass migrations of refugees and military confrontations, particularly in regard to China and India who both want to secure the dwindling water supplies from the Himalayas. At a local level, rural communities will require heavy subsidies and cities like Canberra will find themselves paying huge bills for water. Yet these rather obvious extrapolations are rarely mentioned despite the increasing volume of military geopolitical studies that reinforce these obvious conclusions.

On a very different slant, I advise you strongly to download the free compilation of Australian experimental music assembled by New Weird Australia. This first batch contains lovely tunes by Pimmon (whose new record Smudge Another Yesterday is out and requires your attention), Tom Smith aka Cleptocleptics, Anonymeye (Andrew Tuttle, co-director of the Sound Summit festival as part of This Is Not Art), and a stunningly gorgeous track by the brilliantly named Brutal Hate Mosh, who I’ve never encountered before but now dearly want to befriend.

disarm the wheatfiend!

Lo! Pictures from the recent production of my play Hate Restaurants at the Virgin Labfest in Manila! Director J Victor Villareal and his cast of (I assume) professional deviants have done an extraordinary job. Hate Restaurants is a rags-to-riches fairytale about a humble kitchenhand who grows up to have his head torn off and his blood used to decorate the entranceway of a pancake restaurant belonging to the Scientologists.

As you can see from the images, Villareal and co have taken this simple (but charming) premise and constructed an edifice of theatre which brings to mind all your favourite styles from the heyday of the Bubonic Plague. Plague-chic!

not from the Labfest production, but sexy nevertheless