Relative Silence

Welcome to Hostage X.

This venue has been an R&B (not the good kind) club since it opened in central Wollongong roughly 18 months ago. After the closure of the local music Goliath the Oxford Tavern local musicians have been crying out for a new original live music venue. With a few weeks of overlap between the opening of Hostage and the closure of the Oxford there is renewed optimism for local upcoming musicians. There are many other venues in the area which put on music nights on occasion, some are even making it a routine.

With Hostage being reletively new venue and being independant of the local venue monopoly it has been viewed as a place of great potential. The owner is more than willing to try and increase crowds by opening the place up to new patrons, and with the Oxford locals looking for a  new home this place could work out well in everyones favour.

The venue itself is a very strange one, downstairs is a very high ceilinged room equipped with boutique bar, DJ booth and Gothic style furniture. Upstairs is a long thin room, reminiscent of many Sydney nightclubs which create a great atmosphere due to their small size. Upstairs also holds possible the biggest collection of mirrored disco balls that I’ve seen in my life. From memory one night I counted 70+ whilst drunk and then lost count after being distracted. One day I will count them all.

Without any further delay; week 2/52.
Madpolly are a local folk/acoustic/blues band comprising of Bec and Mel up front and John on double bass, with a changing array of drummers. They put on a good show with plenty of fun and banter that suits their style of music, quirky song titles and stories to introduce them Madpolly are exciting to watch.

I’ve shot them a few times before and Bec from Madpolly seems to be notoriously hard to get a photo of her face. One day Bec, one day I will get you!

2/52 Bec from Madpolly

Week 1.

Still going.
The saga with my CF card was annoying and has left me jumping the gun with a false start. 2 weeks worth of photos lost, no great loss. They werent’ the best photos, but it just means this 52 week project lasts a little longer.

This week was a bit more of a challenge than last week, as the only gig I was attending this week happened to be one I was playing at. My band Video Games played with 5 other bands at the Unibar Band Comp repecharge round. It was a very sombre occaision as one of the members of one of the performing bands had died in a tragic car accident 24 hours previous.

The bands performances were slightly subdued as both a tribute to Nate Cult and as nobody was in an overly party mood after losing one of our musical brothers.

V-def is a local rapper and is building up quite a name for himself in the ‘Gong and surrounds. I’ve been told he is the Australian freestyle rapping champion, but I can’t confirm this at this time. Either way, the man knows his way around a dictionary and a theasauras, as well as a musical notebook.
Tonight he was not part of any of the bands but he did join local rockers Order 66 on stage to rap over one of their tracks.

Due to the lack of any colours but red in the lighting state I decided to change my camera to B&W and shoot with B&W in mind.

2/52 V-Def at Unibar

The April Maze were back in town. One of my favourite bands, not on the strength of their music but on being two of the most likeable people I’ve ever met. The fact that their cello driven folk music is infectious and catchy is just an awesome bonus.

Week one of a 52 week project.
I’ve thought about it before, I have toyed with a 365. A photo per day for a year. Sadly I cant’ see myself keeping up with that to a standard that i’m happy with, so it became 52. One photo per week. Since I have started taking my camera to almost every gig I go to this seems to be a much more managable task. Take my favourite photo of the week* and upload it here and on my flickr account.

It drives me to go out and watch more bands and shoot more gigs. That can only be a good thing.

* Photo MUST be music related.

0/52 The Prologue. (It was originally 1/52 however the photos from the weeks in between were lost when a CF card got corrupted, thus resetting the count).
Sivan from the April Maze playing at the Otis bar on Crown st.
One of the darkest venues that I’ve ever been in, amazing vibe. Great staff and a relaxed Melbourne bar feel it is suited to cocktails and lounging around like a lord of lesuire.

As a live music venue it has a few flaws; there is no stage, there is just a corner with no thought to acoustics. There are no lights, literally none on the performers and the ones in the rest of the venue would be pushing a combined 100 watts between them. The brightest lights in the room are the ones coming from the fridges behind the bar.

This amazing lack of light proved to be a bit of a hurdle, I took my 50mm f1.4 lens. She is a very wide and fast lens, but clealry at my usual ballpark ISO of 640-1200 I was unable to get ANYTHING which was less than a great big blur. Something of a talent since Todd and Sivvy don’t move around much.

Thankfully earlier this year I took the time to read the manual (…. Yes… I read a manual) of my 7D and found out how to access the ISO boost. In the case of the 7D it can be boosted to an astonishing ISO 12800, which in the Otis bar that night was EXACTLY what I needed.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to share with you 0/52 (on a technicality 1/52).

1/52 The April Maze - Sivan