Even a supermodel has got to have a huge bout of faith in a product to put her child’s name to it, and that’s precisely what Kate Moss has done with her latest fragrance, Lilabelle, named in honour of her daughter Lila, with the ‘belle’ bit naturally translating to ‘beautiful’.

Kate says the fragrance is a gift to her first-born, “for her to enjoy in years to come”, hence she’s lent it a classic, timeless touch.

The fragrance’s top notes include mandarin, osmanthus flower and freesia, with heart notes of white lily, jasmine and plumeria, and base notes of sandalwood, musk and suede. Despite such a broad combination of ingredients, says Kate, “It’s a really soft and gentle scent yet also a bit daring.

“I created it for both for grown women who want to remain young at heart and teens who want glamour and sophistication; my gift to every woman and girl who lives life to the full.”

Kate Moss Lilabelle EDT 30ml $30 and EDT 50ml $39 available from Target, Priceline and selected pharmacies nationally. For stockists phone 1800 812 663.

Mark Ronson is one major go-to producer. After the release of two solo LPs, an album with Amy Winehouse, and the soundtrack for an ad campaign for Toohey’s beer, the man behind the music is back with his greatest challenge yet: creating the theme for London’s 2012 Olympic Games which will be used across Coca Cola advertisements sponsoring the event.

The song features samples of sounds of athletes performing the world over: from the slap of a gymnast landing on a mat to the popping of ping pong balls. The soundbytes have been layered over the commercial track and most of the recording was original. Ronson himself strapped microphones to athletes’ body parts, taking these bytes back to the studio and feeding them through synthesizers and such.

He’s also kept busy this past year touring with his band The Business International and working on the new album for Eighties stalwarts Duran Duran.

Antonino Tati speaks with Ronson about working with music veterans like Amy Winehouse while having a knack of spotting new talent, recording in the studio versus playing live, and lending his production skills to the ad world.

Does it matter where you are when you’re producing records and soundtracks?

Usually I like to be in my studio in New York; it’s quite comfortable there.

Since having had huge success with Amy Winehouse’s album all those years ago, has there been pressure to live up to it?

That record seemed to capture a moment really well. With Amy, we really had a bond over music so we just said, ‘Let’s make it sound like stuff that we like’… But all I can keep on doing is make music that I like, and hopefully someone else will share the same opinion.

You have a knack of picking up and exposing hot new talent and marrying this with quality veteran artists on your albums… 

Maybe I just have a certain taste, or maybe that’s a terrible insult; that my taste is so regular, so the common denominator, that I like the same things that other people like… Oh well, on my last record [Record Collection] it was really important not to go with the people banging down my door, like Robbie Williams and Amy Winehouse, when she was with us. Instead I opened the door for the next round of artists. I really enjoy working with young talent. There’s just an excitement and energy that comes with recording when someone is doing it for the first time.

But you did work with Duran Duran on their latest album…

I did. And I think it sounds like Duran Duran in a good way. It’s not like we’re rehashing anything. I love Duran Duran…

Do you meet these musicians at parties and liaise with them directly, or is it all done officially through record companies?

It’s never really about the record companies; it’s always through a friend. Lily [Allen], for example, I met one night when I was DJ’ing at a hip-hop club in London and she was there at the end of the night and we just started talking. Amy, we met through a friend of a friend back when.

Do you think that’s what keeps the music sounding so organic on your records?

I’m not sure if it contributes directly but it’s all part and parcel in a way. The same way I meet people organically, we also play organically live. Everybody I work with enjoys music naturally and making music for music’s sake. When I think about people who’ve been hooked up through record companies, they’re usually young pop stars who come into the studio and [the situation] is just blank. I’m not good at that; I don’t work well in that environment and that’s not how I like to create. The people I have worked with from their early days – like Daniel Merriweather or Amy Winehouse – they had a really strong vision of their own when they wrote, so all I had to do was be a great producer.

Santigold seems like another artist you’ve worked with sans major record company interruption.

True. I met Santi before she blew up big. I used to drop my dogs off at her apartment in Brooklyn on the way to the airport and she’d walk my dogs for a week.

What you just said actually sounds like a snippet from a Santigold record. So that is you having a conversation with her on the Diplo remix album?

Yep. John Taylor from Duran Duran actually asked ‘Are you offended?’ and I was like, ‘That’s my voice, moron’.

I find it quite ironic that John doesn’t drink anymore, yet the pair of you were pushing a beer campaign with a Toohey’s ad you created some time ago.

Basically the contact was to create a band and take them to New York and write. So one day I recorded with John, one day it was Santi and so on, and the best song, the one that we thought was the most appropriate and most awesome and exciting, was the one with John in it. He really loved it, he contributed the change and the bassline and three days later we recorded it.

The song also featured Sean Lennon. Who on earth was footing the bill there?

Tooheys, I think. But really everyone was doing it for the love of beer. Except for John, perhaps.

Do you find a common link to the artists you work with, or is it the diversity that makes an interesting project, be it an album or an ad soundtrack?

I think it’s the diversity. The thing I love most about treating first recordings as demos with artists is that you get the most out of each session.

When you’re touring, are you twiddling knobs on electronic gadgets or playing real instruments onstage?

The guitar is pretty much the only thing I would stand on stage and play in public.

Any last word on the Coca Cola ad campaign for the 2012 Olympics?

I’ve said it before but to me sport is music in the way that it has so many natural rhythms and when I was recording the athletes I wasn’t thinking of them as  performing a sport, I was thinking of them as people in an orchestra. I like the results.

Photography by Bryony Shearmur.

View the Coca Cola advert with music produced by Mark Ronson here.

You’ll notice today (Feb 22) that Google features a constantly moving doodle of colour that might appear like a glitch at first, but rest assured it’s there for good reason. The doodle represents the electromagnetic waves that are the basis for radio.

Indeed, today is the 155th anniversary of the birthday of German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the man who invented the apparatus that could produce and detect radio waves, leading to the evolution of the everyday medium we often take for granted.

Sadly, Hertz died at the early age of 36, having been diagnosed with Wegener’s granulomatosis, an incurable vascular disease that affects several organs at once. His legacy lingers, though, every time we look at a radio dial, with the ‘Hz’ that appears in MHz after digits like 92.9, 94.5 and 96 all standing for ‘Hertz’.

Hooray to a genius who helped provide us with hours of on-air entertainment. Now, if only someone would invent an apparatus that killed off Kyle Sandilands for good…

Skate competitions and demos are most certainly not few and far between at the moment. There’s been the Hurley Australian Bowl-Riding Championships, the current Big Day Out Skate Tour and the Beach Bowl at the impending Australian Open of Surfing. Sure they’re fun and offer the riders a bit of incentive to dig harder, but not nearly as luring as the inaugural VANS Bowl-A-Rama.

Still claiming the ranking of largest skate event in the Southern Hemisphere, VANS Bowl-a-Rama has again picked up its game in regards to a 25% increase in the prize pool. Skate stars from around the globe will venture into the hipster scene on Bondi Beach for the week of skateboard infused cultural festivities including parties, art shows, parties, music shows, parties and other entertainment, and the aforementioned overall prize pool of $80,000.

Kicking of with Tic Taco, a local art show at native eating hole Beach Burrito Company, the week of festivities will be home again to the Love and Guts art show, a ruckus of a launch/sign-up party and an even more outrageous Official After Party.

The entire event, the skating not the debauchery filled nights, will be broadcasted live online as well as via television courtesy of Fuel TV, so all the lazy folks who can’t be bothered to deal with the 5000+ crowd that gets drawn won’t miss out on the fun.

You heard it from us. VANS Bowl-A-Rama. Be there or be square.

VANS Bowl-a-Rama will take place from the 21^st – 26^th February, with the actual main event on the 25^th at Bondi Beach Skate Park.

For more information on the event and surrounding festivities visit www.bowlarama.com.au.

The great thing about the Big Day Out is that it draws such an eclectic crowd of movers and shakers, thanks to an artist bill that spans the grand spectrum of pop, rock and dance music. Future might focus on electronica; Groovin’ In The Moo is big on indie; and Peats Ridge is skewed toward the more folk-like. But Big Day Out opens its great big arms avidly to all genres.

This year’s  lineup was massive with veteran rockers sharing the same stages as arthouse electronic acts, rap artists and sample-loving DJs.

Soundgarden were a highlight, playing all gigs across the country, with singer Chris Cornell (above) and the boys delivering innovative renditions of classics like Black Hole Sun and Blow Up The Outside World. Kanye West thrilled east coast BDO goers but disappointed Perth fans by not making it across. Kasabian made up for it, injecting more oomph into their performance than at previous gigs (though we’re a little disappointed they neglected to play Empire). And Foster The People embraced everything great about pop and kept fans well pleased.

Other highlights included the kooky and delightful Architecture In Helsinki, local rockers The Jezabels, soul-delivering lovely Kimbra, experimental rock band Battles, and Perth hip-hopper Drapht.

Oh, and one rather spunky Noel Gallagher and his High Flying Birds, looking rather healthy since not having played with his younger bad brother Liam for a while…  Antonino Tati

Photography by Jayga McMullen.

(above and below) Kasabian

 



(above) Foster The People

(above) Architecture In Helsinki

(above) Battles

(above) Drapht

(above) The Jezabels

All ecstatic front-row styleeee

Pam Ann is a woman time forgot. Looking like having stepped straight out of the Sixties, fitted in a polyester Pucci knock-off, she possesses the style of Jackie O, but the mouth of a drunken sailor. The mock stewardess, whose name is an anagram of that failed airline from Panama circa 1979, is touching down in Oz this August to play various intimate venues.

Having toured with Cher and crewed a private jet for Elton John, Cream asked Pam if she gets picky about her passengers.

“I’m a bit misunderstood,” she says. “I can be really nice. I look after my first class passengers; I’ll carve a roast for them. But it’s all based on labels, really. If someone’s wearing a K-mart t-shirt in the front row, they’re thrown down the back in two seconds flat.”

Hopefully she’s referring to those sitting in the front row of a fantasy plane, not some poor sod dressed casually at one of her performances.

For guaranteed laughs, especially with all that’s gone wrong with Qantas, expect airline know-it-all Pam Ann to entertain well.

Pam Ann Tour Dates and Venues are as follows:

ADELAIDE
Festival Theatre – Playhouse
Wednesday 1st August
Bookings: www.bass.net.au or 131 246
Tickets: $50 Adult/ $45 Concession/Group

SYDNEY
State Theatre
Friday 3rd August
Bookings: www.ticketmaster.com.au or 136 100
Tickets: $80 First Class (front 4-6 rows, inc comp glass of champagne & keyring); $60 Adult; $55 Concession/Group

BRISBANE
Brisbane Powerhouse
Friday 10th & Saturday 11th August
Bookings: www.brisbanepowerhouse.com.au or 3358 8600
Tickets: $80 First Class (front 4-6 rows, incls comp glass of champagne & keyring); $60 Adult; $55 Concession/Group

MELBOURNE
Athenaeum Theatre
Friday 17th August
Bookings: www.ticketek.com.au or 132 849
Tickets: $80 First Class (front 4-6 rows, inc comp glass of champagne & keyring); $60 Adult; $55 Concession/Group

PERTH
Astor Theatre
Friday 24th August
Bookings: www.bocsticketing.com.au or 9484 1133
Tickets: $80 First Class (front 4-6 rows, inc comp glass of champagne & keyring); $60 Adult; $55 Concession/Group

For every big-name music producer there’s a bedroom boffin just waiting to be discovered. With software and digital devices easily accessible to create quality music, punters are able to lend their own influence on a track, or indeed come up with original music of their own. So it’s nice to see a pop star of huge proportions, like Beyoncé, inviting budding producers to remix one of her tracks.

The singer is inviting fans to remix her number one urban and pop club single End Of Time from her latest album 4. Already a rapturous, percussion-driven delight in its original form, mix maestros will have their work cut out for them to come up with something even better and upload it to SoundCloud.

The grand prize winner will receive US$4,000 as well as the opportunity to have his or her remix appear on an upcoming Beyoncé release. The contest is open to entrants in 25 countries including Australia, the US and UK. Oh, but last entries must be in by March 9, so get those nimble fingers to work!

To enter, visit www.beyonceonline.com and download the audio stems of ‘End Of Time’.



Every week, without fail, a batch of haircare products crosses our desks with the hope of us getting around to try them so as to present to you, dear reader, our verdict on the best. Occasionally a batch stands out brightly, purely because of its brilliant packaging, as did a fluoro-green group of products that recently arrived from the house of Schwarzkopf.

We think the name – [3D]MENSION – sounds very post-modern, and with the ‘MEN’ part of its name bolded in black to appeal to the male of the species, our graphic designer was virtually having an orgasm over the design. But of course there’s more to quality product than mere packaging, and [3D]MENSION delivers results. Targeting the hair, scalp and roots, it provides a full care routine with minimal fuss. Why? Because of these ingredients: Panthenol to condition the hair, Menthol to refresh the scalp, and Carnitine to stimulate the roots. Not only do the products leave a guy’s hair smelling fresh, men, rejoice, for you won’t get all confused with the mathematics either when shopping for the range for every product is priced at a trusy $21.95.

For [3D]MENSION stockists phone 1800 251 887.

Pop singer Whitney Houston has died, at age 48.

Houston was discovered dead in a bathtub in her hotel suite at the Beverly Hills Hilton hotel just hours after being seen partying loudly at the hotel bar. A member of her entourage made the discovery, to which paramedics were called but failed to resuscitate her, pronouncing Houston dead at the scene.

The news of her death arrived on the eve of the Grammy Awards, of which Houston has been a respected attendee since her debut in 1985 with her self-titled album (pictured). Last Thursday, it is alleged Houston was rehearsing for a performance at a Grammy-related party being hosted by longtime mentor Clive Davis. According to a person at the rehearsal, the singer looked dishevelled and was sweating profusely with the smell of liquor and cigarettes on her breath.

Drug and marriage problems aside, Whitney Houston will be best remembered for being one of the world’s most remarkably talented singers whose hits included Where Do Broken Hearts Go?, Didn’t We Almost Have It All?, How Will I Know?, and her debut single The Greatest Love Of All. Fans continue to send messages of mourning through their Facebook and Twitter pages.

Produced on the back of playing to sell-out festivals all over the world Velociraptor! is Kasabian’s fourth studio album. Beginning with a gong then launching into new territory on the Kasabian soundscape, it could be their best work yet. Already described by critics as “a cross between Smells Like Teen Spirit, the Prodigy and Tron” it covers their trademark sound of distorted guitars and wild west trumpets with dark, new techno influences. Patrick Lewis asks lead guitarist and some-time singer Sergio Pizzorno what inspired the eclectic new sound of Kasabian, catches a Spinal Tap reference, and learns why Crack Foxes are so important…

You had a great reception at last year’s Big Day Out festival. What was it like touring Australia?

Melbourne was incredible and Perth was amazing. Australia is just such a great place. Nothing is a hassle. You’ve got cities where everything just comes together. Everything works and at night everyone goes wild.

You’d been touring with Muse, Oasis and U2, playing big shows before you made your new record ‘Veloceraptor!’ Would you call it your ‘stadium rock’ album?

If it is then that would be up there as an incredible achievement. It would prove you don’t have to write shit music to become massive. You’ve got U2 and Coldplay, but apart from them the world is missing a big fucking rock band and if we can be that, it would be amazing.  

What did you learn touring with Muse and U2?

When you play those big places you have to put on a show. If you don’t, it doesn’t work but if you do and it’s not good, it’s horrendous. Stadiums are boring if there’s not a show but there’s got to be a balance. You don’t want to get the little Stonehenge out with dancing midgets. Muse and U2 were really cool guys. Matt Bellamy [Muse lead singer] is a funny character. He told me that when he was younger, growing up in Devon, he came up with a way to cheat the fruit machines at fairgrounds so he’d always win. I dig anyone who has got that about them. He wouldn’t tell me how he did it because he thinks some people still want to collar him.

On your last album, you cast Noel Fielding in your video clip for ‘Vlad The Impaler’. I know you’re all big fans of the ‘Mighty Boosh’, but what’s your favourite episode?

Who else could have done Vlad The Impaler? There’s no other person in the world like Noel Fielding. He’s an absolute genius: the kind of person who could walk into a room and people say, “Who the fuckin’ hell is that?” He’s like Mick Jagger. He’s a maverick and we should look after these people because there’s not many of them left. I’m am absolutely massive Boosh fan. I love ‘The Nightmare Of Milky Joe’, especially when the madness sets in from the coconuts, and ‘Killeroo’ from the first series when Noel fights the Kangaroo.

What about the Crack Fox from Series 3? When Cream interviewed Noel Fielding he told us that was his favorite episode. If you had to put him in one of your video clips what would he be best suited to?

I buzz off the Crack Fox. It’s genius how they get away with the voices. The Crack Fox would have to be in a clip for ‘Empire’ [the title track from Kasabian’s second album]. There’s like a renaissance vibe going on. The Crack Fox would do well in battles. You could put him on the front line and people would say “No way, we’re not fighting ’em.”

What music are you listening to now?

Beadyeye: the Oasis splinter group; they’re fantastic. Liam Gallagher will always be my hero. It was nice to grow up with a real official rock star you could believe in. He called our last album ‘majestic’ which is a really nice word. I listen to Miles Kane and I really like The Penguins and Perth band Tame Impala. I met them in Australia; in fact it was Noel Fielding who turned me onto them. They’re really nice, beautiful hippies. They’re incredible musicians.

Musically, ‘Velociraptor!’ is definitely a step in the different direction. How would you describe it and where did the title come from?

It’s nice to keep everyone on their toes. This album feels like the greatest of all. We’ve taken the best of all three previous LPs and taken the sound into the future. It’s epic; ambitious. It takes you on real journey. It’s gunslinger rock. We always thought ‘Velociraptor’ would be a great name for a band. It’s just a great sounding name. It sounds modern. Velociraptors hunt in packs of four [Kasabian are a band of four]. They were the only dinosaur that could defeat the T-Rex.

Favourite song on the album and Why?

‘Man Of Simple Pleasures’. It’s a country song but it’s ultra modern. I like the message. Technology is taking over in a lot of ways. It’s about turning those systems off. Climb the trees, talk to your friends, do those things.

Kasabian are headlining the Big Day Out along with Kanye West. The band also play at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney on Tuesday 24 January. Tickets available  through www.premier.ticketek.com.au and at the Festival Hall in Melbourne on Saturday 28 January. Tickets available through Ticketmaster.

‘Velociraptor!’ is out now through Sony Music.