Despite being a notorious shut-in, I dragged myself out of my comfort zone and halfway across the Valley for Bigsound 2012. Being busy with Zedstuff in the morning I was only able to get to one of the afternoon sessions. I ran into a band-managing friend of mine who dragged me into Mobile - The Most Powerful Marketing Tool Ever (hyperbole is theirs, not mine). It started out as a love-in for Twitter and Facebook, which wasn’t particularly exciting to me. It got a bit more exciting when they started talking about streaming services like Spotify and Rdio. That was mostly because it got Foxtel’s Danny Yau all fired up about copyright. He was all like ‘big business can’t stop what’s coming: international copyright laws are gonna fall into line, there’ll be universal release dates for everything, you’ll be able to access any content from anywhere for peanuts’ he even said that piracy is caused by big business’ protectionist trade policies; pretty inspiring stuff to hear from a guy who works for Foxtel. He even finished with a joke: there’s a figure out there that says 60% of people use a mobile device while watching television... which makes the other 40% vigorous masturbators.

With the serious part of the afternoon out of the way, I started doing my stretches for the rapidly approaching Bigsound Live. The evening started off a treat with Caitlin Park at the Alhambra Lounge. The empty floor filled up quickly with folks keen to catch her brand of sweetly tuneful indie-folk, alt. country and indie-electronic quirks. I especially loved her cover of the theme from The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air. The vibe was great and it continued over at Flume’s set at Magic City. It was fricking packed and I hung off a banister upstairs to hear him drop out party banging dubstep, wonky, bass music and more – I’m keener than ever to hear his forthcoming album. Winter People at the Zoo were similarly pleasing – they might have two very cute violinists but the Cores comparisons stop there. Their mix of alt-country, indie-rock and thundering post-rock is innovative and they pull it off with panache. On a side note, over the course of the night nearly everyone seemed to be totally into what was happening on any stage I happened to be at. Only once, at the Zoo, did I notice two girls chatting, oblivious to the music throughout the set. Well, bad luck for them, they missed out on a treat. Violent Soho provided exactly what was expected: unreconstructed 90s crashing guitar. That was a really good feeling. I particularly liked their roady (an unnamed Triple-Zed volunteer) running on stage to give one of the band a vaporiser full of highly illicit looking smoke between each song. I caught a very little bit of The Trouble With Templeton back over at the Alhambra lounge. His new band seemed to be having troubles with the mix, but despite that it’s clear that musically, they’re really thriving – quite keen to hear his new record. About this time, despite the fact that I’d limited myself to one (large) drink per act, time seemed to elongate, warp and fray and I managed to miss the warm wall of guitars that is Emperors at Oh Hello, complete, which frustrated me despite my pleasantly sozzled state. Almost immediately King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard jumped on the stage with all seven (?) members and rocked up a garage storm. Despite having four screaming guitars and, uh, seven screaming guys, they manage to work subtleties into their sound, like the sci-fi warble of a theremin or a keening harmonica. One crowd surfing dude tried his best to wreck my evening by crashing into a table and knocking a giga-litre of beer over me and everyone else around (you are a massive douche), but, in the end not even that dented my first night of Big Sound Live. I feel half-dead, but I’m really looking forward to the second.

- Chris Cobcroft.