Updates, downloads and the Mekong

Business is on the up. Intense. Some days it's enough to drive a man towards cheap valium substitutes just to avoid palpitations. What am I talking about padre? hatonrack business of course - yeah music and events, that type of shit. At the moment there's plenty of it, and my sense of responsibility to start blogging about it has been growing daily, what with my day job as an online content producer and moreover the banality of Australian political news dominating the media ("you bought a ute off your mate" "Nah I didn't, and I can say that in Chinese" etc).

But the past couple of weeks haven't seen me sitting in front of a computer in wintertime Sydney. No no, they've seen me listening to the same Illmatic and Ready to Die I've been listening to for nigh on 15 years in a host of altogether more exotic locations. From Ho Chi Minh in the South, to Hanoi in the north; from Halong Bay for spires, to Ninh Binh for paddies; from Hoi-An for clothes, to Hue for... stuff. Yeah Vietnam fools, and what a trip. If you've been to SE Asia before, you'll be familiar with the experience of drinking litres of water every hour only to get to the end of the day and wonder why you still don't need to visit the toilet/hole in the floor/portal to the Mekong. It's called sweat partner - it leaks the f*ck out the pores in your skin. And how. I haven't seen backpackers that wet since... actually, forget about it.

Anyway, it wasn't all holiday. There's been plenty of work to do for the upcoming hatonrack regular funk and hip hop super-party-event, The Scenario (don't know the classic Tribe Called Quest/Leaders of the New School reference? Get schooled). Hassling the f*ck outta my compadre Flip+Skip to finish that promo design; watching pardner Dave Silva coordinate the creation of all physical promo and then begin distributing with homeboy Vern; confirm acts; confuse Melt Bar sensae Walter with unnecissarily long and convoluted emails; annoying the sh!t out of the lovely and patient Trina from D2MG hip hop academy - our partner in Scenario crime who's coordinating the dance aspects of the night. Trying to push out the message to as many people as possible about how dope the events going to be and why you should all go. It's a monthly event, first Friday of every month, gonna be blessed with the best funk and hip hop DJs, live rap and funk acts, dance crews, battles and corny stage props. Sheet, there's even a happy hour from 9 to 11pm! Don't sleep on the Friday 3rd July launch party, see the flyer somewhere on this page - discount entry for those who RSVP to the facebook event.

So yeah, Vietnam wasn't all steamy pho, iced coffees, getting hassled by scooter taxi dudes and drinking delicious cheap beer. It was a bit of work as well. In fact I even worked on the plane as it was ascending - yeah you know, going up. Which is my sh!tty attempt of segueing back to the original theme - the up and upness of hatonrack business.

Three months ago we released the debut release from superpowers of the stage and borats of recorded formats, 1NF0 - aka Nick Knowledge and Jacob Giles. The release is Information Jakeknowledgy, it's downloadable for free RIGHT NOW and for f*ck's sake I can tell you it's hard to give innovative, inspiring, top-shelf music away for free these days. It's like people on the internet now require you to f*cking pay THEM for them to look at something you've made... Anyway, download it now if you haven't already, and have a listen to it first on our media player if you're an untrusting suspicious muthafucker who won't listen to a Platnum's over-and-again-proven taste in music - it's seriously a ground-breaking release for 2009. JJJ's been playing it, the boys were interviewed by Hau on the hip hop show a few weeks ago, and they've been getting plenty of street press which we'll have to get around to scanning and uploading to this website one day before 2012... The artwork and wallpapers in the download are pretty dope as well.

But seriously, as much as I bitch about fickle music consumers, we've actually been pretty stoked with the pick-up. Over a thousand people around the world have copped the album directly and the number's climbing every day. It's a great platform for them to release their next 1NF0 album later in the year - an "eighties mixtape" according to unconfirmed reports - and solo projects Soul Sample (Nick Knowledge's second album, which has apparently been "one week away" from finished for about seven months now) and Jacob's State of Mind. 1NF0 is getting good press and are constantly on stage - they're headlining The Scenario launch party on 3rd July at Melt Bar Kings Cross in fact; another reason not to miss that shit.

Yep, constantly on stage are 1NF0... I used to be able to say that about mine own 206collab, but then sometime in May muthafuckers started departing for different continents like they were re-enacting the out-of-Africa thesis. Eno returned from Ireland earlier in June, Tiff got back from the Philippines - where for some unbefuckingknownst reason she decided to travel with Flip+Skip for six weeks - and Flip+Skip himself gets back on Friday 26th June, just in time for the save FBI party and a generous six whole days before the all-important launch of our flagship regular event - just enough time to place the glazed cherry on the top of Scenario cake painstakingly put together over the past couple of months by the blood, sweat and tears of others. Fucking capitalist.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the 206collab is reconverging. Your daughters may have enjoyed working on that tan the past month or so - even if it was shifting into winter - but it's time to lock 'em up again.

The first 206 show for the second half of 2009 is a Dusttones production at Beach Road Hotel, Bondi, on 17th July. It's gonna be a big ticket event - we haven't played since the big O-ish-ii send-off back in April (we'll have some mad video clips from that up on the site shortly) and will have some special new routines to try out on you. I must recognise that we did have some major sound issues when we performed there with Bluejuice about a year and a half ago. Sound was terrible in fact - I'm not even sure Tiff's mic was real. In fact I'm sure some fucker - mortal or otherwise - was having a great laugh at our expense, so bad was the sound. But I'm confident that the audio will be so good this time that it will completely make up for our prior unpalatable experience. Because if it's not, I'm going to kill everyone. Like, everyone. But hey come along, 17th July Beach Road Hotel, Bondi - it's gonna be one hell of a night! More details to follow.

OK so I've still got to tell you about where we're up to with the upcoming 206collab album, Watch Kulagina, and also share some stories and video with you from my experience DJing in support of De La Soul and Cut Chemist two consecutive nights in April - now THAT was a gig. But my final meal in Vietnam was a poor choice, and aside from the 15,000 Dong (Aus$1) I handed over to the street vendor for the noodles and unidentified, aged, unrefrigerated meat of which it consisted, I'm still paying it off with ongoing rounds of stabbing gut pain and nausea. Not entirely unpleasant - verging on warm, comforting and funny at times in fact - but neither is it something that inspires me to type a lengthy article.... Hahaha, yeah OK you got me, it's long, but if you got to this point I reckon that means it's a pretty effort for my first blog. Oh but to be a virgin again...