Smirnoff Presents the DFA Records Stage at Future Music Festival

As they have done in previous years, Smirnoff are getting inventive at Future Music Festival. This year, they are bringing a slice of New York nightlife to the festival by hosting James Murphy’s DFA Records on their very own stage.

Aussie festival-goers will be as good as transported to the heart of New York City with an all-encompassing nightlife experience that will see DFA leading-light Murphy and Pat Mahoney, his partner in the legendary LCD Soundsystem, on headline duties.

DFA Records have always been on the cutting edge of music, having released genre-defining stuff by some ace acts, many of which will be in full effect on the Smirnoff stage at Future Music Festival, including: Hercules & Love Affair, Holy Ghost! Juan MacLean, Benoit & Sergio and Horse Meat Disco.

To the side of the stage, aspiring DJs will be given the chance to experience how it looks to be a headline performer. To capture the moment, their photo will be taken at the ‘Superstar DJ’ booth, against a real crowd backdrop. Photos will be uploaded to the SmirnoffAustralia Facebook page:

The Future Music Festival 2012 takes place on the following dates: 
Brisbane - Saturday March 3, DOOMBEN RACECOURSE
Perth – Sunday March 4, (Labour Day Long Weekend), ARENA JOONDALUP
Sydney – Saturday March 10, RANDWICK RACECOURSE
Melbourne – Sunday March 11 (Labour Day Long Weekend), FLEMINGTON RACECOURSE
Adelaide – Monday March 12 (Adelaide Cup Long Weekend) ELLIS PARK

Tickets are on sale now via Ticketmaster (136 100 or: www.ticketmaster.com.au)

Yacht - Shangri-La

The fifth album from Portland, Oregon duo Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans is their second on the DFA label and, get this, deals with the idea of “paradise being a kinetic potential, a latency within us that has been eaten away by time.” Wow. So, Shangri-La is a concept album then, all about utopia in the face of dystopia. The world is turning to shit but it's okay because we're all going to party in a higher place. Or something.“The earth is on fire/ We don't have no daughter/ Let the motherfucker burn,” sings Evans.

Sonically, the record is a catchy clash of disco, punk, pop and electro, presumably intended to soundtrack this future utopia. Strangely then, it is actually a slower track that is most interesting. On Love in the Dark Evans nonchalantly informs us "I love you like a small-town cop/ Yeah, I wanna smash your face in with a rock." However, this intriguingly threatening moment also highlights the problem with Shangri-La. Namely, when Yacht are telling us not to “worry about God up above/ We're gonna live life in love,” it's hard to know how genuine the sentiment is because the delivery on the album generally appears to be sneeringly ironic.

So it's a relief that the melodic pop of the closing title-track brings things to a sweet end with the rather lovely and seemingly heartfelt idea that heaven is wherever you want it to be. If they'd told us that at the beginning of the album, we could have just had fun dancing to their well-crafted tunes rather than wading through the kind of scenester space-age psychobabble that would make Nathan Barley blush.

Review by Bobby Townsend