Ooft. We really really like Claudio, a lot – indescribable vibes emit from this talented soul and although she is now a woman of the world, she originally hails from Perth.

Okay so she’s playing an exclusive intimate gig tonight at an undisclosed location, we just might have some limited edition tickets, we might not..

Give us an email on brooke@hipflaskapp.com if you’re interested – you should be.

In the meantime…

Trip Bass from hipflask on Vimeo.

Trip Loops from hipflask on Vimeo.

Trip Solo from hipflask on Vimeo.

Ah yeah.

You know we love Perth, it’s great, kinda small, but great. It is a place of countless opportunities for those who search for them, but sometimes because of the strong relationship’s already established it can be hard to ‘break the barrier’ and get some recognition.

Anyway we met with up Jasmine – a girl who is absolutely slaying it!
At only 18 years of age (while juggling a part time job and full-time study) she is launching her first print publication, ‘The Ink Grid‘ on the 16th of April at The (ever-beloved) Bird.

Her goals in putting this project together included, giving ‘support and coverage’ to creatives that may not have that leg up in the way of networks – which personally I think is great. She is providing a platform for the youth, the up-and-comings and the one’s that like to do things a little differently – lets showcase this homegrown talent.

Access the Alternative.

You may remember a little while back, we met with the crew behind ‘31 Days In‘ – they do a drawing for everyday they’re in a foreign location around the world. We LOVE these little snapshots of society so we kept in touch and turns out they’re just across the ditch in NZ and they’re doing some good things ?…

So you’re back in Wellington! We love NZ, what are some of your favourite things about NZ?
Loads! Pies, fish and chips, the beautiful landscapes, family, wind. NZ has fewer sharks than WA, so that’s pretty neat. And Wellington has been really good to us so far – Summer lasted a lot longer than we expected.

This ‘31 Days In’ is particularly different to the last… you have local musicians contributing tracks with each picture – how did this collaboration come to exist and why?
Music is a huge part of what makes Wellington such a great little city – the locals are a creative bunch, and it seems like almost everyone is involved in music production (or can bang out a tune on a ukulele). We want to start getting more involved with local creatives and communities during the 31 days travel series, adding new layers to the project in each destination, so we thought music was the way to go here. The idea was to have songs and paintings that worked together to capture the essence of Wellington: something winsome for a trip on the cute cable car; something spirited for the city’s distinct (and drafty) wooden houses; and something moody on the inevitable day that the wind destroys everyone’s umbrellas.

We sent out a few emails to our favourite Wellington musos and were totally amazed at the response — 31 awesome musicians and bands were keen to contribute a track. Contributions range from internationally acclaimed acts to underground heroes and bedroom songwriters, including massive songs from one of New Zealand’s finest labels LOOP Recordings Aot(ear)oa.

A big reason why the musicians have been keen to be involved is that all proceeds from the sale of those tracks (and a portion of art sales) go to a local charity organisation, Kaibosh. Huge shout-out to the generous musicians involved: Andrew Laking, Glass Vaults, A Girl Named Mo, Maple Syrup, Shuedet, Wellington Sea Shanty Society, Israel Starr Musiq, Fraser Ross, The Polly Johnson Set, Jet Jaguar aka Michael Upton, Finn Johannsen, Chris Tse, Daniel McClelland, Chambres, yosh, Echo Beach, LOST BiRD, Étienne de Silhouette, Cosimo, Carlos Navae, Terror Of The Deep, Kat McKenzie, Towers, Rosy Tin Teacaddy, Roseneath Centennial Ragtime Band of Wellington NZ, Full Moon Fiasco, French for Rabbits, Timothy Blackman, Lake South, Nadia Reid, Electric Wire Hustle and The Andy Gibson Project.

What is Kaibosh?
Kaibosh (www.kaibosh.org) is a food rescue service that works with local businesses to reduce food waste by collecting, sorting and then donating surplus food to those in the community who need it most. This includes food banks, refuges, children’s homes and the like. Kaibosh is the best example we have ever seen of identifying an issue and working logically to solve it – we hope this kind of thing will take off everywhere.

People can get involved by volunteering their time (which is so popular that there is a waiting list!) or becoming ‘Food Rescue Heroes’, where a monthly donation ensures that excess food continues to get to the right people. If you sign up, you also score some goodies from cool local businesses like People’s Coffee (http://peoplescoffee.co.nz), Six Barrel Soda (www.sixbarrelsoda.co.nz) and the Wellington Chocolate Factory (www.wcf.co.nz).

Kaibosh have some exciting fundraisers coming up really soon, like ‘Make a Meal in May’ where you invite your friends around, cook up a dinner on the cheap and then donate the money you would have spent going out for dinner to Kaibosh. We’re looking forward to inviting round some mates to enjoy a meal — it’s super easy and a nice way to hang out with your buddies while also giving back to the community.

How can we help?
Buy our CD! Tracks can be individually downloaded right now, and pre-orders for the 31 days in Wellington album (to be released very soon) can be made at https://31daysin.bandcamp.com.

All proceeds go to Kaibosh, so it’s as easy as buying a CD and listening to some cool tunes. Purchasing one CD is equivalent to rescuing 11 kilos of food and providing 33 meals to those who need it most.

As well as the artists featured, what other tunes have you been playing along this trip?
Zoe has had Jungle’s Busy Earnin’ on repeat for weeks now, and Tim was kept alive throughout March only with coffee and techno.
Man I love this album too!

Any funny stories/disasters happening along the way?
We lost the original painting of Day 10: City Lights. Twice. It was a minor disaster, solved first by downing a few beers and then hitting up the streets to look for it. Turned out that it sat in a post office for two weeks before we remembered it was there, and then the second time it went missing we found it in a mysterious unknown compartment under the back seat of the car.

Other highlights include getting soaked by bellyflopping teenagers hurling themselves off the wharf, admiring some incredible mullets at the Coastella music festival up the Kapiti coast, and having a print presented to Jurassic Park’s Dr Alan Grant.

Love ya work. 

By Hannah Docherty

So the Easter long weekend has meant we have been reduced to mere piles of chocolate/hot x buns wrapped in skin, meaning that although the events are still going down, alas our body weight is not.

Lucky we can ease you back into the social scene with some boutique film screenings, your date will be that impressed the pot belly wont even be a thing – promise.

The much-loved Alliance Francaise French Film Festival is back, and in Perth for 2 more weeks. Polish off your French & head down to Luna on SX, Windsor or Cinema Paradiso, with 48 award-winning French films circulating this is not one to be missed!
Our top picks include: Dheepan, a powerful drama about a family fleeing from Sri Lanka, Blind Date, a quirky romantic comedy about two unlikely neighbours and the gripping thriller Taj Mahal, based on true events of a terrorist attack in Mumbai. Closing night will include a screening of what has been called the greatest french film produced – Contempt starring the gorgeous crush-worthy Bridgette Bardot ❤
More info screening times here

If French films aren’t your thing (they should be) the awe-inspiring ‘Sherpa: Trouble on Everest’ documentary, presenting the extraordinary pressures and politics of climbing the mountain from the Sherpa point of view is screening on Saturday and Sunday at Luna Outdoor Cinema in Leedy, while Sunday arvo will give you the opportunity to catch ‘The Room,’ a bizarre and strange film that has gained a cult following here in Perth.
Head down early to grab a bean bag & beer before the show starts – hosted by Monkey Collective‘s James Palm.

PIAF Lotterywest Film Festival is nearly at an end, so be sure to check out an international film at Somerville/ECU Joondalup pines if you haven’t already! This weekend you have a choice between ‘A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting Existence‘ a ‘ quietly absurd, deadpan comic of delights’ hailing from Sweden or ‘Our Little Sister,’ a subtle family drama with an uplifting Japanese flavour.

So pretty much something to please all tastes- go on, It’d be rude not to!

It’s Saturday night, smack bang in the middle of the long weekend so pop your boots and coat on and head to Rosie tonight (26th March) and check out locals The Wheelers of Oz do their thing along side Dougal’s Casino, Regular Boys and Drage Lion.

Questions asked, Questions answered.

Here’s some light reading for you to devour on your journey.

Alex and Sam… you’ve been making music for a while together how did you guys meet?
(SAM) We met through family friends when we were young kids. It was one of those situations when you go to your parents friends house and you have to hang out with the kids at the dinner party. As we got older we started getting into the same kind of things and naturally became best mates.

So there’s 7 of you in total and most of you are in other bands, how do you figure out logistics?
It can be pretty hard to get everyone together for rehearsals sometimes but we always find a time to make it happen. Alex and I live together and have a studio in our house so we are always recording new demos. When we get together with the whole band we show them the parts and everyone puts a little bit of their flavour on top. 

The album you released late last year is titled Revivalised – what does that mean/how did you come up with it?
The first album is a mix of all our influences, so in a way we were reviving anything from the past that influenced our process, perhaps it was music or some other everyday shit.

Your songs have been described as cinematic and other writers have noted your avant gardè influence, was this intentional? Do you have an idea of how you want things to sound beforehand or is it a gradual improvised process?The Avant Gardè thing started as a bit of a joke. I studied a bit of film making and film history in my degree at uni and wrote “Avant Gardè Cinema” in our influences section on good old Facebook while i was in a bit of a film phase. I guess people read that and latched on to it whenever they asked us about our music. It’s definitely a big influence when it comes to the idea of creating something but not so much an influence to the sound of our music.
We have certain style of music that we work towards. We are able to experiment a lot and the songs continuously change as we work on them in the studio and with the band, but the original idea is always in there somewhere.

I love that concept of the photo booklet you included with some copies of the album, why did you make the decision to do this and how did you choose the images?
I love taking pictures just as much as making music and really wanted to tie the two together somehow. I was shooting heaps of photos of feet around the time that we were making the album. I don’t know why haha. Every time I processed a roll of film I noticed a had a bunch of feet photos. Lots of them were of band members so Alex and I thought they would fit paired with photos of some gear that we used on the album.  

What is your favourite track you’ve recorded and why?
A new one that we just recorded. It doesn’t have a name yet.

What’re you vibing on right now? Give us some tunes you would recommend checking out.
I always come back to Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures, I go through phases of spinning it non stop. Some other stuff to entice the ears –
Fabio Viscogliosi – il nostro caro angelo
Morgan Delt – Morgan Delt
Foxygen – Bowling Trophies
The Jim Mitchells – Planet Absorbed
Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.

Besides the gig, what can we expect up next?
We are going to head over east and play some shows in the next few months. We are also in the process of putting together another album which will be out later in the year.

If you’re reading this at a later date, you know where to look for their future gigs, dive into those links in the meantime.

Yep.