Interviews

MONTANA SHARP ANNOUNCES DARING NEW SINGLE & VIDEO POWER

After wowing audiences with her breathtaking debut single and video Greenhouse in 2020, Montana Sharp is back with her magnificent follow up single Power – a layered theatrical pop track about the pros and cons of wielding emotional power as a woman in a romantic relationship, released today – May 7. Once again collaborating with Majella Productions (Maddy Jane, Julia Stone, Ecca Vandal) to create a fittingly epic music video to accompany the enormous song Power, this spectacle was inspired by the one and only Queen of Hearts from Alice In Wonderland. And you had better believe the hype, Sharp celebrated the release with a completely sold out show at the Wesley Anne in Melbourne lastnight.

Power is not quite the empowering song you might think it is upon first listen – and this nuance is Sharp’s strength. Evocative of Eurovision stars Kate Miller-Heidke and Montaigne, Power is a tour de force, propelled by cycling piano, impressive percussion and an all-encompassing chorus throughout which sees that powerhouse voice soar to new heights. Speaking on the inspiration behind this intriguing song, Sharp offers some deep insight, saying, “I think I grew up sold on the idea that my life would be magically ‘fixed’ once a man came to rescue me…I’d get into a relationship and expect the guy to ‘save’ me from my problems, and I’d be so disappointed and bitter when they inevitably couldn’t – so I’d cut them off abruptly in order to regain a sense of control. I know people will listen to this song and think it’s empowering, and perhaps it was when I wrote it – but I think the head that wears the crown was very heavy, and there’s a lot more subtext within the story.”

The video clip for Power is nothing short of spectacular. Set in the world of Alice In Wonderland with Sharp cast as the Queen of Hearts, the video is dark, moving, vibrant and more than a little unsettling. It’s the perfect reflection of this complicated song; of reclaiming a power dynamic in a relationship, for better or worse. Reflecting on the making of the clip, Sharp explains, “I’ve worked with Majella before on the video for my song Greenhouse, and I loved how I presented them with a concept and they one-upped my idea by a mile. I had an idea of a superhero WonderWoman vibe, and they took that and came up with the Queen of Hearts/maze idea to represent the story behind the song. Although I don’t have anywhere near that many ex boyfriends – and in my view I’m way too weird to pull off the ‘hot heartbreaker’ vibe, I absolutely loved how they brought the story to life!”

With a background in classical piano since early childhood and studying pop voice at Monash University, this highly trained, highly skilled musician has managed to marry complex chord structures and motifs found in classical music with modern pop songwriting conventions – resulting in utterly brilliant, captivating songs that are so uniquely Montana Sharp. And as a busy session musician by day with her work for others topping AMRAP charts, it’s now time to shine a light on Montana Sharp the solo artist.

Power is out today, May 7.

May 11, 2021 0 comment

Film Interviews Featured

Allied: Marion Cotillard And Robert Zemeckis Interview

written by David Griffiths

New suspense-thriller Allied is one of those films that has risen to notoriety before its release not because of what critics have been saying about the film but because of the rumours and innuendo that have surfaced about its stars – Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. With all of those stories circulating it seems that everybody forgot that for the third time Pitt was starring in a fairly decent war film.

Pitt’s co-star Marion Cotillard says it only took her reading through the script to realise that this was a film that she certainly wanted to make. “When I read the script I wanted to see the movie,” she says grinning. “I thought that it was such a beautiful story. It was a mix of a very entertaining film and very deep emotions and questions about love; it’s really a beautiful, beautiful love story and it has this spirit of ‘old movie’ about it and knowing that it would be directed by a visionary like Robert Zemeckis made the project even more exciting. It is at the same time very entertaining and it talks about what are you choices in an extreme situation like the war, especially when your work is being a spy and you are pretending that you are somebody that you are not. In the beginning of the movie both of us are spies and they don’t know anything about each other and they pretend to be this loving couple and it is going to turn into this very extreme situation that the war creates, so part of the movie is very entertaining and part of it is very serious with all the questioning about choices and all the questioning about love.”

Cotillard also admits that one of the reasons that she was attracted to making Allied was because she was a huge fan of the film’s director, Robert Zemeckis. “He was really part of my desire to be an actress,” she says thoughtfully. “I’ve watched all of his movies, and I knew what he wanted to tell with this story because when we first met, he said ‘I’m not used to telling love stories like this one, this is really new for me.” It was very exciting to see him be so honest and so committed to doing something that he is not used to delivering and he was so good at it, all the questions that we had, all that we shared during the preparation time that we had. We had little more than two weeks where we all sat together, with Brad Pitt, with Robert, with Steven Knight who had written this amazing script, and to have this period of time where we could get to know each other, get to really understand what we wanted to tell with this movie was really fascinating and I was really fascinated by Robert on set because of all the movies that he had directed already and all the special effects that he has been part of creating. He has really changed cinema with what he has done and the movies he has done. So yeah I was in awe a lot and really fascinated by the way he directed this one.”

When it comes to the man himself, Robert Zemeckis, he says it was the characters that really drew him to want to direct Allied. “What I really liked about the project when I first read the screenplay was that this story had these two unbelievably well-written characters. These two characters were very complex and very passionate, that was what I was drawn to. The way that the screenplay was written so elegantly and these characters just really, really jumped right off the page, and that really attracted me as well. I think the question at the heart of the film is one that is universal, a universal question, which is – does love trump all? Is love the key driving emotion in everyone’s life and what happens when you love somebody and the circumstances get very, very complicated and what choices should we make? Those questions are all very universal and have been there all through time, and they are the ones that I think are very dramatic and very interesting. That is one of the things that I like to do and one of the things that I think cinema does very well and that creates tension and suspense. It is interesting in this movie that the tension and suspense come from the emotions of these two characters, and this incredible passion that they have for each other in these circumstances that are very, very complicated and dire. To have that much tension and suspense come from within characters was a wonderful challenge for me and something that I enjoyed doing.”

Zemeckis also seems genuinely excited when he gets to talk about having to recreate the past for the film. “I did a lot of research,” he explains. “It’s one of the things that movies do really well, they can evoke and re-create past periods of time and the way that you do is you do a lot of research and look at a lot of photographs, a lot of footage – a lot of historical footage – and then you talk to people that really know – people like historians – what was going on. We were lucky on our film because the Imperial War Museum were our consultants, so we had great people surrounding us.”

This leads to being asked what was it like working with two of the biggest movie stars of current day – Brad Pitt and Marion Cottilard. “Working with both Brad and Marion was a real thrill because they were both professional and very focused and very hard working. Brad also a very good attention to detail and I was very impressed that he went down so deep and gave such an emotional performance, one that I had never seen him do before, so that was a thrill. Marion is amazing, I mean she is one of the best and greatest actresses that I have ever worked with. She is one of those actresses that can make anything work and she pays such close attention to her character and does an amazing amount of work on her own preparing, so when she comes onto the set, she is ready to deliver and does.”

Allied is in Australian cinemas now.

December 28, 2016 0 comment

Music Interviews Featured

Acolyte Interview

written by David Griffiths

With the brilliant Acolyte about to return to Victoria for some shows Dave G caught up with front woman Morgan-Leigh Brown to learn more about this amazing band and to see what their Vic fans have to look forward to.

You can listen to or downoad our Acolyte interview right here.

November 1, 2017 0 comment

Film Interviews Featured

Dunkirk – Christopher Nolan Interview

written by David Griffiths

Over the years Christopher Nolan has made a name for himself as one of the finest directors of the modern era. He has been nominated for three Oscars over the years and has been the man at the helm of critically acclaimed movies such as Memento, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception and Interstellar.

Now Nolan’s work returns to the big screen in a way that we haven’t seen before. Dunkirk is a movie that critics are saying is not just a film – it’s an experience unto itself – a work of art if you like. Somehow Nolan has taken veteran actors like Tom Hardy and Mark Rylance and mixed them with newcomers like Harry Styles and Fionn Whitehead and the end result is one of the most visually spectacular war films you are ever likely to see.

It doesn’t take long listening to Nolan talk about Dunkirk to realise that this is a film that he was passionate about, due to the subject matter, from the very beginning. “Well as for most British people the story of Dunkirk is something that we grow up with,” he explains. “I can’t even remember the time I was first told about the events of Dunkirk. As a storyteller you are always looking for gaps in the culture or in the cultural record – stories that should have been made into modern films and haven’t been and Dunkirk is certainly one of those. I think it is one of the great stories of human history and it hasn’t been addressed in modern films until now. People of Britain talk about the Dunkirk spirit and I think the residence of the story is different for different people but at the heart is community heroism in the face of adversity. It is not so much a story about individual heroics as it is a story about a community effort. It’s about how as a society, as a group of people we can achieve so much more than we can individually.”

One of the aspects that has wowed critics about Dunkirk is how Nolan has managed to weave the stories of the land, air and sea at Dunkirk together so brilliantly well and he says that he wanted to do that but keep an intensity throughout the film. “I wanted to do that but to have an intensity,” he says. “Dunkirk is a survival story and it is a story about 400,000 men trapped on a beach with the enemy moving in on them from all sides. It is a story about a desperate time, they had to get these guys back home, and I wanted to put the audience on the beach with these guys, and put the audience in the cockpit of a Spitfire battling the enemy in the air and I wanted to put them in a small boat heading over to help these guys. So to do that I decided to tell the story with intensity but with subjectivity and from three different points of view. Over the course of the story they all braid together and you get a more coherent look at the bigger picture of Dunkirk.”

Nolan also goes in depth into how he achieved the feat of shooting this film with very limited CGI. “What we did was try to shoot in camera as much as possible,” he says. “That way we could do as much for real as we could. We want the film to feel tactile and physical and authentic. We want it to play in the present tense so the audience feels like they are there and there is no screen between them and the events of the past. To do that I felt very strongly that we shouldn’t use too much special effects so we tried to do as much in camera as possible by sourcing real planes from the era, real boats and putting the actors into as much closeness of the reality as possible. At least in a way that we could do it that was still safe.”

Part of the idea for making Dunkirk was planted in Nolan’s mind when he made a crossing of the channel himself. “I made the crossing with Emma (Thomas – the producer of Dunkirk) and a friend of mine who owned a small boat,” he explains. “We made the crossing to Dunkirk at about the same time of year that the evacuation had taken place and it was far more difficult than any of us had expected. The channel really did not co-operate, the seas were very rough and it took a very long time, something like nineteen hours, for us to get over there, so the difficulty and the fear of that without people dropping bombs on us, and the feat of that without there being a war zone at the end of the journey, that experience really cemented to me an admiration for the people that took part in the real evacuation. That really was the driving force behind why I wanted to make this film.”

During the filming of Dunkirk there were leaked reports of weather creating havoc for the crew while they filmed at Dunkirk and Nolan was only too happy to tell us all about that. “Filming at the actual location seemed like the best way to get close to the truth,” Nolan says. “When you walk that beach , we walked it a lot, you feel the history there. We had to re-build huge sections of The Mole, which is this big structure that spans out into the sea. There were men essentially trapped on it, and that re-creation of history poses a lot of logistical challenges but ultimately to be able to re-stage these events with historical accuracy felt like an important part of what we were trying to do and gave us a good basis to the making of the film.”

Dunkirk is in Australian cinemas right now.

August 6, 2017 0 comment

Music Interviews Featured

Zakk Wylde Interview

written by David Griffiths

The legendary Zakk Wylde is back with a brand new album with Black Label Society called Grimmest Hits. Dave G recently caught with Wyle and chatted to him about the new album and also about heading back out on the road with Ozzy Osbourne.

Grimmest Hits by Black Label Society is out now.

Listen to “Zakk Wylde Interview” on Spreaker.

March 9, 2018 0 comment

Music Gigs Interviews Featured Rock

Sarah McLeod Interview

written by David Griffiths

This week sees Aussie rocker Sarah McLeod not only release her brand new album Rocky’s Diner but also embark on her national tour. Dave Griffiths caught up with Sarah to chat about the inspirations behind the new album and also the new challenges she has set herself with the tour.

You can listen to or download our Sarah McLeod interview right here.

August 12, 2017 0 comment

Film Interviews Featured

FOR YOUR SINS – Julian Lucas Interview

written by David Griffiths

With a stellar cast that includes Michala Banas, Ryan Shelton, Dave Lawson, Tegan Higginbotham and Sam Watkins one of the most interesting comedies to screen at this year’s Sti Kilda Film Festival is For Your Sins. Dave G catches up with director Julian Lucas to see how this great little comedy came together.

Listen to “For Your Sins – Julian Lucas Interview” on Spreaker.

May 18, 2018 0 comment

Interviews Blues

Cameron Holmes and the Blues Dudes

written by Peter Sutton

Cam from “Cameron Holmes and The Blues Dudes” was proud of what the band has achieved.He can be. The unique sound of the band has been described as “Blues with a Melbourne twist.”
And yes, I can hear that unique sound we sometimes tag special bands, that produce a blend that Melbournians see as their own.
I had been sent a copy of their new single “Warhorse,” which I might best describe as “hardcore blues.” I was not far off the mark.
“Our music is a total melting pot of styles,’ Cam explains.”Our drummer comes from Spook The Banshee (a metal band),the bass player has played a lot of stoner rock, Cam has done everything “from classical to heaqvier stuff which you could call Prog,” the Sax player can play everything and the harmonica player who has played blues and folk his whole life.”
Cam is taking a three prong approach to the music. The tracks will be individual enough to be placed on Spotify (or similar)and the Band will be producing an Ep.
“People consume music in a different way. People tend not to listen to an album from end to end now.
Cam likes to sit back, relax and hopefully the mood will come to write a song. “I like to ‘free write,’ which is a technique that a lot of spiritualists use. I don’t know where it comes from, but I write general themes and then I fill it out from there.”
I wanted to look at the “Melbourne Edge,” with the music of “Cameron Holmes and the Blues Dudes.”
“Warhorse” has a dark edge to it. “It’s not something we set out to create, it’s something that happened with the way that we write. You can’t put our music into any particular category and that’s something that I really like about it.By drawing from a lot of different genres and pulling a lot of different styles together, we think we have come up with something unique.”
Another track “Hell” is written for lap steel guitar. “It has the sax backing up the bottom end. It’s a different track. Very us.”
And “Fourteen?”
“Is as close to trad blues as we get. It’s about writing a song about your girl friend, but your girlfriend is Amphetamine.It’s because who we are and how we write that we can take it to darker places.”
“In my ideal world, we could do something like Pink Floyd could did in ‘The Wall”. Create a flow, from end to end and has a story. People don’t consume music like that any more, but we try and do that in our live shows.

November 5, 2016 0 comment

Music Interviews Featured

Quinn Sullivan Interview

written by David Griffiths

Teenager Quinn Sullivan is considered one of the best blues musicians in the world and is about to drop his brand new album Midnight Highway. Dave Griffiths chatted to Quinn about how he became such a talented musician at such an early age, what it has been like to meet some of his musical idols and what we can expect to hear on Midnight Highway.

You can listen to or download our Quinn Sullivan interview right here.

March 21, 2017 0 comment

Music Interviews Featured

Palmerslum Interview

written by David Griffiths

Melbourne (via Darwin) band Palmerslum are wowing listeners with their brand new EP Bloodhounds. Dave Griffiths caught up with the band to chat about their rise in Darwin and of course the brand new EP.

You can listen to or download our Palmerslum interview right here.

June 8, 2017 0 comment

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