What’s more important than snags, cricket, beer, pavlova, facepaint or sunshine (of which there is a definite lack of in Sydney) on Australia Day?  The music. If you’re not tuning into the triple Hottest 100 tomorrow, or if you need some tunes to carry you even further into the day/ night, we’ve devised an awesome ’straya day playlist to get  you patriotic about our great Aussie music catalogue. The list includes Silverchair, Ratcat, INXS, Cold Chisel, Icehouse, Men At Work (without saying), Powderfinger, AC/DC and even Craig Machlachlan…. click here or below to play.

Latitude is a music and arts festival that takes place near the east coast of England in Suffolk. Now in its fifth year, Latitude presents a popular yet relatively niche collection of established artists from a very broad and respected spectrum.

I’m currently on a 100% attendance rate and it’s been a real pleasure seeing it mature into the celebration it has become. Unfortunately my veteran status didn’t stop me from taking every wrong turn on the way there, thus turning a three hour trip into a four hour slog.

I digress. Once I had exposed the lying wench within the satnav, I spent a glorious few days in almost unprecedented thirty degree sunshine and in the company of (among very many others) – Empire Of The Sun, Laura Marling, Corinne Bailey Rae, Richard Hawley, Wild Beasts, Chief, Hockey, Yeasayer and a fresh-out-of-retirement Belle And Sebastian.

Empire Of The Sun - Latitude 2010

Check out these photos from a glorious festival weekend, and have a look at the official site to see more of Latitude.

Image credit: John Williams Photography.co.uk

Well, the beautiful beautiful thing that is Glastonbury Festival is over for another year. The sun was uncharacteristically, um… out, and the incredible line-up were out in full force celebrating the UK festival’s 40th birthday!

image courtesy of Brothers Cider

Our fellow In Sounder Sarah attended, so we’ll hopefully have a full Glasto report coming from her soon (unless we’ve lost her to the stone circle and herbal highs tent). Stay tuned!

In the meantime, please check these Gorillaz and Empire of the Sun clips because they are utterly epic! Damon Is God, ya dig?

Snoop & the band absolutley kiiiiiilling Clint Eastwood

Lou Reed! Lou Reed! Lou Reed!

The legendary Mark E. Smith giving Damon a soundgasm

Empire of the Sun’s We Are The People (who rule the muddy fields of Glastonbury)
PS, check out this interview with Emperor Luke Steele on Dots & Dashes!

Peace, love & mud that smells very, very wrong!

Happy Naughty 40 to our beloved Glasto!

Stroll down Oxford St in London this month and you’ll be bombarded with an array of brilliant dioramas in honour of the British music festival season… The windows of the iconic Selfridges dept store are displaying a series of ten song-title inspired dioramas called “Sounds of the Mind” – and Empire of the Sun’s Walking On A Dream is one of them!

The window exhibition is showing now and will be up for 6 weeks with 125,000 people walking past them each day. Check out the pics below – the two lions kinda remind me of the terrifying Sphinx Gate in The Neverending Story!

If you guess the song titles of all the window displays, you can win £500 to spend at selfridges.com, but we can give you a headstart by telling you that other artist involved are Hot Chip, Florence and the Machine, Dizzee Rascal, The XX, Marina and the Diamonds, The Drums, The Big Pink, Paloma Faith and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

So… who can book us on cheap flights to the UK?

If you’ve not heard today’s incredible 10th anniversary Splendour In the Grass lineup, have you not a computer / radio / phone / ears / eyes????

OK so camping tickets are $450 (ouch), but we’ve done the math & it turns that makes each set $5.55… Five and half bucks to heard the new LCD album live!? The full lineup is below, with our favourite acts on the LHS. (Full disclosure, they’re all ours!)

In your pre-Splendour research mode, we’re willing to help you out even further by giving you:

• Laura Marling Ltd Edn I Speak Because I Can CD/DVD with 5 free downloads, postcard artwork, and lyrics booklet
• Jonsi blockmounted poster featuring Go album art
• Operator Please signed 7″ vinyl of Logic / Logic (Dolby Anol Remix)
• Ben Harper & Relentless7 signed blockmounted poster featuring White Lies… art
• Gorillaz limited edition Plastic Beach CD/DVD
• Hot Chip One Life Stand double gatefold vinyl
• Goldfrapp Headfirst collector’s edition cassette

Just head to our sister store at theinsong.com/splendour, buy any of the singles or albums to receive competition details, and tell us in 25 words or less how you plan to warm up for Splendour.

Over the last several months, the streets of Sydney have been graced by a site for sore eyes…

Each morning the stunning Chariot of the Sun greeted us as we entered our HQ – hibernating in our office carpark by night, radiating mystical energy like an otherworldly spacecraft locked away in the dark, waiting to be unleashed upon the roads of Australia by day. And unleashed it was… see the Chariot of the Sun visiting Australia’s great icons – the Gold Coast, Byron Bay, Bondi Beach, and the Harbour Bridge.

Today therefore is a bittersweet day for us, to see the Chariot find a new home down south in Caroline Springs, Victoria. Its new owner Mario Chrisanthou must now take the Chariot’s reigns and tame the beast… Godspeed Mario, Godspeed!

Here are the Chariot’s final moments at EMI HQ. Farewell oh Chariot of the Sun, we will miss your pounding subwoofers, skull feature door-locks, extremely wide turning circles, and the comforting growl of your engine beneath our feet as you cocooned us in your warm embrace.

Oh Chariot, we salute you.