mixtape // december Posted by Helena

Avicii - The Days

Nicki Minaj feat. Skylar Grey - Bed of Lies

Calvin Harris feat. John Legend - Blame

Ella Eyre - Comeback

Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk

Vance Joy - Riptide

One Direction - Where Do Broken Hearts Go?

Lorde - Flicker (Kanye West Rework)

Brooke Fraser - Kings and Queens

Cage the Elephant - Cigarette Daydreams

Olly Murs feat. Travie McCoy - Wrapped Up

Troye Sivan - Happy Little Pill

Neon Jungle - Louder

The 1975 - Medicine

Taylor Swift - New Romantics

Listen on Spotify (minus the Taylor Swift song because she removed all her music.)

mixtape // september Posted by Helena

I'm listening to so much girl pop at the moment and it's the most fun to rock out to in my car while on the highway. If you ever see someone singing overly enthusiastically while eating a piece of toast and sipping tea, that could very well be me.

I've also included two of Many Things' songs because they're great and Mikey's amazing and Hayley from The Jezabels sang vocals on Chains and it's heartbreaking beautiful. I'm also listening to One Direction's new free song Fireproof on repeat (not available on Spotify though). I've read a lot of people saying it's like The Beach Boys and John Mayer, but all I hear is Fleetwood Mac!

listen on spotify: fourzerofive - 2014 september

Allday - You Always Know the DJ
Angus & Julia Stone - Heart Beats Slow
Charli XCX - Boom Clap
Ella Henderson - Ghost
G.R.L. - Ugly Heart
Iggy Azaela feat. Charli XCX - Fancy
Katy Perry - This Is How We Do
Many Things - Chains
Many Things - Dear One
Neon Jungle - Louder
Nicky Night Time - Everybody Together
NONONO - Pumpin Blood (Belarbi Remix)
Northeast Party House - The Haunted
One Direction - Fireproof
Rizzle Kicks - Tell Her
RÜFÜS - Sundream
Savoir Adore - Dreamers
Taylor Swift - Shake It Off

two door cinema club in new york Posted by Helena

Dream gig! Two Door Cinema Club performing in Central Park. I've seen them live in my three favourite cities - Melbourne, London and New York, and I got to see them with two of my best friends. Special memories!

mixtape // april Posted by Helena

I've definitely not been giving my little corner of the internet as much love as I should, so I'm going to start a monthly playlist. Given that my musical taste doesn't really change much from month to month, this is going to be a challenge! It will also make me look for new music because I won't let myself share the same songs from the month before. Listen on Spotify here.

There's quite a lot of artists who have been around for a while, but I've only just discovered them recently. I am completely obsessed with Ed Sheeran's new song though. Play SING from the rooftops!!

music // laneway festival 2014 Posted by Helena

Laaanewaaay! Well, it was a darn tootin' boiling hot in Melbourne. We arrived just after lunch to make sure we didn't have to stand around in the heat for too long, but it was still a case of sweating-while-standing-still unless you were in the shade. Thank goodness that Melbourne heat goes away when the sun sets. As I predicted, I bumped into so many people I knew and got to see friends perform - yay!

My housemate missed out on a ticket before it sold out, so we were on a hunt to find her one. At the eleventh hour (almost literally since it was about 10pm the night before), I put one last post on Facebook to see if anyone was selling one, and got a message from a friend in London who happened to be touring with Savages and they had a spare guestlist spot! Needless to say I made her pay for my food and drinks alllllll day!

So we saw Savages, Cloud Control, Chvrches (well I saw a couple of songs before going to Cloudies' signing to catchup because I couldn't get in touch since everyone's phones didn't have reception), Haim, Lorde and The Jezabels. I was so stoked that none of the artists I wanted to see clashed. I would have liked to see Vance Joy as well, but I wasn't that committed.

My friends also did an hour DJ set at the official after party, and the super nice Laneway driver guy picked us up, then said we were going to be doing a swapsie - we'd be getting out and Haim would be getting in. My eyes nearly bugged out of my head and I had to restrain myself from asking for a photo. So I got out of the car to have Baby Haim smiling at me. Mini swoon.

being an extra // british india Posted by Helena

Last month I was an extra on British India's latest video clip for Blinded. While one without much experience would think it's quite glamourous, in actuality it's quite exhausting! We were required to dance vigorously to the entirety of the song and then do a lot of screaming. The storyline was a band playing at a prom and then they start going crazy, spit lots of blood and the real British India come out of their bodies. The band wanted to create a really C-grade horror video and I think it turned out really awesome!

So while we started the day like this...



We ended up more like this about 4 hours in...

music // wilderness festival Posted by Helena

One of the best festivals I've ever been to was Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire last year. It was big enough to feel like a festival, but small enough to feel friendly, with some wicked food and artists. I also got to go with some of the best peeps I know! 

cloud control // on tour in hobart Posted by Helena

So... I kinda went on tour for 24 hours. Half of the reason I went to Hobart was to see my friends play another gig and hang out with them some more. I texted Laura, one of our friends back in London, with some silly snaps of us and she said, "Helena, are you on tour?!" I guess I was! Not unlike when I was on tour for 24 hours with Laura's band Tigercats in Barcelona. 24 hours is my tour limit. I'd had very minimal sleep the night before I flew to Hobart and then another night of minimal sleep since we were up until 4am.

Cloud Control's second album Dream Cave is out now, and they're playing at Laneway Festival next year!

cloud control // david young Posted by Helena

Once again I've neglected my little corner of the www. Just running in to say that my friend Dave made his directorial debut for our friends' latest single and I'm super dooper proud of him.

Dave, Al, Ulrich and some other peeps went to Iceland for a few days to film it. Al character is a bit of a vagabond who wanders around trying to get to his destination in some really spectacular scenery.

May I present SCAR by CLOUD CONTROL, directed by DAVID YOUNG. Wahoo!

music // cloud control Posted by Helena

Photos by Ulrich.

Hello! I have a buttload of super talented friends and my pals in Cloud Control have just released Dojo Rising, the first single from their second album Dream Cave (or Dreamy Dave Cave as I'll be calling it. Shoutout to Dave if you ever read this!). They just played a sold out show at the Sydney Opera House and they're coming to Melbourne this week - yippie!

I love talking to friends about their jobs - especially if they're drastically different from mine. I read this interview with Al this morning and I thought it was really interesting because he's talking about his job for his job, which I guess is a side I wouldn't usually see. Here's some cool bits...

You recorded the vocals in a cave, or quarry is that correct? 

I was told I can’t reveal the name of the album or any of the song titles [just yet] which would help the story make more sense. But, yeah we recorded some stuff in a cave, it’s related to one of the songs mainly, the album has some cave themes.

So it’s just one song in this quarry or cave, is that right? 

One song plus a bunch of other random stuff on the album, it’s in a few songs actually. We only did the vocals for one song in a cave because the song is kind of about being in a cave. I wrote it in the rehearsal studio. I was in there by myself and I’d been drinking some whiskey. I tried to write the song that Roy Orbison would write if he was trapped in a cave for like thirty years and was just going crazy. He had a lot of suffering in his life anyway, but [I wanted] this to be as if he’d actually gone insane.

You mentioned that the title of the album would help it make more sense, does that mean that there’s a theme – is it a concept album? 

It’s totally not. The way the album was written, we were just writing separate songs; there was no agenda. I felt that on Bliss Release, even though it was like that, the songs did hold together really well, they all felt like they had the same ideas in them, I was hoping this time around we could do something similar. We’ve come up with ideas of how to link them all together. I think the name Bliss Release really tied everything together and I think this time around we’ve tried to do the same thing – to have an idea for the album that’s like a framework that all the songs can just fit into, like its building something together rather than just being a compilation.

I know this is an obvious question but do you feel pressure with this album, because your first album was so well received and you did really well for a young band? 

Sometimes I’m worried about it but I’ve got a lot of faith in this new album. I’m not that worried. Whether or not people like it, I think we’re all feeling pretty proud of it. I think that’s all you can do, try and make something you like and put it in the world – maybe people will like it, maybe you can change a couple of perspectives. I think we’ve been really true to ourselves and done something that’s really honest and just a cool piece of art.

Did you meet Rivers Cuomo?

Yeah, he was really, really nice – really lovely. He’s kind of a reserved little guy; I thought he was really cute. He’s exactly what you’d imagine from his songs and everything. I don’t know if he’s shy but he seemed like it. He did kick a soccer ball around backstage with shin pads on before the show and stuff like that. What was cool about Weezer was how down to earth their whole show is. You tour with some big bands and they’ll have a tonne of crew and production and stuff. Whereas Weezer play one guitar for the whole show, they’re just a straight up band – they get up there they play the songs. It could be at Oxford Art Factory and they’d have the same setup, they’re just doing it in fucking stadiums or arenas.

How excited are you to be back home for Vivid? 

Man I love being back. I feel like we’ve got a home over here and we’ve got friends and everything but it’s like having two homes. When we’re here I really miss Australia and when we’re in Australia I miss London.

I'm the same... When I'm in Australia I miss London and when I was in London I missed Australia. Sigh. I'd also like to put in a vote for Rivers being a very cute man. I met him for about 30 seconds and we discussed the weather. Seriously. How boring.