Big Day Out Sideshows

All right hipsters, it's time - clear your schedule, stock up on your Berocca and get your beauty sleep now, because you're going to need it when the Big Day Out sideshow carnival rolls into town. In 2010 Lees & West are bringing you the biggest few weeks on the music calendar and one hell of a sideshow party. The Big Day Out shows are sold out across the country. But now we have more opportunities to party! With night after night of thunderous metal, sassy pop, freak-folk, hip-hop and dance, you better be prepared. Can you handle the pace?

GROOVE ARMADA
with SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO DJs

Picture yourself, arms in the air, jumping in unison: you're Superstylin'. Picture yourself, swaying as a trombone wails: you're At the River. Now picture yourself in a state of musical euphoria... You're on the dance floor and GROOVE ARMADA have taken over. Brit beat masters Andy Cato and Tom Findlay know how to put on a party. And they'll be doing just that Down Under this summer, previewing songs from their forthcoming, harder-edged album Black Light. With their new frontwoman Saint Saviour getting rave reviews, one of the greatest live dance music shows ever to grace a stage just got even better. Don't miss GROOVE ARMADA in their element this summer.

"Andy Cato and Tom Findlay know how to put on a party... GROOVE ARMADA reaffirm their place as live act supreme." (Virtual Festivals, July 2008)

Australia will let its freak-folk flag fly this summer with DEVENDRA BANHART. The people's troubadour came to prominence with the cosmic folk and ethereal vibrato of his 2005 breakthrough, Cripple Crow. In 2009 came his sixth album, What Will We Be, which Rolling Stone calls "the best he's ever made". In concert, this charming quirk of nature drifts from hushed to frantic, from folk to surf to reggae to heavy psychedelic rock. Call it whatever you like - psych-folk, avant-folk - it's really "just DEVENDRA BANHART, playing music and enjoying himself" (BBC). Listen to DEVENDRA BANHART play music and you'll enjoy yourself too.

"A born original, to whom inspiration comes so often and so fast and so hard, that every avenue has to be explored." (The Fader, October 2009)

LILY ALLEN (ON SALE NOW!)
with DIZZEE RASCAL + CALVIN HARRIS + MIAMI HORROR

She's brash, she's bold, she's magnificently mouthy, she's the one and only LILY ALLEN and she's bound to be the talk of the summer. A rebellious national treasure in her British homeland, a style icon and ‘face of Chanel', ALLEN has been adopted Down Under too, her second album It's Not Me, It's You owning the charts in 2009 and going three-times platinum along the way. She mixes sunshine with sass, social commentary with sardonic two-fingered salutes. She's a pop queen for the 21st century, and she's still not turned 25.

"ALLEN's set is a stunning lesson on how to grow up in public. Songs from It's Not Me, It's You are like diary entries from the front line of cause celeb. These spark nicely with the twenty-something-in-crisis lyrical bent of older tunes like Everything's Just Wonderful... ALLEN is irresistible." (thelondonpaper, July 2009)

Strap yourself in, hold on, and feel free to scream. Few musical experiences match the roller coaster ride that is THE MARS VOLTA, and in 2010, they'll loop the loop in Australia for the fourth time. You love THE MARS VOLTA? Here're three last chances to feel the thrill when they will play for over two awe inspiring hours at side shows in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. For the past eight years, composer and guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala have followed their muse in experimental, boundary-breaking and virtuoso directions. Their fifth album, Octahedron, is the latest step in the evolution of one of the most exotic rock bands on the planet. THE MARS VOLTA's journey continues January 2010.

"Some of the most experimental, technically mind-blowing and original music being released today. What THE MARS VOLTA do at a show is more than just play songs... the band takes you on a journey that is all at once uplifting, wild, shameless and self-indulgent." (Beat, July 2008)

BIG DAY OUT dares you to look into the eyes of the band that's changing the face of metal: MASTODON. Four Southern gents from Atlanta, Georgia, MASTODON have spent 10 years melding brains with brawn, technical proficiency with sheer ass-kicking thunder. They have become, so says Rolling Stone, nothing less than "the most important new band in metal". Armed with their fourth album Crack the Skye, MASTODON will make the earth rumble.

"They awed the underground with 2004's massive, Moby Dick-themed Leviathan; in 2006, they grabbed the crown with the brutally psychedelic Blood Mountain. It established them as a rare beast: a band respected by diehards for technical bonafides but also by indie rockers for jump-cutting conceptualism. MASTODON are a full-on metal band for people who think they're too cool to like metal." (Rolling Stone, March 2009)

CALVIN HARRIS

You might be ready for the weekend, but are you ready for CALVIN HARRIS this summer? The Scottish super-producer/DJ/chart-topping pop star is a one-man hit-making machine: I'm Not Alone, Acceptable in the '80s, The Girls, Ready for the Weekend and that smash Dizzee Rascal collaboration, Dance Wiv Me. On stage, that big bundle of club and radio hits become hands-in-the-air anthems, with HARRIS fronting a live band that he calls "even more rocking than the tunes", while he's out front proving geeky bedroom musos can be rock stars too. Well, at least one of them can. He's in demand with everyone, everywhere, from pop starlets wanting his production skills to dancefloors demanding his DJ sets. But there's only one place he'll be this summer. People get ready: you don't wanna miss CALVIN HARRIS.

"The tunes punch like Tyson as they come out of your speakers... HARRIS has expertly distilled classic elements of club music into a sugar-rush injection." (The Mercury, August 2009)