Brad Strut spent the past weekend performing at the Edinburgh Festival in a UK v Oz soundclash with geezers Mark B (producer for Delta’s The Lostralian, but you knew that) and MC Honeybrown. We’re still waiting to hear the results of this global face-off, but in the meantime, the dates for Brad’s long rumoured Australian tour have been revealed. Taking in 12 dates across this great sunburnt country, the list of support acts Strut is bringing with him is almost as exciting as the news that the man himself is touring.

In a neat twist, the Brisbane show gets supports from Melbourne in the form of Hospice Crew/Broken Tooth Entertainment chiefs Ciecmate and New Sense and the undercard for the Melbourne show is Brisbane’s finest: Lazy Grey with Jake and DJ DCE.

Twelve dates of rawness:

Saturday 22nd September @ National Hotel, GEELONG ft TREM with guests FATTY PHEW ft SPIT – $15 on the door.
Sunday 30th September (Labor Day Long Weekend) @ Colonel Light Hotel, ADELAIDE with DAMO ft WORDS, CLANDESTIEN (WA), DJ KANSEL ft BVA, PATTI & CONSEPS, 2BIZ, K21, EVOLVE & PURPOSE – Earlybird tickets $20+bf from Clinic 116 or www.venuetix.com.au.
Friday 5th October @ Cape York Hotel, CAIRNS with BUTTAHS THE WORDSMITH, DJ MORPHIX – $20 on the door.
Saturday 6th October @ Exchange Hotel, TOWNSVILLE with THE NORTH WARD (SOLDIERS HILL + SUGAR HEIGHTS), TIPPETT STREET HOUNDS – $15 on the door.
Friday 12th October @ Heat Nightclub, PERTH with CLANDESTIEN, HUNTER, WOLVERINE, DJs ROB SHAKER & DEFYRE. Hosted by HUNTER – $25 from 78 Records, The Butcher Shop and Mill Records, $30 on the door.
Friday 19th October @ The Venue, CANBERRA with DOUBLE & BIG LU. Hosted by SHREKK & TOAD – $20+bf pre-sale through nurcharecords.com, $24 on the door.
Saturday 20th October @ Bar Broadway, SYDNEY with SCOTT BURNS, OVERPROOF, DOUBLE & BIG LU, DJ OLOGY. Hosted by SHREKK & RIVALS – $22+bf pre-sale through nurcharecords.com, $25 on the door.
Friday 26th October @ Hotel Great Northern, BYRON BAY with CIECMATE & NEWSENSE (HOSPICE CREW, VIC), BILLY BUNKS (VIC), STRICKNINE, KINGSKONEKTED, VERB ILL & L FLOWS, DJ BOE- $17+bf from Hotel Great Northern, www.byronbayentertainment.com; www.oztix.com.au; Music Bizarre Lismore; ABC Centre Balline 02 6686 2436.
Saturday 27th October – The Waterloo Hotel, BRISBANE with CIECMATE & NEWSENSE (HOSPICE CREW, VIC), BILLY BUNKS (VIC), STRICKNINE, KINGSKONEKTED, VERB ILL & L FLOWS, DJ BOE – $20+bf from Rockinghorse, Skinny’s, Butterbeats, Sunflower Music, Moshpit or www.oztix.com.au.
Saturday 3rd November @ The Western Port, PHILLIP ISLAND ft TREM with guests TRANQUIL ARTILLERY – $15 on the door.
Friday 9th November @ The Espy, MELBOURNE ft TREM & BOB BALANS, with guests LAZY GREY ft JAKE BIZ & DJ DCE (QLD) and more – $15+bf from This Is It and Obese Records.
Saturday 10th November @ Brisbane Hotel, HOBART with MATTY B (WA), EPC, HEADS OF STATE – $15 from Ruffcut Records.

Soulmate Records’ inaugural release, Boltz’ The Wishlist, hits stores next weekend. With a spate of worthy debut solo artist albums in the past month (see also Vents’ Hard To Kill and Damo’s D-Classified Files), you might be having trouble deciding where to spend your hard-earned.

To help you decide we have, for a very limited time, an exclusive download of the track “Spitfire”, as featured in Acclaim Magazine’s quotable column “Sweet Sixteen” this month. The Mules-produced track features a sample you may recognise from last year’s comeback record from a group of Aussie pioneers, but flipped differently and embedded in a thick, funky track that really lets Boltz, aka Bobby Rocketz, get busy with his. Additional production on the album comes from Styalz Fuego, Canada’s Muneshine, Weapon X, Trials of Funkoars and M-Phazes, while Royce Da 5’9″, A-Diction’s Breach, Fergo One and Ken Hell-alter ego Take It Easy Heezy collaborate on the mic.

Stream or download “Spitfire” right here.

Boltz on MySpace
Soulmate on MySpace

Download “Comin’ Home” (mp3)
from “Jewelry Box Sessions”
by Planet Asia
Gold Chain Music

• Buy at iTunes Music Store

More On This Album

Cali Agent and chief-jewellery-rocker Planet Asia is hitting Australia for the first time, with five shows scheduled in four days! With a conveniently timed new album on deck (which, if I’m not mistaken, comes less than a year after his last full length, the Evidence-produced The Medicine), Asia brings his rock solid flow and stage presence to Adelaide, Melbourne (free show!), Sydney, Byron’s sold out Splendour in the Grass festival and Brisbane this week. See above to download a track from the new album Jewelry Box Sessions.

Those dates in full:
1st August @ Electric Light Hotel, Adelaide: $20 (or $12 before 9pm). Featuring DJ Sum 1 on the cut and BVA from Mnemonic Ascent.
2nd August @ The Espy, Melbourne: Free! Support from DJ Flagrant, Illy, M-Phazes and One-Sixth. And it’s free!
3rd August @ Bar Broadway, Sydney: $21 on the door/$15 before. Asia joins the 2nd birthday celebrations for ever-busy local label Nurcha. Last Credit launch their album Breakfast of Champions and Def Wish Cast perform.
4th August @ Splendour in the Grass, Byron Bay: The only international hip hop act at this year’s Splendour (though megastars the Hoods and The Herd rep for the homeland), Planet performs what must be an afternoon set at the sold out winter festival before hot-footing it north for:
4th August @ Step Inn, Brisbane: $22.50 presold. Asia rocks the venue formerly known as the Shamrock. Support from DJ Staen 1, Clinic, Stricknine, Proclaim, Nikk C and Kingskonekted.

In what is possibly the most overdue hip-hop tour to Australia ever, the twice-delayed Jehst dates now seem locked in for mid-October. Rumours of a Brisbane date were quickly nixed, but heads in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide will be able to catch the High Plains Drifter aka J-Star aka Billy Brimstone along with DJ Konny Kon and, if the grapevine is correct, Micall Parknsun instead of the previously announced Asaviour.

Holding it down for down under at all shows are Delta the Lostralian and DJ Staen1. Assuming the promoters get the ‘h’ in the right place, all should go smoothly!

Those dates in full:
11th October @ The Manning Bar, Sydney: $35 plus bf. Additional support from The Tongue, Wisdom2th, Dj Ology and Dj Chromek.
12th October @ The Espy, St Kilda: $35 plus bf. Additional support from Low Budget, Dj Kamo, Jolz and Dj Chromek.
19th October @ Fowlers Live, Adelaide: $35 plus bf. Additional support from Roach Scholars, P Body and Dj Chromek.

Check out Micall Parknsun (with a cameo from J-Star) in ‘Dunya’, the single from Jehst’s Underworld Epics production album, which dropped mid-2006 on Low Life.

Jehst on MySpace
Micall Parknsun on MySpace

The list includes, but is by no means limited to: Ian Thorpe, FiggKidd, TZU, Hunter, Dazastah, Muskrat, the Hoods, Ken Oath, Sereck, Brad Strut, Bob Balans, Matty B, Maya Jupiter, MC Trey, Fubex, Bert Newton’s son, Glen McGrath’s wife, Sally from Home and Away, Big Kev, the Resin Dogs, Kylie Minogue, Ivan Milat, Martin Bryant, Weapon X, Sleek the Elite, John Howard, Scribe, Phrase, The Herd, Shane Warne, Adam Hills and that cab driver that Mark Latham punched. You can probably guess from some of these names that Damo’s references are not always tasteful. One of his less off-colour lines is:

I’m dope as fuck when I’m spewing sick shit
I’m like the Jason Akermanis of the music business
So when I’m on the cover for doing lyrics
Your picture’ll be in the where are they now section next to Quromystix.

He’s got a point there. Where is Quromystix?

Aha! There he is.

The former Fugleman, Reference Pointer and solo artist (This Last Week I’ve.. and Looking for Andrew Bradley) has been off the map for a minute. Last time I was aware of him doing anything, he was on stage in Sydney with Upshot, Sleeping Monk and Sleek the Elite. As it happens, he’s got a track about to hit radio with homeboy Mostyn (aka Mostyn Space Unit, also of Reference Point). Their single “Goodnight Mr Howard” is a optimistic lead up to this year’s federal election. You can check it on their joint MySpace page. It will appear on Mostyn’s upcoming solo album, Heavy Lifting.

The problem is the attitude of the programming manager who seems to add hip hop music based on a completely ignorant knowledge or taste for the genre. Or perhaps its the Triple J art-fag mentality of supporting the “underdog”. From where i stand you have to make hip hop that sounds like it was produced twenty years ago to get Triple J love. Make a record of an international standard and god forbid have an affiliation with a major label and you can almost certainly count yourself out of high rotation airplay.

Triple J’s playlisting of hip hop is certainly patchy and picky, but is Montell bashing his head against a brick wall? Justice and Kaos’ sound would fit better amidst the nighttime playlists on Nova (in some cities, at least), Sydney’s The Edge 96.1 and Perth’s Groove FM. Triple J clearly favours a specific sound, and it’s possible that Montell is overestimating the national youth broadcaster’s ability to influence sales anyway. Sure, the national exposure of a medium rotation slot on the Js isn’t going to hurt an artist, but it’s far from a free pass to mad loot.

With almost 3000 views on YouTube in less than two weeks, chances are you’ve already seen this clip for the lead track from Brad Strut’s Legend: Official. Produced by Prowla, the beat’s got an early-RZA lilt to it and the flows show that Brad is one of the country’s most assured spitters. The album drops on 9 June.

13th’s other work includes a beautiful 12″ release on Basic Equipment in 2001 and contributions to numerous compilations, including 2002′s landmark Culture of Kings 2 on Obese.

Groundup broke the news and has the tracklist exclusively.

13th Son on MySpace
Grindin’ on MySpace

The 12″ will drop on Invada, the Inertia-distributed label helmed by Katalyst and Portishead’s Geoff Barrow, in May. The album What’s Happening will follow soon after.

Dust Tones, this Saturday 21 April at Sydney Uni’s Manning Bar, will feature sets from Hermitude, Rephrase, Percussion Junction, Mark Walton, Noodles, Noel Boogie and Bentley. Nice!