Monthly Archives: August 2024

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News and Touring

Gareth Koch Releases New Single ‘Song For Stevie Nicks’

Song for Stevie Nicks draws inspiration from the Rumours album by Fleetwood Mac, a band in which Stevie is a member and songwriter. Gareth’s guitar work on the track is reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsay Buckingham’s style, while the song itself is cast in the gentle yet intense mood of the ballad Landslide.

Gareth’s signature style pervades the song, with subtly nuanced playing & classical influences on display. Song for Stevie Nicks is imagined & created as a song which Stevie herself might have written.

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About Gareth

Gareth Koch is an ARIA Award winning multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, guitar soloist, composer & songwriter. He has recorded a sizeable repertory across multiple genres spanning works for classical guitar, flamenco, original compositions, arrangements, medieval projects, rock & songwriting. He has appeared at major festivals within Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.

Born in Milan, Gareth began his musical studies on piano and clarinet, and at age 12 was accepted into the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He received his Bachelor of Music degree at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music before winning scholarships for advanced guitar study at The Royal Madrid Conservatorium & the Vienna Academy of Music. He holds a PhD in Music & has lectured in music across Australian & European universities.

 In 2002 Gareth formed the first guitar supergroup with Karin Schaupp & The Grigoryan Brothers, Slava & Leonard. Saffire – The Australian Guitar Quartet soared to #1 on the Classical Music Charts and even featured on ARIA  pop charts. The quartet released a total of 3 best-selling albums & was Australia’s biggest selling classical act for several years.

Gareth is involved with many cross genre projects & has released a succession of collaborative albums with Martin Kennedy & with ARIA Hall of Fame inductee Steve Kilbey (The Church). His recent release ‘The Guitar Player’ received a coveted 5 star review from The Sydney Morning Herald. Gareth’s current output has a strong rock bias with classical overtones & his writing is increasingly focussed on the ethereal nature of music.

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News and Touring

Tim Walker Releases ‘Love Is For The Young (At Heart)’

Love is For the Young (at Heart) is not a lovesong – it’s a song about love. It pictures the joy especially of young love, when it’s all blue sky. But cupid’s arrow is delightfully indifferent to many things – appearance, age, even intellect!

Tim: ‘The song was inspired by a couple of teenagers I saw skipping past me down a busy footpath on a crowded Saturday night, holding hands and singing: the guy was short, wearing ill-fitting jeans; the girl looked like someone from the bridal party out of the film Muriel’s Wedding. They were an odd couple, it’s true, but they had the world at their feet. King and Queen. Later seen eating pizza together down the street.’

Pilot is about the post-pandemic urge to travel and get away from all the traumas of 2020-22, its covid-19 confinements, and the resulting overseas travel boom we have now. The song’s bridge reveals the other side of the coin – what we hope to escape to: freedom and “good times”.

Get On, Saturday Night is an upbeat tribute to all the great Saturday nights, and is perhaps therefore the cousin to track 1.  Streets Of Rome is a re-release from the 2019 album Bridge of Angels. The album and that track specifically, was inspired by a trip to Rome (the location of the bridge) in 2018.

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Tim Walker is a singer-songwriter now based in Adelaide (ex-Sydney). His indie electric-folk/pop style reflects a city perspective, but with country, rock and jazz influences and universal themes. He began as a folkie at school, and continues its idea of personal stories, using electric rock guitars thrown in. As a tertiary student in Adelaide he was in a small country rock act doing mainly covers. Now as a soloist he is at his most prolific.

He moved to Sydney for work and continued playing after hours in many venues across town before releasing his first album, Fellow Traveller, with Foghorn Records in 2008. He followed this with a series of singles, then returned to Adelaide in 2018.  He released the album Bridge of Angels in 2019, again through Foghorn Records.

He has played at several major music festivals including Peat’s Ridge and the Sydney Blues and Roots Festival Windsor (NSW), and the Port Noarlunga Blues Festival (SA).

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News and Touring

Big Merino Releases Single ‘Ain’t No Shame’

Alex: ‘I’ve always been fascinated by people who are able to move through life and experience unguarded joy, it’s something that I’ve learned but it doesn’t come naturally to me and I like that idea of learning to let go of something that you love’.

During the recording process the band tried to recapture the spirit of the legendary Sun Studio recordings. Working with Phil Punch provided the perfect opportunity to try that approach especially as he had built equipment for the iconic recording space.

Formed in 2017, Big Merino play original music that blurs the lines between country, blues, roots, rock and pop. Despite an obvious passion for what’s often called ‘Americana’, their songs somehow manage to be very personal and quintessentially Australian – the words and sound shaped by the landscape and their own stories.

Their live sound is a classic combination of acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, bass and drums. Their recordings are fleshed out with multiple guitar layers, gospel style harmonies, Hammond organ, piano, horns and percussion.

In 2018 the band released their debut album ‘Suburban Wildlife’, made two cinematic film clips with director Alan Harca, and performed all around Sydney. The band has done numerous Interviews & live-to-air performances including ABC 702 & RN, 2SER Dirt Music, Radio Skid Row, Eastside Radio, Aussie Music Weekly and 2BBB. The single ‘Black Cockatoos’ was top 10 on AMRAP Metro and Regional playlists.

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News and Touring

Gareth Koch & All India Radio Release Single ‘A Song For Brian Eno’

A Song for Brian Eno began life with Gareth recording a series of wine glasses (glass harmonica) tuned to differing pitches. The notes of each glass are tuned by adding specific amounts of liquid to each glass, and played in a circular motion with a moistened finger. In total seven glasses were recorded and these form the basis of the work.

Inspired by Brian Eno’s famous 1978 recording Music for Airports, this recording sits squarely in the ambient genre, a type of music intended to induce calm and a space for contemplation.

The track is expanded on synthesisers by ambient masters All India Radio. The final touches are added by Gareth on his signature classical guitar for Martin (All India Radio) to mix and master.

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About Gareth

Gareth Koch is an ARIA Award winning multi-instrumentalist, recording artist, guitar soloist, composer & songwriter. He has recorded a sizeable repertory across multiple genres spanning works for classical guitar, flamenco, original compositions, arrangements, medieval projects, rock & songwriting. He has appeared at major festivals within Australia, Europe, Asia and North America.

Gareth is involved with many cross genre projects & has released a succession of collaborative albums with Martin Kennedy & with ARIA Hall of Fame inductee Steve Kilbey (The Church). His recent release ‘The Guitar Player’ received a coveted 5 star review from The Sydney Morning Herald. Gareth’s current output has a strong rock bias with classical overtones & his writing is increasingly focussed on the ethereal nature of music.

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About All India Radio

A monument to the creativity and vision of songwriter Martin Kennedy, All India Radio is a fusion of psychedelia, prog rock, ambience, and pure dreamy pop creates something greater than the sum of its parts.

All India Radio have created shimmering aural edifices that cross genres and defy easy definition across a staggering 30+ releases since the late 1990s. All India Radio albums have featured cameos from Kennedy’s favourite artists over the years – Steve Kilbey from The Church, prog metal legend Devin Townsend, Ed Kuepper (The Saints) Graham Lee (The Triffids) and David Bridie (Not Drowning Waving). Martin’s music has featured in CSI, One Tree Hill, The Lying Game, Emmerdale, Bondi Rescue and many more.

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