Mitch Parker: For a brief moment each year Brisbane becomes the center of the Australian music universe. The industry gathers, the artists tune and the crowds flock to The Valley for Big Sound. During the two nights of Big Sound Live, over a hundred acts will showcase their music at a dozen different venues as punters dash from act to act with frenzied joy. I was just one of the 4ZZZ team to head along in 2013 and thus present my observations of the talent on display at Australia’s largest music conference.

Wednesday evening kicks off with Brisbane locals MTNS (pronounced simply as mountains, because vowels are lame). This three piece received significant attention upon the release of their single ‘Lost Track of Time’ but are yet to release their anticipated EP. It’s easy to see why there was such interest in this band. Their almost melodramatic lyrics are easily engaging while their electronic waves create floating texture. A cover of a Mr Little Jeans’ cover of Arcade Fire’s ‘The Suburbs’ is a notable effort, with stripped back beat elements providing space for the frontman’s working of the lyrics to shine. MNTS popular single ‘Lost Track of Time’ that thrust the band under many spotlights is wonderfully worked in the live environment, providing a stark moment for the room to feel all the feels.

Notorious Brisbane garage, pop-punk outfit and cannabis advocates Dune Rats command a massive crowd when they take the stage at Electric Playground with punters crammed into every corner eager to watch the carefree live show of this duo. There’s no doubting Dune Rats music is guilt-free fun but newer songs highlight subtle hints of maturity ever so briefly, showing the real talent that is hidden behind the shrugged attitude of the band. Combining a mix of surf, garage and Cali skate sounds while singing lyrics such as “Dalai Llama, Big Banana, Marijuana” repeatedly there is no questioning the crowd pleasing fun that is on display.

A staple of the Brisbane music scene for a couple of years now, although in varying formats, The Trouble With Templeton are now garnering national attention since the debut of their album Rookie. Playing to a rather packed out club the band immediately showcase how polished their sound has become, proving to be a standout of the entire evening. Frontman Thomas Calder produces some of the most lyrically interesting and beautiful songs in the current Australian scene. The band supports these lyrics with musical precision and allow for genuine surprises in composition, which prove to be delightful. Current single ‘You Are New’ hushes the boisterous crowd with its soft opening before launching into rich heights. I catch more than a few in the crowd singing along with the band, which at a music conference full of industry types trying to play it cool could be the biggest compliment of all.

Currently one of the country’s most interesting noisemakers is Jonti, South African born but now thoroughly Australian. Multi-instrumentalist, arranger, producer and vocalist this man keeps you guessing. His mashed together electric work may appear effortless but you can sense the thought that has been put into every twist and turn. Everything here is beautifully layered and thought out and genuinely engaging. Tonight Jonti appears flanked by a violinist, a wonderfully addition that adds softness and yet somehow lets sounds soar through higher regions. Making music that is abstract, engaging and emotive is surely every musician’s dream, one that Jonti is lucky enough to possess the talent to achieve.

Clubfeet are my first review for the second night of Big Sound Live, and I arrive at the venue early with a good ten minutes to kill. The band is on stage sound checking with what looks like increasing frustration. I’m eager to see what these guys can do live; since their inception Clubfeet has been a success story of international music press such as Pitchfork, Spin, and NME. Unfortunately for me and the other punters who have turned out for their set, Clubfeet don’t start playing until 15 minutes past the beginning of their scheduled set time. I’m not complaining, I completely understand that technical difficulties arise and bands’ and audiences alike just have to deal with it. But unfortunately at a conference of this size, with so many acts to see and with only half-hour sets I simply don’t have time to hang around. I leave without seeing a note, disappointed but hopefully Clubfeet will make it back to Brisbane someday soon.

The main reason I couldn’t wait for Clubfeet to go on any longer was because Bored Nothing was my next show and frankly I refused to miss a single track from this act that I believe produced one of the best albums of 2012. Fergus Miller aka Bored Nothing received considerable attention from the music blogosphere with his music on Bandcamp before eventually forming them into a self-titled album. Tonight, backed by his band, Bored Nothing is slaying the crowd. ‘Shit For Brains’ jangles out of speakers with indie precision, with surf elements abound but picking up into waves of sound that smash into the crowd. It’s reminiscent of late 80’s early 90’s, often called DIY rock but I find songs lean more towards pop, which I’m grateful for. Even when hidden behind a mass of his long hair, Miller has a great ease on stage as he banters with the crowd. Quite simply, I’m completely enamoured, and I can’t wait to see what’s next. If Bored Nothing’s Tumblr is anything to go by it could be a song about Margot Tenenbaum, for which I, and I’m sure many others, await with glee.

As a country Australian’s are quick to claim international success stories as our own, “Our Cate/Nicole/Hugh/Russell” for example. Brisbane it seems also plays at this game, quickly claiming our own hometown heroes, to which Megan Washington is no exemption. After a notable absence since her 2010 debut ‘I Believe You Liar’, a raging success story in the Australian industry, Washington is back after recording a follow up album. Tonight is about the new, a test-drive if you will, with only a few exceptions to this. Washington’s early work is clever in the way it displays genuine emotional song writing behind sharp-witted lyrics, but these new songs seem to have more maturity to them, often a display of raw emotion. Composition has changed as well with more definition to the band’s sound. A notable track is a ballad played during the middle of the set that completely captivates the crowd, sending a hush all the way to the back of room where the audience is packed into corners, and with good reason. It seems there have been some significant changes to Miss Washington as she’s shifted and grown as an artist, but one thing we can be grateful has remained the same is that voice. It’s as charismatic and pure as ever.

Jazmine O'Sullivan: Brisbane's BIGSOUND is such an exciting time of year. The fun starts in Fortitude Valley from about 12pm in the day, where music can be heard coming from various venues, the smell of cigarette smoke taints the air, and the beers are pouring freely. With a careful eye, you can spot many local musical talents wandering the streets from early in the day, right up until the last shows of the evening. With such an incredible array of artists performing in this year's BIGSOUND Live showcase, there were many instances where it was difficult to choose exactly who to see, which is never a bad problem to have!

Wednesday: Wednesday evening kicks off at Electric Playground, where Sydney's Bloods are laying down their grungey, scuzzy, feminine brand of low-fi garage pop to a thoroughly appreciative crowd. These ladies (and gentleman) look so at home on stage, and are clearly having a good time with their set; sassy head shakes, sweet harmonies, dancing, and smiles a-plenty emanate from the stage, creating a completely feel-good vibe amongst the audience. It's always refreshing to see women take such ownership of the stage, especially in a largely male-driven genre, yet their male drummer should not go without commendation; he does a great job to shine behind this two rockin' gals. Into My Arms is but one of the many highlights from Bloods who have started this Wednesday night with style, fun and of course, rock!

Next it's over to 633 Ann to catch another Sydney-based group, Little Bastard . One word immediately springs to mind as soon as these guys start: fun! They are completely unashamed to get loose and have a wild time on stage, dancing and singing to one another, whilst clearly enjoying the completely unique style of punk-infused country-western music they create. The Bastards' set varies from fast-paced, foot-stompin', raucous, yelp-inspiring good-times, to moody, broody and emotive, and is engaging throughout the whole journey. The musicality of each band member also has to be noted; incredible banjo plucking styles, forceful bass, crooning harmonica, high energy guitar and the occasional contributions from violin. The drummer brings simply the bass drum to the set, and releases a fury on it by slapping it with his hands. Desert Roller is a favourite tonight, making this reviewer want to laugh, cry, dance, sit, sing, smile and love all at the same time. These guys are a must-see band!

After a quick dash, we're back at Electric Playground to catch Melbournites King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard . The venue is bursting at the seams by now, and it takes a bit of effort to get a decent view of the dyno-mite! that is taking place on stage. Just to give a quick rundown of what can be seen on stage, there's not one, but two drum kits (it's absolutely magic when they play in synchronisation), five guitars and a synth, and their style is a blend of psychadelia, surf, rock, thrash, and well, pretty much everything! With so many instruments crammed onto the stage, it's no surprise that their sound is intensely powerful, and the frequencies really reverberate throughout your body, soul and mind. KGATLW practically punch you in the face with their set, the most welcome punch you can ever imagine.

Over at Ric's Adelaide's Bad//Dreems are creating a lot of buzz amongst patrons. Their stage presence is so grungey, so sleazy, so badarse and so apathetic; it's fantastic! The guys are really reminiscent of old school rockers like The Saints, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones in the way they carry themselves, yet their music is fresh, modern indie grunge you can really throw yourself around to. The South Australians pull off a fantastic set.

Thursday: Thursday night's fanfare kicks off at The Rev with the ever charming, endearing, sweet and talented Rainbow Chan . In her recorded work, Chan's vocals can often play second fiddle to the quirky electronic beats she creates, however that is definitely not the case tonight as her vocals are so powerful and effortless; it's really admirable. She loves to move around on stage in a way that's kind of awkward, kind of confident, kind of funny, kind of serious, and you can't help but smile as she does so. Halfway through the set she dedicates a song to Brisbane's own pop-hero Jeremy Neale, who can be seen to be bopping away at the front of the audience. Neale isn't the only musical act interested in Chan's performance, as the guys and gals from Tigertown are also seen amongst the crowd.

After a mad dash to Oh Hello! we're now watching local quartet Major Leagues . The first thing you notice about this group is how they absolutely embody the style of the nineties – the best outfit is the tanktop dress matched with running shoes, oh how we miss the nineties! Fashion aside, their sound could be described as nineties grunge pop as well; there's a real apathy to their performance and it really works, especially when they cover the theme tune to Daria. Included in the set is their forthcoming single Silver Tides, their current single Endless Drain, and the closer Feel, which we are told is another track coming from their forthcoming EP. Once again, Neale is spotted in the crowd, this time joined by last night's shining stars, Bloods.

The Love Junkies follow on from Major Leagues at Oh Hello! with the frontman telling the audience they are off to a shaky start because his guitar keeps slipping out of tune and the sound is less than desirable. He probably would have been better off keeping such views to himself, as this patron had no idea anything was going wrong at all; everything sounded pretty swell to these ears. Black Sheep Blues is an absolutely killer track and a highlight of the set, which starts off with a slightly country twang in the guitar, before the beat drops for the chorus, turning into tremendous thrash rock; it's fantastic to experience in the flesh, and gives insight to just how talented this group are as musicians.

Next it's over to The Press Club to see Sydney-based psychedelic trio The Walking Who , who have brought three friends to help them out tonight on guitar, synth and tambourine duties to really convey the spirit of their recently released EP Mansions. A sure sign you've made it as a musical act is when you have a dedicated fan-girl at the front of the crowd, dancing with gusto to each and every track, and by these measures, The Walking Who have definitely made it as there's not one, but two of them dancing up a storm tonight. We get to hear a couple of tracks from the aforementioned EP including Have You Seen The Colours?, Rita and Take My Picture, before the set is closed out with an absolutely mesmerising instrumental jam. Brilliant stuff.

Ric's have hosted a pretty heavy lineup tonight, to which The Sinking Teeth fit right in. Upon entry, we're blasted with Spiderman-like foam; an indicator that we're in for a bit of fun with this set. It's always good to shake things up with a heavier style of music, because we now see drummers giving it their all, absolutely throwing themselves on the drums, as opposed to the more reserved style of drumming you see in indie-pop bands. Toward the end of the set the group hand out cans the crowd, which are later revealed to contain confetti, which makes for a brilliant spectacle in this tiny venue. Right at the end, one eager fan crashes the stage and decides to take over vocal duties, and does a pretty good job of it too. This set is wild!

Finally at Ric's, it's time for Clowns , and boy, do these guys put on a show! The performance is of course helped by a couple of gutsy, determined and dedicated fans who ferociously head-bang their way through the entirety of the set, yet it's the showmanship of Clowns that really captivates. The frontman roams around the venue mid-song, ending up at the back of venue, in the crowd, all over the stage, and he even climbs up onto the roof of the bar and in a real "leap of faith", dives into the audience, who thankfully catch him and parade him around a bit. Showmanship aside, their music is just amazing. Many people in the crowd can be heard comparing them to Frenzal Rhomb, yet they definitely have an edge of their own. A completely brilliant way to cap of the night, thank you, Clowns!

Chris Cobcroft: - Thanks to the high impact nature of the Spunk Records Party at The Alhambra the night before (saw Bored Nothing - I said he sounds like Elliott Smith, he countered with Heat Miser - deal; Shining Bird - lashings of medicated, 80’s clavinova-pop and syrupy sax - delicious, even if they seem to still be working out the details on the live version; Kieran Ryan, tall and quiet - maybe not really my kind of indie-rock as much as the other half of Kid Sam, his cousin Kishore Ryan), many of the regular contributors to my Wednesday radio show spent the day in a state of near death and were unable to contribute in quite the way I’d hoped. So, I spent the day scrounging for content and comprehensively missed all things Bigsound.

Made up for some of that with a bit of determined nocturnal wandering on Wed night. I started out in the line for Billy Bragg, which didn’t get any shorter after ten minutes, so, bugger that. Hopped on over to Oh Hello to catch Tkay Maidza. The pint-sized MC rapped up a storm, even if we could barely hear her thanks to a spectacularly average effort from the sound guy. The clearly M.I.A. and Santigold influenced femc was catching fire even before a piece of the lighting equipment actually caught fire, causing an unexpected intermission, but she persevered like a pro, never dropping that big, genuine, smile. I haven’t heard too much of Tkay’s stuff before now (just that ‘Wiggles-go-grime’ single Brontosaurus), and several of the beats on the evening were not hers: including one from TNGHT and another from Hermitude, so I feel like I still haven’t heard that much of her, but, like I said, she can really rap, so I want to hear more.

I dropped in on Starry Field at Ric’s Bar. With the doors strictly closed the place smelled like an armpit and was as loud as a (very dirty) bathroom. Fronted by Middle East member (and producer?) Mark Myers, the band deftly weave together steel and acoustic guitar with synthesiser for an extremely smooth and darkly southern gothic, country sound. I really like what I heard.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are fronting BIGSOUND for a second year and seem to have grown up mightily, thundering through their fifteen minute single Head On/Pill with furious concentration. Live it comes across with a krautish intensity. Honestly, I never know quite what I’m going to hear from this band and I love that. It’s great that so many people have embraced them, too. It was well-nigh impossible to get near the stage in the voluminous Electric Playground.

I tried to get back into Ric’s Bar for the grungy/jangly Bad//Dreems, but from outside I could see the punters were clearly stacked floor to ceiling, so, bugger that.

I ducked back down to catch Jonti at the Rev. I know he’s been working away on his second album for the esteemable Stones Throw. What I heard sounded pretty sweet, and really bumped on the Rev’s sound system, even if the strange addition of the girl he brought to saw away on the violin was often, largely inaudible. While the world is jumping on the trap bandwagon, Jonti appears to be sticking with wonky and the sounds were much less cluttered than on his debut full-length. On the downside, I’m not entirely sure how many were his own. Despite his array of electronics he was fiddling with I recognised at least a couple of Flylo tracks into the mix, which sounded great, but - maybe I’m missing the point - did I come to BIGSOUND to hear people DJ other people’s music?

Night’s last stop was at the Press Club to catch my favourite goth-folkers The Orbweavers. I’ve always been a fan of the sparse but reverberant horror they manage to infuse their music with. Mistletone threw a couple of new tracks up our way recently, although I think a new album is still a while off. To me they sound significantly more like (very slow and sad) 60’s girl group music, but listening to them live...they brought so much of that retro-pop sweetness to their old stuff too, maybe I need to go back and listen to it again. Stuart Flannigan stared at his feet like a very shy mixture of Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly - some of the best work I’ve heard in ages. The addition of a trumpeter lent the music a mariachi quality when they let him cut sick (he’s good, too), but mostly just complimented their existing sound, thanks to a rigid level of restraint. The ring-leader, Marita Dyson, was delightfully nerdy. The Orbweavers fascination with Melbourne’s history and geography is wound through their music and Marita explained its various comparisons and contrasts to the working-class history of New Farm, hidden in it’s renovated mills and warehouses. Entertaining, educational and an unexpectedly genteel end to the first night of BIGSOUND Live.

I nursed a slight headache into the only conference session I got to see :( up at the Judy Wright, the following day. The heavy music panel is one I’ve always wanted to catch and this year I made it. They talked through all the sensible stuff you should do as a heavy music outfit. Alex Ploegsma, a lawyer and publisher talked gregariously about publishing, surprise, surprise, but also a lot of other things. Shake Appeal’s Nik Tropiano let fly a few fist pumping catchcries about the digital revolution and Obsidian’s James Geekie (who looked well hard) talked laconically but entertainly about dealing with black metallers and the potential for using skull fragments and brain matter as merchandise.

Back to the bands! I got in a bit earlier than I thought I would and tromped into The Zoo to catch Canadian’s Saidah Baba Talibah on a friend’s vague recommendation. Led by the titular Saidah (looking like a teensy version of Skunk Anansie’s Skin) their soul-blues rocking was pretty convincing (half the band was hired the previous day, too, which could work either for or against them, I dunno). Their greatest asset by a long way was Saidah’s stage presence: whipping the crowd to a froth and making them beg for more. Whatever else you might say, this is one band to see live.

Christ Ric’s is noisy with the doors closed. Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys put ‘debacle’ back into DIY, their drum kit literally disintegrating when they tried to get going. Nick Warnock joked with rather vicious self-deprecation about the band’s prospects for impressing the biz at BIGSOUND, but they were still pretty entertaining, finding, as they do, the sweetspot between the punk of yore and today’s dole-queue rock. I left myself with a bit of a gap and ended up in front of the relatively low-key Mr Cassidy, picking out some country and roots songs. Frontwoman Danni is married to Owen from The Living End, who was plunking away on his very recognisable double-bass. That’s neither here nor there, they were alright. A bit like a more sparse version of Gillian Welch, one of whose songs they covered during the set.

I had meant to see all sorts of other things, but managed only to get in front of the Bakery Lane stage for The Melbourne Ska Orchestra. Boy I’m glad I did! They have something like twenty-seven members and they were all squeezed on to this tiny stage, but it didn’t stop them from unleashing a furious show. It was led, of course, by the irrepressible Nicky Bomba: looking like Vince Colosimo and as energetic as James Brown. They romped through their well known numbers (of which there were enough to take up nearly all of the set). Bomba and the band, comprising seem really gun musos, kept the crowd at fever pitch the entire time. I was sold by the MSO on their debut record. Live, I’m so much more sold - those guys (and gals) are the business. They finished by marching off stage, playing their hearts out and back towards the Valley Mall. The ska mutating slowly into something that sound more like New Orlean’s Second Line. Turns out that was what they were aiming for, as they launched into the theme from The Treme. Sadly they had to stop playing, for some reason, probably public order related. Still, I reckon MSO would have to be my gig of BIGSOUND.

I thought I’d have missed all of Zeahorse, who I’d hoped to catch last. As I trudged by the Press Club they were still grinding out some punishing jams and I couldn’t resist a look in. The guitar sound reminded me of Metz and it seemed pretty damn great, or it could have something to do with the near complete lack of anything else approaching heavy music at BIGSOUND making me over-compensate, but they were a pretty enjoyable couple of minutes. Sadly the band stalked off stage (looking pretty pissed to have been there) all too soon. Thus ended another year of BIGSOUND.