Last month the Federal Minister for Energy and Resources, Martin Ferguson announced that he would fast track the decision to build a Commonwealth nuclear waste facility in the outback Northern Territory – reinforcing the previous government’s legislation to over–ride the wishes of the NT Government, and without proper consultation with the traditional owners or the residents of the proposed areas.

Three of the proposed sites, Hart’s Range, Mount Everard, and Fisher’s Ridge are located at defense base sites. The fourth, Muckaty Station was nominated by the Northern Land Council. The station is managed by a land trust comprised of a group of traditional owners. One of this group, the Ngapa family, have nominally agreed to the facility, but many others have not.

The Bowels of the Earth responds to this issue as a Troma inspired touchy feely exploration of the abject, the corporeal and the profane.

The work features Mitch (Harts Range), Barbara Shaw (Alice Springs) and Diane Stokes(Muckaty Station) who air their concerns about the dump, uranium mining and its effects on their traditional countries.LISTEN.

Gustavo Böke, Claire Conroy, Michaela Davies, Damian Martin & Sumugan Sivanesan.

View The Bowels Of The Earth Blog
Underbelly Festival 2008
Carriageworks, Sydney

Interstellar rehearsal recording from the recent Underbelly Public Art Lab & Festival. Very loose...set the controls and lay back...

The photo is of the Re;Public of Sidney set up by the Token Imagination crew. The pic is by Nick Mariette.

40.1MB 29'09

Peter and I recently put together a set for the NOW Now series of improvised music and more.

The night, put together by Ben Byrne was a night of surround sound (you'll have to use your imagination) at Lan Franchis Memorial Discotheque.

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Friday, 13 April, 2007
the NOW now series 2007 #6: Surround Sound at Lanfranchis

Alex Davies
Shannon O’Neill
Nick Mariette
Sumugan Sivanesan and Peter Newman
Ben Byrne
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I played some slide guitar, alongside a recording we made earlier. Peter was using this as a base to work his laptop magic. Peter had also made a video projection for the performance (I missed due to my head being in the speaker box), which I am assured was suitably mesmerising.

Many thanks to Nick Dan (check out Pulled Out) for recording the set. And the NOW now, for letting us do it.

23.2MB 16:53min

Sometime between 2001 and 2004 we did a late night radio - Spitting Bits, on Sydney's community radio, 2ser.

This is self indulgent radio - I mean it was the graveyard shift...Nick and I would just select whatever we were into at the time / could grab on the way out. Nick was infinitely more prepared than I. A typical show would involve Nick playing some music he'd ordered from abroad, as I nodded off by the console. Sometimes our one regular listener (Geoff?) would call requesting dark ambient. Occasionally we would have guests.

Quite often, as the morning rolled we'd start messing around with the decks. Anything and everything went into the mix - Innuit folk songs, field recordings, freak jazz, French pop....frequencies - test tones, sponsor carts, the BBC world service and other random sounds would also be patched through the desk. Psychedelic folk mutates into radio squelch, and on occasion it wasn't so bad...This is one such mix.

It's long and large - 58mins, 53MB.

My esteemed guests! It gives me great pleasure to introduce your hosts for this evening ~ The Surgeon & The Shamen...