Transcript: Gadigal Budyari (beautiful Gadigal)
GADIGAL BUDYARI
Written by Matt Stegh
*Track 1: Papua New Guinea, FSOL (start of track til 00:45)
The Big Broken Bodies of giant goannas, fossilised, still, captured in their Zig Zag waltz, eternally teased by the lascivious glittering blue skirt that dances around them.
Dull green black skin. Sandstone, spectacled yellow, wink from jagged spreading limbs and big bold foreheads that jut out into the bouncing blue.
Flashy white Flotsum and Jetsum volley the sun back at the sky. The soapy water that races off the reptiles rough hide spins the floating vessels around and around…
Bastardly Bleak cement Barnacles hold the beastly bodies down, clustered along every spine and long limb. They tether the mythical megafauna with the sheer weight of audacity
From high on the towering barnacles the architecture of money screams neon. Their flashy forms fall onto the water to bounce back in pretty broken gibberish.
The big bulking white shells shine hard white, sitting on old stories with sad strength. But underneath the waves, the stories whisper to the water that carries the sand of the land as it sidles up against the rock, massaging messages that travel out into the ocean and up to Kgari
The packed little car careens way too close to the metal on the left and the cars on the right as it crosses the giant unfolding fan that skeletons across the water
*Track 2: Inner City Good Life-intro ( track start til 00: 24 overlaid with lorikeet calls)
Gadigal has stunning trees, and so many birds. Big birds, aggressive birds, highly organised social birds, finely tuned brains and fast energetic metabolisms from a steady diet of sugar.
Australian trees, notably eucalypts and melaleuca’s flower at different times along the east coast, giving its nectar feeding birds a super highway of high energy nectar and in turn big broad ranges for its plant life.
Gadigals main flowering season for eucalypts and melaleuca’s is march April may and June. At this time Guriyal the Rainbow Lorikeet is joined by 3 other types, the scaly breasted Lorikeet, Musk Lorikeet and Little Lorikeet. You usually cant see them, they mainly green and much smaller than the rainbow lorikeet. The rainbows stick around after the others go there’s no need to leave, the nectars always flowing on Gadigal.
And so, we were a small flock of loud careening birds, free wheeling around Gadigal, looking beautiful, making, creating, and dancing high on an inexhaustible supply of nectar. Out on a wing every weekend, long preening rituals, endless bird clown chatter about what we might be doing to our brains…..
*Track 3 Primal Scream- Don’t Fight it feel it ( start til 00:35)
BURRRRRRRRRR KE KE KE
The evil scream of cute little Burumin cuts through the white noise of the city hustle.
The colour killing rays of the street lights slice through gaps in the jungle canopy of the Jekyll and Hyde Park fig trees
Hordes of ravenous humans, high on stranglehold of the Gregorian web that casts its bullshit spell of New Years Eve, Cat call from the shadows
The Cathedral leers down over the sacred land like some fucked camp medieval demon from a fever dream
Head down with performed protective purpose , I move swiftly through the messy manic crowds.
There had been a spate of bashings lately, id read about them in the Sydney Star Observer on the steps of the DJ box of the Oxford Hotel, while I waited to circle through the bar collecting glasses
Crossbow attacks in the Narrabeen Valley beat and the South Head hate crimes, not ever bothered looking into by the cops. Fuk the pigs
GET ME IN THE CLUB FUK
*Track 4 Joey Beltram- Energy Flash (fade up from 2:00 til 2:30)
Hands In my pockets my sweaty fingers gripping a sachet of 3 of the finest pressed ecstasy pills going around. The strange pop hieroglyph embossed on the pills long forgotten. Theyd been pre crushed, ready for fast hard inhalation through my well trained nostrils.
Through the doors, up the stairs and straight into the movie theatre of the Metro.
The Southern Outpost was on the decks, smashing out hectic Uziq and Autechre remixes, to the visuals of Barraka….always Barraka.
Everyone was up the back in the corner climbing over the seats, resplendent in their looks, behaving like animals.
A spiral of yellow chicks, falling along the conveyor belt, I lift the straw and sachet up to my nose, the beaks of the chicks burnt off one after the other, I inhale….
In the split second of consciousness my brain was afforded….
Im fucking scared.
Then Im out
A miasmic thud and drone seems to awaken the watery receptors of my body and ripples slow consciousness back into my mind
Theres steel wool carpet against my cheek, drenched wet by the contents of my stomach, and still it empties…..im on my side, invasive fingers in my mouth moving my tongue around making me gag.
I hear Nat shes asking for help, hurried voices, hospital, doctor….
And im back…..sit me up, my head still not connected to my body, not feeling anything other than more liquid coming from my mouth
I need to feel my body, help me up, I go to walk, cant feel my legs but the floor finds my feet and Im floating
Im leaning on the railing of the stairs to the dancefloor, I descend, the stairs coming up to meet my feet
An angel from above sings down over the pounding beat
Lulling me into heaven with a hymn of absolute bliss
Im in church and now I need to dance
*Track 5 Gat Decor- Passion (fade up 2:07 til 2:46)
Some where in Frog Hollow….
We slid from the loud wet plastic cave out onto the solid sandpaper of the pavement.
The soft apricot dawn melting holes through the giant open lavender sponges of the jacarandas that lined the steep street
Our nocturnal amphibian eyes blasted open by the erruption of expansiveness
Mind drawing our exposed selves back into rave cave dreaming we shuffle up the back lanes, whispering the nights highlights. Our breathy broken murmurings joined by the soft morning chortle of a magpie singing up the sun
*Track 6 The Orb- Little Fluffy Clouds (00:18 til 00:55 overlaid with magpie)
A small wet gully between a gorge of tall tight terraces
Cool and damp, and held together by the tight serpentine grip of a forest giant
The Rusty Figs canopy, a dark miasma of flat rubber leaves, shifts and dances around its massive limbs, the dark behemoth twisting and turning, a big black carousel
From its dark shadow realm and clear red eye of a Koel stares down at us with the slyness of a freak show Charlatan
Its pupil appears in our hand, and the Microdot gives us avian side eye as we slide it under our tongue.
The Koel erupts into its fever song
Cackling hysterically we grab hold of the play ground equipment upon which we were sitting as it joins in with the undulating spinning of the giant umbrella tree wheel bearing down upon us
The woodchips of the playground below us erupt into a rip of brown turbulence that tears our life raft from its cement footholds as our world dances into the spiral of the Koels searching cry
*Track 7 Koels and Channel Billed Cuckoos
Gadigal has big birds. Lots of them. They’ve done super well as the city has grown.
I remember whiskered Bulbuls and sparrows in Darlinghurst and smaller honeyeater species in Marrickville.
They’ve largely gone, driven out and probably predated on by the bigger species
Currawongs, wattlebirds, noisy minors, magpies, kookaburras, butcherbirds these rule Gadigal now and with their proliferation 2 other species of birds have done really very well. Both migratory and both parasitic, the Koel and the Channel Billed Cuckoo, which largest parasitic bird
Their populations have exploded with the growing numbers of large birds they use as hosts for their young
We named our tightly packed little Terrace on Crown street The Southern Outpost
It was the name of our flatmate Patricks vinyl distribution label
It exclusively distributed Black American Techno, specifically from Detroit
Our aural landscape was guided by Afro- Futurism, a generous and beautiful offering to those who were listening, changing the face of music, dance and story-telling
The Public Enemy of Techno, Underground Resistance, whose futured race politic spoke of of a universe wide resistance movement of First Nations and Black and Brown people, to an sonic assault of dark electro
*Track 8 UR Mi Raza (fade up from 00:50 til 1:15)
Drecyia, a techno collective who built a whole speculative sonic reality of a black aquatic civilisation deep in the Atlantic ocean. Evolved from ancestors who lept off the slave boats to escape a life of slavery. Their album art gave glimpses of this world under water vessels based on stingrays ridden by hot Black gilled mermen
*Track 9 Drexiyia Wavejumper (fade up from start til 00:30)
The gospel tinged futured disco of Carl Craig, the gentleman of techno jeff mills and arguably the originator of American techno Juan Atkins…. Fuk we danced, back then you could tour them you’d just need a gig in Sydney and Melbourne and you could bring them out.
From blacked out pubs, the hall at the MCA, an abandoned warehouse in Alexandria, someones uncles property in Peats Ridge, restaurants the train sheds where Carriageworks is now. Everywhere was a potential venue, often only once…..you never knew where it would be until after 5pm when a 0055 phone line opened with the details.
I remember seeing Jeff Mills at the restaurant above Sky Gardens in Pitt Street Mall, probably where some heinous fast fashion chainstore is now….. This was a fucking moment, 4 turntables, hard fast deep rootsy techno, playing the vinyl like a jazz musician, like a sped up marching band at a future disco, scratching and dropping, the crackle of the needle on the vinyl animating our bodies with an electrical current driving us into ecstatic dance….
*Track 10- Jeff Mills MIX ( fade up from 19:30 – 20:40)
It was on this night I was head hunted by a modelling agency LOL
I was wearing white cord tailored pants, a red mesh sleeveless top, bleached blonde hair
Skinny AF from a steady diet of speed, dancing and the occasional pastizzi
A group of us adrog club kids were suddenly thrust into the magazines and onto the catwalks getting slammed by the fashion media and newsapapers as celebrating heroin chic….
And like the contents of an overturned handbags on the corner of Forbes and Burton it rolled out into the streets, taking many in its path.
This surge in heroin coincided with a crack down on ecstasy, speed and dance parties.
A few kids died, and parents went on a war path with cops and councils.
The comedown was brutal, we lost so many friends to heroin.
Ecstasy and speed suddenly became really hard to find, at the same time a new cold drug crept into the night. The John Howard Ice Age was approaching, but that’s a whole other story….
Sacred and profane, as a First Nations bicultural queer man, This Nation informs my identity, my spirit, and my creativity. I'm deeply grateful what I've learned and continued learning from living on Gadigal country with my community. I don't mourn the parts that I'm not nostalgic.
The thing I think about although is the loss of liminal spaces, marginal spaces that propagate, nurture and nurture the sacred and the profane.
And allow it.
To flourish.
They can be physical spaces or abstract psychological spaces. For me, they will have a connection to drug use, though not always.
They are my breathing space, A space to listen and learn. I dedicate tonight to Judd Macadam, the only white guy who could ever play black music.
Thank you very much.