Review - Big Backyard “SxSW
1999” Sampler
The
Big Backyard is world famous for broadcasting Australian new music in
Luxembourg, Lithuania, LA, London, and all points in between and beyond every
week. The also support our local industry by puting together collections of
known, unknown and unsigned artists from all corners of the country and taking
those CDs to well-attended international industry gatherings like Austin’s
South by Southwest (SxSW), in Texas. Apparently Austin is quite the haven for
Australian music and with compilations like BBY’s “SxSW 1999 Sampler”
there’s little wonder!
Sixteen tracks by fourteen artists based
mostly in regional areas of Australia, including Byron Bay NSW, Horsham Victoria, Cairns FNQ,
Katoomba & Wollongong NSW and Queensland's Gold Coast. The music styles on offer here are
just as widespread, with country, alternative, funk, blues, reggae, acoustic,
combinations of these and many more! It would be difficult to choose one or two
great songs from this album, but The Phoenix Movement, Cavante,
Lawrence
Woodward, At Random, Miles from Nowhere, Sharyn
Bothe and Don Hillman would rate more than a mention.
For its wide-ranging variety and quality of
production, BBY’s “SxSW 1999 Sampler”
would have won more than a few fans of the Antipodean new-music scene.