The long awaited, or more so, long forgotten issue six of BATS has been put to print and will be available for free in Brisbane stores and online later this week.
Benjamin Ringuet, is a local designer who has just finished studying and has created his own label - producing both male and female garments. He's already been involved in fashion parades such as Mercedes Fashion week, Port Office fashion and Westpac’s Queen street parade. We interviewed Benjamin about what he does, how he does it and what it's like being a young designer in Brisbane.
I do a bit of this, and a bit of that. Mainly designing and creating clothing, but I’m also the lead singer of a Brisbane band called Tikaal. On my days of I work in an antique store as security and general handyman, believe it or not.
Why do you do it?
I enjoy the challenge of designing clothing. It’s very unpredictable, I never really know until the last moment, if I’m actually going to be happy with my creation. The reason I started designing women’s garments is because it was a challenge, and I honestly didn’t think I could do it. Also the idea of making someone feel good about themselves, because of what they are wearing. Giving them individuality and a chance to stand out from amongst the fads, and trends. It’s also a lot of fun, and I get the chance to meet some real swell people along the way.
What are your thoughts on Brisbane being a breeding ground for young designers? Should we all just pack up our bags and moved to Melbourne?
Brisbane is a very unique city in itself. It differs from Melbourne and Sydney in a cultural sense. Brisbane has its own unique scene thriving through the music, fashion and art being produced at the present moment. Everywhere you go from West End to the Valley, boutiques are opening, new bands are forming, designers are flocking and culture is developing. Every second person I talk to when I’m out in town is a fashion designer or a bass player in some up and coming band, I’ve never heard of. Times are changing, artists are breeding. They say Brisbane is the fastest growing city in Australia, it’s a melting pot of the gifted, a blend of all the talents from our older sibling cities. It seems to be that everyone in Melbourne is packing their bags, and moving up to Brisbane.
On a scale of 1 to 69 (69 being the highest and also a mildly amusing number) how hard was it to create your own label in less than one year after leaving your studies? And why?
You Bats have no shame. But either do I, so I’d have to say 69. Seriously though, this year has been one hell of a roller coaster. I would be lying if I told you it hasn’t been hard, but at the same time this journey is only beginning. I have made lots of mistakes but you learn something different, or meet someone new every day.
Where can our readers get their filthy hands on your clothes?
They’d have to wash them first, but at the moment Benjamin Ringuet is being stocked at Red Cordial in the city, and Alterior Motif up the coast, stay tuned; I have high hopes to expand. You can also check out my Benjamin Ringuet facebook or email me on bringuet@hotmail.com if anyone would like purchase an item of clothing. If they're nice to me I can give them a good price. Also i'm currently selling some t- shirts at the moment with prints of some photos ive taken and some rare family photos from the summer of love, 1969.
How often do you wear our own creations?
Never, I only wear rare exotic furs and fabrics
What does the future hold for Benjamin Ringuet?
Fast cars,bright lights and expensive women. I’m not sure. I hope there’s a future for someone like myself, in this industry. I really want to expand out of Brisbane one day and create clothing for individuals willing to make a statement. I want to one day design suits, shoes and dresses. Most of all in the future I want to continue to do what I do best, designing clothes, writing music and making girls look pretty, for the sake of my amusement.
Benjamin recently had a fashion parade at Threaded, which we attended, here are a few photos of his clothes in action - courtesy of romanceinmypants.com
Recently, Kelsey and Emily caught up with Frederick from DATAROCK when they were on their European tour. Frederick gave us some minutes of his time so we could chat to him about their soon to be Australian tour, how Australian crowds compare to European crowds and whether or not he would let Barack Obama use one of their songs in an ad campaign.
THE INTERVIEW:
Hey it's Fredrik
Hey, how are you?
Good thanks, how are you? It's early morning in Australia?
It's so early. I worked last night, so please bear with me.
It's late night here, it's a 9 hour time difference, so yeah, it's late here in Norway.
How are you feeling? Are you feeling alright?
Yeah I am, we've been touring for around three months. In North America, and Norway. 50 shows over three months.
Yeah, we see you're currently touring Europe, is there a country you haven't played in yet that you would like to?
You know what, we've never played in New Zealand. But we've come to Australia five times so far (laughs). Yeah I guess New Zealand, out of all the countries we haven't played in before. We've only played in 31 countries.
What about Antarctica, would you play there?
If given the opportunity, yes.
The last time you were in Australia was not too long ago actually, have you had the chance to "cuddle a koala" or do any other typical tourist-y things on your Australian tours?
We've never tried surfing in Australia for some reason, I don't think we've spent enough time on the beach.... we all got sun burnt at the Gold Coast though. In Sydney Harbour, we went to the aquarium and we got a picture taken there, it's on our Myspace.
You're coming back to our shores early next year for the Falls Festival and Sunset Sounds, are you excited to be playing the festivals along with some of the other acclaimed artists such as Moby and Yeah Yeah Yeahs?
Yeah, I mean, you know it sounds like a perfect set up for us. Yeah I think, hopefully we should see the same audience.
We see your also playing some sideshows in Sydney and Melbourne, but unfortunately not in Brisbane, which is a shame since we heard your last show with Art vs Science was killer, what's it like playing with Australian bands?
Yeah, we played like three or four shows with them. Yeah, those guys are great. When we DJ we play their songs, we think they are great. That's one of the great things about being on tour actually, you get to know the other act. In Brisbane, we don’t have a sideshow. I have NO clue why.
There's pretty much never any sideshows in Brisbane. We're a sleepy little town.
We have played in Brisbane before on our tours, at a place, I think it's called The Zoo? Yeah that's the place.
Yeah that's where we played last time. But anyway, my daughter has a best friend, they're almost like twins, they've been playing together since they were born, but in fact she just moved to Brisbane, so my little kid is coming with me on tour and we are going to stay there for three days.
Oh, how old is your daughter?
She's three and a half.
Does she listen to your music, does she like it?
Yes she does, but like a lot of other people, she only listens to Fa Fa Fa. She listens to it over and over. She doesn't listen our other songs as much as Fa Fa Fa. Yeah, I dunno, the kid seems to like it, everyone likes Fa Fa Fa, I don't know what’s going on.
Yeah I think I listened to it when I was fourteen, I remember it being one of my favourite songs at the time.
Yeah, it's really funny. But it's also a favourite of older people. I dunno, it's something about the funky song that just works for three minutes.
How do Australian crowds compare to European crowds?
Oh, Australian crowds are the best crowds. That's the bottom line. Australia was the first country where we played for a massive audience, we played for 25,000 people in Sydney. We've done 650 shows, and our favourite shows would be the American music festival and the shows we did at The Hi Fi bar in Melbourne. There's something about the Australian audience that just, well, I think Australian people like to party the way we like to party.
Your music has been used for a lot of ad campaigns, are there any companies you would like your music to be used for? Say If Barack Obama wanted to use your song "Sex Me Up" in one of his campaigns, would you let him?
(laughs) Sure, if he wanted to. One of the things we find funny about Fa Fa Fa, is that the chorus of that song is, it's kinda depressing, you know: "Cause I'm gonna ride fast, going nowhere, cause I left my pride in the past, I'm gonna ride fast, to where I don't care" It's kind of negative. If you want to brand your fucking product with that so be it, be my guest. Another funny story is, the number one beer brand in Argentina, which is the country with 200 million people, this beer brand, they wanted to brand their fucking beer with the song "Princess" with the chorus being: "Princess! You got prince ASS, you got a prince of an ass" It's so fucking stupid! If someone wanted to use our songs, you know, that's fine. But you know, our songs are used in an unprecedented number of video games, like Sims 2 and Sims 3, and like four different Fifa games. I mean more than 260 million people have been exposed to Datarock through a videogame.
Your songs have been featured heavily in the game Sims, have you ever actually played the game?
The Sims? Have I ever played The Sims?... Well yes. But have we ever played The Sims on stage? That's a little bit too much. I don't really care about synthesisers or anything, I really care about making songs, the synthesisers are just part of the production. We don't play games much, we travel with toys such as keyboards. The ones you can buy online for like 100 dollars. That's the kind of toys we like. Have you ever caught your mothers out dancing to your tracks? What do they think of your success?
(laughs) I guess I have seen my mother dancing with my daughter at one of my shows. You know, she's very happy. Yeah they're all very proud, everybody thinks it's very absurd. We started Datarock as a fun, little stupid project, but that took us around the world.
Well thanks for talking to us Fredrik, we hope you have fun on your Australian tour.
I hope you're coming to the show.
We are actually, to Sunset Sounds, so we'll see you there.
Datarock are heading back to Australian shores at the end of this month for The Falls festival and early next year for Sunset Sounds. Get your tickets to Sunset Sounds ASAP as they are selling out fast - easily the best festival this summer in our opinion. www.sunsetsounds.com.au
Congratulations to Alice Rezende and David Raywood who both won tickets to the Sunset Sounds festival for having the best costumes at our last party.
We are back again to throw another party before the year is out.
Whether it's to celebrate the end of exams, the start of summer, or the fact that we've had printing difficulties and will be releasing our sixth issue later than expected... is really up to you.
Join us for an ALL AGES afternoon show featuring some great local bands:
NO WAVES, not to be confused with a popular culture scene or a low tidal volume ventilation, is an art exhibition which will showcase several emerging artists from the gold coast this Friday night
held in a warehouse, the exhibition will be accompanied by music from
Comic Sans, A Deadbeat Band and Mary Jane
so skate on over to 99 Lower West Burleigh Road at 6.30pm (fuck being fashionably late)
and get ready for the coolest thing to hit the coast besides the odd tornado and/or shit storm
it will cost you 10 bones
but it is BYO
and girls and boys only! according to the facebook event
- however we asked if hermaphrodites would be turned down on entry and rest assured they won't be
"they are people too"
here is a really cool promo vid that I was only able to watch 14 seconds of as I am actually capped on my internet, but please watch it and inform me of its ending
tell us how much you love/hate this issue - email us at contact@batsmagazine.com
including: a BATS directed fashion shoot (photographed by Jack Loel, with clothes from Boxvintage), photography by Jeff Levingston, features of Nicholas Chalmers, Blue Carousel and Ma'at, an interview with Brisbane's Marilyn Monroe, review of Comic Sans' EP 'Digital Natives', BATS' very own advice column and Five political icons Alex Grigg (from Red Riders) would turn gay for. As well as all of your favourite knick knack articles and controversy.
Yesterday we launched BATS Issue Five: The Icon Issue at The Fort
It was a great day/evening and, as always, it was a fantastic turn out. It was loads of fun, and once again we were overwhelmed by the friendly and fantastic (and good looking) people we were constantly surrounded by. The music from all four bands, and two djs was awesome and we could rave on about it forever, but we really want to get some thank yous out of the way:
Thank you to the unidentified woman who took it upon herself to play the grand piano on one of the landings (she was actually pretty amazing, and weirdly enough she was in my dream last night - shredding on a guitar, so whether or not this is true to life? I'll never know)
Thank you to the person who wrote "I've been constipated for 5 days" in our guestbook. We wish you luck on your shitting-escapades.
Thank you to all the bands that played - you were all amazing.
specially to The Arc who pushed on for nearly 3 hours - thank you so much.
Thanks to Charlie for playing to a completely sober, underaged and motionless crowd.
Thank you to Stemford Hiss/Swamplords for lending their gear
and to Stature::Statue who, due to unseen circumstances beyond their control, played after hours and we were forced to announce "hey guys, there is still one band to go, don't go yet" (Thanks Max)
Thank you to The Fort/Kel for letting us use their amazing space.
Thanks to Will, the sound and go-to-guy, for making our day run smoothly and solving any general fuck ups.
Thanks to our exhibiting artists and the existing BARI artists for making the place look visually amazing - and thanks to the BARI festival in general for allowing us to be a part of their program.
Thank you to Ellie for making the freaking amazing mars bars slice!!!
Thanks to all our friends who helped us set up/clean up/ate our food.
Thank you to anyone who bought our merchandise or showed us words of support.
But most of all Thank You to everyone who came - even when sleeping in on Sunday would have been a much preferred option.
Here are some photos:
however, stay tuned to this blog as much much more will be coming very shortly
