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Formed atop an ancient mountain and brought into the world in the form of a sacred egg...wasn't Monkey Magic cool? I wish my bio were equally rad. Instead I have to contend with a very typical birth (not even a virgin birth, though there's only one guy who has the balls to claim that). A childhood in Sydney's western suburbs, an adolesence in the Illawarra, and a recent return to Sydney-town covers the basics. Through that time I've performed as a stand-up comic, sung in a band (who weren't so much a one-hit wonder as a one-show wonder), studied for various degrees I never finished, and taken a job as a professional music nerd at a certain black-and-yellow retailer in the Sydney CBD. I've also cultivated a massive crop of red hair, of which I'm mighty proud.

• Pavement, 
• St Jerome's Laneway Festival, 
• The Basics 

• I don't want to be one of those people who knocks out a big wanky list of the bands/artists they "like" (i.e. copied from their iTunes playlist). What I will say is that music is never in the background for me, 
• it's an active participant in my everyday life. Anyone who uses music as aural wallpaper, 
• or consumes the generic and overly familiar deserves punishment. Listen to something that scares you or surprises you on a regular basis, 
• you might grow a little!

• I love Charlie Kaufman's writing, 
• so Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a fave, 
• as is Being John Malkovich. Everyone says those ones, 
• though, 
• especially those who are trying to craft an indie aesthetic without going too far out. But hey, 
• that's me, 
• I'm content with who I am. I also dug the 'adaptation' (another Kaufman reference there!) of Jonathon Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, 
• though I (classically) prefer the book. Thank You For Smoking is a wry gem, 
• and the Coen brothers know their way around a film set, 
• Fargo and No Country for Old Men being key examples.

The afforementioned Mr Foer's book is a classic,  the language use is so silly that it leavens the darker moments,  and,  funnily,  creeps into your thinking. The same is true of Anthony Burgess and his much more disturbing novel,  A Clockwork Orange: read that,  and I guarantee you'll being thinking of milk as 'moloko' for a while (nothing to do with the former Roisin Murphy vehicle).