Features / Music

+ Welcome to the Pilerats.com Soundcloud.. With Wonderland Festival coming thick and fast, today's post is a two-pronged announcement. The first - and most relevant to what we're talking about - is the release of the Wonderland 2014 Mixtape, mixed by ever-reliable Perth DJ Sleepyhead and premiered earlier today with the good folks at Purple Sneakers. He helps us out yearly for the CIRCO Festival mixtapes, and this is another featuring all the acts on the bill, along with a couple of Sleepyhead flourishes, including Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit. It's a sweet little 20+ minutes to sort out ya house party soundtrack, or Wonderland Festival pre-drinks. The festival hits Supreme Court Gardens Saturday 20 December, head HERE for tickets. You may also notice the mix has been posted to our brand new (and accordingly very skint) Pilerats.com Soundcloud. To differentiate a little between ourselves and the Record Label, we decided to start up our own Soundcloud to give us the freedom to post

The glorious second coming of local punk pioneers Radio Birdman.

In a world where jokes are just strange questions that need answers.. My little brother used to tell really bad jokes as a kid; mostly because for a long time he thought jokes were just questions that needed any kind of answer. Most kids don't start to understand wordplay, riddles and puns (the concepts behind your basic knock knocks) until around six or seven - the years before then though they've already mastered imitating adults - so there's this odd limbo zone where they can mimick the actual telling of a joke, but can't quite execute the punchline.   A while ago a Tumblr, Bad Kids Jokes, that tapped into this limbo not-quite-there kid joke zone, did the 'Net rounds. Now, Redditor JohnnyTopside has posted illustrated versions of the some of the pearlers. Here's our favourites:        DO IT NOW!

Hanging with one of the country's biggest DJ/producers.. To say Alison Wonderland's had a breakout year would be selling it short. Sure she's been commanding festival stages for a fair while now, but 2014 not only saw the huge Wonderland Warehouse Project sell out around the country, it's also seen her debut EP Calm Down unleashed onto Australia and the world. Being a popular party DJ is one thing, but she's since moved onto something far and above, working with producers like Lido, Djemba Djemba and Mr Carmack for one of the year's biggest releases. We talked getting to where she is now, the cello and how no one is called a "Male DJ".

A sombre tale of one man's encounters and failure with fame..

Yung Gud proves his legs as a standout producer beyond the world of sad rap.. As Swedish rap oddball Yung Lean continues to shake up the rap game and anger #realhiphop heads all around the globe, it’s about time we shone some light on the army of fantastic producers that shaped Lean's truly singular sound. Nightvision, Gatorade, Princess Daisy and Ghosttown are among the most recognized and well-received Yung Lean tracks and all of these are produced by his 19 year-old partner in sonic-crime, Yung Gud. Above: Yung Gud Along with Yung Sherman, Yung Gud's (shall we say, classy?) re-appropation of classic trance synths and blunted '90s drum pads in their production for Lean's releases Unknown Death and Unknown Memory made those releases sound like they were from another planet (not just across the pond in Stockholm, Sweden). There’s a lot of opinion around Yung Lean's flow (is it whack, is it revolutionary), but you’ll rarely hear a bad word about Yung Gud and Yung Sherman's beats. A cou

Kit-Pop tells how the project formed, working with Future Classic and the duo's future plans.. After years spent working together on a variety of projects, two of Western Australia's brightest exports - Kit-Pop and Ta-ku - officially sealed the deal late last year with the formation of their new project, HWLS. After steadily drip-feeding tracks since that point, earlier this year saw the announcement the duo would be joining tastemaker label Future Classic, their first release - a self-titled EP (grab the vinyl HERE). Ticking another box off the list, this December will see HWLS hitting the club/festival circuit for the first-ever shows under the moniker (dates down below), making it as good a time as any to learn a little about this production power-house, from one half of the duo - Justin Elwin AKA Kit-Pop.