Death To Your Dreams

Hear Death To Your Dreams

We had a planning session for a grant application last night which went well. We want to record an album and produce a beautiful digipack book/CD with lyrics, poems and images.

We've joined the myspace revolution so people can hear our work. There's lovely pictures taken at the launch during Fringe last year by Sooti and various other Sean-friends.

Speaking of Melbourne Fringe, we're planning a three night extravaganza for Fringe, a whole new show to further explore the spoken word /music /visual nexus. Eeek, I'm so excited!

Ms. Sam

Spanish Club gig reviewed

Oh my god, it was great! Jon played liked a dream (and launches his band's album in Melbourne this Saturday 15 - Colour TV - The Carlton Music Room, Carlton from 9pm). We love this show. It's so fun. Joel provided gorgeous visuals of trees and running taps and other delights. Joelistics and Citizen Tom and MC Lioness were great as was The Bedroom Philosopher who MC'd.

But we'll leave it to Richard Watts (3RRR SmartArts presenter) to summarise on his blog:

"...and lastly, the most perfect merging of spokenword and rock music I've ever seen: the pairing of poet and writer Sean Whelan with The Mime Set. Imagine a musical cross between Mogwai and The Dirty Three, with the addition of a female vocalist, and Sean's whimsical, sorrowful, heartfelt and inspired spoken word, and you'll have some idea of just how much I was

enthralled...."

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Melbourne's Spanish Club show

So excited by this. We get to perform in the luxurious surrounds of near-new Melbourne venue the Spanish Club in Fitzroy tomorrow night, Saturday April 8 at 11pm as part of the Emerging Writer's Festival.
Our rehearsals have gone well and it will sound good. Bassplayer replacement Jon Shannon has fitted in gorgeously while Justin, our normal bassplayer, is on tour with his other band, The Dumb Earth in Sydney for the launch of their album, Dry Land.

We have a myspace site now, and will have sound samples up very soon.

Ms. Sam

History of the DTYD project

In April 2005, the mime set invited Sean to read his poetry during a residency at Melbourne’s Builder’s Arms Hotel. Positive feedback led to the idea of collaboration between poet and band. With clear correspondences between Sean’s surreal romantic poetry and the mime set’s textured, emotional music, the 2005 Melbourne Fringe Festival became the deadline to create and present their explorations.

Over the four months of preparation, new music was improvised to existing poetry and new poetry was written to existing songs, notably in the piece ‘Honey O’ where Sean’s words are a response to the existing lyric of relationship breakdown, giving the piece the apparent perspective of his-and-hers internal dialogue, the two voices indirectly responding to each other’s bewilderment and sadness.

Eschewing the more traditional approach of reading, Sean performs ‘lead vocalist’ style alongside mime set’s vocalist, Ms. Sam, with all four musicians swapping instruments to sculpt the different musical perspectives the pieces demanded from us."

Death To Your Dreams is a dark and quixotic collaboration, where the sympathetic magic between words spoken and sung, metre and melody, performance, and the promise of poetry amplifies the pieces’ reverberations of desire, risk, rejection and humour. It's love.