I Forget, Sorry!’s favourite loud shirted comic book nerd has just signed a worldwide publishing deal with Universal, which nobody could have expected, including him.
To celebrate 12 months which included his first top 100 single, top 50 album, Like A Version, 2 entries in The Hottest 100, Unearthed J Award nomination, #7 in the RAGE! top 50, a record deal with Permanent/Shock and now a worldwide publishing deal with Universal (deep breath) Chance is going to hit the road on the Infinity Album Tour with fellow I Forget, Sorry! members Mind Over Matter (who, by the way, just had their new single Real Life added to high rotation on triple j) to travel around most of Australia playing songs for you.
Tickets are on sale now.
Friday 12 April – The Standard – Sydney, NSW Saturday 13 April – Live It Up Festival – Brisbane, QLD (U18s) Wednesday 17 April – The Zoo – Brisbane, QLD Thursday 18 April – Surfers Paradise Beer Garden – Surfers Paradise, QLD Friday 19 April – The Spotted Cow – Toowoomba, QLD Saturday 20 April – The Big Pineapple Music Festival – Sunshine Coast, QLD Wednesday 24 April– Kay Street Saloon Bar – Traralgon, VIC Thursday 25 April – Ferntree Gully Hotel – Ferntree Gully, VIC Friday 26 April – Northcote Social Club – Melbourne, VIC Saturday 27 April – Karova Lounge – Ballarat, VIC Sunday 5 May – Caxton Street Seafood & Wine Festival – Brisbane, Friday 24 May – The Ed Castle – Adelaide, SA Thursday 30 May – Spurs Saloon – Devonport, TAS Friday 31 May – Hotel New York – Launceston, TAS Saturday 1 June – Republic Bar – Hobart, TAS Thursday 6 June – Transit Bar – Canberra, ACT Friday 7 June – The Great Northern Hotel – Newcastle, NSW
The first batch of acts vying for Australian Album of the Year at the 2012 J Awards were announced recently on triple j Breakfast with Tom & Alex. The 2012 Unearthed Artist of the Year and The Music Video of the Year nominees have also been announced.
Out of the five nominees, two of the acts - The Rubens & Alpine – are being noticed for the debut long-players. Hermitude pick up their first nomination for their fourth album Hyper Paradise. Ball Park’s nomination comes just a year after their first, for their debut Happiness & Surrounding Suburbs and Tame Impala follow up their 2010 J Award win for Innerspeaker with another nod for their sophomore Lonerism.
Kingswood, Flume, The Rubens, Chance Waters and Thelma Plum have all picked up nominations for the 2012 Unearthed Artist of the Year.
Six clips are set to battle it out for Music Video of the Year at this year’s J Award’s. The crew behind videos for the likes of Alpine, Gotye, Flight Facilities, Kirin J Callinan, Bertie Blackman and Hilltop Hoods are all in the mix ahead of the November 23 awards ceremony.
Chance Waters has come back swinging with Young & Dumb, the under-your-skin-catchy follow up single featuring enchanting Australian songstress, Bertie Blackman, which was exclusively premiered on triple j’s Good Nights with Linda Marigliano tonight.
On the seemingly unlikely collaboration, Chance Waters explained that once he had the song concept in mind, he needed the right female vocalist to complete the track. He felt that Bertie Blackman and he were moving in parallel paths in their production, their sound and unusual pop aesthetic. After numerous Skype conversations and e-mails, a friendship was forged and thus commenced this exciting collaboration.
With production from recent hit machine One Above (Hilltop Hoods – I Love It, Illy – Heard It All) who also takes credit behind the boards for his work on Maybe Tomorrow and featuring horns and strings by members of Unearthed darlings Lime Cordiale & Cogel, the collaboration is seemingly pre-destined to be one of the biggest songs this summer.
Bertie Blackman and Chance Waters are currently working on an ambitious Young & Dumb video concept together.
Young & Dumb will be available to purchase on iTunes tomorrow, Friday September 21.
Permanent Records, the imprint of Shock Records dedicated to fostering Australia’s local artists, has signed a deal with Sydney’s Chance Waters. His new single Maybe Tomorrow has been in high rotation on triple j for a number of weeks and subsequently added to a slew of stations and networks nationally, flying to #9 on the most added national radio chart.
Maybe Tomorrow has remained steadfast in the iTunes Urban Top 50 for 10 weeks straight, peaking at #16, also reaching #2 in the independent distribution radio charts and #5 on the independent singles chart after an 11 week run on the AIR Charts.
Permanent Records will release Chance Waters’ new album later in 2012.
Originating from two of the most musically isolated parts of Australia, Perth rapper Coin (of The Stoops / Coin & Taku) and Tasmanian DJ/producer Akouo (Javs & Akouo) have been quietly building a cache of sounds that blend neo-soul, backpack rap and eclectic rhythms.
The duo draw inspiration from a range of influences, from hip hop producers such as J Dilla, Pete Rock, Hitek, Exile and 20Syl to neo-soul figures like Amp Fiddler, Erykah Badu and Common. As a member of The Stoops, Coin collaborated with producer J Squared (Illy / Beathedz / Spit Syndicate) on their album Stoop Squared. It was soon followed up his album Home, a collaboration with future beats producer Taku (Raashan Ahmad/Miles Bonny). Coin’s work on The Stoops infectious summer anthem Free featuring 2010 Wam Song of the Year winner Georgi Kay was met with critical acclaim, earning The Stoops a strong run of festival shows and international support slots including Pete Rock, Kurtis Blow and LoopTroop throughout 2011.
Akouo builds musical soundscapes that encompass soulful melodies, unique beats and jazzy bass lines. His debut album Outwit The Muscle featured as Triple J Hip Hop Show ’Album of the Week‘ and it’s single Lazy Days collected strong rotation on triple j radio. His works include collaboration with artists such as Class A, Chance Waters and Dunn D. In 2010, Akouo released a collaborative EP with US MC Javs (DJ Bonez/Jase).
This August Chance Waters is celebrating his recent success with his Maybe Tomorrow Tour. Chance will play a string of dates along the east coast throughout August following the success of the recent single Maybe Tomorrow. Maybe Tomorrow was added to rotation on triple j, and subsequently multiple stations nationally.
Upon its release the single flew to #9 on the Most Added National Radio chart and #4 on the Most Added Alternative National Radio chart. These achievements assisted Maybe Tomorrow to reach the latest height of #30 on the iTunes Hip Hop chart. In its 2 weeks in the AIR Radio Charts the single attained the highest spot of #11 and #2 on the Independent Distribution Chart.
On the event of Maybe Tomorrow receiving more than 20,000 track streams on Youtube, Chance released his video clip for the song which will no doubt hit a similar height.
Also on Youtube, Chance’s remix of Gotye’s international hit Somebody That I Used To Know has broken the overwhelming 150,000 views mark, and his previous single Infinity has hit almost 24,000 views. Recently the song has been synced to National Geographic’s trailer for its new series Doomsday Preppers which documents the day-to-day lives of people preparing for the end of the world. The trailer is currently playing to an international audience on National Geographic worldwide.
This tour is a chance for fans to catch the innovative Chance Waters headline shows for the first time along the east coast.
Following the success of his first single Infinity, (currently sitting at over 20,000 views on YouTube), Chance has had his head down in the studio and this week will release his new track, Maybe Tomorrow from his soon to be released album, Infinity.
Produced by One Above, the new single demonstrates Chance’s lyrical potency and his potential to push the typical boundaries of the hip-hop genre with an up-beat tempo, off-beat rhythm, piano-rock influences and live instrumentation.
Following widespread national acclaim under the appellation Phatchance, Sydney hip hop artist Chance Waters is losing the alias and going ‘au naturale’ with his given name. Chance is facing a ride on a wave of aftershock following his previous success that can only further shake up the Australian hip-hop scene, as we know it.
Chance’s debut album Inkstains saw the artist claim Featured Artist spots on triple j Unearthed and Music NSW as well as topping charts in AMRAP’s Most Ordered To Air Chart. After sparking a rave of support including The Australian Newspaper labeling him as “an intelligent lyricist and masterful storyteller”, Chance is well on his way to becoming a best-selling artist invigorating “a breath of fresh air” (Rave Mag).
Chance is undeniably cementing his place as a “burgeoning hip-hop star” (Dom Alessio, triple j) and carving the path for Australian hip-hop as he goes.
Chance is currently on tour: Saturday 18th of May – Evelyn Hotel – Melbourne [with Seth Sentry] Saturday 19th May – FBI Social – Sydney
Following the release of the title track from his soon to be released sophomore album, Infinity, Sydney hip-hop artist Chance Waters (formerly Phatchance) announces that he will hit the road for a series of East Coast shows this April and May. Infinity is produced by Adelaide artist-to-watchOne Above, who recently produced The Hilltop Hoods’ #1 Single ‘I Love It ft. Sia’ as well as numerous songs from Chance’s debut LP, Inkstains.
Recently you have departed from the Phatchance title to perform under your real name Chance Waters. What was the reasoning behind the name change? Honestly it was a personal thing, when people asked me what I did and I explained to them I was a musician and told them my stage name was Phatchance I felt like there were all these connotations and assumptions that a name like that carried with it, it’s a really light hearted name, it’s pun based and for a fair while it hasn’t been heaps indicative of the type of music I make. As I’ve gotten older and have matured as an artist I’ve been growing away from a lot of the style elements and influences that I came up with, I felt like by changing to something neutral I’d have a little more freedom in terms of peoples expectations and would also have an opportunity to reintroduce myself somewhat.
You have a new album coming up titled Infinity. Can you give us any brief details on this release? Definitely! I’m really excited to get it finished and get it out to people, it’s looking like it will be a 12 track album and it should be out sometime in July, there’s a pretty wide range of sounds and I think it’s a little different to anything else that’s going on locally at the moment, at least in terms of production, we’ve approached it from as musical a perspective as possible, there’s a lot of bridges, pre-choruses and instrumental changes, things I think should get more of a run in Australian hip-hop, and I’ve tried to keep my standard of writing as high as possible from start to finish, so I’m feeling really positive about putting it out and seeing how people receive it.
We’ve seen the first track released from the upcoming LP which is also the lead single to the album, titled infinity. Tell us a bit about the track and who you worked with on this one? ‘Infinity’ encapsulates a lot of the ideas I wanted to cover in the album, it’s produced by One Above with a little additional instrumentation from Jon Reichardt (Guitar) and Kieran Owens (Bass), behind the scenes we put a huge amount of time and effort into the production side of things and One Above made a million small changes and additions to the song before we went to mastering. From a production perspective it’s sort of indicative of where I’m trying to go with the record, not bringing the drums in till the very back half of the song and creating as much texture as possible in the instrumental made it a really interesting song to work with, it’s probably not the most radio friendly number we could have chosen as a lead single but I wanted to release a song that was really true to where I wanted to go and Infinity did that perfectly.
You dropped a film clip for the track Infinity, do you feel as comfortable expressing yourself in video form as you do say making a track or writing some lyrics? Definitely! I love the process of making a video and trying to represent the concepts in a song in a visual medium, I think it’s part and parcel with being a musician now, that you need to be able to do something interesting with both your live performance and your video work, I’m probably not as good as knocking out regular clips as some artists are and I can’t murder the rapping at camera thing like some dudes do, but I love the idea of doing something cool for the key songs on an album. The Infinity clip was probably our biggest production to date, which is funny given how simple the actual video is, but I think visually there were some really nice ideas and the aesthetics of the dancers and the lighting really complemented the concept for me, which is what we were aiming for, so I was heaps happy with how it turned out.
In 2009 we saw the release of your debut LP, Inkstains. How do you think Infinity compares to that release? I’d like to think it’s a way better record in general. There’s a lot more balance, which was a deliberate thing, I tend to get into this pattern of writing melancholy song after melancholy song, so I tried to pepper the album with a few beat choices that I wouldn’t normally run with, which lead to some interesting results because in a couple of cases there’s quite up-beat production and it’s contrasted with my more macabre writing style, the next single, which is called Maybe Tomorrow, is a perfect example of that. Think jingly piano rock meets cynical arsehole making fun of the end of the world. I also tried to experiment a lot with tempo and song writing and tried to push the boundaries a bit. It’s not totally finished yet but I’m really proud of what we’ve done so far and I think it should resonate with the people who liked my earlier releases as well as hopefully opening up my listening base a bit.
At the end of last year, the I Forget Sorry team released 5 mixtapes each one from one of the artists on the roster. Yours, Approaching Infinity featured a Gotye remix where you teamed up with One Above once again. Tell us a bit about the track and why you picked the Gotye track to remix? That song has probably been one of the best received tracks I’ve ever worked on, One Above murdered the remixing side of things and it was a really cool concept to write to. Gotye’s one of my favourite artists and I’ve been a little obsessed with his music for years, so the second I saw the video I knew I wanted to do it, I never expected him to be kind enough to send us the stems though. Obviously the success of the track was mainly about piggy-backing what was always going to be a massive hit, but we were lucky in that we got in early and I think we did something a bit different to all the other remixes that were floating around, so people picked it up and ran with it. I still get Google Alerts about that track getting played on radio in Europe and it definitely introduced a lot of new people to my music, which is really surreal, I’d love to do more official remix work in the future but right now I’m primarily focused on finishing the album and getting some new originals out.
You are also off on a tour around the country, are you looking forward to the dates, and what can heads expect at your live show? Yes! I’m heaps excited about the tour dates! I just merged Melbourne shows with Seth Sentry, and he’s one of my favourite rappers full-stop, and I was also lucky enough to score main support for TZU in Adelaide which I’m kind of pegging onto the tour, so there’s a lot for me to look forward to. In terms of my live show it depends on the date, in Adelaide I’m doing a more standard set with just myself and One Above, which will be heaps of fun as I’ve never shared a stage with him, but for most of the tour I have a bassist and keyboard/banjo player and for Sydney and Melbourne I’ve also got a violinist/singer joining me. I’ll be playing a mix of older tracks from Inkstains and Inkstains (Acoustic) as well as some songs off the mixtape and a few untested tracks from the new album, I’m particularly excited about wheeling those out for the first time and seeing what works and what doesn’t.
Originating from two of the most musically isolated parts of Australia, Perth rapper Coin (of The Stoops / Coin & Taku) and Tasmanian DJ/producer Akouo (Javs & Akouo) have been quietly building a cache of sounds that blend neo-soul, backpack rap and eclectic rhythms.
The duo draw inspiration from a range of influences, from hip hop producers such as J Dilla, Pete Rock, Hitek, Exile and 20Syl to neo-soul figures like Amp Fiddler, Erykah Badu and Common. As a member of The Stoops, Coin collaborated with producer J Squared (Illy / Beathedz / Spit Syndicate) on their album Stoop Squared. It was soon followed up his album Home, a collaboration with future beats producer Taku (Raashan Ahmad/Miles Bonny). Coin’s work on The Stoops infectious summer anthem Free featuring 2010 Wam Song of the Year winner Georgi Kay was met with critical acclaim, earning The Stoops a strong run of festival shows and international support slots including Pete Rock, Kurtis Blow and LoopTroop throughout 2011.
Akouo builds musical soundscapes that encompass soulful melodies, unique beats and jazzy bass lines. His debut album Outwit The Muscle featured as Triple J Hip Hop Show ‘Album of the Week‘ and it’s single Lazy Days collected strong rotation on triple j radio. His works include collaboration with artists such as Class A, Chance Waters and Dunn D. In 2010, Akouo released a collaborative EP with US MC Javs (DJ Bonez/Jase).
Following the release of the title track from his soon to be released sophomore album, Infinity, Sydney hip-hop artist Chance Waters (formerly Phatchance) announces that he will hit the road for a series of East Coast shows this April and May. Infinity is produced by Adelaide artist-to-watch One Above, who recently produced The Hilltop Hoods’ #1 Single ‘I Love It ft. Sia’ as well as numerous songs from Chance’s debut LP, Inkstains.
After more than five years actively touring the country and releasing music under the moniker Phatchance, Chance Waters has decided to lose the alias and return to his given name. With the changing of the guard now complete, Chance has his head down and his mind firmly focused on the road ahead.
Chance has toured the country extensively, playing his own headline shows as well as support slots for international heavy weights such as Method Man & Redman, DJ Premier, The Beatnuts and De La Soul, and a score of local mainstays including Bliss N Eso, The Herd, Urthboy, Muph N Plutonic, Drapht, Pez & 360, and The Funkoars. In 2010 Chance embarked on two separate national headline tours, totalling over thirty dates to more than 7000 punters, and won a spot to showcase his material at APRA’s ‘Song Summit Live’. Last year, Chance hit the road for the Hey, Where’s Your DJ acoustic tour, the first ever acoustic Australian hip-hop tour, which included capacity shows in Brisbane and Melbourne, as well as a three-week capacity residency at Oxford Art Factory in Sydney.
More recently, Chance released the mixtape Approaching Infinity, featuring the remix of Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’. The track is currently receiving play on radio in Europe and has clocked over 100,000 views on Youtube.
Tour Dates: Fri April 27. Plantation Hotel. Coffs Harbour. **FREE ENTRY** Sat April 28. Brewery. Byron Bay. **FREE ENTRY** Fri May 11. Chatswood Club. Chatswood. Fri May 18. Beaches Hotel. Newcastle. **FREE ENTRY** Sat May 19. FBi Social. Sydney. Sat 26. X&Y Bar. Brisbane.
