double bass

Bertie Blackman’s first encounter with her artistic self came as a child sashaying across her mother and father’s paint strewn studio floor. The daughter of iconic Australian artist Charles Blackman, not many musicians can boast a foundation of emotional expression like Bertie.

Bertie first stepped onto the scene with ‘Headway’ (2004), her folk-inspired debut album. The single ‘Favourite Jeans’ became Bertie’s radio breakthrough and saw her dubbed “Australia’s underground queen”.

Binary Band is formed of the sparring vocal harmonies, dobro (slide guitar) and harmonium (missionary organ) of Ali Thoburn and Billy Tudor, and complimented by the occasional electric piano and pieces of catgut, dusty wood and rusty metal. The resulting sound is an earthy, wide-screen brew of American roots, English psychedelia, film soundtracks, North African blues and Far Eastern influences that brings to mind Neil Young, The Low Anthem, Peter Gabriel, The Band, Tinariwen and Traffic.

Alan Silva (born Alan Treadwell da Silva, Bermuda, January 22, 1939) is an American free jazz double bassist and keyboard player. Born a British subject to an Azorean Portuguese woman (Irene da Silva) and a black Bermudian man known only as "Ruby" at the very height of segregation, Silva emigrated to the United States at the age of five with his mother, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19. He adopted the professional name Alan Silva in his twenties.