Checking out

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”.

Frank Martin (15 September 1890 – 21 November 1974) was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands. He was born in Geneva, the tenth and last child of Charles Martin, a pastor. Before he started school, he was already playing the piano and improvising. At nine, he was composing complete, fully formed songs, without having had any instruction in song forms or harmony. A performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion which he heard at the age of twelve left upon him an ineradicable impression, and Bach became his true master.

Mike Doughty (born June 10, 1970, in Fort Knox, Kentucky) is an American indie and alternative rock singer-songwriter and author. The former frontman of Soul Coughing barely sounds like his former self. Doughty began writing solo songs in 1995, but nothing materialized until Soul Coughing broke up in 2000, at which point Doughty began touring solo with his acoustic guitar after becoming clean and sober. Skittish was finally released to the masses along with the EP Rockity Roll on the ATO record label.

Lyrics Born (a.k.a. Asia Born) is Tom Shimura (b. 1972), originally from Berkeley, California, though through his childhood he lived in Tokyo, Japan, and Salt Lake City, Utah. He began his hip hop career while at college at UC Davis, where he was a DJ at the college station KDVS. He is a founding member of the group of artists known as Quannum Projects. He is also one half of the group Latyrx with fellow MC Lateef The Truth Speaker.