Bud Petal - Sydney, Sydney (2019)

Sydney, Sydney is a musical diorama of modern day Sydney. It takes the listener from beers at the Courthouse Hotel in Newtown to corn-tassels in Clovelly. From wage slavery in Bankstown to longings for the Levant in Lakemba. From being happy in Hurstville to waiting for Louise with a cup of tea in Eastwood. From police brutality in Redfern to activists proclaiming “Know your city! Love your city! Organise to make it better!”

Bud Petal is the stage name of musician Eran Asoulin, who with his band has now released 4 albums. His music has been described as “cerebral art-folk”, “a true outsider, a freak-folk wunderkind”. He was “discovered” when his self-produced first album was pulled from the trash at a local radio station. A self-taught musician from The Levant, he spent his teenage years immersed in the bohemian/DIY art scene of Newtown, Sydney.

His music collides Mediterranean 70s/80s folk pop (Lucio Battisti, Nada Malanima, Aviv Geffen), the Middle Eastern/Arabic music of his childhood (Marcel Khalife, Oum Khaltoum) and from the West: early Joan Baez and elements of free jazz.

His voice is a glorious, glissading din with stuttering vibrato. Lyrically you’ll find an oddly surreal, socialist-humanist world with strands of Emile Zola, A. B. Yehoshua, Yaakov Shavtai, Andre Breton, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and John Pilger.

As well as receiving airplay in radio stations all over Australia, in Berlin, in Paris, and in the United States, Bud Petal has curated and featured in shows at the Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide Fringe Festivals.