Dejacopis @TheC_Amsterdam
8 years ago in the city of Perth, Australia, a group of LGBT artists came together to set up a music and performance event celebrating the Pride week.
Not only a one-night feast, Homophonix became a label under which the main organizers Vinn Pitcher and Nat Ripepi gathered a strong collective of unique voices and allowed them the freedom to experiment and express themselves.
Fast forward to 2011: Vinn joins forces with Channa, Sexy Galexy, Brian Neubauer and BO & LO  to bring Homophonix to Paradiso and give back some light to a rather gloomy summer in Amsterdam.

 
The song opener is a cover of Wham’s ‘Careless Whisper’; accompanied only by the acoustic guitar, Vinn’s voice appears strong, deep and full bodied.
Tonight’s version features also a portion sang in Swedish, his adopted country for the past few years.
Vinn’s songs are stark, compelling. The nature of his lyrics is obscure; you don’t get to have a full open view to his heart but if you listen close enough you can have a peek into his most personal thoughts.
A song about missing summer may appear quite naive and simple, but that’s a cover up for an intense sense of longing and loneliness.
Vinn likes to guide us to the meaning of his words; he offers an explanation to the metaphors for ‘dry’, ‘wet’ and ‘sly’ associated to an Australian village where alcohol is forbidden, yet you cannot help but wonder the way the ‘paradise in your own mind’ truly looked like.
The rendition of this song at Homophonix got to be particularly striking: together with Lo on the saxophone, every guitar lick sounded richer, every note expanded to include all the shades of the desert and the icy night.

 
Channa is an open book instead. Her stage presence is powerful and laid-back at the same time.
She is capable of make you smile, laugh uproariously even, and a moment after, pour her tears in her words for you to hear.
Her music is, for a lack of better words, carefully balanced. You can find yourself tapping your feet, repeating the chorus immediately, getting sucked up in.
She might tell that all her songs are sad and about break-ups, but she should no longer ‘justify’ nor ‘apologise’: that is the stuff of Art and it does not only cure herself (or so she claimed), it soothes us all.
Using a simple loop pedal effect in the guise shown also by Ani DiFranco and Andrew Bird, her last song rolled as a call to arms: Breathe in, let go. Dance if you want to, but first and foremost do not stop falling in love over and over again, with yourself, with anybody else.

 
Mixing jokes, self deprecatory anecdotes and sharp witty remarks, Brian Neubauer’s lyrics come in the form of a statement, a political manifesto for men who are not afraid to fight a battle against misconceptions and stereotypes.
Brian’s music is pure folk, the kind that of folk that is born from discrimination and pain to accomplish freedom and forever seek for empowerment.
‘Pay the bill, bottoms up now don’t forget to wink’, tap along with the rhythm dictated by the harmonica and embrace all of your contradictions, simply ‘Go it Gay’

 
http://www.paradiso.nl/ 
http://www.channa.nl/ 
http://brianneubauer.com/
http://www.myspace.com/sexygalexy
http://www.djbomonde.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/djbomonde