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phil van rooyen

  •  van ruin landscape

    Van Ruin
    + The Cants
    Link and Pin Café, Woy Woy, NSW
    Friday, September 21, 2024
    Photos; Tony McNamara

     The Link and Pin has become a special venue that has created its own scene and mythology. It has own mix of outsiders, rock pigs’ mis-fits, eccentrics and those that you will not find at the local RSL club poker machine room.  

    It’s located outside Sydney at Woy Woy on the New South Wales Central Coast. In its own unusual way, the venue has been celebrating Octoberfest in September and I say, why not?  Bavarian lederhosen and Ramonestee-shirts make for a great look.

  • trauma magnetTrauma Magnet – Van Ruin (Crankinhaus Records)

    It has been an explosive 12 months for Van Ruin, a band formed in Sydney only a year ago that almost immediately began recording their first mini album. Band leader Phil Van Rooyen had a batch of deeply personal songs he had written about his years of counselling substance abuse in the underbelly of the city's Northern Beaches.

    Phil threw himself into a flurry of  writing and recording, working with his decades-long mate and Al Creed, of local legendary bands like Dr Fruitworld and Panadolls,as well as the New Christs.

    Enter Stuart Wilson (Lime Spiders, New Christs, Chris Masuak’s Dog Soldier and The Crisps)on drums. There were a couple of the raggedy, under-rehearsed gigs that were hanging by a thread at times, and as thrilling as they were they did not capture the brutal darkness and brilliance of what would the debut EP,  “Jails, Death and Institutions”.