Mess+Noise: Today

News: Artist On Artist: Stockades Vs Seahorse Divorce

2013-06-19T05:00:00Z

Already united in math-y sharpness, Melbourne five-piece STOCKADES and Brisbane five-piece SEAHORSE DIVORCE prepare for a joint East Coast tour with a stream-of-consciousness round-robin Q&A. See if you can keep up.

Allan Stacey (Stockades): ATTN: Seawhores. A Facebook user once said, “Sorry to hear about the band name, will you be OK?” I would like to know, are you OK? And what is the story behind the band name?

Justin Parslow (Seahorse Divorce): Well, we had a few friendly brews at our friend Cam’s house and were discussing the obscurity that is how the father seahorse raises its young in its pouch. We decided our friend the seahorse must have had a fight with his misso and gave her the flick.

We all laughed into the night and I suggested we call the album Seahorse Divorce, but at the time our current band name had already been taken and we needed another. So then we called ourselves Seahorse Divorce.

I have noticed Joe doesn’t use a hair brush. Is this going to cause animals and homeless people to wind up in our tour vans?

Joe Sterley (Stockades): I’ve had short hair for a while but hopefully that won’t affect the amount of animals and homeless people I can get in the vans.

Ben Stimpson (Seahorse Divorce): I welcome any animals and vagrants willing to share our passage through the celestial currents for even a short drive down the road.

In the egalitarian age of bands where nowadays every man and his dog is an artist, musician, writer or critic and has the resources to make their own art and distribute it without any intermediaries, it seems the motivations that used to drive people to create, i.e. fame or immortality, are now fairly redundant with the sheer mass of culture popping up from anywhere and everywhere for better or worse.

Given the unlikelihood of breaking away from that ocean of culture and achieving wider recognition, what does Stockades feel is the impetus for being in a band today? Furthermore, given the relatively young age of all of you, do you feel like any ‘golden ages’ of music have tragically already happened or is there more exciting prospects here and now?

Joe Sterley (Stockades): We don’t really know what it’s like to have to pay tons of money for analogue recording or suck the dicks of record label scouts so it's hard to conceptualise our band outside of a music culture without implications of digital technology/the internet. Of course we couldn’t have existed without being able to hear the music that inspired us, record music cheaply and distribute it through the internet. I think the impetus for being in a band is probably an individual thing, but if playing the music you want to play is the root of it then I think the ‘ocean of culture’ is a great thing to be a part of.

I think the culture surrounding different styles of music throughout the 20th century could be described as ‘golden ages’. The music itself, though, is still around, and it confuses me when people say ‘music was so much better in 19-whatever’ as if they heard everything played by everyone in that decade and scored it against everything being played at the moment. This is the most exciting time, though, because you can get music for free on the internet from anywhere in the world and that’s awesome.

Ben Stimpson (Seahorse Divorce): Word, there’s a lot to do with digital/mass culture that makes me pretty uncomfortable and apprehensive, but the fact that you can travel pretty much travel anywhere in the world either physically or digitally and form bonds with anyone through free music, no matter the cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds, is a beautiful thing.

While you’re still viral Joe, Seahorse is a pretty ethically/politically neutral band in the sense that we all have wildly differing or opposing ideologies and cultural values of varying intensity without really reflecting or conveying them through the band. Stockades is obviously equally populated with free and independent thinking sentient beings, but has more overt ethical undertones regarding social change, DIY, etc., which is awesome.

Is there much discussion or debate that fuels that aspect of the band or is it more a matter of all having pretty similar opinions and intent for the music? Is there any sense of music being a platform or example of action/lifestyle or did it all just happen to come together this way and nobody’s had to think too hard about it – like I probably did with this question?

Joe Sterley (Stockades): Music is a part of action/lifestyle, and I suppose also a reflection rather than an example for me. We don’t have any unified ethical philosophy or principles that we’ve established as a band or anything. I think we all believed in DIY from the outset; we never really discussed that. I think if someone in the band had a serious conflict with the lyrics I’d change them, but they’re not supposed to be representative of all of us.

Toby Young (Seahorse Divorce): What’s your favourite fruit?

Alex Irvine (Stockades): Tomato.

Joe Sterley (Stockades): The fruit question is too difficult. It should have sub-categories. Why did you decide to record the Seahorse Divorce LP live? What was interesting/difficult about the experience?

Mick Ellul (Seahorse Divorce): It was a giant, stressful test to see if we really liked each other and could play our instruments well enough. We would have either loved or hated each other by the end. Thankfully we still talk enough to organise jams each week. Personally I think any drawbacks to live recording are far outweighed by the positives. As soon we let go of personal hang-ups and started listening to what we were playing as a product of the group, it felt and sounded natural – no click tracks, simple gear setups – and it happened much quicker than multi-tracking.

Ben Stimpson (Seahorse Divorce): Given how accessible it is for bands to have polished and studio-produced recordings, a live album seemed like one of the remaining marks of distinction for your standard ‘rock band’ outfit. Also, like Michael said, simplicity and an organic whole was what we were aiming for, rather than crystal and well-defined single parts. Having found out we could do it, I think it might be something we could just keep getting better and better at attempting and pulling off.

Allan Stacey (Stockades): Your album seemed to come together quite quickly. Having played in bands together before and knowing each other for a while, did you find this made the writing process easier? Was this why you felt there was no need to do a demo or EP like most bands these days do?

Michael Ellul (Seahorse Divorce): Pars and I have been playing in bands together since grade 9 (?), so we’ve gotten pretty comfortable with writing together. The band started when we were both in Mackay over the holidays and I wanted to start a ‘pop’ band, so we put together rough demos of a few songs. I sent the songs to Ben, who suggested Toby join, and in a couple of jams we had a few songs already written. Josh just slipped right on in and while we were on a roll we just kept going.

Ben Stimpson (Seahorse Divorce): Yeah, having all been in bands before and finding writing so unrestricted (everyone contributes pretty evenly and easily to songwriting without much disagreement) a demo didn’t seem to make much sense. It’d just stand in the way of how quick new songs seem to pop up, but the first release is definitely a matter of trial and error and we can start refining everything from here.

I’m pretty excited to be playing with everyone in Seahorse and everything is impermanent, so it makes sense to me to write and tour as much as we can for as long as we can while the inspiration’s there [and] let the rest sort itself out later.

Joshua Coxon (Seahorse Divorce): Joe, I am interested to know about your lyric writing process. Do you have a stock(ades)pile of stuff to draw from or do you just let that shit flow out of you Kerouac-style? Do you think the music plays a large role in determining the theme of your lyrics or is it all a subconscious thing?

Joe Sterley (Stockades): I usually just write down things when they occur to me or just thinking about things that I’d like to write about. Usually it starts out as just a few lines that I develop and add to when we are working on a new song. Sometimes things come easily and sometimes not; usually if I do anything like ‘spontaneous prose’ I edit it a lot. Aside from maybe having more serious themes/stronger language in heavier parts, I don’t think the music really affects the lyrics as much as the way they are expressed.

Justin Parslow (Seahorse Divorce): Alex, can you play the drum set blindfolded?

Alex Irvine (Stockades): Yes. Can you play the drum set with ciggie?

Stockades’ self-titled 10” EP is out now through Monolith. Seahorse Divorce’s self-titled album is out now through Tenzenmen. Tour dates below.

Fri, June 21 – Sun Distortion, Brisbane, QLD [all ages]
Sat, June 22 – Blackwire Records, Sydney, NSW [all ages]
Sun, June 23 – Yours & Owls, Wollongong, NSW [all ages]
Mon, June 24 – Smith's Alternative Bookshop, Canberra, ACT [all ages]
Tues, June 25 – Evolution Lounge, Mildura, VIC
Wed, June 26 – The Metro, Adelaide, SA
Thurs, June 27 – Footscray house show, Melbourne, VIC [all ages]
Fri, June 28 – The Reverence, Melbourne, VIC
Sat, June 29 – The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS

News: Premiere: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard ‘Head On/Pill’

2013-06-19T01:00:00Z

Is it possible to hear a sitar without immediately thinking ‘raga’? Not really. But we’ll stop short of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s ‘Head On/Pill’ one, and just settle for the band’s own description: “a 16-minute freakout.”

‘Head On/Pill’ is the bravura opener of the band’s upcoming third album, Float Along – Fill Your Lungs. The song was recorded at the Christmas Street warehouse with their repeat collaborator Paul Maybury. The result of live tracking with all seven members – that means two drum kits, three electric guitars, one acoustic guitar, bass and vocals – it was then overdubbed with sitar and taken home with singer/guitarist Stu MacKenzie to be laden with assorted delay and tape echo.

Not surprisingly, the end result sounds like an inter-dimensional tumult with one hell of a gravitational pull. But rather than just being a druggy tunnel-visioned jam, the song lapses into teasing periods of pop falsetto and Kraut-y interlocking, among other diversions.

We’ve traced The Gizz’s progress for a couple years now, from 2011’s jam-packed 10” Willoughby’s Beach to last year’s debut LP 12 Bar Bruise to this year’s spaghetti western experiment Eyes Like the Sky. In that time, the Geelong seven-piece have grown from a novel garage-psych pile-up to a formidable rock band who earned no less than a national tour support with The Drones this year.

If this behemoth is any indication, Float Along – Fill Your Lungs should capture that progress rather nicely. A radio single of more reasonable length is coming in a few weeks, as is a video clip for the below. The album is due out in September through Flightless.

Review: Jagwar Ma - Howlin

2013-06-18T02:00:00Z

Despite toeing the line between washed-out indie-guitar jangles and pulsing house tracks, Howlin is a surprising exercise in restraint. Surprising also because debut records are not usually like this – they should be overloaded, jostling with ideas that collide and crash at unfortunate times. Jagwar Ma seem to have happily skipped this stage of development, and Howlin unfolds as a highly sophisticated and mature release. Then again, it’s not like recording is new to Jono Ma or Gabriel Winterfield, who’ve been around the works with Lost Valentinos and Ghostwood, respectively.

This maturity definitely doesn’t equal minimalism though, and there is certainly no lack of sonic ideas here. They’re just deployed sparingly, for maximum impact. Check the gradual piling of layers on opener ‘What Love’, with the bass pushing the vocals and various electronic swirls into a thick pulse. Or the way the heavily iced vocals of Jono Ma hang over the muted beat of ‘Uncertainty’ before diving down into a sleek groove.

The forward momentum powers through the seven-minute epic ‘The Throw’, which turns some Beatles-style tumbling vocals into a slow-burning psychedelic jam. Between the stylised modern jams, the ’60s influence drips through in the bright pop bounce of ‘The Loneliness’ and the elastic psych chorus of ‘Come Save Me’. The latter’s lilting pop melody is pure radio sugar, bound for seriously high rotation.

There’s a palpable sense of ease on Howlin. Jagwar Ma are comfortable in letting the sounds stretch out, to settle and rest and become gradually hypnotic before introducing their next idea. Sometimes the sudden change jars: the switch up from the muted house of ‘Four’ to the Madchester revival of ‘Let Her Go’ is a bizarre step at first listen. That is, until the latter turns into a looped vocal chant. The best example of their penchant for the hypnotic comes in the quiet closer ‘Backwards Berlin’, with blended piano and acoustic guitar thrumming over soft imprints of electronica.

Come Save Me by Jagwar Ma

They’ve been firmly lodged within the hype machine prior to the album’s release, with the ever-reliable Noel Gallagher told NME that no less than the future of the galaxy depended on its success. Lucky, then, that Howlin is thoroughly impressive. The galaxy will remain intact just a little longer.

News: Watch: Alpine Cover Radiohead Classic

2013-06-18T06:00:00Z

Melbourne’s Alpine have covered Radiohead’s ‘Just’ for the A.V. Club’s “Undercover” series.

Each year, the magazine invites bands into their Chicago office to cover a list of 25 songs. Once a song is covered it gets crossed off the list, meaning the pool of songs shrinks every time a new band comes in. They could’ve picked U2, Billy Joel, Billy Ocean, or Dinosaur Jr, so why’d Alpine pick ‘Just’?

“We’re huge fans of Radiohead like everyone else in the world,” said singer Lou James in the video, “so it’s an honour to be able to do it.” Guitarist Christian O’Brien said covering Radiohead felt “like high school” all over again.

Unlike Mark Ronson’s neo-soul take on The Bends classic, Alpine put their ethereal, dream-pop sound aside, delivering a faithful rendition of the track complete with criss-crossing vocals and distinctive trem-picking.

The band are currently at the tail-end of a US nationwide tour with Crystal Fighters, which winds up in Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York’s Webster Hall over the next couple days. The tour is in support of the US release of A is for Alpine. It’s their second stint in the US, following a trip in March that included stops in Los Angeles, New York and Austin, where they were one of the Aussie success stories of South By Southwest.

[From FasterLouder]

Alpine covers Radiohead

News: New Band Alert: Designer Mutts

2013-06-18T03:00:00Z

Band: Designer Mutts.

Members: Mark Spence (vocals, baritone guitar, drums), James Carthew (baritone guitar)

Summary: Grunge-indebted spinoff duo of Sydney garage trio Royal Chant. Founded while RC bassist James Carthew was overseas and singer/guitarist Mark Spence decided to keep working on songs with RC’s then-drummer. After said drummer exited both projects, Spence recorded Designer Mutt’s debut six-song EP himself at Megaphon Studios, playing baritone guitar and drums. As a live concern, the band is now Spence on drums and vocals with Carthew on baritone guitar. Launching the EP next Thursday (June 27) in Sydney; info below.

Latest Release: A Day at the Wauchope Races EP, free through RC’s own Dirty Mab imprint.

Quotes: “A collection of vignettes from the edge of the modern world, influenced by English Literature, post-bop jazz drumming and Andy Kaufman.”

Upcoming Gigs:

Thurs, June 27 – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney, NSW [EP launch, w/Doc Holliday Takes the Shotgun, Udays Tiger, Siamese Almeida, Milkmaids  + Jugular Cuts]
Sat, June 29 – Roxbury Hotel, Glebe, NSW
Fri, July 12 – Crate Record Bar, Glebe, NSW

A Day At The Wauchope Races by Designer Mutts

News: Gigs In Brief: Circular Keys, Bearhug, Iowa, Sounds Like Sunset

2013-06-18T12:00:00Z

– The Melbourne duo of Phillipa O’Shea (Colossal Youth) and Dennis Santiago (Eucalypt, Absolute Boys), Circular Keys are reissuing last year’s single ‘Eurogrand’ as a limited 7” on Bedroom Suck this Friday (June 21). It’s also available digitally. Says the label: “From underwater grottoes to cosmic showers, Circular Keys use sound as a method of exploration like no other.” The woozy, subterranean tune will see local launch next Friday (June 28) at The Tote alongside Angel Eyes and Footy. Doors are at 9pm; advance tickets here. Revisit the song’s oceanic video below.

– As previously reported, Sydney’s Bearhug have followed up their slacker-rific first album Bill, Dance, Shiner with the five-song EP Over Easy, also on Spunk. Following a trip to SXSW this year, and despite the fact that it came out back in April, the band are launching the EP this Thursday (June 20) at Brighton Up Bar with Joseph Liddy & Skeleton Horse and The Metal Babies. Ten bucks gets you entry plus a copy of said EP. Doors are at 8:30pm.

Fireworks by bearhugband

– Split 7” kings Tym Records add Iowa and Sounds Like Sunset to their stack of luminaries (Mudhoney, Earthless, Regurgitator, No Anchor, The Nation Blue) with their 11th release – and part of their ongoing Record Club. To celebrate, both bands are launching the split at The Grace Darling in Melbourne on Friday, July 5. Also on the bill are Brat Farrar and Liam Stewart. Last year Iowa released the fuzz-loving album Never Saw It Coming, while Sounds Like Sunset apparently put out a woefully underrated shoegaze album back in 2005. Launch info here.

Never Saw it Coming by Iowa

Feature: Track By Track: Seja

2013-06-17T02:00:00Z

Brisbane’s synth-collecting SEJA VOGEL recorded her second album ‘All Our Wires’ with her brother Mirko and collaborated with Robert Forster, Wally De Backer and members of Cut Copy and Regurgitator. She reveals the various backstories behind her heavenly pop tunes.

‘Like Fireflies’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko Vogel. All instruments by Seja and Mirko except bass by Ben Ely.]
I wanted this song to have a really nice Stereolab-y groove in the bass and drums. I feel like Ben’s bouncy bass line really fits in with the upbeat squelchy synth sounds in the song. When I demoed this track it had a bizarre drum loop which was really syncopated, so when we were tracking the album it was important for me to incorporate some of this rhythmical strangeness, without alienating the listener too much.

Mirko and I had lots of fun programming all the synths and we took turns at trying to make the craziest noises we could on the Korg MS-20 for the intro and then laid them all on top of one another. The song is about new friendships, whether they be platonic or romantic; going through the motions of friending them, being shy during the initial stages, then shouting it off the rooftops, to togetherness, to compromise, to supporting one another in crisis, and all the other great things that happen when you love someone.

LIKE FIREFLIES - by SEJA by Rice Is Nice

‘C’mon’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko.]
I wanted this song to have a bit of a dreamy feel to it, which was ultimately created by synthesizers and Mellotron sounds mixed with the acoustic sounds of the drums and guitar. I was listening to a lot of Harry Nilsson when I wrote this song. I always liked how he made nonsense words and how it didn’t really matter what he was singing as long as it sounded interesting and made its own phonetic soundscape.

The message of this song is to get yourself up when you’re feeling low. When I was writing it, I remember wanting the melodies to be as beautiful as a Grandaddy song, and I think some of the harmonies and chord changes were definitely inspired by them.

SEJA - C'MON (RADIO EDIT) by Rice Is Nice

‘When You Said You Were Mine’

[Written by Seja and Mirko. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko. Arrangement by Wally De Backer.]
This song about thinking of past loves and the future, and sort of writing a comforting and empowering letter to oneself, reassuring yourself that it’s all going to be OK. The lyrics tell a story about how sometimes one can’t tell if the feelings you are experiencing are love or hate because your mind is just in overdrive, either within a relationship or in the middle of the aftermath.

The song came about during a writing session Mirko and I had at his studio in Melbourne. We made a really simple drum loop and starting playing over it. Mirko had the initial chord progression for the choruses and then I worked around it for a few days until we came up with what it is today. When we tracked the song, we recorded Mirko playing two drum parts which were slightly different. They were then cut up and we recorded a thousand different percussion instruments (well, maybe about 12?) over them, which changed the whole feel of the song. We took it to Airlock Studios, where we recorded some Rhodes and piano and finished the rest of the instruments at my home studio.

The Wally arrangement came into it very last-minute when I gave him my album while I was visiting his studio at the beginning of the year. He had all these great arrangement ideas when he heard the song, and I was really curious how they would all sound. I feel like he added a lot more highs and lows, and shaped it into a much more dynamic and balanced song.

WHEN YOU SAID YOU WERE MINE by Rice Is Nice

‘I Killed a Day’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko.]
This was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. I wrote it on guitar which is rare, as I normally write on keys. The final song doesn’t really have all that much guitar in it, but I think you can tell that it’s written in a slightly different way to the rest of the album. The original demo used mostly vocals as instrumentation and although the final version has many other instruments, layered vocal harmonies play a large role in the second half of the song.

The piano and drums for this song were recorded at Airlock Studios. There is a beautiful grand piano at the studio and I felt so lucky to be able to use it. Even though the parts were far from technically amazing.

I KILLED A DAY by Rice Is Nice

‘Imaginations in Hyperspace’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko except guitars by Tim Hoey.]
I wanted this song to sound as epic as possible and I suppose I wanted the guitar sound to be a little My Bloody Valentine-esque. Tim Hoey (Cut Copy) played all the great noisy guitar on this track, which fit really well with the pitch-bended Farfisa organ and other synths going through a overdrive pedals.

The song is sort of about an intergalactic chase but it also touches on elements of general paranoia and anxiety. I really like how the Roland JX-3P synth break in the middle stands out as all the other instruments cut out. It was supposed to have a big synth solo after that, but Mirko suggested a noisy guitar solo would be much more suited and he was so right.

IMAGINATIONS IN HYPERSPACE by Rice Is Nice

‘Call Me Wrong’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko except lap steel by Tim Curnick.]
This is the first song I’ve ever released that has absolutely no keyboards so I suppose it stands out on the album because of that. I think it worked out really well though and Tim’s lap steel really makes it sound special. The lyrics are mostly, but not exclusively, contrary. I wanted to write a song about that part in all of us that makes us want to do the opposite of what other people project onto us. But then every now again throw in something that is the same as what people expect.

I’ve been lucky enough to play this song live with a few special guest stars doing the other harmony party, including Sarah Kelly (Good Heavens), Tim Steward (Screamfeeder, We All Want To), Tim Morrissey (John Steel Singers) and Mel Tickle (Little Scout), and Dan Kelly. Well on my way to collecting all my favourite musicians in Australia and do a duet of this song with them.

CALL ME WRONG by Rice Is Nice

‘Hearts Beat in Time’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko.]
I love how this song progressed from my demos to the finished album version. It started as an acoustic-guitar finger-picked song and ended up as a synth-y arpeggiated dance song with four-on-the-floor-type drums. It has more tracks of keyboards than any other song on the album. I think there were about 20 tracks of different keyboards.

It’s also one of the only songs I've ever written that has a key change. When we were tracking the song, Mirko and I had a bit of a fight about whether or not the song needed bongos/congas in the key change. I was against it for days but eventually gave in and let him try it. Mirko was right. It needed congas. And now I’m sad they’re not as audible as I’d like them to be.

HEARTS BEAT IN TIME by Rice Is Nice

‘All Our Wires’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko.]
The reason this is the title track for the album is because I wrote this song about untangling all my wires in my life, trying to lead a healthy and uncomplicated existence and basically to cut a lot of the drama out. I thought it was a really nice sentiment and I believe most of the songs on the album have an element of this theme in them. Also, the cover of the record is a giant felt modular synthesiser with many wires, so it was kind of fitting.

This song started off as a very slow, tremolo-guitar-based song and I’ve played it live like that for a long time. I decided to change it because a lot of the songs on my album were all turning out to be at a similar slow tempo and I wanted each song to have its own home on the album rhythmically and sonically. So we changed it around a bit and added a middle eight, amongst other things. It is a completely different song now, but I like thinking back to where it came from and what it sounded like then. This song has been on a journey.

ALL OUR WIRES by Rice Is Nice

‘I’d Do it Over’

[Written by Seja and Mirko. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko.]
Mirko and I wrote this song at one of our writing sessions in Melbourne. It was (obviously) inspired by ELO and Grandaddy chord progressions so we made the drums sound very ELO. Lots of the instrumentation for this song was recorded at Airlock, including grand piano. I spent many hours programming arpeggiators at home that ended up filling out the textures of the background. The song uses lots of Mellotron sounds as well and it’s generally supposed to be a fairly uplifting song lyrically.

I'D DO IT OVER by Rice Is Nice

‘Die Wolken’

[Written by Seja. Produced by Mirko. All instruments by Seja and Mirko except vocal by Robert Forster.]
I never intended to write one German song per album, but this is the pattern I seem to have created now [following the first album’s ‘Wir Haben Geheimnisse’]. I sometimes like to write things down in German to challenge myself creatively. I moved here when I was seven, so English is naturally much easier for me these days.

So I wrote this song in German and kept thinking it would be really great to have a male voice singing with me in unison or harmony, and Robert was the first person who came to mind as someone who can speak German (we quite often chat in the language when we run into each other around Brisbane) and I was absolutely thrilled when he agreed to sing it with me.

I wrote the song after I figured out how to hammer-on on the acoustic guitar when I was playing around one day so it extremely hammer-on heavy. I’d been listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel when I wrote it and wanted a similar guitar vibe. Lyrically the song translated to ‘The Clouds’ and is about how the clouds always know how you feel. Sounds way cooler in German...

DIE WOLKEN by Rice Is Nice

‘All Our Wires’ comes out this Friday (June 21) through Rice is Nice. Launch dates below.

Sun, June 23 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD [w/Scraps + Keep On Dancin’s]
Fri, July 5 – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney, NSW [w/The Wednesday Night]
Sat, July 6 – Grace Darling, Melbourne, VIC [w/Banoffee + Seagull]

News: HTRK, Twerps, Beaches Top Bumper Sydney Bill

2013-06-17T04:00:00Z

Sydney’s Carriageworks will play host to a bumper, all-ages event in July.

Presented by FBi Radio, “At First Sight” will be headlined by HTRK, playing music from their soon-to-be-released fourth album, the follow-up to 2011’s M+N Critics Poll-topping Work (work, work). Other bands on the bill include: Melbourne’s Twerps, performing a rare Sydney show before heading back into the studio to begin work on album number two; The Laurels, who recently performed at Psych Fest in Austin; Beaches, whose second album She Beats came out last month; and Super Wild Horses, whose new album Crosswords hit shelves in April.

Straight Arrows, Songs, Holy Balm and Day Ravies are also on the bill, with more acts to be announced. There’ll also be DJs and a record fair featuring local stores, labels and private dealers. The event has been curated by local DJ Marty Doyle, who runs management/booking agency Magic Cactus and has hosted Dusty Fingers on FBi for the past four years.

Doyle says: “At First Sight is a day for all of us that treasure the experience of seeing a truly great band perform live, or flicking through crates of records and finding something old or discovering something new for the very first time. It is about giving people the chance to talk and explore really great music together with other equally passionate music lovers.”

At First Sight will be held at Carriageworks on Sunday, July 20. Tickets are $35.

News: News In Brief: Nuggets, All Our Friends, New Weird Australia

2013-06-16T11:00:00Z

– Last year’s two Australian-focused Nuggets compilations will get a second life on limited-edition vinyl come Friday, July 5. Released 40 years after the original Nuggets collection, Antipodean Interpolations of the First Psychedelic Era sees current Oz bands like Straight Arrows and Velociraptor cover those same classic songs, while Down Under Nuggets: Original Australian Artyfacts 1965-67 makes room for likeminded Oz bands of that fertile mid-’60s era, including The Loved Ones, The Easybeats, The Masters Apprentices and many more. Antipodean Interpolations will be a double LP limited to 500 copies, with eight additional tracks from Bleeding Knees Club, The Night Terrors, Bad/Dreems, The Icypoles, Melodie Nelson, ScotDrakula, New War and Bored Nothing. Meanwhile, Down Under Nuggets will be a double LP limited to 1000 copies. Both will come in numbered gatefold sleeves with complete liner notes.

– Last Friday, Sydney community station FBi Radio kicked off the fundraising live series All Our Friends to mark 10 years on the air. The first in the series was curated by Future Classic and Astral People at GoodGod and featured sets from Panama, Cosmo’s Midnight, Victoria Kim and Rainbow Chan & Moon Holiday. The upcoming three gigs all take place at Oxford Art Factory and are co-curated by the labels Broken Stone, Rice is Nice, Popfrenzy and Modular. Full line-ups below.

Fri, June 21 – Step-Panther, Palms, Bloods, Caitlin Park, Melodie Nelson, Magnetic Heads, Sister Jane + Catcall (DJ set) [Broken Stone Records night, $15 or $10 for FBi supporters]

Sat, June 22 – Richard In Your Mind, Day Ravies, Unity Floors, SPOD, Donny Benet, Shady Lane, Alyx Dennison (Kyu), Adults + Straight Arrows DJs [Rice is Nice/Popfrenzy night, $15 or $10 for FBi supporters]

Sat, June 27 – Movement, Softwar, Wordlife, Slow Blow, Club Mod DJs + special guest to be announced [Modular night, $35]

– New Weird Australia unveiled its latest free-download compilation last week. Six and Twelves is all about the guitar, whether it’s got four, six, or 12 strings, and whatever the approach. Having culled more than 70 submissions of “world-class approaches to abstract guitar music hiding in Australia” down to 26, the label settled on tracks by Sadglint, Bonnie Mercer, Brain Drain and Hinterlandt, among less recognisable names. Compiled by Andrew Tuttle, the bulk of the tracks are previously unreleased. Grab the comp here.

Sixes and Twelves by Various Artists - New Weird Australia

News: Big Scary, Dick Diver, More For Brisbane Festival

2013-06-14T03:00:00Z

Brisbane Festival has unveiled its 2013 music lineup for the Speigeltent with performances scheduled from Brooklyn outfit Beach Fossils, the Arizona-based Calexico and UK MC Ghostpoet.

The local contingent of acts includes The Basics, who have recently been rejoined by Wally de Backer (aka Gotye), as well as Big Scary (who just signed to stalwart indie label Barsuk in the US), Hungry Kids of Hungary, Dick Diver, Roger Knox and Emma Louise.

Also on the bill are Panthu du Prince, Olafur Arnalds, Russell Morris and Doku Rai Band. The festival kicks off Saturday, September 7, running until Saturday, September 28.

(Big Scary photo by Dexter Cornelius)

Sunday, September 8 – Roger Knox
Wednesday, September 11 – Russell Morris
Thursday, September 12 – The Basics
Friday, September 13 – Doku Rai Band
Saturday, September 14 – Dick Diver
Sunday, September 15 – Ghostpoet
Tuesday and Wednesday, September 17 and 18 – Calexico
Thursday, September 19 – Beach Fossils
Friday, September 20 – Pantha du Prince
Saturday, September 21 – Big Scary
Sunday, September 22 – Olafur Arnalds
Tuesday, September 24 – Hungry Kids of Hungary
Wednesday and Thursday, September 25 and 26 – Emma Louise

(From FasterLouder)

News: Artist On Artist: The Laurels Vs The Black Angels

2013-06-13T11:00:00Z

To celebrate their current tour together and kinship post-Austin Psych Fest, THE LAURELS bassist Conor Hannan asked THE BLACK ANGELS guitarist Christian Bland about ghosts, album design, the band’s evolution over four albums and the Reverberation Appreciation Society.

You grew up in Texas. Did you experience any chainsaw massacres?
Definitely. At ‘Fright Night’ at Astroworld in Houston during Halloween, guys dressed like Leatherface would run around with chainsaws scaring all the kids.

Were there any Texas bands that particularly influenced you growing up? I’m really loving Cold Sun at the moment – that record sounds so Texas to me! Anything less obvious?
Well, Buddy Holly to start with. He’s always been one of my favourite musicians. I could listen to him forever. One of the main reasons for my moving to Austin was because of the 13th Floor Elevators, and through them I discovered the entire International Artists catalogue which includes: Red Krayola, The Golden Dawn, The Lost & Found and Endle St. Cloud.

Cold Sun’s amazing. We had them play at Austin Psych Fest 4. The electric autoharp sounds so eerie.

We loved our time in Austin for Psych Fest – it really was such a great festival. And it seems like it’s evolved so much over time. Any particular highlights from over the years? I think ours was Spectrum. Minds blown.
Yeah, Spectrum also played at APF 4 and they were a definite highlight! Hearing [Spacemen 3’s] ‘Revolution’ live was pretty unreal. “JUST 5 SECONDS!!!”

Highlights over the years have included Sky Saxon of The Seeds, Roky Erickson, The Raveonettes, The Crystal Stilts, The Growlers, The Golden Dawn, Brian Jonestown Massacre, BRMC, A Place to Bury Strangers, Dead Meadow, The Warlocks, Moon Duo, Wooden Shjips, Dirty Beaches, Black Lips, Psychic Ills, Kaleidoscope (UK), The Moving Sidewalks and Clinic to close out this last year’s festival! (I could go on and on, as we pick every band so we love ’em all!)

“If we could live 20,000 leagues under the sea, we would.”

Can you tell us a little more about Reverberation Appreciation Society? Do you ever get sick of appreciating reverberation and think to yourself, “Shit, I just wanna gate something”?
We figured we needed to start a cult so we formed it around our favorite thing in life: reverberation, which we never get sick of. If we could live 20,000 leagues under the sea, we would. We gather every first and third Saturday during the spring and summer solstice, opening each ceremony with the singing of our anthem followed by the 13th Floor Elevators song of the same name, then we proceed to do a our secret rituals to ensure the success of all our future endeavors.

Your covers and posters always look great (the ’68 Mexico Olympics theme for [2006’s] Passover was so excellent), as does all the Bland Design stuff. Are there any visual artists you’ve been particularly inspired by? What’s the process like with the dudes you work with on the covers etc.?
Thanks! I’ve always loved Wes Wilson’s work. He actually did all the drawings for the Phosphene Dream [2010] booklet. I love optical art. Some of my favorite op artists include Bridget Riley and Julian Stanczak.

I usually design the album artwork in the studio while we’re recording the album, because I like the visual to look like how the album sounds, just as we do with our live shows and the ‘Mustachio Light Show’. The Indigo Meadow cover was a bit different as I worked with a friend, Matt Cliff, who did all the illustrations for the album. I had an idea of what I was envisioning, and he made it come to life.

“I believe we’re in a physical dimension in parallel with other dimensions we just can’t see or comprehend.”

We read that your house was haunted. Did that inspire the title of [2008’s] Directions to See a Ghost? Piers [Cornelius] saw a UFO in our backyard while we were working on our record. I think it inspired his songwriting.
That it did, and it later inspired the song ‘Haunting at 1300 McKinley’ on Phosphene Dream. Whenever you tap into another dimension I think you’ll come out with some new inspiration. I believe we’re in a physical dimension on Earth in parallel with other dimensions we just can’t see or comprehend with what we’re equipped as humans unless you use something to alter your brain chemistry.

Indigo Meadow’s a great record – we listened to it a fair bit on tour! While it’s obviously a bit of a departure from earlier releases, it still feels distinctively Black Angels. How has the writing/recording process evolved since, say, Passover?
The songs on Passover came from our first 25 years of life on this planet, so it had a long gestation time, where the other albums only had a couple years to develop. Passover was the culmination of everything we’d experienced into an hour-long album. We weren’t as experienced as musicians and I think this lends to the beauty and simplicity of it.

Some of my favorite albums have been bands’ first albums: [Pink Floyd’s] Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the [self-titled] first BRMC album, Bo Diddley, Captain Beefheart’s Safe as Milk and Jesus & Mary Chain’s Psychocandy, to name a few. But bands evolve over time and some get better and better with each album: The Beatles, Radiohead, The Beach Boys. (Pet Sounds and Smile were such a departure from their original sound, but these albums transcend time.)

“It seems like in order to gain new fans, you’ve gotta cater to people’s short attention spans.”

Our writing process has changed since Passover. With Passover we just played what felt good and didn’t really think much about song structure. If we hit a good groove we’d just keep playing it. And when we felt we needed a change, we’d change. And when we felt the song was over, it was over. I think Directions to See a Ghost was even more in this vein. With Phosphene Dream we decided to work with a producer, Dave Sardy. He pushed us to structure our songs. We would sit down and listen to some of our favourite bands (The Beatles, The Kinks, The Zombies, The Troggs, Phil Spector) and study how they structured their songs and we applied that more. I think we continued with this on our latest album, but having honed the idea even more.

It would be fun to deconstruct this idea on the next album and start from scratch and just play what feels good and let the song dictate where we go instead of overthinking things. Not that we did on Indigo Meadow, but it was more thought out than Passover or Directions to See a Ghost.

It seems like in order to gain new fans you’ve gotta cater to people’s short attention spans. If we made an album with three 20-minute jams, I’m sure our early fans would dig it but it wouldn’t help to get many new fans. We’d like to push our songs as far as possible, so we use The Beatles as our road map. I think we’re in our Help! stage, so I’m really excited for the next stage. I’ve had the honour of convening with our muse a couple times this year and I’ve liked the direction she’s channelling through me.

Can you tell us more about your earlier relationship with Light in the Attic? Man they put out cool shit. What’s your favourite thing they’ve released? I think mine’s Michael Hurley, though I’m pretty excited by this Lee Hazlewood series they’re rolling out!
Light in the Attic signed us during SXSW 2005 and shortly thereafter we released our debut [self-titled] EP. They’ve had so many amazing releases! My favourite release has definitely been Rodriguez’s Cold Fact but I also really dig the first Free Design album. It reminds me of a New York-style Mamas and Papas.

The Black Angels are touring Australia right now with The Laurels. The tour kicked off in Brisbane last night; see below for the remaining dates.

Fri, June 14 – Palace, Melbourne, VIC [w/The Laurels + The Murlocs]
Sat, June 15 – Enmore, Sydney, NSW [w/The Laurels + Zeahorse]
Mon, June 17 - Capitol, Perth, WA [w/The Laurels + Mezzanine]

Feature: ‘Sydney Feels So Sectarian Now’: No Art, Making And Unity Floors

2013-06-13T02:00:00Z

Despite sharing bills and social circles, Sydney bands No Art, Unity Floors and Making don’t sound the least bit alike. MAX EASTON sits down with members of all three ahead of No Art’s East Coast tour, on some of which the other two are supporting. They discuss each band’s songwriting and recording methods, genres like “knee rock” and “post-bass” and the city’s increasingly divided network of venues and rehearsal spaces.

The mingling of No Art, Making and Unity Floors as friends and common members of Sydney’s DIY line-ups has been formed over a half decade. No Art’s lingering swoons are in stark contrast to Making’s stilted and aggressive deliveries or the exuberant guitar-drums duo of Unity Floors (pictured), but it’s their likeminded approach to music which makes them feel a part of something singular. From their friendships grown in Sydney’s insular scene to the similarities in their approach to recording and releasing, the three acts have more in common than suggested by their scant recorded evidence.

From the drunken enthusiasm that followed a Custard reunion show at Enmore’s Vic on the Park last weekend, a circle consisting of members of each band spoke excitably about No Art’s East Coast tour in support of their 7” Dead Arm – a tour where Making and Unity Floors will perform support duties in Bateman’s Bay and Brisbane, respectively. Under the blue-and-purple hues of Custard’s lighting rig, it was decided to put this discussion to print, recapping five years of three bands and close friends to yield a snapshot of their lives in Sydney’s sprawling music scene.

Four days later, over a case of beer at the round table of a Newtown sharehouse generously donated by infamous ex-Brisbanite Josh Tucker, a frequently distracted two-hour recording was made, condensed and edited for readability below.

LIST OF PLAYERS
No Art: Trish Roberts, Vivian Huynh, Charles Buddy Dabooul (not present)
Unity Floors: Gus Hunt, Henry Gosling
Making: Chris Davies, Pete Kossen, Matt Taylor (not present)

It felt like the three of you, at some stage, all started appearing on the same bills. Did you feel like there was a point where the three bands felt like a part of something?
Gus: I don’t really know, there was a night at Black Wire. I remember a night where Henry and I were watching with Chris, Pete and Matt [all of Making] watching someone from the back. Actually, Henry is responsible for the whole No Art thing, because he liked them so much.

Trish: We didn’t know Charles or any of the other bands before we started playing. The first time we met Unity Floors, Gus thought Vivian was the nice one.

Vivian: Yeah and how wrong that was. I don’t remember talking to him, but that’s a common theme with me.

Gus: Should someone say something controversial to get the clicks going?

Vivian: Maybe that Unity Floors are actually the bad band. They’re not the nice guys after all.

Gus: Well yeah, you gotta set up the story. So you start out as a nice band, then you surprise them with your new intent.

“It’s been great to have someone to bounce ideas off … but he hasn’t said anything is a bad idea.”

You all released [records] independently initially, but Unity Floors have gone with Popfrenzy for the LP. Were you approached for that?
Henry: They asked us to do a bunch of supports early on, then they asked if we had something coming out and that they’d be really interested to hear it. We had no idea what that meant; we just went, “Cool?”

Vivian: You were being seduced.

Henry: Yeah, we had no idea.

Gus: I can’t remember how it happened, but I think Greg [Clennar, of Popfrenzy] just appeared. But it’s been great to have someone to bounce ideas off. We can ask him what he thinks about something and he’ll say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea.” But he hasn’t said anything is a bad idea yet. I don’t know what that means.

Just keeping up morale.
Trish: I wonder how you make decisions with just two people in the band. We always need a third to make a decision.

Henry: It’s usually Gus coming to me.

Gus: Yep, it’s me freaking out and going to Henry, who then gives a logical and calm answer that’s intelligent.

And the rest of you are pretty happy releasing on your own?
Pete: Oh yeah, it’s easy.

Gus: Really? I found it really hard. Really hard.

Chris: What’s hard? You’ve got the internet.

Gus: Things like getting the vinyl pressed. We spoke to those guys and they asked, “What’s your matrix code?” I remember filling out the forms for the guys who were pressing it and writing: “???? I don’t know, whatever you guys think.”

Pete: And now that’s on the inside of all your records.

Vivian: I have no idea what’s on ours.

Well it’s sitting on the table.
Vivian: Ah, who cares.

Pete: It’s got a barcode on it and everything. What’s that do?

Vivian: It’s gonna be in record stores, Pete, so…

Gus: Why doesn’t it have a QR code?

Trish: Ugh! You are the only person who has ever used a QR code!

“We just lowered our standards. But you have to do that, I think.”

Making, you’re ready to release something soon? It’s been 18 months... [Laughter and silence] No? Yes?
Pete: We’re closer today then we were three months ago.

Vivian: How so?

Chris: We just lowered our standards. But you have to do that, I think. Towards the end we thought, well, this version sounds pretty good, we’ll just go with it. We were trying to make it absolutely perfect before that.

Gus: We ditched a lot of stuff off ours.

Henry: I think we did 15 tracks and ditched four.

Gus: For B-sides and rarities…

Vivian: All killer no filler.

Henry: That’s what we were going for.

[Gus pulls out a bottle opener pinched recently from a bar and opens another round of drinks.]
Trish: That bottle opener, it’s so minimalist. It’s like Unity Floors.

Vivian: Unity Floors aren’t minimal!

Trish: Well, how would you describe Unity Floors?

Pete: Amateur post-rock. Post-bass. My bass is on that record actually, Gus played it.

Nice Fit by unity floors

Vivian: What kind of bass player are you?

Gus: A bad one. I just played root notes.

Trish: You consciously wanted to do that though.

Gus: It’s just for the record; you need bass there to thicken it up. As long as it’s not doing anything like walking bass lines. Our thing is that if you can’t do it live, at least for now, you’re not allowed to record it.

Trish: Total opposite of us. “Let’s have eight vocal layers…”

When do you stop adding elements to your recording?
Trish: When you’ve been working for two years on an EP and haven’t put it out yet. That’s when you stop.

Vivian: We take so long to do anything. We’ve been together four years and we’ve put out an EP, a cassette and a 7”.

Trish: But we’re really happy with all of it. I’d rather be happy with it then have a lot of stuff out.

Pete: What are the Unity Floors recording rules? Sunglasses?

Gus: That you’ve gotta be able to do it live is the one thing. I’d really like to do some crazy stuff on it, but it’s not practical.

“Charles was going to be a second guitarist and synth player, but when he played he was like a CD in a microwave.”

When you’re playing with dissimilar bands like these guys, do you start thinking about adding different elements to your band or changing things around?
Henry: We’ve thought about it a bit, but the two-piece just seems to work. It’s easier to organise, we’re both good friends; to get someone else in would be someone who doesn’t know us as well.

Gus: If you’re gonna play music with someone you’ve got to be friends with them first.

Vivian: We weren’t friends with Charles though…

Gus: But the world is friends with Charles.

Vivian: Charles was going to be a second guitarist and synth player, but when he played he was like a CD in a microwave. It was fucked. Then this other girl we were looking at for a drummer didn’t show up and he said he’d have a go. He hadn’t drummed in four years, and in typical Charles form he just smashed it.

Trish: And I went, “You are never getting away from that drum kit. I don’t give a fuck. You can sing from behind there if that’s what you want to do, but you are not leaving that kit.”

And now he can’t be here cos he’s tutoring drums.
Trish: How does Making (pictured) record?

Pete: It’s hard. It all has to be recorded at the same time; we live track it.

How do you hold it together? Those songs aren’t exactly straight-forward…
Chris: Well, we rehearse twice a week.

Pete: There are times when you’re playing a seven-minute song and six minutes in your brain starts going, “It would really be a shame if you were to fuck up right now.” And then you look down at your fingers and they just go “Ha!”

Chris: We fucked up a few times on Monday when recording and I was actually happy to leave them in there this time. Previously we’d think everything had to be executed perfectly, but now I feel there’s more style in those errors. When I listen to other records I really enjoy those moments, but usually when I hear it in ours, I hate everything.

And writing all those parts? How do you do that? The result for Making is really unnatural.
Pete: Painfully. We all have to agree that we like each other’s parts, so that can be a bit of a process.

Chris: I’m more interested in people vibing off it. If people are excited about what they’re doing then I won’t tell them not to play that. I wouldn’t by choice write the music that we make; I wouldn’t do that, but I enjoy the interaction more.

Pete: I definitely couldn’t come up with this stuff in isolation. It’s always a reaction to what everyone else is doing. It’s a pretty rigorous process compared to other bands who can go “verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge.”

Trish: For us we go, “Oh shit, that just went verse, chorus, verse, chorus…”

Vivian: “…now let’s play the thing that sounds nothing like anything.”

No Art are a bit more fluid than Making, do you think your songwriting is a bit easier?
Trish: Maybe fluid, but we still have like five ideas for a song, and will try to decide where to put those ideas in.

Pete: You know when you have those ideas that don’t work that you’re just barracking for?

Vivian: Yeah, and you just keep trying to smash it into another song.

Trish: ‘Kids in Place’ is like that, even now I think it just doesn’t work.

Vivian: While everyone else goes, “Ooh, cool change.”

Trish: I think that’s more interesting, to go with those impulses. Otherwise you write something that’s forgettable.

Is the Unity Floors process more simple because it’s just the two of you doing something a bit more conventional?
Henry: Maybe. Gus will have something on the guitar that’s worked out, and the song can come together in three run-throughs. It might be a loose idea, but we’ll have the base of it pretty quick.

Gus: Then there’s this weird unspoken moment when we’re both happy with it. But there’s a lot of hours spent together in a room. I know Making and No Art, you guys spend time in a studio to rehearse. Does that make you get down to business more?

Pete: Yeah, if I’m in a commercial record space paying $66 for three hours, you don’t want to sit down and chat. When you take time out and set all your shit up, you’re motivated.

Trish: When we had the studio it was really productive, but there was a point where that stopped being productive and we knew we had to start playing in places.

Gus: I guess Henry just comes over and we hang out. That’s why I ask.

“We just rehearse in a shitty room then go and play a shitty show. You get good at playing the type of spaces you rehearse in.”

Chris: We played this show and we met a guy who was in a band who was quite big. We were talking to him and we found that we both rehearsed in Marrickville. And he asked if we rehearsed at Top Studios.

Pete: And we were like, “Woah, don’t waste your money, come to the Pitz [Marrickville rehearsal space], it’s really cheap.” And he said, “Oh no, I need to have my own lighting rig and foldback.”

Chris: He pays $120 for three hours, we pay $70 a month.

Pete: He needs it all ready to go so he can run through his entire show. While we just rehearse in a shitty room then go and play a shitty show. You get good at playing the type of spaces you rehearse in.

Gus: Can I bring up knee rock?

Chris: So, here’s the thing: No Art (pictured) are the premier members of the genre of knee rock.

The hell is knee rock?
[Gus gets up from the table and demonstrates, bobbing up and down at the knees.]
Chris: They do it in sync after a while too, and then suddenly they go out of sync. It’s like when you’re waiting at traffic lights and you watch the blinkers of two cars that go in time and then slowly they’re off again, and all of a sudden they’re exactly opposite.

What sort of venues were you playing when you started out five years ago?
Vivian: We played Mum, at the World Bar. That was an experience. We did a one-month residence in the 2am slot on a Friday, packing up at 4am.

Trish: We’ve got this term in No Art called hate-playing. It’s like hate-fucking, when the crowd is so fucked that we just hate-play them. Hate shows are so good, they’re so satisfying. At our launch when Vivian broke a string and got really angry? She hate-played the shit out of them.

Vivian: People came up to us and said that was a really good show too. Early on we were also playing places like Spectrum, the Gallery at the Oxford Art Factory; we met Mere Women for the first time at the Red Rattler…

Trish: I feel like in the four years we’ve been playing, that shit has changed so much.

“We only play a venue we would go to, or where we think our friends might want to go to.”

Do you feel you’ve graduated from smaller venues like the Gallery? Is that why you don’t play there anymore?
Trish: I think it’s just shifted and we have new priorities to play only at places we like.

Henry: Yeah, we only play a venue we would go to, or where we think our friends might want to go to.

Vivian: Same, unless it was the Beach Road Hotel in Bondi. They pay huge money.

Gus: [Talking to the microphone] Yeah, let that be known. We are three bands who are happy to play the Beach Road whenever we’re needed … and we’re willing to negotiate.

That whole idea of the different levels of venues you can play … do you feel capped at all by what you can achieve in Sydney?
Vivian: I don’t really think there’s a pyramid thing going on.

Chris: But Sydney feels so sectarian now. I think the divides are like they weren’t before. The Kings Cross music is so different to the Inner West music. There was so much cross-pollination before, where a band like Ohana could play at Spectrum.

Gus: When it comes to people who listen to guitar music, like the bands we’re all into, it’s such a small, small minority of people going out, and I don’t get why people aren’t cross-pollinating more.

Trish: I think Ohana time [early-to-mid 2000s] was pretty exceptional for Sydney music. I think that was a time where people were playing a lot of shows at a lot of different places.

Vivian: Back then people would earn their chops somewhere like Candy’s Apartment. It wasn’t like there was a place where people wanted to play; they just played wherever they could, even if it was terrible.

Gus: I wonder in retrospect how much of this kind of thing is just mythologised. Four years from now, are we going to be going, “Oh, remember that time when the Black Wire years were cool?”

“They’d be like, ‘How do you go out and play so hard to no one?’ And Dead said, ‘That’s what Australia’s like every night.’”

Do you feel like you all get stuck playing to the same people?
Trish: We make a conscious effort not to do that. It’s easier now though, because people are getting more desperate. When we started playing, if you played with bands who didn’t sound exactly like you – which we could never do anyway – people would get bummed and step out for a bit.

Vivian: Yeah, No Art can never fit a bill. We’ve always found that awkward. Now, maybe bands are just more integrated as people, but we try to play with as many different people as we can that we actually care about.

Pete: Ian Rogers [of No Anchor] was telling us this story about that band Dead who were on tour in America. He said Dead would go out and play awesomely every night, then the American band would go on stage and see 20 or 30 people and go, “Hmm, not tonight.” Then they’d just load out because there weren’t enough people there. And they’d be like, “How do you go out and play so hard to no one?” And Dead said, “That’s just what Australia’s like every night.”

I can’t even fathom that attitude of being upset by that kind of turnout. If there were 30 people at a show I’d think that was sick. I’d say, “Fuck yeah, 30 payers. Tonight, the sound guy is not going to be taking money directly from me.”

No Art kick off their 7” tour tonight, including two gigs with Unity Floors and one with Making. Dates below.

Fri, June 14 – Public Bar, Melbourne, VIC [w/Infinite Void, Naked Maja + Halt Ever]
Sat, June 15 – Gasometer, Melbourne, VIC [w/Duck Duck Chop, Yolke + SeeSaw]
Fri, June 28 – Metro, Adelaide, SA [w/Naomi Keyte + Menagerie]
Sun, July 7 – Hideaway, Brisbane, QLD [w/Unity Floors + Footy]
Fri, July 12 – Black Wire Records, Sydney, NSW [w/Unity Floors, School Girl Report + Lenin Lennon]
Sat, July 13 – North St, Batemans Bay, NSW [w/Making, School Girl Report + Corpus]
Sun, July 14 – Sunset People @ Hollywood Hotel, Sydney, NSW [free]
Fri, July 19 – Croatian Club, Newcastle, NSW [w/Lenin Lennon]

Review: TV Colours - Purple Skies, Toxic River

2013-06-13T02:00:00Z

When Assassins 88 disbanded with nothing more than a status update in April last year, they became yet another Canberra band to have a brilliant yet short career. For a brief moment, it actually made me wish I lived in the nation’s capital so I could have seen their outrageous live show more often. After TV Colours’ debut album was constantly delayed, I was convinced that they too would enter an early retirement, leaving behind a legacy of just over five minutes.

But it is rather apt that this album was six years in the making; the exact time it takes a person to make it through high school. That period where plenty of naïve 12-year-olds are transformed into pessimistic young adults eager to escape the wasteland that surrounds them; the same place they were once proud to call their neighbourhood. This album explores the dichotomy of high school: enjoying the most carefree and fun-filled years of your life while simultaneously coping with a sense of oppression and social isolation.

The Kids Are All Grown Up by TV Colours

The album opens with two high-energy tracks that celebrate the reckless abandon of youth. “Let’s hit the fucking freeway!” Bobby Kill screams on ‘The Neighbourhood’, while ‘Lost Highway’ consists of anguished cries that are largely incoherent. This fervent desire to escape is contrasted with later tracks ‘The City’ and ‘Livin’ After Midnight’, which are both lonely soundscapes of passing conversations and checkout beeps, showing that the teenage dream is often at odds with the reality of shitty part-time jobs and underage drinking in parks.

Much of Kill’s lyrics are filled with standard teenage angst, like “I don’t wanna go to school!” on ‘Run With the Creeps’ and the repeated shouts of “I just don’t care anymore!” on ‘City Nights’. On paper it can come across like a mild temper tantrum from a bratty kid, but delivered with passion and intensity it illustrates the emotional volatility of adolescence.

TV Colours - Beverly by Dream Damage

The album perfectly matches the general outlook of the 2k13 youth by pining for past decades while simultaneously looking toward the promise of the future; anything that gives them an escape from the present. On ‘Beverly’, the nostalgic snippet of a changing cassette precedes airy synths that wouldn’t seem out of place in a science-fiction movie soundtrack.

Perhaps the greatest contradiction on display is that an album about the teenage years can exhibit such maturity. The product of six years’ hard work is an excellent debut album that’s far more than just a collection of songs; it is a self-assured record and one of the year’s best.

Purple Skies, Toxic River by TV Colours

News: Tapes In Brief: Naked Maja, Mope City, Crescent

2013-06-13T05:00:00Z

– Bleary in the best sense of the word, experimental Brisbane five-piece Naked Maja are launching the new 50-run cassette Take. True to its title, it’s up for free download too. The band’s sound mingles ambient, dream-pop, shoegaze and Krautrock, with admitted influences in Stereolab, Slowdive and Brian Eno. Recorded and mixed by Nite Fields’ Michael Whitney, the EP launches in Melbourne and Hobart over the next few days. Released through LoFly, the hand-packaged tape has appropriately heady art by Brisbane artist Matt Deasy of #7th Disaster.

Thurs, June 13 – Grace Darling, Melbourne, VIC [w/Swimming + Sui Zhen]
Fri, June 14 – Public Bar, Melbourne, VIC [w/No Art, Infinite Void + Halt Ever]
Sat, June 15 – The Grand Poobah, Hobart, TAS [w/Heart Beach + Swimming]

Take by Naked Maja

– A 50 run you say? Why, that’s a huuuuge release compared to the 20-run of Mope City’s new Disneybland EP, home-dubbed and hand-packaged to boot. In fact, there are only five copies left as we write this, but it’s also available digitally for the same low price of $5. The Sydney trio claims members of Day Ravies, Snotty Babies and Drown Under, and they’re launching the tape tonight (June 13) at the Petersham Bowls Club, site of last month’s excellent Shambles to-do. Also on the bill are King Tears Mortuary, J.E.M. and Brisbane’s visiting Kids Cryptic, featuring members of Black Vacation. It’s free from 7pm, with more details here.

Disneybland EP by Mope City

– It’s been out for a couple months, but Crescent’s four-song IRL tape on This Thing remains a potent brain-tickler. Melbourne producer Leon Crescent – whose “unique stream-of-consciousness approach to juke [is] now dubbed ‘housework’” – kicks off the EP with his hands-dirtying, attention-grabbing, free-download remix of Kanye West’s ‘Mercy’.

Crescent - #Aquarius (VIP) by Crescent.

News: Signings In Brief: Ben Salter, Strange Talk, Friendships

2013-06-13T02:00:00Z

– It’s been two years since Ben Salter’s “long overdue” and Shellac-plagiarising solo album The Cat. Well, the drought ends next month, friends: the Gin Club co-founder has signed to ABC Music to release the seven-song European Vacation EP on July 12, timed with a national tour. Rather than a concept record about Chevy Chase’s antics abroad, the EP sprang from Salter’s own five-month stint on the continent. It was recorded at Nowhere Audio in Brisbane’s West End. Below, watch the video for lead single ‘Semi Pro Gamer’, which comes out tomorrow.

Fri, July 12 – Spotted Cow, Toowoomba, QLD
Thurs, July 18 – Café Le Monde, Noosa, QLD
Fri, July 19 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD
Sat, July 20 – The Metro, Adelaide, SA
Sun, July 21 – Mojo’s Bar, Perth, WA
Thurs, July 25 – Worker's Club, Melbourne, VIC
Fri, July 26 – Petersham Bowls Club, Sydney, NSW
Sat, July 27 – Front Gallery, Canberra, ACT

– Passion Pit-style synth-poppers Strange Talk have inked a deal with US label Wind-Up, home to Creed, Filter, Evanescence and … well, isn’t that enough? Wind-Up will release the Melbourne quartet’s self-produced debut LP Cast Away (released here in February on Sony) in the US, Canada and Europe on August 20. Beginning tomorrow, Strange Talk are touring nationally with Hey Geronimo. The band previously topped Billboard’s Uncharted chart in the US with the single ‘Climbing Walls’ off their self-titled 2011 EP, thanks to key placement in an ad campaign for laundry detergent.

Fri, June 14 – Alhambra Lounge, Brisbane, QLD
Sat, June 15 – Sol Bar, Maroochydore, QLD
Wed, June 19 – Beach Road Hotel, Sydney, NSW [free]
Thurs, June 20 – Transit Bar, Canberra, ACT
Fri, June 21 – The Small Ballroom, Newcastle, NSW
Sat, June 22 – Winter Magic Festival @ Baroque Room, Katoomba NSW
Thurs, June 27 – Hi Fi, Melbourne, VIC
Sat, June 29 – Eureka Hotel, Geelong, VIC
Thurs, July 11 – Newport Hotel, Fremantle, WA
Fri, July 12 – Prince of Wales Hotel, Bunbury, WA
Sat, July 13 – Amplifier Bar, Perth, WA

– Comprised of producer Nicholas Brown and visual projectionist Mischa Grace, Melbourne beats duo Friendships have divided their attention so far between playing live, releasing a debut EP in January, sharing free tracks on Soundcloud and remixing peers like Flash Forest, RaRa, Audego and Super Magic Hats. Now they’ve signed to Silo Arts – home to Rainbow Chan and Outerwaves, among others – and celebrated the blissful union with the mixtape My Guts, spanning the likes of Squarepusher, OutKast and Electric Sea Spider.

draver by ƒriendships

News: Forthcoming: The Cannanes

2013-06-12T11:00:00Z

What: Howling at all Hours by The Cannanes.

When: July 5 through Chapter.

Key notes: First new album from DIY pop icons since 2002’s Trouble Seemed So Far Away. Follows 10 prior albums on labels around the world and March’s self-released Small Batch EP, plus repeated tours of the US, UK, Mexico, Japan and Europe. Features the same line-up that recorded 1989’s A Love Affair With Nature: vocalist Fran Gibson, guitarist Stephen O’Neil and prodigal drummer (and M+N contributor) David Nichols. Also includes cameos from auxiliary members James Dutton (Flywheel, Deep Country), Mia Schoen (New Estate, Sleepy Township) and Fran Bussey (Nice, Dusken Lights). Coming out on CD and vinyl, with a tour in mid-September. Listen to ‘A Bigger Splash’ below.

From the presser: “After such a long wait, it’s reassuring to discover that Howling at all Hours is as engaging and idiosyncratic as anything the band have ever done.”

Tracklisting:

Stephanie
Not Camping Out
A Bigger Splash
I Woke Up In Hargreaves Mall
Melting Moments
Fawn Summers
Countryside
Absence
Is It Because I’m Bleak
The Gesture
Lime Tree

The Cannanes - A Bigger Splash by Chapter Music

Feature: New Noise: Shark Alarm, Bachelor Pad, The Novocaines, Telegraph Tower

2013-06-12T02:00:00Z

Swing from relaxed and folky to screamed and garage-y in this week’s roundup of Soundcloud offerings.

– Yet another Ocean Party offshoot? Yup. What’s more, Shark Alarm will provide the debut release for Osborne Again, a new micro-label founded by Ocean Party guitarist Lachlan Denton to focus on the various bands huddled around their spiritual home of Osborne Street in Brunswick. The free single ‘Tanlines’ isn’t a far cry from The Ocean Party, complete with ultra-relaxed guitar-pop licks and mention of a Hills Hoist. It’s got a bit more Pavement maybe, if you concentrate on the songs where Pavement was most chilled-out. The Alcopop EP surfaces June 28 on tape and digital, with a launch gig in the works.

Tanlines by Shark Alarm by Osborne Again Music

– Last year’s single ‘Oh No’ was enough to mint a fair few new Bachelor Pad fans, but the two-minute ‘Fried’ is even better. A garage marauder warmed right up by a newfound $50 Farfisa organ, it’s got as much early Snapper in it as it does Nuggets revival. It’s the first (and for now unmastered) taste of the Sydney trio-turned-quartet’s debut LP Dooming Out, recorded with Owen Penglis and due out next month on the band’s own imprint Everything Sucks.

Fried (unmastered yo phil spector CALL ME) by Bachelor Pad

– As we speak, Perth post-hardcore band The Novocaines are recording new songs to follow up their recent one-two punch of screaming and squalling singles ‘Freedom Please’ and ‘Til Death’. The band have likened the songs to such contemporaries as Fucked Up and Pulled Apart by Horses, while one cheeky journalist threw The Vines in there too. Having shared stages with You Am I, Jebediah and DZ Deathrays in the past, The Novocaines are working towards more touring soon, here and overseas.

The Novocaines - Freedom Please by Mess+Noise

– Telegraph Tower is the Sydney folk duo of guitarist/singer (and M+N contributor) Barnaby Smith and cellist Oliver Downes. They take cues from such genre greats as Fairport Convention, Roy Harper and The Incredible String Band on the five-song debut EP Concubine, launched last month at 107 Projects. These songs aren’t as well-mannered as they may first seem: Downes’ cello turns markedly discordant to finish off ‘Town Hall Revisited’, while Smith sings with an eerie trill about unglamorous adultery (‘Mistress’) and other assorted bleakness (‘Born in the 1920s’). The EP was recorded and mixed by unsung Sydney multi-hyphenate Brian Campeau, with artwork by Smith and Amy Godfrey.

Mistress (EP version) by Telegraph Tower

To nominate new music for this column email us at news@messandnoise.com.

Review: Footy - Mobile Cemetery

2013-06-12T02:00:00Z

Melbourne duo Footy lend quiet experimentation to a poignant album of mostly instrumental electric piano pieces. Think of them as muted torch songs, suggests LUKE TELFORD.

Before you even start to listen, Footy seems a beguiling band. The name begs to be read as a satirical jab at the sport and its culture. The knowledge that Footy is two blokes with keyboards (Lewis Mulvey and Paddy Gordon) and the word ‘experimental’ in their press release lends to this impression. The music clearly isn't the type of stuff you might hear effervescing under AFL highlights. But it also doesn’t seem likely Footy will sound anything like Elton John and Billy Joel crooning at each other across metres of Steinway.

The cover for Mobile Cemetery heightens suspicions of subversion – an old photograph unceremoniously painted over in a kind of crude pointillism. It’s texturally evocative, lending the hope that the music it conceals will be similarly so; bending conventional song into new forms, or revelling in the sort of glorious chaos that pianos yield when briskly dismantled. What actually greets you when you when the stylus touches down is none of the above. If you’re previously unfamiliar with the band, it might take you by surprise.

“Its sound is simple and muted … nothing is needlessly showy.”

Mobile Cemetery is a clutch of half-drunk torch songs and ruminative sketches that draw the listener into an understated narrative. Its sound is simple and muted; a core of lush keyboard instruments is decorated with exotic percussion and some quietly dizzying production techniques, but nothing presented is needlessly showy. Most of the record is instrumental and meanders subliminally, in the same way a thread of childhood memory can unspool into bizarre tangents when your dozing mind lifts it out of the air and follows where it leads.

‘Realisation’ paces dramatic piano interjections with quiet, plaintive motifs before resolving into a resolute march. It functions as an opening suite – it piques your curiosity, invites you to join in reflection, then draws you resolutely into the album’s world with promise and stateliness. ‘Endless Selection of Channels’ follows, sounding like the maudlin soundtrack to a pensive moment in a made-for-TV drama. Its mopiness gently unfolds into inquisitive, optimistic shapes, almost as though a metaphorical weight has been lifted from a narrator’s shoulders. Closing track ‘Sea Home’ is unabashedly beautiful, revelling in the endless peace of the security of sleep.

Footy — Sea Home by Lost And Lonesome

The record’s underlying concept is thankfully left inexplicit, though the group’s label notes it was inspired by restless late-night drivers through Melbourne light-industrial areas. The two pieces with vocals certainly present images that resonate with that source of inspiration. The verse lyric on ‘Workin’’ plays out like a paean to forgotten working-class generations, while the quietly musing crowd on the title track relates experiences of walking through childhood neighbourhoods long gone to the dogs.

“It feels familiar; sometimes ingratiatingly affirming, sometimes painfully sad.”

For an experimental band, much of the music presented here is welcoming – there are no imposing freakouts, impalpable ambiences or dense chord clusters. It feels familiar; sometimes ingratiatingly affirming, sometimes painfully sad. In one sense, it feels manipulative. The album often sounds as though the duo is reaching for melodies that might resonate in seemingly profound ways with listeners brought up unconsciously absorbing cheap daytime TV soundtracks. But in a way it’s necessary, a means to an end.

Mobile Cemetery feels like an attempt to articulate the balance of hope and helplessness that reflection on one’s early past can bring. It evokes the disjointedness that arises from pairing imagined homelands with starkly unforgiving or disappointing realities. It’s experimental in concept and execution but oddly formulaic in practice. Cheesy but inexplicably poignant. A strange and beautiful record.

‘Mobile Cemetery’ is out now through Lost & Lonesome. Stream it here. Footy play Friday, June 21 at the John Curtin Hotel in Melbourne with Seagull, Where Were You at Lunch and Sissysocks. They also play Happy Fest at The Zoo in Brisbane on Saturday, July 6.

News: Exclusive: The Stabs Book One-Off Fundraiser Gig

2013-06-12T05:00:00Z

With those Homeless Records reissues of Dirt and Dead Wood out and making the rounds, plus The Stabs passing the decade mark this year, there’s been much talk of special news from the scathing, beloved Melbourne trio.

Well, here it is: The Stabs will play a one-off hometown show on Saturday, July 13 at the John Curtin Hotel. It’s the first show for the band (who haven’t aged a day since 2009) in two years and a fundraiser to help them finish their half-recorded third album. It’s also a launch for the vinyl reissues and a showcase for new material. There are no other shows planned.

Tickets are $15 + bf now or $15 on the door if still available. Order both reissues via Homeless; they’ve been mastered by Mikey Young and include a download code. They’re limited to 400 copies each.

M+N got Stabs bassist Mark Nelson on the phone today to discuss the show, the third album and the recent activity of band members Brendan Noonan (guitar, vocals) and Matt Gleeson (drums).

Why just the one show?
Since Brendan moved to Castlemaine to run the pub [The Bridge] – and he has a daughter now – it’s just been real difficult being a band. We haven’t done anything, really, for … about two years now. But our albums have just been released on vinyl, and we’re gonna launch it.

“If we get together we have dinner. We don’t jam.”

Have you been working on new material?
No. We have a new album half-recorded, which has been sitting there for I think two years now. We recorded six new songs and there are new ones written [since] that just need to be learnt. But we haven’t gotten together [as a band] since Brendan’s moved to Castlemaine. If we do get together, we have dinner. [Laughs] We don’t jam.

We’re treating this show, though, as sort of like a fundraiser for us to get our third album finished. The idea being that, after this show, we will have the means to actually get this third album out.

Have you thought about crowdfunding?
No, we haven’t. To tell you the truth, I don’t know why but I’ve just never gotten into that sort of thing. I’ve never applied for grants for the band, even though I’m sure we would have been eligible. It’s stupid, and I know it’s just my thing, but I’ve always been of the work hard, save money, blow it all on tour mentality. [Laughs]

Dirt by The Stabs

You said you’ve got half an album recorded?
Yeah, we recorded it with Loki [Lockwood] at Atlantis, which is where we did the second album [Dead Wood]. We like working with Loki, we like that studio, and he owed us some money from putting out that album [through Spooky]. So we cashed that in as recording credit and then hit a brick wall. [Laughs] This gig will really help with settling our debt and moving forward to record the rest of the album.

“One of [the new songs] actually has a chorus – a repeating chorus – which is new for us. There’s one a cappella song. That’s like a chain-gang thing. There’s one that’s like a percussion freakout.”

How do the newer songs sound compared to the previous two albums?
There’s a couple songs that we started playing in our live set before we stopped playing. One of them is right up The Stabs’ alley, except it actually has a chorus – a repeating chorus – which is new for us. And the other one is kind of mellow. It’s still full-band-arrangement enough that we were getting away with playing it live, but it was a real mellow point in the set. That was definitely something new for us.

The rest of the songs on the album, so far, actually live and die in the studio. For instance, there’s one a cappella song. We can’t do that live. That’s like a chain-gang thing. There’s one that’s like a percussion freakout. There’s a couple that don’t have drums on them. It’s a very mellow album. It’s very studio-based and very mellow. And there are a couple outrageous rockers, like there should be on a Stabs album.

Dead Wood by The Stabs

Besides Brendan doing the pub, what have the rest of you being doing music-wise and otherwise? I interviewed you about Miniature Submarines, but that was a while back…
Yeah, I haven’t really been hitting that so hard. I did some more recordings, but I haven’t been doing a hell of a lot of Miniature Submarines. I’ve been playing drums in a band called Map Ends, which I really enjoy because I’ve never been a drummer before. I’ve recorded drums for Miniature Submarines, but that was one song at a time so I really didn’t know if I could pull off playing for an hour straight. As a drummer, if you make a mistake, everyone is on their arse. I also thought it was time I put my money where my mouth is, because I’m pretty notoriously a jerk to my drummers. [Laughs] It was time I opened myself up to that kind of abuse as well.

Matt’s been playing mostly with Paul Kidney, I think. I haven’t been playing a hell of a lot, to be honest. I actually moved to Bendigo for half a year, and I’ve broken my wrist twice in the last year and a half. The first time put me out for four months, and the second time was only a couple months but…

How’d you do that?
Playing basketball.

Maybe basketball’s not your thing.
It’s definitely my thing. I love it. I did my right wrist last February and pretty much 12 months later, almost to the day, I did my left wrist this year. Because of breaking my right wrist, I couldn’t keep doing the job that I had. So I went to stay with my parents for a couple weeks in Bendigo, which turned into living with them for six months. [Laughs] So that’s where a lot of last year went for me.

News: Video Premiere: Go Violets ‘Josie’

2013-06-12T02:00:00Z

Eating ice cream, dancing, swimming, bonding with canine companions, playing their respective instruments and even squeezing in a bit of air drumming: that’s a typical day in the life of Brisbane guitar-pop quartet Go Violets.

Following the makeshift behind-the-scenes video for the earlier single ‘Teenager’, Go Violets decided to expand that idea into an updated ‘family portrait’ of the band right now (including newish member Harriette Pilbeam, also of Babaganouj) . And so we have the video for the noisier and punchier new single ‘Josie’, filmed at Brisbane’s New Farm Park and Cedar Creek and directed by Nick Sonner of Nick Sonner Images.

The band are launching the Sean Cook-produced tune this month, starting with a hometown gig tomorrow. ‘Josie’ will anchor a debut EP later this year.

Thurs, June 13 – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane, QLD [w/Roku Music + Pool Shop]
Sat, June 15 – Brighton Up Bar, Sydney, NSW [w/The Fabergettes, The Demon Parade + Atom Bombs]
Thurs, June 20 – AFTR DARK @ John Curtin Hotel, Melbourne, VIC [w/Split Seconds + Jasper]