Mess+Noise: Today

News: Fangs Touring Their Next Bite

2009-07-10T01:00:00Z

Think you’re underground? Think you’re diffident about any chance of commercial success? Think again. Melbourne’s self-styled ‘power trio’ Fangs of a TV Evangelist are a band who change their name with every release, hand-make all their records and screen-print all their artwork. Take that, Eskimo Joe.

Jace (Pigman Vampire, Meandering Funeral Posse, Bikini Eyebolt), Mikey (Brain Resin) & Jem (Fire Witch, Inappropriate Tough Guy Behaviour) are the deranged malcontents who don’t understand the protestant work ethic and the brains behind the Fangs of and Fangs of Satanic Soccer Mums CD-R EPs released in 2008.

The current incarnation of the band apparently ‘sees them walk a darker, more slow burning path than that seen in the past’. Personally we’re more down with walking around charmingly pleasant hipster enclaves with cafes specializing in organic food but whatever takes your fancy, I guess. Fangs of A TV Evangelist was recorded over two days at Headgap Studios by Neil Thomason and Sloth. We really, really, really hope it is the Sloth from The Goonies finally breaking free from the shackles of the Fratelli crime family to live the dream of recording deliberately uncommercial music in Melbourne.

The record is out via self-described ‘boutique/DIY/Independent as fuck Melbourne label’ WeEmptyRooms.com and the band hit the road again in August.  

FANGS OF A TV EVANGELIST TOUR

Thursday, August 6
Bowlo, Wombarra, NSW

Friday, August 7
Repressed Records, Sydney, NSW (afternoon show)

Friday, August 7
Red Rattler, Sydney, NSW

Saturday, August 8
North St. Café, Bateman’s Bay, NSW

Sunday, August 9
Honey I Blew Up The Kids, Canberra, ACT

Friday, August 14
Hyde Park Hotel, Perth, WA

Saturday, 15 August
Norfolk Basement, Fremantle, WA

Sunday, August 16
208, Perth, WA (All Ages)

Friday, August 21
Eastern Station Hotel, Ballarat, VIC

Saturday, August 22
The Old Bar, Melbourne, VIC

Thursday, August 27
The Nash, Geelong, ACT

Sunday, August 30
Round and Round Records, Melbourne, VIC (All Ages 3pm)

News: Cave & Ellis Moon Us Twice

2009-07-10T12:00:00Z

As if trying to prove the divisive dichotomy previously presented by Mess+Noise abundantly true, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have extended their manly love-in even further. This time the duo, who have been collaborating on music for more than fifteen years (hmm, that bad break-up that made The Boatman’s Call essential really was a long time ago), are releasing a new 2-CD set.

The compilation, entitled White Lunar, contains music the hirsute, Sartorialist-approved gentlemen have composed for films such as The Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. The CDs will also feature a selection of their other cinematic scores, including rare and previously unavailable material.

In 2007, Cave and Ellis scored Geoffrey Smith’s The English Surgeon, a film tracing Dr. Henry Marsh’s struggle to bring neurosurgery to post-Soviet Ukraine. Matthew Watson’s The Girls of Phnom Penh, a film investigating Cambodia’s ‘virginity trade’, was the film we recently noted Cave and Ellis had also scored. Selections from these scores will feature on the release.

White Lunar is available 18 September 2009 via Mute.

News: Laura Jean Tours With New EP

2009-07-09T01:00:00Z

Laura Jean has been busy since releasing her acclaimed second album Eden Land. Busy helping produce friend Jen Cloher’s new record, busy writing a new album on her pastel yellow Gibson SG electric guitar and busy stocking up on goods from the Wycheproof Op-Shop (Beryl and Valda from the shop are Mess+Noise spies, just so you know). She’s not letting up any time soon – she’s back on the road again.

Ticking off the ‘abum preview tour’ requirement, Laura Jean will be playing songs from this proposed new record on an upcoming east coast tour. The tour starts in her old stomping ground Lismore and finishes in her adopted home of Melbourne. Laura Jean’s band for the tour comprises Jen Sholakis on drums, guitar and singing, and Biddy Connor on viola, piano accordion, casio and anything else that comes to hand. Laura Jean will joined on this jaunt by the Mess+Noise-approved 2008 Australian Music Prize nominee Tom Cooney, whose album Presque Vu caught everyone’s attention last year.

The lovely Laura Jean is also promising treats and surprises on this tour. We’re not sure if this will include offloading any unwanted Wycheproof purchases but she will have for sale a limited edition 4 track tour EP at the shows. The EP features a duet with Ned Collette, a demo for Eden Land and a live version of her yet to be recorded song ‘Valenteen’.

LAURA JEAN TOUR

Tuesday, July 21
The Winsome, Lismore, NSW w /Elana Stone, Tom Cooney not appearing

Friday, July 24
The Black Box Theatre, Nambour, QLD

Saturday, July 25
The Troubadour, Brisbane, QLD (Tom Cooney not appearing)

Friday, July 31
Bellingen Memorial Hall, Bellingen, NSW (All ages show) venue changed from Diggers Tavern

Thursday, August 6
The Clarendon, Katoomba, NSW

Friday, August 7
The Hopetoun, Sydney, NSW

Saturday, August 8
The Front Gallery, Canberra, ACT

Friday, August 14
The Curtin Bandroom, Melbourne, NSW

News: FourPlay Fourthcoming With New Album

2009-07-09T12:00:00Z

Fourplay, the nation’s only indie rock quartet string quartet, have released a new record. Continuing their tradition of taking album names less than seriously (which started with 2000’s The Joy of …) Fourplay have settled on Fourthcoming for their new record. The title reflects the prolonged genesis and eventual release of the record, which was originally devised in 2006 in Tasmania.

Continuing the band’s tradition of choice indie rock covers, Fourthcoming sees tracks from Leonard Cohen, Sufjan Stevens, The Cocteau Twins and Rage Against The Machine (ok, we need to hear this) transposed and transformed by the string quartet. Think you’ve heard it all before ? Fourthcoming is an entirely different beast for Fourplay, finally being recorded live at Canberra’s Street Theatre over three performances. The band are touring the new record all through July and August.

Fourthcoming is out now via MGM.

FOURPLAY ‘FOURTHCOMING’ TOUR

Thursday, July 16
Heritage Hotel, Bulli, NSW

Friday, July 17
The Street Theatre, Canberra, ACT

Saturday, July 18
The Street Theatre, Canberra, ACT

Thursday, July 23
Governor Hindmarsh, Adelaide, SA

Friday, July 24
Fly By Night, Perth, WA

Saturday, July 25
The Tivoli, Brisbane, QLD (Brisbane Festival)

Thursday, July 30
The Clarendon, Toowoomba, QLD

Friday, July 31
The Basement, Sydney, NSW

Saturday, August 1
The Basement, Sydney, NSW

Sunday, August 2
Kings Theatre, Launceston, TAS

Thursday, August 6
Tonic Bar @ The Country Club, Launceston, TAS

Friday, August 7
Republic Bar, Hobart, TAS

Saturday, August 8
East Brunswick Club, Melbourne, VIC

Review: Collarbones - Waiting for the Ghosts

2009-07-08T02:00:00Z

As Scissor Lock, Sydney’s Marcus Whale has experimented a lot with cut-and-paste techniques, crafting richly intricate pieces from looped and layered instruments such as guitar and piano, as well as the sound of his own voice. Waiting for the Ghosts, the debut release for Collarbones, sees Whale trading AIFFs with Adelaidian Travis Cook to create a suite of short, simple pop tunes spliced together from a variety of sound sources.

The title track, for example, consists almost entirely of samples from Björk’s Vespertine album, reconfigured as to be virtually unrecognisable (although the occasional vocal shard might tip off more attentive listeners). ‘Paper Dolls’, the EP’s least directly accessible track, combines echo chamber vocals with washy keyboards and massive, dry percussion, while ‘Weatherman’ hints at the autumn-hued aesthetic of Hood.

Part minimal techno, part leftfield indie pop, this is an enchanting little collection of tunes that reveal Whale and Cook’s songwriting capabilities. And as if all that wasn’t enough, Waiting for the Ghosts is totally free, having been put up on archive.org under a Creative Commons License. When something this good is just there for the taking, why wouldn’t you grab it?

News: Kingsmill Defends His Corner

2009-07-08T01:00:00Z

It would be hard to find a more polarising figure in the Australian music community than Triple J music director Richard Kingsmill (sit down, Pav). A man beloved by some for his passionate commitment to Australian music and bemoaned about by many for the veritable encyclopaedia of programming failures they see at Triple J, one thing’s for sure – his is not an easy gig.

In a recent interview with mag Tsunami, the man known as ‘The King’ (that’s Mr K to you and me) defended his corner passionately, confessed that he reads online blogs for tips and stated, point blank, that there’s nothing he could do to improve Triple J at the moment. Righto, glad that’s sorted then.

Kingsmill’s never one to take an exchange about his role lightly but Tsunami seemed to catch him at a profoundly phlegmatic and brusque moment for his role and for his relationship with local bands. Kingsmill states that he does try to get through all the CD’s he is sent, although the sheer volume received now requires ‘gut instinct’ and the ‘bullshit filter’ to come in to play. However, in an exchange sure to warm the cockles of the hearts of those-two-guys-who-aren’t-Gotye from The Basics, he also addresses the issue of playlisting, and then shunning, certain bands. His riposte is blunt : ‘So anyone that criticises us for not playing them – just because they’re Australian, just because they’re independent: fuck you.’

Although the example that Tsunami hit Kingsmill with is hardly apposite (Primary and Sneaky Sound System, anyone ?), The King still manages to make a passionate defence of not playlisting certain records and bands, noting that ‘the simple fact of the matter was – you made a worse record than the first one, that’s why we’re not playing it’. Before you jump down his throat, Kingsmill then proceeds to regale the interviewer with a tale about being pressured by Alex Lloyd’s people to play Lloyd’s third and fourth albums. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for a man pressured to play an Alex Lloyd record.

Kingsmill concludes the wide-ranging interview by defending his programming choices as ‘common sense’ and even addresses the idea of branching out into Triple J 1 and 2, confessing ‘we’d love it’.

The battle of wills displayed here couldn’t help remind Mess+Noise of the old Friday night fights on Lateline between Mark Latham and Christopher Pyne over which Tony Jones was required to intercede. In fact, Kingsmill pulls a mean impression of the Liberal member for Sturt in the transcript with his strident, impassioned speeches and dismissive tone to the interviewer.

There might be a life after JJJ yet, Mr K?

News: Bridezilla Play Splendour, Tour With Decoder Ring

2009-07-08T12:00:00Z

Recipients of sexist stereotyping and needless hate from far too many (just listen to a good proportion of the male audience at one of their shows), Sydney’s Bridezilla, are hitting the road again. The band have just been confirmed to play Byron Bay mega-fest Splendour In The Grass on 25 July, an early shot across the bows before their run of shows with Decoder Ring through August and September.

The band have recently been holed up in a barn in rural NSW recording their as-yet-untitled debut record with US uber-producer Kramer. Expect these shows to function as a preview of sorts for that album, a record certain to be one of the highlights of the year and desperately anticipated by some in the Mess+Noise community who can’t stop rabbiting on about ‘Heart You Hold’.

Bridezilla have, as previously noted, also joined the line-up for the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival curated by ATP and The Flaming Lips, which will take place in New York City in September.

BRIDEZILLA TOUR DATES

Saturday, 25 July
Splendour In The Grass, Byron Bay, NSW Thursday, 20 August
The Great Northern, Byron Bay, NSW
w/Decoder Ring

Friday, 21 August
The Sound Lounge, Gold Coast, QLD
w/ Decoder Ring

Saturday, 22 August
The Zoo, Brisbane, QLD
w/ Decoder Ring

Friday, 28 August
The Metro, Sydney, NSW 
w/ Decoder Ring

Saturday, 5 September
Hi-Fi Bar & Ballroom, Melbourne, VIC 
w/ Decoder Ring

Saturday, 12 September
ATP, New York, NYC

Feature: Road Test: Vroom

2009-07-07T02:00:00Z

Online touring resource Vroom aims to take the pain out of booking an interstate show, but does it actually work? We asked three touring musicians and a label manager to take the beta version of the site – which was developed by Sydney-based singer-songwriter Tracy Redhead – for a spin. Photo of Tracy Redhead by RENAE KELLY.

“I will probably tell some of my friends about it if I can’t be bothered telling them the good places to play myself.”

Matt Banham

Musician, No Through Road

Vroom is a pretty interesting site. I think if I was a musician just starting out this would be a great tool to find what venues are available and where. It really is a clueless person’s dream. That said it would be hard to know from this site what type of people go to these venues, and if people actually go at all. For example, when I go to cities like Melbourne, it’s important to know where the “cool” venues are; the kind of places people go to almost regardless of what band is playing there. You need a crowd to be there, especially when you’re just starting out. There’s no real indication of what these venues are really like and its pretty hard to trust a description written by the venue itself.

I think this could be vastly improved by some sort of section where punters, bands or bookers can add comments or reviews onto a venue’s page: ratings or short comments about what it’s like playing there, what the people were like to deal with, whether of not they screwed you over and if you would happily play there again. If properly moderated, that information would be a bigger help to a band starting out, or even bands who are looking to play somewhere different for a change.

This does seem like a good resource though. I will probably tell some of my friends about it if I can’t be bothered telling them the good places to play myself.

Simon “Tig” Huggins

Label manager, Two Bright Lakes

I like the site. I think it’s a great idea. Generally it seemed to cover venues I would book our acts for, however, it didn't have any warehouse information. I think this is something that’s really needed. Two Bright Lakes would book all-ages warehouses for their tours all the time if there was a decent system involved in booking them. We're all pretty sick of shitty pubs and their shitty staff and management. Also, some of the venue searches returned strange results. Case in point: I searched [Melbourne’s] “The Corner” and it wasn't anywhere on the first page. Maybe updating the search to filter colloquialisms is a good idea? Lastly, when I pressed the back button it led me to "page can't be displayed". It’s pedantic but this is a pet hate of mine.

Matthew Saliba

Musician, Hira Hira

After having a look through the website I can tell already I’m going to get a lot of use out of it. I wish I knew about it a couple of months ago when I was booking my band’s first interstate tour.

I loved the ease of searching venues, and it was especially handy to be able to search specific fields. For example, a venue that caters to punk music with a capacity of 250. Perfect! The amount of information available on grants and the links available will save hours of research.

Recently, a friend and I began compiling a list of venues, promoters and band contacts into a database. While we will still keep that list, this has done away with a big slice of the hassle to fill out more contacts and has superseded the database in other fields. The venue information supplied will make contacting promoters easier. With access to information such as capacity and licensing, I’ll be able to conduct a conversation with a booker in a more professional manner and know what to expect on the night of the show.

A listing for record stores would be a useful addition, as they’re a great place to play when you’re on tour. I think a discussion forum would also be great for communication between bands and promoters.

I’m about to organise a small-scale NSW tour outside of Sydney, heading to places I’ve never even visited before. This site will cut down hours of venue research and emailing people back and forth waiting for replies and relying on other bands/promoters for info.

Kristin Murphy

Musician, Yeah Bears

I was introduced to Vroom by a friend who regularly visits the Music NSW site among other resources. I was able to create my own database of venues relevant to my bands – some of theses venues I knew by reputation others just looked like good possible venues.

I particularly liked the fact that most provided contact details, which would help us book shows ourselves as opposed to relying on other bands or promoters to book all our out-of-town shows for us. Capacity details are also a big plus. They give us a good indication of venues we might be able to book and fill. Another handy bit of information is the payment method as there is nothing worse than going to show and expecting payment on the night to cover fuel or accommodation and finding out that they need your ABN details which you left at home, like a twit.

The only thing I'd like to see improved would be a few searching filters ie. search by capacity, over 18s/AA and maybe even genre if that wasn't too hard. I made most of my database at work so I had about 20 windows open adding these details to my spreadsheet (while I should have been doing work, but that's irrelevant). If these filters were in place I wouldn't have had to sift through cafes that only accommodate jazz, solo acts etc, but this is only a minor issue. Overall, I found this site invaluable. I've since passed on my database to friends and it's enabled us to organise our own little tours and help out other touring bands.

Review: Stemford Hiss - Halls

2009-07-07T02:00:00Z

The Doctor Who theme that seems embedded in the song ‘?’ will begin to wreck the heads of even the most hardcore TARDIS fans. The wailing Michael Hutchence-like vocals lurking in opener ‘Mourning Walk’ will do the same only with more of an acid reflux. But then throwing the listener for a loop seems to be part of the agenda for this young Brisbane five-piece who mix touches of dub, kraut rock, ’80s cheesiness and caterwauling psych on Halls, their debut four-track EP.

They are nothing if not ambitious, and even though the experimentalism doesn’t always come off – closer ‘Levity Befallen’ sounds like Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark – they must get credit for giving it a red-hot shot.

‘The Stopper’, with it’s drone-y intro and flourishes of saxophone, stands out as the strongest of the four songs even though at times it seems as if it wouldn’t sound out of place in a Miami Vice bedroom scene. But hey, whatever was playing on Sonny Crockett’s bedside table seemed to work for him.

News: Crayon Fields Release Second Single, Shows

2009-07-07T01:00:00Z

Twee pop dreamers Crayon Fields are busy prepping one of the year’s most anticipated Australian albums, the recently christened All The Pleasures Of The World. As they build up towards the record’s release in September, the band are releasing the title track as a vinyl single and hitting the road again.

The Fields’ 2006 debut Animal Bells was one of the year's most acclaimed releases, voted #2 in the Mess+Noise end of year critics poll (#4 in the general readers poll). The band have been working on their sophomore record since then.

Last year, the band released single ‘Mirror Ball’ as a limited edition vinyl single and it sold out almost immediately. The ‘All The Pleasures In The World’ single will be released with another track from the record, ‘Voice of Paradiese’. A video for ‘Voice Of Paradise’, directed by Crayon Fields frontman Geoff O'Connor, can be found here.

The band have just returned from a UK and European tour to launch the ‘All The Pleasures Of The World’ single at the Toff In Town on Saturday August 22.

In addition to their single launch, Crayon Fields are also playing two special gigs in August supporting New Zealand legends The Bats.

All The Pleasures Of The World will be released on Chapter Music in September 2009.

CRAYON FIELDS SINGLE LAUNCH

Saturday, August 22
The Toff In Town, Melbourne, VIC
w/ Dick Diver

Tickets $10+bf (Moshtix 1300 438 849)
Tickets on Sale Monday July 6

CRAYON FIELDS SUPPORTING THE BATS

Friday, August 7
Northcote Social Club, Melbourne
w/ the Twerps

Tickets $25+bf (northcotesocialclub.com.au /9486 1677)
$30 on the door if still available
Tickets on sale now

Saturday, August 8
Hopetoun Hotel, Sydney, NSW
w/ Songs

Tickets $25+bf (Moshtix 1300 438 849)
$30 on the door is still available
Tickets on sale now

News: The Nation Blue Return With Rising Waters

2009-07-07T12:00:00Z

The best band ever to play a shitty Wednesday night gig at The Arthouse and then sell out with Converse, Melbourne’s The Nation Blue, are back with a new record. Rising Waters, due out on August 7, promises more of the unremittingly bleak hardcore/shitty white-boy whingeing that the band have been perfecting since 1999’s Descend.

Rising Waters follows the band’s 2007 masterpiece Protest Songs, one of the most indignant, pungent punk rock records of that, or any, year. Protest Songs also managed to be the only record in history to have constipated throat victim Paul Dempsey guest playing fucking keys and still be the one of the best things Mess+Noise has ever heard. Pretty good work for a bunch of fuckwits originally from Tasmania.

Mess+Noise looks forward to a record of disgusted cynicism, bowel-shaking noise and general contempt for the malaise of the modern world to reinforce our music hating world view. How do The Nation Blue describe Rising Waters ? As ‘a hopelessly sliding account of people on the wrong side of youth trying to reconcile problems in their heads...surrounded by darkness and spinning saws’.

Consider our pants wet with anticipation.

Feature: Track By Track: Jen Cloher

2009-07-06T02:00:00Z

JEN CLOHER gives us an insight into five of the nine songs that make up her “serious” second album 'Hidden Hands'.

Writing a track by track for Mess+Noise is daunting, particularly when you’ve written an album that deals with mortality. It’s not cool to take yourself too seriously and it’s not cool to be a female singer-songwriter in this country unless you go under a curious moniker and/or keep it quirky and relatively lighthearted. So before any of the comment vultures have a chance to tear me apart I am outing myself as an uncool outsider: a totally un-hip, old-fashioned songwriter going by her own name who makes the kind of music your parents would like.

There are nine songs in total on Hidden Hands, here are five of them.

‘Mother’s Desk’

At the beginning of 2007 I moved to Auckland to take care of my mother who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I didn’t know much about the disease except that a person loses their memory. My mother was a celebrated academic in her day and I wrote most of the album at her old desk downstairs in her study. Sometimes she would sneak in while I was playing guitar and clap at the end of a song scaring the bejesus out of me.

‘Fear is Like a Forest’

We spent a week rehearsing the album at Adelphia studios in Collingwood. It’s run by brothers Kevin, Ange and Phil Andrianakis, three mild-mannered, merry, late 50s, Greek vegetarians. (Well, when was the last time you met an older Greek man who was a vegetarian?) Suffice to say they are complete legends, carpenters by trade, who love music so much they converted a warehouse into the finest rehearsal space in Melbourne. The best thing about Adelphia is the coffee machine that sits pride of place on a Copacabana-style cocktail bar. On the wall above is a photo of their now deceased mother meeting Johnny Farnham circa ‘Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)’. She is seated and Farnham is sort of being presented to her…

One day we were taking a break. Geoff Dunbar, Mic Hubbard and Tom Healy were out making coffee and myself, Jen Sholakis, Laura Jean and Biddy Connor were in the rehearsal room singing my song ‘Fear is like a Forest’ in a Toni Childs-esque voice. I’m not sure how it started but we were going hard out, singing through microphones LOUD and really getting into it. It wasn’t mean spirited - she just has one of those voices like Eddie Vedder or Cher - that distinctive quaaayyyy-like quality that is very satisfying to sing in. Soon the other’s came in and we started back into rehearsing. Perhaps two minutes into playing there was a knock at the door, I turned and saw one of the brother’s (Kevin) looking through the window, motioning to be let in. I got up and opened the door. Next to him stood a short, wholesome, tanned woman in her mid-40s. “Hi, I’m Toni Childs,” she announced. “I’m out touring in a couple of weeks. I’m flying my band over from Hawaii next week for rehearsals and I was wondering if I could take a look at the space?”

Later that day I tried singing in a Deborah Harry and a Kate Bush voice but it seems I was only able to manifest my mother’s favourite late 80s singer-songwriter.

‘I Am Going But I Am Not Gone’

I am a big fan of the Canadian actor/director Sarah Polley who was first noticed when she starred in a Disney Channel television series called the Road to Avonlea. At the age of 12 (around 1991) Polley attended an awards ceremony wearing a peace sign to protest the first Gulf War. Disney executives asked her to remove the sign but she refused. This soured her relationship with Disney and she left soon after to star in far more legendary flicks like Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Polley directed her first feature in 2006 called Away From Her. It stars Julie Christie who plays a woman in her early 60s diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. It manages to avoid the sentimentality of a lot of “dying of a disease” movies by keeping a sense of humour and thankfully it hasn’t been all Hollywood-ed up with soft focus lenses and dream sequences. There is one scene where Christie turns to her husband (Gordon Pinsent) and says in a pissed off tone, “I am going but I am not gone.” I was moved by this simple sentence, it sums up the experience of living with Alzheimer’s. This song is written from the perspective of my mother talking to my father about their life together: “I am going but I am not gone/Bound to you by all that we have sown/The slowest disappearing act/Lost in fiction/Lost in fact/ My own private Idaho.”

‘Hidden Hands’

If you have never watched the last recorded interviews with the legendary Joseph Campbell do yourself a favour and go buy the Power of Myth. The guy has the most incredible knowledge of the history of mythology and is considered to be in the league of some of the great thinkers of the 20th century - file next to Carl Jung and James Joyce. Campbell had a profound effect on George Lucas who upon reading Campbell’s seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces went and wrote the Star Wars trilogy – the good one – with Mark Hamill playing Skywalker. Anyhow I wrote this song based on a Joseph Campbell quote, “When we follow our bliss, we are met by a thousand unseen helping hands.”

‘Watch Me Disappear’

I came up with this brilliant song title (Googled it to make sure it was mine) only to discover it was a novel by Jill Dawson about a marine biologist called Tina Humber.

Jen Cloher’s Hidden Hands is out July 10 through Sandcastle Music.

Review: Wooshie - Natural’s Is In It

2009-07-06T02:00:00Z

There’s scarcely any information out there about Perth’s Dylan Michell. And given that he’s described as “mysterious” on his label’s website, it’ll probably stay that way. The three pieces here arrive and depart with the brevity of apparitions, each one containing a slew of conflicting textures and references. The odds and ends combine with an uncanny harmony, as if these polar opposites were aligned in some forgotten moment in time.

Take the title track for instance, where intermittent blues guitar collides with dark vapour trails of organ drone and splintered percussive textures. It’s a haunting modern blues, evoking sad back alleys in stale commuter belt suburbs. Wooshie’s productions often sound like they’re parts of greater wholes; locked groove sound bites dissected and re-contextualised.

While intoxicating for the six minutes it lasts, this debut is an infuriatingly brief missive. You want these miniature tracks to persevere and evolve but Michell opts instead to demonstrate as many variations of his austere composition as will fit. Perhaps that’s the desired effect though. Like déjà vu, these moments pass too quickly to be adequately understood.

Review: Grand Salvo - Needles

2009-07-06T02:00:00Z

Grand Salvo is in many ways Australia’s answer to Iron & Wine. Both Paddy Mann and Sam Beam have a knack for writing the most affectingly simple tunes that need little more than a lightly strummed or fingerpicked acoustic guitar to make their point. Both are also blessed with honey-rich voices and sport rather fetching beards. ‘Needles’ is the first track to surface from Mann’s forthcoming fifth album as Grand Salvo, Soil Creatures, which by the sounds of things is shaping up to be his most intimately beautiful yet. Reining in the orchestrations of last year’s Death, Mann has here reverted his focus to the most basic of elements: voice and guitar. Like Beam, Mann takes a completely naturalistic approach to his singing, letting it float gently over those delicate guitar lines without the faintest hint of effort. Elegant in its simplicity, ‘Needles’ is warm, inviting and the perfect teaser to whet our appetites for Soil Creatures.

News: Damn Arms Are Dead

2009-07-06T01:00:00Z

Melbourne electro-punks-turned-yacht-house-pioneers Damn Arms are dead - in case you cared or noticed. The band, who have been so close to inactive over the last year that the question of their demise was something of a fait accompli, finally confirmed the end on Friday. A Myspace blog titled ‘Yama’s Very Delayed Parting Words’, posted by founding member/survivor Yama Indra, states that neither Indra nor fellow Damn Arms member Tim Sullivan ‘will be writing any further material as Damn Arms’. Indra’s blog follows a post from Tim Sullivan back in March 2009 announcing his departure, leaving Indra as the sole member of the group.

Although the blog thankfully avoids the default ‘musical differences’ claim, Indra curiously states that he and Sullivan are ‘still close friends’ although they have ‘agreed to part ways musically as far as the eye can see’. Guess one of you will have to move out of Melbourne then, huh ?

Damn Arms were a band who failed to capitalise on their potential. Emerging in mid-2005 out of the ashes of Adelaide’s Snap ! Crakk !, the band chalked up some incendiary live shows and the promising Homewrecker EP as positive strikes. They spent six weeks in Europe, supporting Forward Russia and headlining their own shows in London and Paris, getting friendly with other next-big-things-oh-shit-our-career-is-dead Test Icicles. Lest we damn them with faint praise, let’s also remember that the New Musical Express gave the band the #1 on their Radar chart, they DJ’d with The Gossip, and the band sold out headline dates at the Barfly in Camden.

However, all this action amounted to nought when debut The Live Artex arrived too late, too overcooked and too bereft of, y’know, actual songs. A change of sound from electro-punk to self-described ‘yacht house’ was seemingly the final straw. The band had relegated their career to DJ sets from Sullivan and Indra of late, and the ever-declining line-up (members Ian Jackson, Ben Browning and Simon Parker all left the group for other projects) seemed to suggest any news of their demise hadn’t been greatly exaggerated.

Damn Arms are survived by Indra’s solo/collaboration project Gloves, Jackson’s Heirs, Sullivan’s Das Moth and Parker’s Lost Valentinos. Ben Browning plays in some band called Cut Copy. Never heard of them.

Nu-rave is dead, long live nu-rave.

News: Princess One Point Five Returns

2009-07-06T12:00:00Z

Sarah-Jane Wentzki’s Princess One Point Five project (P1.5 to those who know her well) is returning to the live stage after a period of relative absence. The purveyors of perfectly beautiful pop-rock are riding high after riding their fourth album and licensing two wonderful songs to two incredibly bad US TV shows.

Back in October 2008 Wentzi announced that trashy US show Gossip Girl had licensed ‘With Light There Is Hope’ from first album At Long Last. Then, in February 2009, P1.5 made their next move in wresting control of the ‘overwrought emotional scene soundtrack for bad US show’ mantle from Snow Patrol with the announcement that P1.5 had some music played in the promos for Medium, a show that not only stretches the bounds of plausibility but also taste. Is that disdainful huffing, I hear? That little Medium promo was PLAYED AT THE SUPERBOWL KIDS, continuing the esoteric tradition of obscure Australian bands getting publicity via US sports (‘Noah’s Arkestra’ from Mountains in the Sky soundtracked an NBA play-off commercial a few years ago).

P1.5 are now preparing their fourth record, which is due for release in early 2010. In July, however, the P1.5 gang will be returning to two relatively unconventional stages for some shows.

July 23 sees P1.5 performing a stripped back semi acoustic set at NGV Australia (Ian Potter Centre, Fed Square) for the final sessions of the ‘late night Thursday series’. The band will perform following an artist talk from the directors of LAB architecture studio. For more info go to : http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/lnt/

Then, on July 30th at The Forum, the full band are previewing some of their new material as well as a few old favorites for the Melbourne International Film Festival. Both shows are free entry.

PRINCESS ONE POINT FIVE

Thursday, July 23
NGV Australia, Ian Potter Centre, Melbourne, VIC

Thursday, July 30
The Forum, Melbourne, VIC

Feature: Stockholm Syndrome

2009-07-05T02:00:00Z

Recorded in Sweden with Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn and John fame, Sarah Blasko’s third album 'As Day Follows Night' shows that home isn’t necessarily where the art is, writes ADAM D MILLS.

Having recorded her debut album The Overture and the Underscore in Los Angeles and its follow-up What the Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have in Auckland, Sarah Blasko ventured to Sweden for album number three. While traveling in Scandinavia, she struck up a friendship with Bjorn Yttling – who, besides being the Bjorn in Peter, Bjorn and John, has produced records by The (International) Noise Conspiracy, Lykke Li and Camera Obscura – and decamped to Stockholm in February to begin working on what would become As Day Follows Night.

This tendency towards recording in far-flung locations reveals an important aspect of Blasko’s creative processes: the desire to remove herself from her comfort zone, both spatially and psychologically; to put herself in deliberately foreign environments and situations in order to foster her own artistic development.

“I think it’s good to go somewhere where you’re just focusing on the album and you’re out of your home environment,” she explains. “This time I did feel that it was very helpful to me. The last two records, even though I did go to a different environment, I [had] someone that I knew with me. The first time I went with Rob [Robert F. Cranny, instrumental wunderkind who co-produced Blasko’s first two albums], and the second time it was with all Australians that I knew, so that was very much like friends making a record. This time, just going over completely on my own, it really was very good for me. When you’re with people that you do slip into the way that you would normally do things. But when you’re essentially outnumbered it’s really hard [to do that].

“I got more of a sense of the universal nature of music,” she continues. “I live in Newtown [in Sydney], and there’s something that happens to you when you’re just so far away that you think, ‘Fuck it, I’m gonna put a flamenco guitar or a saxophone here’, and just know that it’s not what I would be doing if I was in Sydney. There’s something that can be suffocating about being in your home environment. Things don’t seem as magical for some reason. Maybe that’s silly of me – I can just do what I want anyway. But there is more of a free feeling when you’re so far from home. You feel like you can almost do anything.”

Yttling’s role as producer was much more than that of a hired-gun engineer or even a musical sounding board. As Cranny was during the making of Blasko’s first two albums, he was a fully-fledged musical collaborator, helping to define the album’s structure and tone. Like any working relationship, however, this one wasn’t without its occasional bouts of strain.

“We did struggle, because we are very different as people,” says Blasko. “But just every now and then. I would say for the most part it was actually a really exciting and a really wonderful experience. I think for the most part we really understood what we were trying to do. We just had very different ways of communicating, and I think that’s where our problems lay. Essentially, though, it was a really good learning experience for me. I find it really hard to just let go of things. Obviously it’s so important to not just let everything go, you’ve got to have your own ideas, but to trust somebody and let go and let them be a director of sorts was really important for me this time. I really needed that by that stage because I’d spent so much time writing songs alone. I had ideas in my head but I wanted to be flexible to what someone else thought. It was kind of hard; it’s hard to take direction sometimes.”

Between them, Blasko and Yttling created a unique aural world for As Day Follows Night, one quite far removed from that of its predecessors. Whereas Blasko had written the bulk of her previous albums on guitar, this time she found herself writing on the piano, following her experiences with the instrument while composing music for the Bell Shakespeare Company’s 2008 production of Hamlet. “My running joke at the moment [is] now I’ve got two instruments that I play really badly,” she laughs. “So I’m thinking the next [album] I’ll pick up another one and I’ll have this growing number of instruments that I can’t really play.”

”There is more of a free feeling when you’re so far from home. You feel like you can almost do anything.”

Though she concedes that she’s “actually not too bad” at the piano, she left the bulk of the playing to a cadre of session musicians and friends/associates of Yttling who were drafted in to realise the unusual arrangements the pair had worked out for the songs. “We talked really in a detailed way about what kind of musicians I wanted to use. I really felt like I wanted a jazz drummer and heaps of double bass and stuff like that. So they were loosely from a jazz background, I guess, [from] really different musical backgrounds to me. But then Bjorn was interesting, because he kind of bridged the gap. He does a bit of jazz and stuff, but essentially he comes from more of an indie world with his band. So it was great playing with him, because he’s like me. We both have terrible technique with playing, we both don’t care too much. Although he does play some wonderful piano parts on the record, he doesn’t really count himself as a slick kind of musician. But I think those elements are the rougher edges that he and I could provide, [so along with] these wonderful session players [it was] a good mix.”

Hidden among the pop gems of The Overture and the Underscore was a mild sense of darkness, which Blasko further explored on What the Sea Wants. As Day Follows Night seems to continue along the same arc, trading the upbeat catchiness of ‘Don’t U Eva’ for the string-laden lament of ‘I Never Knew’.

“I think I’ve got a warped view of things,” Blasko says, “because I feel like this record’s really poppy. But then I say that to my friends and they’re like, ‘No it’s not!’”

The album has a wonderfully inviting tone, due in no small part to the fact that it was mostly recorded using analogue equipment and laid down to tape.

“I think it’s got a beautiful warmth,” enthuses Blasko. “I really wanted to have that real generosity and warmth about things even though they’re kind of sad songs. When I wrote them I thought that if I was to record them in a sombre kind of way … we really needed to vary the tempos and the expression and just expand it so that it wasn’t this little sad and sorry record. I think I’ve really achieved that. I feel that all the songs have a real life to them that goes beyond their circumstance.”

Though at times the album can sound quite lush, the arrangements are actually quite stripped back. Blasko explains: “Often it just boils own to double bass and drums and voice. For me that was wonderful to record a record that’s like that because there’s just so much space. It was wonderful as a singer to make an album like that. The album’s mainly about the voice, the drums and the bass, and for me that’s really exciting. There are so many things you can fill the sound with, but I just love hearing those raw instruments and really being able to hear their character.”

As Day Follows Night also sees Blasko opening up as a lyricist. Though never one to obfuscate her meaning with layers of superfluous metaphor, here she’s more honest than ever before, especially on fragile yet disarmingly intense tracks like ‘Is My Baby Yours’ and ‘Night & Day’.

“It’s quite direct, I think,” she says. “I wanted it to be that kind of record. I wanted it to have that honesty and be very straightforward in the way [of] an old jazz or blues song; those songs of heartbreak. You know exactly what they’re saying, and it resonates. They were kind of my role models or whatever for the record.”

But even though it’s her most personal work to date by a long shot, Blasko maintains that As Day Follows Night isn’t meant to be taken as confessional. There’s a strong element of characterisation – of truth as fiction – to it as well.

“I think songs are your ideals, the things that you want. For me that’s the way it is. The things that you want to teach yourself or ideals for the way you want to be. They’re like discussions, and there are different characters within that. Often people just assume that if you’re using ‘I’ then it’s about you. It is. In basis the character is me. But then it goes to a more universal ‘I’. You’re trying to say something about the human character or aspects of yourself or aspects of other people. It’s always like a little study, really, like a sociological study in human behaviour.”

Review: Spartak - No Signal

2009-07-05T02:00:00Z

A few months back, Canberra duo Spartak headed down to the south coast of New South Wales, where they spent two days improvising new music in a house by the sea. The result of this sojourn is the pair’s sophomore album Verona, which is due later this year on hellosQuare. In the meantime, Shoeb Ahmad and Evan Dorrian have graced us with No Signal, which combines three tracks culled from the Verona sessions and a reworked live recording from their 2007 tour of Southeast Asia.

Opening track ‘In A Field of Light’ encapsulates the rapid development of Spartak in the relatively short period since the release of their debut album Tales from the Colony Room. With none of the microscopic post-processing that, for a time, seemed almost synonymous with Spartak, ‘In A Field of Light’ sees Ahmad put down his instruments and join Dorrian in laying down noisy beds of metallic junkshop percussion. Its natural resonance becomes an ever-present drone that gives form to the track’s otherwise abstract soundscapes. At the disc’s other end, the aptly titled ‘Closure’, Dorrian steps out from behind the drum kit to provide wheezy organ notes that Ahmad mulches through his four-track.

No Signal’s highlight, however, is the twelve-minute ‘Sleet/Skid’. As the track warms up, Ahmad’s oscillating guitar collides with Dorrian’s cymbal washes, the tension eventually breaks out midway through with bristling chords and Ahmad’s half-shouted, half-spoken vocals. More visceral than anything they’ve done to date, it bodes very well for Verona indeed.

Review: Pimmon - Curse You, Evil Clown

2009-07-05T02:00:00Z

Though Curse You, Evil Clown is technically an expanded reissue of the long out-of-print 3” CD-R Curse of Evil Clown (released by Meupe back in 2005), it doesn’t follow the re-release formula of simply tacking a bunch of bonus tracks onto the end. Rather, it’s more like a director’s cut, presenting the original in a new light through the inclusion of other chronologically and thematically linked pieces. As such, it’s best assessed as a complete entity, with no demarcation between old and new.

Curse You, Evil Clown opens with the chopped and layered tones of ‘Stumbling’. It’s the shortest track here and an introduction to the disc’s overall ambient tone. Second track ‘Stall and Burn’ is a slow-burning combination of crackling static and off-camera scrapes. As the volume and density of the track’s many disparate sound sources grow, so too does its ineffable sense of post-apocalyptic dread. Frighteningly inhuman, it feels like a precursor to the dark dissonance Pimmon would explore more fully on Smudge Another Yesterday.

The mood lightens somewhat with the intricate pulses of ‘Dream Clown’. Beneath a minimal, early Matmos-esque rhythm lurks a half-buried but persistent melody. Barely perceptible, it hovers at the periphery like a semi-forgotten memory that stays teasingly out of reach. Things get noisy again with new track ‘Bottomless Trap-Hole [Scheme 4]’, with what sounds like an overmodulated guitar going head-to-head with a battery of analogue effects. Against the pristine backdrop of the preceding three tracks, its abrasive dirtiness stands out sharply. The shimmering glow of ‘Zero Gravity’ offers a much-needed aural balm. One of the most soporifically beautiful pieces in the Pimmon catalogue, its soft cushion of gently oscillating tones is a flawless exercise in drift. Again, buried so deep as to be almost inaudible is a loping bass melody, straining against the track’s otherwise formless structure.

The extended closing track ‘G-Stains’ is a torch-lit stumble through subterranean; all scorched circuitry and indistinct, vaguely menacing noises. At times it feels like some kind of song or more fleshed-out piece of music is trying to break out, but it never pierces the surface. And that, in many ways, sums up the beauty of Curse. It only ever hints at things, keeping buried so much that might otherwise overpower the delicacy of these compositions. Subtlety is, in many ways, Pimmon’s strongest suit – and here, it’s used to its greatest effect.