Aural Australia #6 - Cybercilious

One of my favourite things about Australia is just how dumb most of our top paid sportsmen are. Having the Hayne Plane Train Brain Drain show porn to school students = while teaming up with Norton to talk about cyber safety, no less - is nothing short of cringeworthy brilliance. Classic Larry David stuff - except real, and creepy, and dumb, and not played for laughs, and will get off scott free.

Luckily we have far better offerings in the musical department...

I really dig/dug Ex Tropical, Jarrod Quannell's first outlay as Lost Animal. I hadn't heard much from the man, but now he has a new album out in the form of You Yang (through Captured Tracks and Dot Dash). His partner in crime is Shags Chamberlain, who you might remember from the excellent Pets With Pets and is now a part of Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. What a world, huh? Anyway, first taste off it is 'Too Late To Die Young', which features Quannell's particularly louche vocals as the film depicts staring off in the middle distance in both urban and rural settings, smoking and scaring kids at a birthday party, and bathtub ruminations before shirking the midlife crisis shackles for some solitary dancing amidst golden balloons in an abandoned town hall. My life, really.

Ela Stiles follows up her acappella drone loop opus Ela Stiles (which she launched at a SM show at The Brightside which was easily the weirdest shows I have put on - poor venue and venue owners, a complete shambles in my mind, nothing to do with the acts though, sorry Ela (and Dollar Bar, and J Francis, and especially Primitive Motion!)) with the warped chamber noise of Molten Metal (through her own great Paradise Daily label). Nowhere near as bare, but certainly still stark and affronting, Molten Metal loops around an industrial, well, melt, implosions of loops and staccato drum machines with Stiles' vocals either puncturing or enveloping the claustrophobic sonic substrata she has laid down. She continues to play with vocal interpretation ('I Don't Think So' reminds me of Tuneyards if she was raised on subterranean trip hop and Einsturzende Neubaten), while dislocated woozy RnB inflections litter the electronic landscape. The title track (featured on a Black Metal tape released earlier in the year) is a drone set that is split by shards of chimes, robotic discombobulated choirs, vocals fighting to overcome the metallic sonic tsunami. It's decidedly weird, and wholly entrancing. I love it.

Deck In The Pit is loose anarcho punk meltdown outta Brisbane courtesy of Glen Schenau (Per Purpose, Bent), Steve Rose (Sydney2000) and Phil Hunter. It's the kind of free multilimbed skronk noise that no-wavers and acolytes of Capt Beefheart can embrace - on the verge of imploding, collapsing, incinerating - sometimes tipping over into the abyss - with Schenau's bent and tortured vocals and strings off-kilter, key, rhyme or reason. You either get it or you don't. I haven't been in Brisbane since this concoction crept out of the bottle, but I can't wait to hear more. Also, Glen has a solo record coming out on the aforementioned Paradise Daily label tomorrow, so expect to hear more about that soon.

Lower Plenty have this broken-down malaise approach to songwriting that is often hard to explain - it just needs to be experienced and lived in. Their new album follows in the same fashion and is likely to pip Hard Rubbish as my favourite of theirs too. There is a tiredness to the stories stretched over 'Bondi's Dead' and 'All The Young Men' that is pregnant with lyrical kitchen sink epiphany, wistful hindsight, rustic inertia and isolated existentialism that sound like campfire chatter and alcohol-sodden self-actualisations. It was recorded in a kitchen in Collingwood too, so authentic as well. Compelling.  Sister Sister comes out next week through Bedroom Suck, preorder here.

Melbourne-via-Glen-Innes act Redspencer have really struck a chord with me on their upcoming album Perks. I enjoyed their 'Ride It Out' single of last year, but the languid jams on their debut record are so rich, lush and groovy = it's a big step up. Is that pan pipes and a gong on 'Spare Me'? This is Li-Lo music, just in time for the Aussie summer (or to pretend in the North hemisphere winter...) Get your Kenny Loggins on with these guys at the wheel.

Lets finish with Brisbane punks Cold Cuts (email tag is infinitehangover - tells us a lot...). I mentioned their stuff in the past, but 'Stay' is a bit more unbridled, leaving the lurking post-punk vibes in the boot while they unleash with more propulsive wares. This is from a recording session with Incremental Studios, so I am always interested what will come of this. Hopefully a lot more.

Hits From The Box #127 - Riding The MRI

Spent some of the day hanging around in a hospital waiting room, and twenty minutes in a thumping, shuddering tube. I got to play a CD in there - lucky me - and seeing as I don't own many CDs, I quickly burnt my own of stuff I've been listening to and wanting to listen to for Sonic Masala. Essentially "reviewing" music while having an MRI. Yeah, I'm pretty weird - especially seeing that a couple songs weren't good, but I couldn't shut them off, so had to listen to four minutes of bile in a claustrophobic tub. Fun times. Anyway, here are six acts that made things a little easier...

Now I know that most bands that grace a Hits From The Box post, they are either just breaking forth, have a small (and often rabidly devoted) fanbase, or have a release that has flown under the radar. The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die doesn't really fit into these three categories. In fact, I am the one that seems to have hidden under a rock - and willingly so. For some reason I shirked from listening to the Connecticut collective because of their name - I immediately thought they were likely to disappoint, being an overly pompous post-rock replica or a overly earnest post-hardcore chimera. Based on Long Live Happy Birthday, their latest EP and my first dip in TWIABPAIANLATD waters, their cantankerous grandiosity is pretty powerful, especially the constant build up on 'Katamari Duquette' - I felt like I was listening to a Slint meets Silver Mt Zion meets Built To Spill mash. I have heard that they have different sounds than this - an every-changing lineup which can flare out to twelve people can have that effect - but I absolutely love this 7" - you can pick it up here.

Chicago trio Impulsive Hearts have slowly built up their revivalist Vivian Girls in the Midwest sound the past year and a bit, and now the proof is in the pudding in their new album, Sorry In The Summer. It opens up with a plaintive swooner in 'I Wanna Be Gone' which builds into a sonorous explosion, ends with Broken Social Scene-esque groover 'Ykily', and touches many other colourful areas in between. The passion that bubbles up in every song here packs a quiet punch. It's just been released through London label Beautiful Strange - let's hope we see them over this way soon.

Heading over to Perth in Australia now, and we have 'Coyote', the new single from rollicking rockers Odlaw. It's a straight-up balltearer, and like it's namesake has a haunting howl and a hunted desperation throughout. It is a taste of what their forthcoming album Regret City will sound like - and it sounds like Odlaw is ready to rip off heads.

To a very new band outta Brisbane now. Cold Cuts have been around only a few months it seems, but their first two offerings really pack a punch. 'Crystal' has a rough growl to it, a bit of a motorik crawl, while 'Night Works' digs deeper and faster, shirking the post to take on a murky punk stance. Rough and ready power station, Cold Cuts are just warming up.

You might remember all the way back in 2012 that I was into the eponymous EP from Melbourne psych punks Sandcastle. I tried at one stage to try to get them to come up to Brisbane for a show, alongside another band called Pageants (and their only album Dark Before Blonde Dawn is still one of the greatest Aussie records never heard). Well one of the Sandcastle boys has upped sticks and moved to Montreal, transforming into Nothinge in the process. Real Boy is his latest album. With his black sack covering his head and with song titles like 'Kill Kill Kill Kill' and 'Die In A Daydream', you could be expected to be hit with harsh cyber punk, or electronic noise. No siree - these are wonky, weird electronic pop skewers, filled with sugar and spice and all things exotic. Other titles include 'Guyliner' and 'Professor Bum's Recapitulation'. He supported Pop. 1280 last month, and has announced a new album, Play Dead, that is in the works too. The boy is busy.

And finally we have Retro Burn, a collaboration between two Minneapolis sound artists that looks to take sampling into a vaporwave netherworld. Their album Follow The Light, The Light Is Your Guide is an existentialist cloudscape, an atmospheric suite of compositions that soars throughout the cosmos, the myriad sights met with innocence, confidence and awe. A extremely chilled sci-fi score for a film that doesn't exist except in your head - this is how I want my Sundays to end...


Happy Sunday everyone!