Brisbane's Detonic Blessings

Detonic Recordings is lumbering out of slumber with their sixth release. The catch? You can only get it at The Bearded Lady in Brisbane on Friday August 28! What is it? Just a mixtape of some of the best wild electronic sounds to come out of the synthetic corners of the world for the last little while. Detonic is putting on the show that features mnttab, Yaws, Spirit Bunny, Wolf Shield and Corporate Vibes. It's wild. Favourites? Obviously love Yaws' contribution 'Regression', and have always loved me some mnttab and Spirit Bunny - but I also loved the garish nature of Corporate Vibes' 'Bass Strait', the sexy grind of Italian duo Schonwald's 'Slow Milk' and the post-everything romanticism of Happy Plastic Cup's closing track. It's all pretty great though (Celiac's Simple Minds cover and Prison's 'Kundle' are good too - ah, just go listen to it!)

But as you will see, the d/l is nigh on impossible to afford, so GO TO THE SHOW ON FRIDAY! Get on it! GO! GOOOO! 

PREMIERE - Yaws' Candy Will Undo U

Back in April Sonic Masala put on its first show north of the Equator, jamming in Power Lunches in Dalston, London, for what was a spectacular night of noise. Kicked off with the light, sepulchral guitar-looped meditations of TOOMS, things were cranked into a frenzy by one-man disco doomsayer mnttab and white noise nihilists Giant Swan. In there too though was the first set of Yaws (AKA Dom Stephens), who managed to entrance the audience with his set, with the tiny space in pitch black outside of the white static of a flickering television screen, starting off with undulating rhythms and pulses before building to a darkly euphoric tantric release - ear bleeding voodoo disco.

Today we are lucky enough to premiere Yaws' first release, a two-track cassette through English/Italian hybrid label WorkinKlassNoize. The A side, 'Undo U', is a seven minute static crawl through the inert temporality of relationships both organic and synthetic - there is a mewling vocal underneath the scored beats that feels alien yet also mundane. The repetition that Yaws showed was his centrifugal foundation is evident here too, and while not as darkly affecting as 'The Seventh Continent', it's a sordid slice of cyberstatic sluicing around the veins.



Then there is the B-side, 'Candy'. Stephens has stated that these tracks look at the hyper-intense nature of contemporary life, highlighting the role of sex in mainstream culture. Yes, the echoed taps, drips and distant manipulated moans that crawl out the back end of 'Undo U' show shadows of this, but the pent-up grind of 'Candy' is more emblematic of the simultaneous coarse/silken desire of hardbodies. The repetition here is more muted yet more feverish, a heat inherent in the roiling rhythms that quickens the heartbeat and holds the mind in delirious sway. The sexual build up of tension and pulse rate is a dangerously alluring amalgam, one that bottoms out in a drone that swallows you whole.



The cassette will be available June 12. Yaws is playing Thursday week (May 22) at Hackney Picturehouse, alongside Simon Frank and Elephant House - will be killer.

PREMIERE - Sonic Explorer Andrew Tuttle Constructs The Evening With Matmos

HELLLLOOOOOO!

It's been six weeks, but Sonic Masala (the blog) is back! We have plenty to speak about, shit on about, brag about and listen to. We haven't been idle - the sixth entry into the Sonic Masala Records stable, Dollar Bar's third LP Hot Ones, is now out and smokin' hot; the second annual (that's right - watch out 2016!) Sonic Masala Fest kicked arse in Brisbane, Australia; and just last Saturday we had our first live showcase right here in London, featuring Giant Swan, Yaws, mnttab and TOOMS - officially an international concern!

So I thought the best way to come back into the written form is with a bang - so here is the premiere of 'Post Meridiem Construction', the new track of Andrew Tuttle's second proper release Slowcation, out on Room40 cassette imprint A Guide To Saints. Featuring Matmos' MC Schmidt, it is a soft melt, the drip filter of whiteout afternoons, where the sun is out but colour drains from the canvas. A netherland of overt emotion, it provides the perfect platform for reflection, rumination and regrowth.



The album itself perfectly encapsulates the fervent yet awestruck fever one gets when in the presence of a positive energy that Tuttle embeds in all of his work. The A side was created while Tuttle toured the States, taking in such diverse outsider fare as the Goldrush Festival in Denver and hanging out with Matmos and Dan Deacon; while the B side was created back on home soil, with the vacation turbines still winding down. Starting with that familiar warm cut up tone of Tuttle's trusty banjo, 'Vernon City Limits' glistens with an eternal shimmer, like solar flares on a slowed-down Super 8 video of a car journey through an innocent past (with the aid of Christopher Fleeger). There is always a percolating sense of innocence and hope in Tuttle's work (dating back to the early days of his Anonymeye guise), yet on Slowcation there is a innate confidence in his efforts to splice and reorder sonic structures entwined with a subversive joy in overlaying bucolic whimsy and happenstance over synthetic currents that sets this above and beyond what he has put to tape in the past. Even the pinging fray that opens 'Wave Triplet' explodes into cascading colour, aural sparks of kaleidoscopic wonder. Tuttle has become an artist in displaying the computer as a expansive palette, a conduit to further realms for more organic instrumentation, and Slowcation is further proof, if any was needed, that programming and hard edits can provide transcendental epiphany.

Slowcation comes out at the end of the month - pre-order it here. Tuttle has a series of shows coming up to showcase the release, so make sure you get along to one of the below and say g'day - he will definitely say g'day back and have a beer and talk cricket if you are into that sort of thing:

• 23.04.2015: The Bearded Lady, Brisbane. with No Magic + Feeding Fauna + Blank Realm x Monopoly Child Star Searchers DJs. 138 Boundary St, West End. $10, 8pm.

• 03.05.2015: Pretty Gritty @ 107 Projects, Sydney. with AFXJIM + Monica Brooks + CORIN + Samuel James. 5:30pm-9pm, $10/8. 107 Redfern Street, Redfern.

• 04.05.2015: Mundane Mondays @ The Old Bar, Melbourne. with Carolyn Connors + Brite Fight. 8pm, $5. 74 Johnston St, Fitzroy.

Slumming It With Sleaford Mods

My brother-in-law said this last month - "I resisted listening to this for ages because the idea of it was shit. They have a fucking song called McFlurries! But it's actually pretty good. Plus they have a song called McFlurries, so, you know."

OK, so there might have been a tiny bit more context there, but everything said here is true about Sleaford Mods, a duo from Nottingham that create a grimy, nascent type of beat poetry over the top of digital beats that are offensive in their simple MIDI forms... Now what my mate meant about Sleaford Mods sounding "shit" is that premise of a Midlands guy ranting over a tinny drum machine - anyone could do that, but it would take something pretty special to make that bearable, let alone enjoyable. Jason Williamson has that something - somehow embodying the streetwise shambolism of Mike Skinner, the nihilistic industropunk rage of Primitive Calculators' Stephen Grant, and the acerbic lunacy and simpleton avant-garde disco harshisms that makes Melbourne's mnttaB such an interesting entity. Austerity Dogs is the album, and it's a strangely satisfying listen - hearing Williamson's abrasive, atonal and vitriolic vocal spasms coming at you over deliberately cut-price beats provides a perfect conduit into the working class frustrations and an abject yet electrifyingly anarchic kicking against the pricks, railing against (and sometimes with) all the tabloids have to offer and more. Most of all its a not-so-silent scream at the powers that be who are railroading Britain into a Thatcherite netherworld of crushed dreams and pissed jeans. Best track 'Fizzy' best propagates this when spitting "work my dreams off for two bits of ravioli and a warm bottle of Smirnoff under a manager that doesn't have a clue."

'McFlurries' is fucking brilliant, by the way. So, you know...

You can buy Austerity Dogs (out through Deadly Beef Burgers Records) here. Sleaford Mods have a new album on the way too - Divide & Exit will be out in April.

Sonic Masala End Of Financial Party Profiles #4 & #5 - Motherfucking Morgan Freeman & DJ Micronations

So this is tomorrow. One more sleep. Or you can go no sleep. I won't endorse it, because your body is gonna get pummelled by the likes of mnttaB, Gravel Samwidge and Bottlecock. But also these cretins, Motherfucking Morgan Freeman. Starting out as We Are Librarians and delving in more bedroom pop, sample heavy meandering ambience, this duo have beefed up their intent and decided to play actual shows for once. Their last show was also a Sonic Masala slamdunk, and they were beautifully shambolic, some noisy pop in all the right places. Expect more of the same tomorrow night. It could be one of the last chances you will get to see this band as is, and it would be a shame to put such a killer moniker to bed just yet without some fanfare. I don't have any sonics to lay out for you - just trust me that they are good.

And providing the mortar that will bind the whole night together is DJ Micronations, who will be leaving his beautiful Anonymeye persona at home and bringing the bling, showering you all with tunes of dubious monetary cred. It's at the Waiting Room from 8pm, just bring a crisp $10 bill and whatever liquor is your poison. See you there!

Sonic Masala End Of Financial Year Party Profile #3 - Bottlecock

Two more sleeps until the greatest 2012 end of financial year party ever, and Bottlecock are raring to rip into it. The local trio are steeped in grunge's afterbirth, sounding like early Magic Dirt yet with even more heroin. They have an elongated song that lovers of punchy grunge music hate, but I love. They are a sight to behold. They are some of the loveliest people Ive ever met, although they look like (and probably will) punch you in the face because you are wearing a Nirvana T-shirt. They just played in Melbourne last weekend with Penguins, another amazing noisy racket of a bunch, but also mnttaB - so they are primed for destruction. Above all else, they will melt your face off and give it to you in a Pablo Picasso Paster of Paris mould. That's worth $10 in itself.



Check out the deets to the Sonic Masala part-A here. Here is a funny write up about mnttaB from Nite Fields/Lost Race Records' Danny Venzin for website The Thousands. If that doesn't get you hot and bothered - then we just ain't compatible.

Sonic Masala End Of Financial Year Party Profile #2 - Gravel Samwidge

Marching out the bands from this Saturday's Sonic Masala show, and next up on the catwalk made out of crumbling Deutschmarks we have Gravel Samwidge. Led by the affably irascible Mark Spinks, the band have been around since 1989 when they formed in Sydney and shook the shitcan with the likes of Lubricated Goat, Munroe's Fur, King Snake Roost, and Tex Perkin's Butcher Shop before relocating to Melbourne in 1990, where there dirty grind garnered palying time with the brilliant Venom P Stinger. In 1995 they won a Triple J Unearthed competition, which helped them to actually put some shit out, but not make money - if they had it they would burn it just to keep warm. But seeing as they didnt have money for warmth, they relocated to Brisbane in 2001. In 2009 they came out of a six year orgiastic hiatus to shoot everyone in the ear with their debut LP Nonchalance (through Turkeyneck Records). And whilst these outsider dirgemongers may have put out a "retrospective" in the form of The Old Tapes last year, they are launching new material in 2012 in just another public display of infernal domination. For the best trick the 'Samwidge ever pulled was making people believe they didn't exist...

Combined with mnttab founder dik's connections when playing with Bastard Kestrel (they toured with Killdozer. KILLDOZER!!!), we have a wealth of experience on our hands to help bring about a monetary Armageddon. Get keen - it is this Saturday, with Bottlecock, Motherfucking Morgan Freeman and DJ Micronations all offering their wares! Try out this demo recording to indicate where they are kinda at now...

Sonic Masala End Of Financial Year Party Profile #1 - mnttaB

Only four sleeps until the next Sonic Masala party - and it's gonna be a end of financial year hoedown like none have seem before! With irascible rabblerousers Gravel Samwidge, uber laconic pit dwellers Bottlecock and lichen-growing hybrid enthusiasts Motherfucking Morgan Freeman unleashing all kinds of fiscal knowledge from their instruments, and DJ Micronations plying the Dow Jones commentary with the requisite monetary musical mixes, it's going to be hard to maintain control of bodily movement, function and spending.

But it gets better/worse, as taking up top billing is none other than Melbourne's master of musical mayhem mnttaB (pronounced Mount Tab). Otherwise known as Dik (Bastard Kestrel/S:Bahn), mnttaB focuses solely on brewing a glorious mess of tortured rhythms, deconstructed synth-punk and lo-fi yelling. It has evolved/devolved since the Shiny Stones and Miracles EP I spoke about in 2010 here, which is evident on new mini-release Rocky 4, 2 & 3. Head over to his Bandcamp to collect some slices of digital abrasion and buffoonery. I can't promise you will like it - which means you probably will.

mnttaB - Rocky 4, 2 and 3
mnttaB - Hollywood Nights

Syntax Error

Melbourne band mnttaB play loud, fast, thrashy noise that snarls its way down into your cerebral vortex and lays malignant eggs there. For more idea of what to expect, here's a blurb from band progenitor Dik himself:

blah blah melbourne blah punk blah blah noise blah bastard kestrel blah

cough s:bahn blah unlikely! cough splutter click.

And...

I havent ventured far from my home studio for a while! - But still grappling with the contradictory forces of ego, creative urge and a subconscious refusal to acquire any musical skills.

Nuff said really. Shiny Stones And Miracles EP is a very short visceral burst of depraved energy. A lot has been promised here - let's see if (t)he(y) can up the ante in the next offering...

mnttaB - A Tighter Grip