2014 - Per Bystrom (Exhaustion, Ooga Boogas)

One of my favourite drummers in Australia is Per Bystrom. I guess it isn't a fluke then that two of my favourite bands - Exhaustion and Ooga Boogas - feature Bystrom in the mix, plus there's his involvement in guttersquallers Leather Towel. And in Biker, Exhaustion's second LP, we have one of the albums of the year. He is also a massive fan of Roku Music's Collider record, so the love-in is complete. Here is Per's favourite records of the year - a better list, better written, than anything that I will come up with.

Total Control - Typical System (Iron Lung)

Gaah gaah gaah – I’m joining in with the universal choir of seagulls swallowing this band’s soggy chip…hooks, lines and stinkers. A better record than ‘Henge Beat’. That's a massive achievement in itself. The record is more Total Control than I thought was possible. The sound of a band eating its own tail and regurgitating a new born. In all its complexity there's an underlying baffling effortlessness. I can't understand how this record came to be. The evidence pointing to this is missing. Nothing hinted at this elevated echelon. Typical system.

NUN - NUN (Aarght Records)

‘Evoke The Sleep’ is the song of 2014. Only one other LP barely managed to keep this album from being the ultimate jam of this year. Live - no one touched this gang of Aspbergers in Australia. They emerged from their live synthesized murk and heavily treated vocals, with foghorn bass player Tom Hardisty producing something dangerously close to being called synth-pop. Epic closer ‘In Blood’ is the only song this year that makes me feel oddly emotional. “I’ve just got something in my eye, fuck off!” 2014: The Year Goth Broke.

Eastlink - Mullum Mullum (In The Red)

"They busted up your brain for an idea. I’m supposed to do the duck walk. You're supposed to have a little bit of fun. You paid for the gun, I paid for the baton” drones Al Montford on ‘What a Silly Day (Australia Day)’. A Stooges riff spoofing all over Abbot policies. A wild dog deaf to the whistle of its supposed master, wasting no piss putting out raging fires in gated communities. The Mullum Mullum tunnel depicted on the cover of the LP was constructed not to upset the local habitat. I don’t know if this was deemed a success by the Wurundjeri people, but there is something appealing about the juxtaposition of Autobahn aesthetics, and the native flora phallus decorating the entrance to the tunnel designed by WA artist Angus James. This record talks about issues not found in your navel. The last song of the album is called ‘Thatcher’s Dead’. Is there a local wishlist?

Ela Stiles – S/t (Bedroom Suck Records)

Galactic Empire folk, Darth Vader hat hair – laments of evil empires crumbling bouncing off hard marble halls once holding splendour and Collingwood black and white tones. Linda Perhac and Anne Briggs inspired folk tragedy minimalism. ‘Kumbh Mela’ is one of the most devastatingly beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, and this album has remained a firm favourite throughout the year. I’ve got no idea what Kumbh Mela means, but it sure is no Jar Jar Binks.

Low Life - Dogging (R.I.P. Society/Disinfect)

I've bumped into the very affable Christian O'Sullivan (bass/Germs t-shirt) many times throughout the years, but only met Mitch Tolman (gtr/vox/Nike) when I filled in on drums at a couple of Melbourne shows earlier this year. "I don't drink" said the man just before frenetically trying to find a lost necklace after a show. Add council flat lad-fashion, and a fixation on Rihanna to their foggy post hardcore chorus pedal driven mix, and this record bewilders. The song "Friends" is the worst out of the lot. A muddy goth/grunge base with echo drenched vitriolic vocals "and all my friends, they're proper scum. Jaded and bitter and faded and twisted" dragged along at toddler pace. Why is it then that this is one of my most played songs of 2014? Fucked if I know. There is nothing positive to say about this record except that it rules. HARD.

Flat Fix - An Unkempt House (Not Not Fun)

Nick Senger (Castings) and Cooper Bowman (Altered States Tapes) make Australian techno. I've heard something region specific in the likes of fellow Antipodean electronic outfits Gardland, Rites Wild, and Angel Eyes. Heavily saturated drifting synth lines, Roland 303/808 hardware driven pulses, and occasional Terry Riley-like arpeggios. Intentional or not, there's something about this that feels Australian. Not so much reflecting its inhabitants, but more on a topographical level. It's a tape. It's an EP. Whatever. It's enough of an album as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and the cover looks like a 1980's paleo-futuristic drawing of Yggdrasil. Which is nice.

Peter Brötzmann & Sonny Sharrock - Whatthefuckdoyouwant (Trost records)

Hidden away Brötzmann and Sharrock live recording from '87, finally unearthed and released in 2014 (on my birthday, THX). The cover of the album features what looks like a slab of granite covered with doctor's writing, and sums it up nicely...70+ minutes of heavy, dense chaos. I've checked, because it's important to know the length of your punishment. That's what I want. What the fuck do you want?

Pan Sonic - Oksastsus (Kvitnu)

I toured Finland in 1994. We travelled there by ship, and soon after embarking the journey turned into a nautical leg of the Stereosonic Festival. The galley was filled with gacked up teenagers mixing vomit with tears. A bunch of bikers at the back of a Helsinki venue yelled out in broken Swedish “Go home fatties!”. In some ways I felt like I was finished with the band after that trip. In 2009 Pan Sonic performed their final gig in Kyiv, Ukraine. Oksastsus is the document of this performance. I wonder if they split up due to their harsh environment, or due to frying every circuit that they came in contact with. I imagine a bunch of Putin lackeys on r’n’r from the Donetsk Republic camps knocking back army hooch and yelling from the back of the Kyiv show in broken Finnish “Not heavy enough!”. The loss of military grade electronic status must have been one blow too heavy. A king hit.


You can grab Biker here.

2014 - oOo

One of the more left-field highlights of 2014 for Sonic Masala was being interviewed for a music magazine in Slovenia, Hrup (read it here, but be warned - Google Translate is not kind to me...). The interview was a lot of fun, and actually allowed me to visualise some of the things I want for Sonic Masala in the New Year. For that I have Ziga Jenko to thank - and it all came from him sending me some improvisations from his band, oOo. Since then we have kept in contact, and I have been introduced to a interesting underground scene in Slovenia that I hope to discover for myself in 2015.

I asked Ziga to hit me with the best experience/s of the year, and this is the result. Everything culminated in a six hour concert in November that they called povezoOovanja (CoOonectings), with fourteen guests coming up every half hour to interject their psych jams. It was held at Menza pri koritu, which is a half legalised ex-military squat in the middle of Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. The idea came to Ziga when reading Improvisation - its nature and practice in music by Derek Bailey. It was so successful that other editions have been planned. Here is a video of the event:

oOo see this time as one where interests of big capital is trying to divide common people even more. It is time to drop all borders in our heads so we can connect without fear in honest and truthful ways. I for one am on board with such ideals.

2014 - Cobwebbs

One of the defining moments for 2014 for me was releasing WORLD WIDE WEBBS, the new album from Brisbane degenerates Cobwebbs. The four-piece have their shtick down pat - that is, an eternal garage arm-wrestle between ridiculousness and disdain, all tied up by great hooks covered in gravel rash. Sam Wightman and Roland Hlavka are the driving force of the band, and their other endeavours (Barbiturates, Police Force, Gold Shade, World War Four, etc) continue to push the sonic boundaries in myriad directions. Hanging out with Sam provided some of the best times of 2014 (most of which cannot be mentioned here). Here are their can't-fuck-withable best of list of 2014.

SW & RH'S NON-NEGOTIABLE BEST OF 2014 

***IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER***

ALEX CAMERON - JUMPING THE SHARK 

AUSMUTEANTS - ORDER OF OPERATION 

COBWEBBS - WORLD WIDE WEBBS 

DEAN BLUNT - BLACK METAL 

EXEK - EXEK TAPE

MADLIB / FREDDIE GIBBS - PINATA 

OBNOX - LOUDER SPACE 

PER PURPOSE GIGS 

SHABAZZ PALACES - LESE MAJESTY 

SHEDSTOCK 2K14 LEGENDS ON THE PISS 

SWANS - TO BE KIND

TOBACCO - ULTIMA II MASSAGE 

TOTAL CONTROL - TYPICAL SYSTEM 

ZANZIBAR CHANEL - DRUNK AT THE JAZZ CLUB

I notice SM Fest 14 didn't make the cut, whatever. Grab WORLD WIDE WEBBS in orange vinyl here.

2014 - Ryan Saar

There has been the upward surge of popularity across the wide brown land of Australia for a little blog that could. No, it's not Sonic Masala - although I'm sure our five regular readers might disagree - but Soundly Sounds, a Sydney blog run by Ryan Saar. His exuberance permeates all he writes about, and his focus on Australian music (some of which I was unaware of until he shook the dirt and grime off) is extremely fortuitous, not just for the people who stumble across his posts but the bands too. He doesn't pay lip service - he writes genuinely about the things that he loves about music - which is Sonic Masala's reason for being too. Anyway, here in Ryan's own words is the most exciting thing about music in 2014.

The 19^th Consecutive Year of My Life; or How Brisbane Made the Best Music of the Year 

by Ryan Saar

This year, I turned 19. That’s a whole one year after 18, but two years before 21, which means it’s a pretty inconsequential year all round. Nobody ever looks back and thinks, “Fuck, 19 was so fucking great”. But I do. Kind of. I mean, there was plenty of clichéd 19-year-old bullshit motions that I engaged in. I started university. I began drinking way more than is probably healthy, simply because I could. The Foo Fighters continued to exist, always a good reminder of the pains of high school. But it was the explosive year of bands and sounds from a city I’ve never even BEEN to was what created the standout year that was 2014.

Everyone in trendy Shitney and Melboring always get all fired up about whatever two-dimensional, blog-approved act that manages to meld soft cock-rock with electronic flourishes happens to exist for two seconds. Most of the time, these acts exist for a few seconds, before moulding into another band that sounds exactly the same. At best, it’ll be Alt-J, which is a hell that I would rather not visit. And the local scenes are plagued with artists who are far too informed/entitled by the success of their overseas idols to want to sound like anything else.

There are exceptions of course – punk rock continues to thrive in the form of a new group called Point Being, Weak Boys released an instant classic, and others such as Collarbones, Shrapnel, Liam Kenny and Orion, who refuse to become pigeonholed. Even indie rock acts such as Prints, FLOWERTRUCK and Step-Panther provided excellence in their fields.

But as a whole, Sydney and Melbourne are too gentrified to be taken seriously. When you’re paying over $250 a week in rent alone, it’s hard to come up with a genuinely dirty aesthetic in your music. If someone is wearing a Dead Kennedys t-shirt, it’s more accurate to assume they bought it for $60 (plus shipping) because they heard one of the songs on Guitar Hero. What’s more, our finest punk venue, The Square, the only place that allowed 17-year old Ryan to get his fix, was shut down earlier this year. Ultimate sad-face emoji.

Maybe this is pandering because Sonic Masala is a Brissy-blog, but almost all the good stuff from this year has been sourced from it’s stinking hot depths. In much the same way that typing the words “producer” is almost always immediately preceded by “Melbourne-based”, the same goes for “gnarled punk band” and “Brisbane”. In some rare cases, it’s Newcastle, or Adelaide or Canberra, but it’s almost always Brisbane.

Why is that? As I’ve said, I’ve never been there, but from the fine exports who have made their way south,  it seems to come down to the remnants of the old police state, the stinking hot, and the lack of things to do. That stifling sensation creates an itch in the creatives, breeding some of the most honest and blood-curdling music to reach these freckled, Shitney-located ears.

2014 has seen Multiple Man, Cured Pink, Roku Music, Tape//Off, Sewers and Gazar Strips release material to soaring praise. Nite Fields got signed internationally! Then, new bands like Hideous Towns, Soviet X-Ray Record Club, Bat Nouveau and Dag chose to blow my mind. Labels like Sonic Masala Records, Virtual Cool and Tenth Court have sprung up to enormous satisfaction, and the almighty Bedroom Suck Records celebrated their 5^th year of existence.  And Blank Realm released the album of the year in ‘Grassed Inn’, a product of pop-weirdness that could only have been birthed in Brisbane.

What’s more, actual attention is being paid to these artist’s, and recognition is being served to those that are worthy of it! This is probably due to the attention driven from the more popular rawk acts of DZ Deathrays, Violent Soho and Velociraptor, and the guitar-pop of Babaganouj, Major Leagues and Go Violets. But hey, those acts don’t suck, and they’ve brought attention to some of the best music that Australia has produced as a whole. If it means that “Persuasion” gets played to all the eager ear canals of the world, it’s worth putting up with another band that thinks The Cat Empire are good.

Basically, 2014 was the year Brisbane music just became incredibly excellent, excelling in all areas from pop, to noise, to darkwave and everywhere in between.  As the last bastion of hope on the East Coast, Brisbane showcased it’s divine talent and unique aesthetic to a godly extent more so than any other Australian city. Just do your thing, Brisbane, and I’ll be in your sweet embrace soon enough. 

2014 - Lawrence English

Another day, another poem. On Christmas Eve I published Mark Zian (Curlew)'s take of the year that almost was in the form of Frozen Cake. Today I give you a specially styled, succinct piece from Lawrence English, whose album Wilderness Of Mirrors is a minor masterpiece in sinuous drone, promoting both sepulchral elegance and gnawing, glacial tension. Here is what he thought of the year that was:

the wilderness 

creeping toward our door 

the sleepers 

smothered in easy dreams 

the woken 

howling for a breaking dawn 

2014 

the year to howl, join us.

I had the pleasure to meet Lawrence for a coffee a couple of days before I left Brisbane for London, and it was strange to think we had never crossed paths before that point. The conversation weaved effortlessly through our shared sonic predilections for drone music and field recordings - about 1/8 of which turned into this interview. The process continues, and will eventually coalesce into a larger, much more unwieldy article sometime in 2015. Until then we can revel in Wilderness of Mirrors (which you can grab here), as well as the collaboration he has done with Stephen Vitielli, Fable, which you can get from here. 2015 promises to be a massive year for Lawrence as his Room40 label turns 15 and he plays all around the world. I know I will be getting down to Cafe Oto on Friday January 23 for his show alongside John Chantler and Rafael Anton Irisarri - get tickets here.

2014 - Curlew

One of the most underrated singer/songwriters in Brisbane - indeed, in Australia - is Mark Zian. His wry, sardonic, slightly skewed world view is at once immediate and oblique, simplistic yet philosophical in a slightly anguished way - with a delivery that is earnest and self-deprecating. His work with Curlew, Knee Chin and I Am Not A Nihilist has always impressed due to its ingenuity and brazen honesty. Zian doesn't play nearly enough shows, and some of that is due to the supposed inaccessibility of such an approach to music.

Bullshit.

Listen to Animal Urges, Curlew's album of this year - it's an unqualified gem of a record. Mix Gareth Liddiard with Richard Dawson and that is the package you are getting.


As can be expected, Zian was a little reluctant to offer a "best of" list or article for Sonic Masala. But being the perennial observer that he is, he gave me this poem, one of hundreds that he has written over the course of 2014, that sums up the year rather succinctly.

 Frozen Cake 

Lunch at work and ladies were talking about having to take a cake into school when it's their child's birthday 
We never had such traditions. 
'What about the kids with allergies', one asks 
'Well their parents bring in a cake and they cut it up and freeze it so they don’t miss out when the others have cake' 
I thought this was ridiculous. 
'But why would you want your child to miss out? It wouldn’t be fair to them' 
'Because life isn’t fair they will have to learn that lesson soon enough might as well start with cake.'

I agree wholeheartedly. Buy Animal Urges here, and push to get Zian in any of his guises out into the open more often for 2015. He is playing a solo set at Rics on Monday January 5 - this will be the perfect start.

2014 - Andrew Tuttle

I haven't done this for a while. I have asked a bunch of people that have made a real difference in my opinion this year, whether it be me personally or in the year of music, to give me something that captured their year. Today I'm kicking off with Andrew Tuttle.

Andrew Tuttle is a regular man-about-town in Brisbane, is one of the best guys that has walked this earth, and I'm lucky to call him a dear friend. But that isn't why I asked him to write for us. He has been promoting music for years, working with Micronations and Room40, and playing most notably as instrumental project Anonymeye, taking acoustic and synthetic machinations to create fibrous tapestries of amorphous sounds through guitar, banjo, synthesisers and effects. The line between improvisation and composition is an organic sine wave, continually played with and built on. Tuttle retired the name after a decade of experimentation, but continues to play with form under his own name. After releasing an EP loosely based on Brisbane and the suburb in which he resides named after the postcode 4064, Tuttle released the excellent sound collage BickLack back in June, a twenty-eight minute sound collage that sews together a bunch of audio samples, improv runs and unreleased edits recorded last year in a mesmeric yet ebullient whole.



And to see out the year, he has given us ...from soapbox to Senate, a result of a work created
for OtherFilm's Institutional Capture festival last month.  The piece  is inspired by Gordon Brown, a gentleman of the Commonwealth (Australia via Canada and United Kingdom) who variously as a radical agitator, subversive, unionist and respected ALP politician served stints both as the President of the Senate in Canberra and at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in Boggo Road Gaol (where the performance was made) in the first half of the twentieth century. Through the use of digital synthesis, on-site field recordings and sparse acoustic guitar, …from soapbox to Senate conveys the oppressiveness of institutions (the prison system, the old Empire) and also the ability of people and buildings to transcend and rehabilitate the consequences of prior associations.



He has had a massive year, touring the US meeting with the likes of Dan Deacon and Matmos, but let's hear it from the man's mouth...

Andrew Tuttle – #tuttythumbsup 2014

Musically this year I have laid a bit low. A few one off performances but no extensive touring, a couple of mixtapes/commissions (including my first film score) but nothing new to sell at shows and a few exciting collaborations that are still in progress. I’ve been working on new music to release and tour in 2015, much of it coming from ideas I picked up through a creative development trip to the USA in September. As well as being a musician, my full-time and freelance work centres around music so I haven’t been short of great listening options this year.

List time: I’ve made a top ten albums, things that are not albums, and live sets list below. I could have easily made top twenty lists and/or cheated by sneaking album preview singles of albums that just missed out onto the ‘other’ list. My token non music list is my top five live sport games I’ve been to this year. Conspicuously absent in that list is my AFL team, as I was a bad luck charm to them the two games I attended in person.

#tuttythumbsup 2014 - albums

Blank Realm - Grassed Inn (BSR/Fire) 

Charlie Parr - Hollandale (Chaperone) 

clipping. - CLPPNG (SubPop) 

Ela Stiles - Ela Stiles (Bedroom Suck) 

Fennesz - Becs (Editions Mego) 

Grouper - Ruins (Kranky) 

Lawrence English - Wilderness Of Mirrors (Room40) 

Nathan Bowles - Nansemond (Paradise of Bachelors) 

Simon James Phillips - Chair (Room40) 

You Beauty - You Beauty (Second Empire/Rice Is Nice)

#tuttythumbsup 2014 - EPs/mixtapes/singles/etc

Austin Buckett - Sand Stems 1-7 (Room40) 

Brainbeau - 0.0001 Excuses (independent) 

Bong YZA - Rippers (Must Destroy Mankind) 

Gardland - Improvisations (RVNG Intl) 

Emma Swift - Emma Swift (Laughing Outlaw) 

Frank Fairfield - Duncan & Brady (Third Man) 

Holly Herndon - Chorus + Home (RVNG Intl) 

Horse Lords - Mixtape Vol. 3 (independent) 

These Guy - Human Language (Wood + Wire) 

William Tyler - Lost Colony (Merge)

#tuttythumbsup 2014 - gigs/sets

Matmos @ Sydney Festival / MONA FOMA / Howler, January 

Screaming Match @ Trainspotters, March 

Boss Fight @ Sonic Masala Festival, June 

Jonti @ The Zoo, August 

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, The Tivoli, September 

Blank Realm @ BIGSOUND, September 

Clipping + Stag Hare + Kevin Greenspon @ Goldrush Festival, September 

John Kilduff/People Like Us/Bob Wagner @ High Zero Festival, September 

You Beauty @ The Haunt, November 

OtherFilm - Institutional Capture festival @ Boggo Road Gaol, November

#tuttythumbsup 2014 - live sport

Queensland vs Western Australia, The Gabba, March 

Brisbane Roar vs Western City Wanderers, Lang Park, May 

Australia A vs India A, Allan Border Field, July 

Baltimore Orioles vs Blue Jays, Camden Park, September 

Queensland vs New South Wales, Allan Border Field, October