Aural Australia #3 - Feral Ferocity

Life is rough and stuff. Time to get feral.

Ausmuteants won't give a shit what I write here anyway. The Melbourne punk wastoids have made that abundantly clear with their track 'Music Writers' off new record Band Of The Future (out now through Aarght!) - an acerbic vomit that pierces the bubble on critics, both of the page and from within the scene. But you can never take these guys seriously - the album title alone throws shade on their Devo shadings, carving themselves of the Marty McFly's of proto-punk's past, flitting back and forward, changing history by deliberately crushing bugs, ripping off butterflies' wings, and beating mouthbreathers at their own game. Plus BOTF builds on last record Order of Operation's clarity, injecting the slicker sonics with familiar spit, pace and leers. The rants and tantrums are as visceral and zanily ridiculous as we have come to expect, yet even more infectious, like a sandblasted canker, with that rank synth whirr throwing us into the surreal and absurd. Nailgun blasts of punk that leaves slackjawed wonder in its wake, with bumps of T-Rex glam and Boggles wrongness to ingest. In short, brilliant. (But what does any of this even mean? What the fuck would I know? Just listen to it already.)

The Peep Tempel released one of Sonic Masala's favourite albums of 2015, Tales, and one of the most underrated rock acts in the country are back with a killer song and video for 'Rayguns'. A bullshit crazy newslogue purge with rolling-news lyrics, .gif ready stock clips fused to the band revelling in their zero-fucks chicanery. It comes from 3rd LP Joy, which promises to get deep into the human psyche and wade maniacally in the roiling chaos. There are still a great degree of Australian grotesquery and humour in their offerings though - opener 'Kalgoorlie' alone lends whiffs of Wake In Fright horror. And while we are at it, below this excellent video is another taste of the album (out later this month through Wing Sing Records), 'Totality'.

Screamfeeder closing out our second Sonic Masala Fest is still (and will always remain) a defining moment in my life. The band have continued to play together and release the periodic new song since re-releasing their albums on vinyl through Poison City Records, and 'Karen Trust Me' is the latest ebullient slice. They have their miasmic noise pop down pat - every chord change, swelling squall, cymbal crash and Steward/Lloyd harmony is present and accounted for, embedded with myriad hooks of all persuasions that it is impossible to remain impervious to its charms. It's enough to keep the withdrawal at bay until their promised 8th album in 2017.

Back to the insanity then. Melbourne punk messes Mesa Cosa have crafted a pagan travesty for their film clip for new track 'Stone Bone'. Still riding the serrated ridge between raucous psychedelic and fucked-up garage rock, the madmen don marsupial, Ex-President and Simpsons masks while running rank in the wilderness, destroying their instruments, TVs and other paraphernalia to climax in a jerrycan-fuelled bonfire for the ages. The boys spend a good portion of the time with their heads impaled on sticks too. They have sold their soul, sacrificed their body bags, and lost their minds - all for our eternal benefit.

Members of Freak Wave, Iowa and Camp Cope join forces to travel back in time to flannel fuzz Valhalla in TV Haze, an act inimitably indebted to Dinosaur Jr in both rambling guitar rock and dry, warbled vocal delivery. The 90s throwbacks continue, but with this self-titled effort it feels warranted, a welcome addition that climbs to the upper echelons of their contemporaries, yet steeped in Australian music nostalgia. They are playing some massive shows in Melbourne next month too supporting the aforementioned Screamfeeder as well as playing alongside SM faves Pale Heads, Ouch My Face and Summer Flake.

We will finish with post-punks Gold Class who are making their way back to Europe after a successful stint over here earlier in the year. New track 'Kids On Fire' feels (to me at least) a mix between obvious signifiers (Joy Division, The Smiths) and more rugged outliers (slowed motorik Hey Colossus, and The Spinning Rooms - really! - with the little guitar lick that strikes me like Joe's saxophone - maybe I just miss those guys so much). The film clip IS Gold Class - black and white, smoked lens, white on black, Venetian shadow, strobe glare. Urgent earnestness. The guys play in London at The Victoria October 26 with The Bodies - it looks to be a tense affair.

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO PREMIERE - Hierophants Have Got A Nervous Tic

I got to see that gangly maelstrom of giddy energy Jake play in his Ausmuteants mutation last Wednesday night at the Shacklewell Arms here in London. They were a brilliant ball of synth punk energy, with UK barbs thrown with gay abandon. Jake can't rest easy now that he is back in Melbourne-town, because Aarght! Records are preparing to launch the looooong-awaited debut album of one of Jake's other bands, Hierophants (whoda thunk it?!) Parallax Error.

It fits perfectly on the Aarght! roster, especially seeing as it was originally started surrounding one of my favourite Aussie bands of recent years, Ooga Boogas, what with the stilted post-punk synth madness and all (see songs like 'Taste' and 'Think' for a direct relation; perennial knob twitcher Mikey young did the final production glossage too). In other places there is an early Mint Chicks fuzz (like 'Nervous Tic'), but mostly Parallax Error marks another sonic seismic shift for the Geelong-via-Melbourne four-piece. Their propensity for writing songs at the drop of a hat isn't really in evidence on the album - it's a tight synth prog playground and you're all invited to bomb-dive the ball pit.

Here is the video for 'Nervous Tic', directed by Moontown's Danny Wild. A lurking number that is fun for all the wrong reasons, like a high that starts to get the wobbles as you realise you are running with scissors barefoot across broken glass across a peak-hour highway. If the video tells you ANYTHING, it's don't eat drug-laced chocolate cake slice that has been sent you in the mail. Or, actually, eat the whole lot. And wait til you get to the surprise cameo! When is your next sequel, dawg?

Parallax Error is out soon - keep eyes peeled!

Exhaustive Biker

Exhaustion is back! The somewhat enigmatic trio brought out an unheralded, corrosive gem with their first LP Future Eaters and now the Melbourne malcontents are back with Biker (out through Aarght!), and its as abrasive, corrosive, hypnotic and seductive as you could imagine - and more. You don't really need to go past opening track 'Blunt Eyes' - the atonal brutality on offer there is nigh on orgiastic. 'Haus Flipper' comes in like a absurdist pop song (for Exhaustion anyway) - the only "light" to be found here - before a steady maelstrom of unhinged noise with a metronomic fulcrum at its core (the drumming from Per Bystrom is phenomenal) unfolds and obliterates everything it touches. I could go on (and should), but I need to get my painkillers and booze (really). I'm going to stop and just say PREORDER BIKER NOW. It's amazing - possibly my album of the year (and 'Twin Lights' scours my soul).

Eating The Future Is Exhausting

A relatively new endeavour, Melbourne’s Exhaustion (sporting members of Snawklor, Ooga Boogas and Deaf Wish) nevertheless sound like they have been around forever, strapped inside an iron maiden on the seventh level of hell, only now allowed to vent their anguish and despair in what is a short-lived respite from the horrors of eternity. Such is the dirge on their debut LP Future Eaters, all screeching guitar, guttural bass, funereal drums and Duncan Blachford’s contorted and flayed vocals, that it is difficult to listen to this without feeling heavy of head and heart. That said, this is an album that leaves an indelible mark.

Opener 'Don’t Fly Righ't is a Jekyll/Hyde sonic orgasm, filled with chagrin and malice in equal measure; 'Keep The Change' offers redemption via humiliation, soundtracked by sheet metal and rusted nails in sonic form; the gut-churning regret brought on by a heinous act manifests into howling despair and paranoia on 'Old Mickey'. The lynchpin is the ten-minute-plus dead-eyed lurch of 'No Place For A Holiday', its ominous groove continually spiked by garrulous guitar strikes, a relentless bassline grind, a bizarrely soothing electronic outro from Zond’s Justin Fuller and a narrative that evokes humanist horrors at every turn (Hitched a ride down south/Fell asleep/Lost my way/When I came to/Life was a living nightmare/Don’t look back/Run). Future Eaters is in many ways a malevolent, malignant album that is more likely to invoke an epileptic fit than an epiphany… in many ways a sister record to the self-titled debut by the Spinning Rooms, but instead of small town madness we have urban nightmares amidst industrial wastelands and the grotesque. This is difficult to like, but nigh on impossible to ignore.

You can buy Future Eaters via Aarght! Records soon - original pressing sold out, but repressing (in white no less) is out next month. Its dark, dank, destructive. Everything I love about music.

 

Oogain' And Boogain'

Mikey Young has the Midas touch. If he isn't killing in Eddy Current Suppression Ring or Total Control, he is producing half of Australia's most interesting, derelict rock music or appearing in further fragmented side projects like Brain Children or Lace Curtain. This may seem like a ridiculous notion/statement/whatfuckingever, but the self-titled LP from yet another of his bands, Ooga Boogas, could be up to the task of eclipsing all that he has done thus far.

Why? Because this is a culmination of all the things that are right with slacker boredom blue-collar rock from backwater Australia, this is an album willing to step out from behind shoddy production values, excessive reverb and indecipherable lyrics, this is the sound of a band deftly integrating a myriad of influences into their own indelible image, like an Ooga Booga cookie cutter. No matter what is thrown into the deep fryer - the Lou Reed saunter of 'It's A Sign', the New Wave pheromones oozing from 'Sex In The Chillzone', the skipping out of town with your degenerate best mate 'Archie & Me' - the album meshes seamlessly together, a insidious construction of Babylonian proportions.

The key here is frontman Leon Stackpole. Whilst each song swings from style and tone, his presence and voice permeates throughout, ensuring us that we are always within his world (and sometimes his mind too). The humour inherent in 'Studio Of My Mind' or 'Mind Reader', the chagrin of 'Ecstasy', the dazed malaise of 'It's A Sign' - it is all iconic, idiosyncratic stuff, yet amiable too - there's no airs and graces, nor seedy aspersions. Rather than being downer or designer, this is - well - true; an honest sense of storytelling, backed by killer songs.

Ooga Boogas isn't an album of scattershot ideas - there is no smash-and-grab laziness or sleight-of-hand, just four guys who have crafted ten songs that all stand alone, but together (sewn together by Young's guitar and  Stackpole's laconic, comfortable vocals and knife's-edge amusing/incisive/stupid/inconsequential lyrics) Ooga Boogas defies description - because it surpasses them.

Ooga Boogas is out through Aarght! Records.. It's an incredible record that exudes class whilst explicitly shunning such a thing, and is bound to be held aloft of one of the truly exhilarating records of 2013. You've got to do it for the kids...and your kids' kids.

Ooga Boogas - Circle Of Trust
Ooga Boogas - A Night To Remember

There's A Homo In My Head

Melbourne's UV Race brought out Homo last year in cassette form, as has been the craze for some time. The problem with that is only a few people got to hear how fucking awesome this band is, and unless you got to to see em live last year chances are you havent heard much of them. Their self-titled release on Aarght! Records and other bits and bobs aside, there is nothing to really get your grubby mitts on...until March 29th, when In The Red will be releasing Homo on vinyl. You can hear the influences of likeminded Aussie reprobates Eddy Current Suppression Ring in tracks like 'Girl In My Head' or 'Down Your Street' (ECSR guitarist Mikey Young is behind them in the recording and mixing process), whilst their sloppy proto-punk gives way to slow faux-folkster 'Always Late' and explodes into psychedelic malaise in the titular track. With the rise of scuzzy, dirty, weird rock in Australia at the moment (Blank Realm, Circle Pit, Naked On The Vague, Slug Guts), its an exciting vanguard to be a part of - but to be honest, UV Race dont give a shit where they are.

UV Race - Inner North

Sun dodgers

Now I have the feeling that I might be treading on Brendan's toes a bit with this one. I've recently been enjoying the clattering, drawling punk of UV Race. Not only are this band Australians like my fellow co-blogger but they sound a lot like Eddy Current Suppression Ring which, as regular readers will know, Brendan holds a particular soft spot for. But to top it off UV Race are even signed to Aarght! Records, the label run by ECSR's Mikey Young.

In short - Brendan, you should have been way ahead of me on this one! But enough of the pointless one-upmanship. UV Race may push out clattering, drawling punk but it is smothered with a warm, effortless confidence that many bands would kill for. At first listen you might think these Aussies are a one trick pony, but a closer look reveals the true depths that UV Race have to offer, Gore Orphanage being a good example. The song recounts the story of a ruined and haunted orphanage in Ohio. That said they also have songs about being a Lego man. Well you can't win 'em all.

Gore Orphanage - UV Race

Also check out their blog here