Girls Scrying On Girls Scrying

If there is one thing that is always assured, it's that a Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing release is going to be dark, garish, disturbing, visceral and seductive - something like an Argento film, directed by David Cronenberg circa '79, from a script co-written by Ben Wheatley and the Soska Sisters. The band played one of my favourite ever Sonic Masala shows back a few years ago now (also playing - Orlando Furious, Adam Cadell/Tony Irving and Blank Realm side-project Huge Nudes - truly unhinged night). I love these guys, their stilted, dark goth noise always a multimedia concern, with zines, books and artwork intrinsically entwined with the twisted sonics on display. Scrying In Infirmary Architecture is all of this, and more. There is the haunting sultry strike of 'A Fraud, Abroad', the most "accessible" the band have truly been (you could see this being called post-punk, even), an oddly beautiful track. 'Beyond The 12th House' and the excellent 'Pollen Moon' are more in sync to what GPOGP do best - with guitarist/madman Casey Latimer howling out obtuse and disturbing lyrics over visceral, giallo-esque instrumentation that inevitably pierces the sinister mood with spikes of cantankerous noise. 'Darwinning' is even more brutal, flaying and flagellating, with Steven Huf's trumpet a slow yet somehow seductive boil low down in the mix; while 'Scrying' is an uneasy melding of the two extremes. Catherine Cumming's plodding drumming is inexorable, the inevitable pull into the mouth of madness, aided by Huf's bass that seems at once easy, obvious, uncompromising and off-kilter - and I have no idea how that can be true, but that's how it plays out. Ak Buk's vocals are less screaming here than they were on Eeling, their last album, more intent on enticing us down a Gothic wormhole on the aforementioned 'A Fraud, Abroad' and 'Ceramic Miscarriages' (which sounds a lot like defunct Perth band and one of my faves of the last ten years, Snowman). Then there is the weird pop bliss of 'Rainbow Islands' which I can't help but feel like is a cover - I'm pretty sure it isn't, but it sounds so different from what's come before, and  yet is quintessentially GPOGP in every way (including the yacht-rock sax solo at the end, which to me makes this track all the more otherworldly). Finishing with 'Scissoring', another track that sonically feels like an urban nightmare giallo score, with added vocals by Shaun Ryder, Scrying In Infirmary Architecture is one weird, glorious ride. You will feel unclean after listening, irrevocably changed, possessed. You will feel the internal mark of the devil and will repeat in an endless mantra - "I love Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing." Get Scrying In Infirmary Architecture through Muzai Records here or here.

The Eclectic Collection Of Currawongs

I can't suppose to know much about Brisbane band The Currawongs, other than Chris from Dollar Bar knows them. Their album Cracticidae came out late last year, and it's a shame I hadn't heard about this before setting the lineup for this year's Sonic Masala Fest - because I really really like this. The soft sepulchral instrumental 'The Return' is a wondrous opener, that bleeds into the atmospheric 'Lessons In Avoidance' with the crashing cymbals an exercise in foreboding. 'Having Fun Harms No One' is a thrashy bit of in-the-red noise, before the contemplative title track bleeds in, a lo(wer) fi Gaslight Radio with added debilitating distortion drowning out the subtleties - it's these deliberate acts of sabotage that bizarrely lends an further layer of intimacy. The accordion is broken out for the quirky Teutonic melancholia of ten-minute 'The Ghosts of Menin Gate' while the found-sound juxtaposition of a kookaburra and an aeroplane gives the right amount of bucolic apprehension to 'Off The Grid.' The dirge rock returns for 'The Elephant In The Room'; the shuffling gait of 'Hold You Back' is surreptitious in its atmospheric beauty and precarious balancing act, teetering magnificently in the last moments; a nihilistic drone fills out 'Department of Human Resources'; and then stumps are pulled with 'Duck Egg Blue', a rustic folksy outro that is as haunted by half-truths as the rest of the album. The drums are incidentally provided on the album by Cam Smith (Ghost Notes, Tape/Off, Spirit Bunny, Tiny Spiders, et al) who also recorded, mixed and mastered the album at Incremental Studios, while Adam Cadell (The Scrapes) lends his violin to 'Off The Grid'. It's eclectic, to be sure, but Cracticidae is a wonderful album that is in places quite stunning. The imperfections make it all the more endearing. Apparently The Currawongs have a second album in the wings - I cannot wait to hear it. Buy Cracticidae here.

Duskdarting

I don't know about you, but my week has been a bit of a stress A-bomb. Cutting down on the beer on the weekend (involuntarily) and the lack of seeing regular live shows (again, out of my control) hasn't helped things. But there has been some shining lights stabbing my mind-s eye from the dark - the arrival of a new bed and finally connecting to the Internet (I know - domasturbation, right?); writing my first piece for The Quietus; starting my first commissioned column (here's hoping this becomes some kind of semi-regular gig); the test pressing for the latest Sonic Masala release (although unlikely to be the next one out of the stable - more on that later); and some news about the next few Sonic Masala releases that are likely to keep me occupied until the New Year. So, most of these things don't bring in money - in fact they added cash to the black void of negative funds that has been my life of recent months - but who gives a shit. I have Duskdarter to console me.

Duskdarter is an eclectic label out of Brisbane that specialises in the more ambient and otherworldly outreaches of sound. Two of their latest releases have occupied my warped, tired brain over the past couple of months, and both include artists who have been involved in Sonic Masala shows over the years. The first release is Monkey-Flower-Shell, a suite of suitably chilled acoustic guitar jams from Kahl Monticone. None of the eleven "songs" breach the two minute mark, a refreshing notion when most instrumental meanderings, well, meander. These songs are soporific moments in a fragmented time - languorous sojourns into a tiki bar of the somnambulist. The electronic aspects that seep into these songs help shift the sands of focus to a degree where it's hard to know whether you are happy, sad, awake or asleep. It's a cryogenic muzak, lulling you through the null-years until it's time to come into a new world. Perfect for the permanent chill.

Then there is the livewire stylings of Adam Cadell and Tony Irving. I saw these two perform one of (if not the very) first shows when they supported Girls Pissing On Girls Pissing November last year, and their loose experimental, experiential jams were raucous yet tempered - and electrifying. Both are incredibly skilled musicians of the highest order, having trained and played with some elite folks. But it's the innate ability to free-form into the darkest recesses of the sonic ether that is truly mesmerising. Some Shards For The Void sounds as rooted in strength in confidence and ability as it sounds insoluble, irascible, anarchic. Cadell's violin takes precedence here, creating a maelstrom of inner-ear turmoil, a skittish membrane one moment, a archaic rusted nail through the brain the next. It's cerebral nightmares and cathartic dreamscapes, with Irving a muttering fulcrum that manages to propel as it anchors.


You can get both in digital form (and Monkey-Flower-Shell in CDr form) here.

Cadell's Melting Away

In today's Hits From The Box I spoke about Fatti Frances's Sweaty, put out by Australia's underground pushers Wood & Wire (a subsidiary of New Weird Australia). Here is another album that has made their hallowed halls, and in my opinion it's even better. As one half of Brisbane's improvisational duo The Scrapes and occasional violinist for Nikko, Adam Cadell is a virtuoso who can do anything. He's currently residing in Ghana, continuing to look for transcendence in music. Here he puts out a release called 'Til It All Melts Away. The more he moves away into the wilderness, though, Cadell has found himself embracing the synthetic, with the four tracks showing an electronic edge that adds to its alienation and urgency. Swaying from haunting meditations to cacophonous maelstroms without end, 'Til It All Melts Away takes the violin, bends it into distorted contortions, and throws it to the wind. It's breathtaking.

You can get the tracks here.