Video Vacuum - The Ocean Party. Constant Mongrel . Gooch Palms, Full Ugly, Home Travel, Andre, Go Go Fish

We are going full Australian with this extended Video Vacuum, so strap yourselves in...

Good buds The Ocean Party keep the good times rolling on in soft focus and fun film clips. One of the best tracks of Soft Focus is 'Deluded', and it's great that not only is it their new single, its a great video of interpretive dance from 'new' member Mark Rogers. He actually finishes the song early, after an impressive display of Fitzroy yoga - and then is superseded by a random dude in a station wagon. Accidental brilliance.

Another Melbourne band that I love is Constant Mongrel, and they have a solid video to go along with 'The Law' that is on their DCM 7" (out through RIP Society). The video - mime masks and an assort array of inanimate objects (including what looks like my dusty VCR that hasn't left my parents' garage since 2006) in an empty room. Trust me, the minimalism works. If you are digging this (and you bloody well should) and are in Sydney, head down to the Lansdowne NOW - they are playing alongside other excellent acts Woollen Kits and Nathan Roche.

The crazy kids from Newcastle Gooch Palms are almost outta town, with their relocation to the US of A imminent. And boy will we miss them - as 'Trackside Daze' attests. The Ramones in hyperdrive, on speed and clinically insane, the duo take the film clip and add cheese, uniforms, outlandish glasses, talking gerbils, dancing skeletons, grandparents, aquariums, impaled heads...man it's a schizoid mindfuck, and so so brilliant.

I've made no bones about how pleasantly surprised I was by how much I enjoyed Spent The Afternoon, the debut album from Full Ugly last year. After recording a house show and some silly interludes from the band, we now have a quaint little video for 'Oh Daddy', which has me reaching for Spent The Afternoon all over again. Nice one guys!

One of my favourite albums of the year in 2014 was Jersey Flegg, the concept album by You Beauty. That band's Will Farrier has another intriguing musical outlet at the moment, as one half of Home Travel, a minimal synth outfit that is at once camp and sinister (therefore, brilliant). Johann Rashid, the other half, resides in New York - and the film clip for 'Death Threats' underscores the seedy underbelly of that city as seen in 80s and 90s B-grade violent films (King of New York comes to mind). It's a super slick production, albeit one that is strange, stupid, knowing and fun (the tongue roll over the th in 'threat' is also incredible) - and I can't wait to see what else these two will bring our way.

An underrated musical genius lurking through the streets of Melbourne is Andre. He slips under the radar in his leather vest and miniscule moustache, his motorcycle purring down these streets. His third album Smooth Move came out in December (I'll have to get to that soon), and here is the (again) slick video for 'Single Town' . It's a great tongue in cheek song about staying single, but the video is brilliant, all slow motion posturing with fans in the bedroom, angle grinders in the garage, steaks on the BBQ, guitars in the bubblebath and a naked Emma Russack. Andre, keep it coming - there isn't enough of this out there.

A couple weeks ago we launched the news of our second Sonic Masala Fest. One of the local bands to make the grade are Go Go Fish, guitar pop nerds who love their hooks with sugar and bite. New single 'Guest List' is exactly the kind of thing these guys do well - the the clip, of the band wandering around a share house that starts out with just a small jam, blazes into a party (with added beer-induced workouts) with the slightest edge, before twinkling out with a wistful grin.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Pencil Pushers

Yet another Melbourne act branching out of the Osborne Street crew that's spawned the likes of The Ocean Party, Velcro, Hot Palms, Zone Out and Andre, Pencil is the wonky pop brainchild of TOC bassist Liam Halliwell (AKA Snowy Nasdaq, who amongst moonlighting with Mining Boom and doing his own things like Menstrual Cycle, as well as recording and mixing stuff, is a busy boy indeed). Halliwell is joined in Pencil by Ashley Bundang (Hot Palms, Zone Out), Jordan Thompson (The Ocean Party), Andre Vanderwert (Andre, Hot Palms), and Zahra Khamissa (Hot Palms, Zone Out) - a petri dish of the Osborne Again/Why Don't You Believe Me? rota. It's more blissfully laid back than The Ocean Party (if you can believe that possible), and deserved of their own spot on the shelf of an already overloaded Melbourne soundscape.

Pencil have a few little releases to their name, most recently their Good Excuse EP. It's sold out, but you can pick up the digitals (and a limited number of their earlier self-titled and Sydney Weekender EPs) at their Bandcamp.  What will these guys come up with next...

Australian Nonchalance

Are you as laidback as this character? I hope so. And many of our current crop of killer Aussie bands are too. Let's check some out.

Andre is the band of Andre Vanderwert, who is one of the carousel players in Hot Palms (I wrote warmly of them only last week). Andre isn't alone on this endeavour though, incorporating Jordan Ireland (The Middle East), Marc Requeiro-McKelvie (New Estate, Popolice, Teeth & Tongue), Hot Palm's Alec Marshall and members of The Ocean Part amongst others. The band has put out a helluva a lot recently: Too Much Talk was a cassette that came out in November; the Do Watchya Want CD-r in February; and the Mend b/w Have 7" this month (all out on Why Don't You Believe Me? Records - they are all available here). This shit is golden - more sonorous and accessible than some of their contemporaries, raucous, maudlin, grungy, gritty, funny - it's just damned fine. Get onto it, NOW -  these guys need to be playing much more often.

Speaking of The Ocean Party, one of their members Curtis Wakeling also moonlights as Velcro - his Wagga Wagga EP was one of my fave short-form releases of last year (check that out here). Well he now has a new lineup, and the trio are backing up with 'Bottle Shop' - distinctly Australian in tone and demeanour, with a perfectly calibrated pop composition ensuring this sticks like a burr. So easy, so effortless, so whimsical, so so good. There's promise of a full length later this year - consider all extremities crossed for that one.

Velcro - Bottle Shop

Now I'm cramming three bands in at once here, but they all contain the Ford brothers, Daniel and Matt. These Brissy-based siblings are the nicest, coolest dudes who are also cornering the market up here with excellent bands. The most prominent at this point in time is scratchy dreamers Black Vacation - so much so that they have scored recent supports for Wild Nothing. Their Scarred Glass EP is fantastic, if rough, and their newer material is much stronger - making them a deliciously dangerous proposition indeed. Not to be outdone, there is Kids Cryptic, a stomping, shambolic slice of garage flights of fantasy; and newest incarnation Thigh Master (man, these guys should be band name generators!) which is darker, dirgier, and also filled with sparkling gems (and are on the support bill for King Tuff tomorrow night here at the Primitive Room). If you haven't heard of these bands, or these boys, guaranteed you will have by year's end.

Black Vacation - Scarred Glass
Kids Cryptic - Shore

Here's footage of Black Vacation at the last Sonic Masala show...

And here is some footage of the excellent Thigh Master, filmed at Rics around the same time...

Whilst Greg Boring may have been better suited in my first post (and was, in fact, meant to be there), the Brisbane noise mumblers slot into the transient debris and shimmering sweatheaps that make up the Queensland capital's 'burbs. The band is not really a band - it's a happening, an anachronistic algae, an osmosis. It springs out of the cracks, delivers short stabs of melting casiotone combustions and wilting malapropisms before disappearing once more amongst the cigarette butts, vomit stains and saliva sprays. Yet they have also got an album out - Heavy Syrup - and the fact that its received an European release (through the ever excellent Critical Heights - grab it here) is unfathomable - and yet prescient. And while the molasses-paced tracks capture the band in "full swing", it never truly intimates how destitute, how coagulated, how haggard, yet utterly of its moment their live shows are. Fucks me when the next one will be either - I don't think even they know.

Greg Boring - Denuder
Greg Boring - Alvin

Great Earthquake is Melbourne's Noel Symons. The one-man looped-up melody maker has just released his sophomore record, Mind Maps, and its a quivering miasma of sounds, using a wide variety of instruments and samples to augment his own eclectic drumming patterns, and what is left is an album fully in tune with its master's whims and wishes. It swells and crashes in such a diverse fashion, weaving a meshed curtain of pastoral warmth, pagan rhythms and soaring vocal chants. Great Earthquake launches Mind Maps officially in May, starting with a show at the Tote in Melbourne Saturday May 4 and finishing with a show at The Waiting Room Friday May 17 (supported by the equally impressive McKisko and Sadglint) and taking on a supporting role under a Ghost Notes single launch out at Southside Tea Room the following evening.

Great Earthquake - Do. Make

I'm yet to see the wistful quirk of Wonderfuls play the traps yet, but based on the limited output the Brisbane outfit has bled onto tape, it would be a woozy, lysergic mess of an epiphany. Salty Town is a cracked malaise, washed down the sink into the underbelly of desperation and despair, all masked by a gauzy air of sun-damaged hope. Bobby's voice, flat and monotone, is the centrifugal force, and what pushes everything over the crumbling edge into the abyss of confusion and inertia - Harmony Korine via literary touchstones Praise and The Dead Heart for the ears. Can you escape? And if so, will you want to? Salty Town will be coming out on vinyl soon.

Wonderfuls - Freezing Cold
Wonderfuls - Relapse

Let's close this shop up with Pearls. I was shown this band by close mate Wilk, proclaiming their burgeoning talents, and he wasn't wrong. They slipped a self-titled EP out into the ether December last year without many people noticing, which is diabolical because these four tracks are damn fine. People are noticing though - they toured with A Place To Bury Strangers earlier in 2013, and have picked up the support for the muchly anticipated Bardo Pond tour in August. Not bad at all.

What Would Hot Palms Do?

I've been digging the new stuff from freshly-squeezed Melbourne collective Hot Palms. J.C. (out through Why Don't You Believe Me? Records, who have also put out gear from Lehmann B Smith and Velcro in the past) is the new EP, featuring three musical adaptions of poems by Jake Core (from his book Expecting to be Loved for Nothing), with Alec Marshall responsible for the instrumentals, playing and recording it all with Emma Russack writing and performing vocal duties and Jordan Ireland (The Middle East) on back-up. This novel approach is augmented by the band's fluctuating membership - much like England's Action Beat or Brisbane's Secret Birds, shows have been anywhere from a duo right up to the full eleven-person-deep rollout, with variants of this done based on who is available when.

J.C. itself plays like a strung-out mirage, skewed and medicated - Picnic At Hanging Rock with goon bags and paint huffers. 'Sunday In Milan' is a masterclass in subtle eeriness; 'Adelaide' lurks in the corners, a wraith in gossamer synth and gauze; 'Benny and the Jets' a wasted dream that wakes you in an acrid sweat, fearful, yet afraid that you will never fall back into it no matter who long you sleep. The ethereal wafts over everything...

You can buy J.C. in CD-R or digital form from here. Hot Palms aren't likely to play many shows in the near future as they hunker down to write and record a new 7" and hopefully an LP. 2013 is looking like a blistering year.


Normally I'd have a Friday Cover Up here, but in lieu of that, let's use a track off the EP that is named after a famous song. Not a cover, I'm assured. Hmmm...well, Beastie Boys had that covered ages ago anyway. This song is just so damn rad. Enjoy.

Hot Palms - Benny And The Jets