Sweet Spirits

The kaleidoscopic confectionery that is Brisbane's Spirit Bunny continues to swirl out into the cosmos, like a multi-coloured fairy floss, all sticky, sugary, and pulsating with synthetic energy. Their new single 'Marshmallows' sees Joel Saunders' vocal delivery veer closer to the tortured pop of Architecture in Helsinki, yet these handmade synth demons (Saunders and Kate Thomas, with whirling dervish Cam Smith on the drums) imbue the track with decidedly darker hues. The squelches and howls of sonic squall towards the end, like scratching a key along an acrylic artwork, somehow heightens the colourful maelstrom that comes before it. There isn't much like this out there - get behind this!

The trio launch their EP Marshmellow Friday June 12 at The Bearded Lady. This is especially exciting for Sonic Masala as it will serve as the first official launch show for our split release of Danyl Jesu and Barge With An Antenna On It's new EPs - so it'll be a triple EP launch! Neither Nathan or I will be there - we are both ensconced in Europe then - but there will be SM goodies at the show too. And the most excellent Brainbeau will also be playing - how can you NOT go to this???

Multiple Men

I mentioned earlier today that I think Brainbeau is one of the best bands in Brisbane. Well, I think Multiple Man are right up there, the nihilist yin to Brainbeau's hypercoloured yang. The Brothers Campion brought out one of my favourite 7"s of last year with Body Double (out through the great Major Crimes label), and have a new 7" in the form of Guilt Culture. It's more dissonance, more disdain, more cerebral crucifixion and flagellation. It's a seductive, leering, dominant future punk secretion that floods the synapses and renders them (and you) obsolete. It's Multiple Man, and they're coming to get you (lovely dudes, but).

Guilt Culture is out on Detonic Recordings.

I've got 0.0001 Excuses and Brainbeau Ain't One

I'm so happy that local neon synth weirdniks Brainbeau have got a vinyl release - SO HAPPY! I have said a few times already that I think the duo might just be the best thing in Brisbane's music scene, and I hope this is just another step in the right direction. Hell, Scraps is on Fire Records nowadays, why can't Brainbeau reach such heady heights?

Anyway, the new 0.0001 Excuses EP 7" is out now through new label Good Samaritron. It features old classic '50c Casio Rave'. Its got handmade stickers that come with it. It sounds like a Euro nightclub that is in a bunker in the middle of nowhere in the mid 80s, the club filled with disinterested Amazons in minidresses and hairy furballs in velour, all of them trapped in a convulsing lava lamp. It's ridiculous. And insidious. And oh so satisfying.

And '50c Casio Rave' is still killer, the best banger from Brisbane ever likely to exist - until Kat and Chelvis write a new one.

Yawning Without Guilt

Big Yawn are a duo out of Melbourne that delve deep into the darker, inflamed realms of electronic sentience. Their Hash Matters/Lowlite 7" (out now through Fallopian Tunes) is crafted to find the holes in the digital age and plug them with jagged ephemera and pummelling hypnosis. The band call themselves "electronic/doof/industrial/miscellaneous" - that should placate the pigeonholers, at least until they take a tab of Big Yawn. It becomes indecipherable static thereafter, of course - after all, the rest is noise. Or is it? It's the febrile mix of slight, layered abrasion and percussive asphyxiation that makes Big Yawn anything but.

Big Yawn are currently in Brisbane, having played a famed Real Bad show out at Moorooka on Sunday (alongside the likes of X In O, Screaming Match and Slurpee). Tonight they are playing at The Hideaway for Guilt Retreat #4, a 4ZZZ connected show (presented by Makeda from A Guilt/All Day Breakfast Enterprises, which is also featuring Sky Needle/6majik9's Michael Donnelly and the Fun Police DJs (AKA Brainbeau), so you know it will be sensational). You can buy Hash Matters/Lowlite here.

Spotting Black Trains On My Black Vacation

It's been a while (two weeks to be exact), but I am back from holidays. To celebrate, Sonic Masala is combining with Trainspotters to help launch 'Glazed', the newish single from Brisbane's own purveyors of lackadaisical guitar pop whimsy, Black Vacation. They are growing in stature, and should be huge by the time 2013 tolls its final bell (if there is any justice in the world).

The supports are incredibly stellar too. Shambolic rocktards Cobwebbs have an album of sorts coming out on Long Gone Records, with more potentially on the way. 

Brainbeau are another band that defy categorisation and are so goddamned good that Grimes should be tweeting about them...or something. They are squirrelling out from the underground cracks they have been trapped in, and to see them playing bigger, brighter shows is a true blessing.

Newcomers Dag are something of an unknown quantity, but if this track is anything to go by the trio will safely make a home here on Planet Masala.

It's all happening at the Grand Central Hotel tonight. The band times is below. It's free entry, beers are relatively cheap (most pints will give you change from a tenner - not to be sneezed at in this money-crunching age), Black Vacation have a few more shirts on sale, and it goes into the wee hours. See you there.

Ladies Night

Poster by Joanne Thies

Tonight Sonic Masala combines with Ladyfest to celebrate the girls - in particular, some female-oriented acts that I think are truly stretching the boundaries of music and the Brisbane music scene. Only three acts tonight...

Shooga, a (currently) five-piece that conjure sonic palpitations of multi-coloured noise, fits and bursts of rayon craziness, and a wash of effervescent grotesquerie...

Ultra Material, an amalgam of Do The Robot and Sunshine State, who offer glacial pop hidden amidst shimmering guitar, an experiment in studied unease held in check...

X In O, a pagan goddess who uses electric eccentricity to communicate across dimensions, warped circuitry to warp your circuits...

All tied together by tunes from DJ Neko. $10 entry, BYO. Doors open at 8pm, with X In O kicking things off at 8.30. This is going to be a true exploration of what some of Brisbane's finest are blissing out on - you'd be a fool to miss this.

Poster by Matt Deasy

All Day Breakfast comp

 

Midday Music is a compilation showcasing much of Brisbane’s underground music scene was put out last year on cassette. Handcrafted (featuring tactile “fried eggs” – white and yellow Blu-tac, on the outer sleeve) and collated by 4ZZZ presenter Makeda Zucco and her project All Day Breakfast, outlet for the documentation and exploration of music and that which pertains to it, the 25-track compilations covers the gamut, from experimental synth pop (Shooga, Brainbeau, Scraps), nihilist rock aggression (Per Purpose, Sewers, Slug Guts), avante-garde noise (Cured Pink, Sky Needle, Multiple Man), unhinged guitar pop (Blank Realm, Heart Flew, Old Growth Cola), slacker malaise downers (Kitchens Floor, Martyr Privates)… In fact, although there are a few bands on the release (X In O, Fig, Perpetual Nervousness) that I haven’t actually caught or even heard much of, the cross section of bands here is pretty indicative of what I immerse myself in here. It is all lo-fi recordings, as you can imagine, but if ever there was a document detailing much of the diversity of the scene (without going into the Long Gone, Lofly or Lost Race crews), this is a mighty fine one.

 

Unfortunately all the cassettes are sold out, but you can download the compilation for free here. Do so – there are some artists here that never get exposure, either because of their standing, their sound or because they never put out that much music for private consumption – then get out and about, supporting these bands in the live arena.

Knee Chin – Thrall Of It All
Greg Boring - Tomb
Cannon – I Should Be In A Fucking Museum