Adding Up The Statsmen Data

One of the most exciting bands going in Brisbane when I was "growing up" in my 20s was the stupid noise fury of Eat Laser Scumbag! Fast, furious, shouty, colour-coded - they were the ketamine Wiggles for the Ramones kids with ASD and middle ear infections. They tore everything apart, a cyclone of hypercolour decimation. The members of these bands went on to other endeavours (the slacker pop nous brilliance of Nova Scotia, the cartoon punk splurge of Undead Apes, the guttural pub punk of Eyes Ninety etceteraaaaaaaa).

But sometimes you gotta keep the dream alive.

Admittedly Champion Data, the throwaway album from 3/4 of ELS!, called here Statsmen, is decidedly different, more interested in Guided By Voices, Pedro The Lion and infinite other 90s guitar bands, taking the combustible energy of cassette-chewed lo-fi rock to all corners of the canvas (with some 8-bit Numan-highfiving-Devo magic on 'Candy', retrofuturist synth silliness on 'Indestructible Roger' and excellently warped motorik psycher 'Taken Over' thrown in to keep you on your toes). This may have been something to do to fill in time - but seriously, this is a great release that everyone should get into. I for one cannot get enough.

Eyes Wide x Ninety

I’ve been meaning to write about this busted rock’n’roll release for ages – a Brisbane tour-de-force to be sure. Led by ex Standing 8 Counts madman Tom Beaumont and joined by Ben Buchanan (Chinese Burns), Rick and X (Eat Laser Scumbag!, Chinese Burns), Eyes Ninety's debut LP has all of these sounds rattling around its rustbucket offering like a soul trying to bust itself out of a sweltering outback prison – decrepit, fetid, disintegrated and a ramshackle mess that is mesmerising. The lung-flaying opener 'I Don’t Wanna Live (In Your World)’ pulls no punches, offering a rusted garage caterwaul. Other great tracks (they are all pretty great) includes the scourged 70s pub punk of ‘Canton II’, the Eddy Current static-tetchy growl and punch of ‘Ants’, the Stooges with no fidelity in a tin shed appeal of closer ‘New Key’. It makes sense that this bruiser is on Swashbuckling Hobo Records – this kind of skewed rock punk (as opposed to punk rock) is right at home in its dirty halls. Get into this here.

Eat Chakra Fandangos!

One of the earliest memories I have of immersing myself in the Brisbane music scene was heading along to The Orient Hotel to watch bands. It was 2004-2005. Before then I went to gigs every month, but very rarely to anything that wasn't being played on the radio. When I say the radio, I mean Triple J, and as any old curmudgeon will tell you, "it was much better back then". So gigs were Magic Dirt, Custard, Rocket Science, Not From There, Pollyanna, Youth Group, Bluebottle Kiss, Even, Gota Cola...and so on. Anyway between Rics, the Orient and the beginnings of 610 a little while later, I moved into a different realm.

The first clear memory I have of the Orient included bands like Turnpike, HO2, Shuriken - and Eat Laser Scumbag! They had me at the name straight off the bat; they had me with the colour coordination (think The Wiggles for dropkicks); they had me with their raw, raucous rock that dealt in speed as much as melody. Over the decade I have gotten to know Ash, Nathan, Adam and Xavier fairly well - the guys have spread to be in bands as diverse as Undead Apes, Nova Scotia, Chinese Burns, Eyes Ninety and more, as well as having kids and spreading across the Australasian lands - but the helter skelter, fever-pitched radness of the band has always remained. They always play when the four of them are in the country together, so they haven't really officially gone anywhere - and here is a 10" to remind us what their brand of spontaneous combustion was all about. Chakras Aligned is a bit more considered then their EP Eat Laser Scumbag 1 Earth 0, but it still packs a punch. 'Vampires' and 'Fandango' in particular show a different side to the band that intimate what might have been and could still be. I believe the 10" is sold out, but you can grab it digitally below. Let's petition to get them back in orbit and smashing pubs, thus reminding us all that you aren't ever too old to get loose.