Phasing Out Exhaustion

Nothing like some exhaustion to start a Black Friday... Melbourne noise heads Exhaustion present new EP Phased Out following on from their Biker LP and their collaboration with Kris Wanders over the past 12 months. The four tracks exhibited here continues the gnarled noise in an inexorable centrifugal free fall, with added industrial destruction from Mark Barrage. The title track is the soundtrack to subterranean tribal law, pagan horror made out of metal and glass, sepulchral figures of feedback fury. Unhinged? Not really; the propulsive metronomic nature of the drums/machine underscore the moans and howls. 'Colleague' offers more abhorrent synthetic scree and anodyne mantras - it fits in with the blackened minimal maximalism that My Disco have taken to their aesthetic on current album Severe, or Perth's Snowman at their basest. These scorched rhythm onslaughts are dissected in the B-side of the EP, with wunderkinds Mikey Young and Stacey Wilson (in Rites Wild mode) taking the reins. Young's 'Phased Out' is laid out like some of the Europunk leather techno that has been entrancing the Australian gutters of recent years (think Multiple Man or Pleasure Symbols, actually cold in Berlin, more earnest, less grimy, more creepy). Rites Wild takes Exhaustion into darker waves, sounding like the techno drone of Yaws or the darkest, desirous regions of Not Not Fun. Put out by Austin label 12XU, Phased Out is yet another transformative experience from one of the best bands in Australia.

Wandering Exhaustion

Last year Exhaustion released their second LP Biker, and it was easily one of my favourite releases of the year. So when I saw this drop into my inbox (on my birthday no less) I was immediately excited. But as you may have noticed, Sonic Masala has been fairly quiet the last month and a half, so I haven’t been able to describe the calamity that unfolded once I started playing the damn thing. You see, these psych rock marauders aren’t just whipping out an extension to their work – this is a blown out, visceral collaboration with Dutch-born tenor saxophonist Kris Wanders, strongly versed in the heady days of early free improv in Europe, having smashed holes through convention alongside the likes of Peter Brotzmann (seriously what isn’t this guy doing these days? Must be one of the busiest men on the planet right about now…) However there is a sense of dynamism on this one-sided LP that eschews each participant’s previous outpourings. There are swells of cathartic metal clang and wind, a caterwaul of desperate release; and there are troughs of tetchy silence, interspersed with false starts and tics that underscores the nervous energy each player brings to the proceedings. It wouldn’t surprise me if Endless Melt had infused sweat and blood into the wax as each record was pressed, so evident is the fever that this collaboration captures. Duncan Blatchford doesn’t allow for his guitar to do all the hissing and spewing though – his vocal interjections are guttural, impulsive, primal breaths, grunts and pants, a rebirth borne of exertion, viscera and saliva. Wanders’ punctuations are speed-of-light ripostes through the defences, at once wondrous and debilitating. It all makes for a heady melange of impulses and expulsions, sewn together by sinew and devilish determination. Grab it here.

2014 - Per Bystrom (Exhaustion, Ooga Boogas)

One of my favourite drummers in Australia is Per Bystrom. I guess it isn't a fluke then that two of my favourite bands - Exhaustion and Ooga Boogas - feature Bystrom in the mix, plus there's his involvement in guttersquallers Leather Towel. And in Biker, Exhaustion's second LP, we have one of the albums of the year. He is also a massive fan of Roku Music's Collider record, so the love-in is complete. Here is Per's favourite records of the year - a better list, better written, than anything that I will come up with.

Total Control - Typical System (Iron Lung)

Gaah gaah gaah – I’m joining in with the universal choir of seagulls swallowing this band’s soggy chip…hooks, lines and stinkers. A better record than ‘Henge Beat’. That's a massive achievement in itself. The record is more Total Control than I thought was possible. The sound of a band eating its own tail and regurgitating a new born. In all its complexity there's an underlying baffling effortlessness. I can't understand how this record came to be. The evidence pointing to this is missing. Nothing hinted at this elevated echelon. Typical system.

NUN - NUN (Aarght Records)

‘Evoke The Sleep’ is the song of 2014. Only one other LP barely managed to keep this album from being the ultimate jam of this year. Live - no one touched this gang of Aspbergers in Australia. They emerged from their live synthesized murk and heavily treated vocals, with foghorn bass player Tom Hardisty producing something dangerously close to being called synth-pop. Epic closer ‘In Blood’ is the only song this year that makes me feel oddly emotional. “I’ve just got something in my eye, fuck off!” 2014: The Year Goth Broke.

Eastlink - Mullum Mullum (In The Red)

"They busted up your brain for an idea. I’m supposed to do the duck walk. You're supposed to have a little bit of fun. You paid for the gun, I paid for the baton” drones Al Montford on ‘What a Silly Day (Australia Day)’. A Stooges riff spoofing all over Abbot policies. A wild dog deaf to the whistle of its supposed master, wasting no piss putting out raging fires in gated communities. The Mullum Mullum tunnel depicted on the cover of the LP was constructed not to upset the local habitat. I don’t know if this was deemed a success by the Wurundjeri people, but there is something appealing about the juxtaposition of Autobahn aesthetics, and the native flora phallus decorating the entrance to the tunnel designed by WA artist Angus James. This record talks about issues not found in your navel. The last song of the album is called ‘Thatcher’s Dead’. Is there a local wishlist?

Ela Stiles – S/t (Bedroom Suck Records)

Galactic Empire folk, Darth Vader hat hair – laments of evil empires crumbling bouncing off hard marble halls once holding splendour and Collingwood black and white tones. Linda Perhac and Anne Briggs inspired folk tragedy minimalism. ‘Kumbh Mela’ is one of the most devastatingly beautiful songs I’ve ever heard, and this album has remained a firm favourite throughout the year. I’ve got no idea what Kumbh Mela means, but it sure is no Jar Jar Binks.

Low Life - Dogging (R.I.P. Society/Disinfect)

I've bumped into the very affable Christian O'Sullivan (bass/Germs t-shirt) many times throughout the years, but only met Mitch Tolman (gtr/vox/Nike) when I filled in on drums at a couple of Melbourne shows earlier this year. "I don't drink" said the man just before frenetically trying to find a lost necklace after a show. Add council flat lad-fashion, and a fixation on Rihanna to their foggy post hardcore chorus pedal driven mix, and this record bewilders. The song "Friends" is the worst out of the lot. A muddy goth/grunge base with echo drenched vitriolic vocals "and all my friends, they're proper scum. Jaded and bitter and faded and twisted" dragged along at toddler pace. Why is it then that this is one of my most played songs of 2014? Fucked if I know. There is nothing positive to say about this record except that it rules. HARD.

Flat Fix - An Unkempt House (Not Not Fun)

Nick Senger (Castings) and Cooper Bowman (Altered States Tapes) make Australian techno. I've heard something region specific in the likes of fellow Antipodean electronic outfits Gardland, Rites Wild, and Angel Eyes. Heavily saturated drifting synth lines, Roland 303/808 hardware driven pulses, and occasional Terry Riley-like arpeggios. Intentional or not, there's something about this that feels Australian. Not so much reflecting its inhabitants, but more on a topographical level. It's a tape. It's an EP. Whatever. It's enough of an album as far as I'm concerned. Oh, and the cover looks like a 1980's paleo-futuristic drawing of Yggdrasil. Which is nice.

Peter Brötzmann & Sonny Sharrock - Whatthefuckdoyouwant (Trost records)

Hidden away Brötzmann and Sharrock live recording from '87, finally unearthed and released in 2014 (on my birthday, THX). The cover of the album features what looks like a slab of granite covered with doctor's writing, and sums it up nicely...70+ minutes of heavy, dense chaos. I've checked, because it's important to know the length of your punishment. That's what I want. What the fuck do you want?

Pan Sonic - Oksastsus (Kvitnu)

I toured Finland in 1994. We travelled there by ship, and soon after embarking the journey turned into a nautical leg of the Stereosonic Festival. The galley was filled with gacked up teenagers mixing vomit with tears. A bunch of bikers at the back of a Helsinki venue yelled out in broken Swedish “Go home fatties!”. In some ways I felt like I was finished with the band after that trip. In 2009 Pan Sonic performed their final gig in Kyiv, Ukraine. Oksastsus is the document of this performance. I wonder if they split up due to their harsh environment, or due to frying every circuit that they came in contact with. I imagine a bunch of Putin lackeys on r’n’r from the Donetsk Republic camps knocking back army hooch and yelling from the back of the Kyiv show in broken Finnish “Not heavy enough!”. The loss of military grade electronic status must have been one blow too heavy. A king hit.


You can grab Biker here.

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.