Aural Australia #2 - Apocalyptic Gifting

Christmas garbage filling the outer aisles of the supermarket, all while Trump rattles the doorway to Hell and we are dragged behind him in a hand basket. I am hoping that Tim Allen does another Santa Clause film, but it's set in the future with Furiousa helping him deliver presents to chroming baldies and models dressed in hessian and prosthetic pregnancies. At least there is hope in that future...Oh, and then there is music. There is always music...

New Brisbane label Coolin' By Sound (run by two of the raddest people ever, Belly and Shell) have two releases coming out this month, with some even bigger announcements on the way. First cab off the rank though is SM favourites Thigh Master, who release their debut LP Early Times today. It's been a long time coming - Thigh Master have been scarring the land with their scuffed, scuzzed and skewed guitar pop for almost five years now. It's an old offering in some ways - originally recorded in 2013, then redone when grand Dag Dusty Anastassiou layered more guitar over the top. The songs include contributions from multiple members across their revolving ensemble (the four piece have seen six incarnations, with Matt Ford and Pat Byron the mainstays throughout) and perfectly encapsulates the loose frivolity and looser hooks lathering their live sets. The band have made lackadaisical lambasted and loose-limbed jams seem both effortless yet frantic - 'Company', 'Treehouse A.P.' and closer 'Flat City' being golden examples. But there are times when they lose the slacker cap and try more melancholic, laconic speeds - the Brisbane downer drawl of 'Brunno Brawl', the Superchunk via Dunedin cheesed melt of 'Canned Opening', the languid malaise of 'Baroona'. The solo 'Hassa Been' is a cracked bay croon, caught on the back deck in the inner suburbs, 44 seconds of lightweight browbeating. Pretty indicative of all facets of what makes Thigh Master an indelible part of the Brisbane musical landscape. Get Early Times here.

Craig Dermody's Scott and Charlene's Wedding releases Mid Thirties Single Scene on Bedroom Suck and Fire Records, and it's a shaping up to be his best effort yet. His band has solidified to include members of Terrible Truths and Beaches and uber producer Jack Farley, and there is a muscularity to the musicianship this time around that, rather than showing a rock lash out or change in direction, it shows a confidence in the laconic, lugubrious, whimsical nature of ambling through the world tasting simple pleasures and grinding down the hours that comes with maturity. I am talking about music of course - Craig will always be a knockabout journeyman in life, taking knocks and giving back a languid grin - and what more can you ask for? 'Maureen' and 'Don't Bother Me' are already classics in the making, which bodes well for their upcoming album and Euro tour - Ill be catching the guys at Brunedell Social Club in Leeds on October 22, but there will be ample opportunities to catch them across the continent.





Now to another supergroup of sorts. Melbourne's God Squad features members of Cobwebbs, Black Vacation, The Kremlings and Sewer Side, and take on a woozy lounge groove take on post-punk doom and gloom. It was very much a time-and-place collaboration, but on the strength of these off-cuts the dudes should make this a bit more of a concern. There is gold in them thar hills, gentlemen...

I intend to do a much more in-depth look at this artist later on in the year, but I am so glad to hear that Greg Charles is releasing new music again. Having flitted around the edges of Brisbane music scene for over a decade in the likes of Blonde Cobra, Charles Curse, 6Magick9 and the Ex-Catholics, Charles has been an enigmatic yet fleeting presence, each appearance full of cracked genius, pastoral awe carved out of personal anguish, tragedy, punishment and redemption. Those who have heard his as-yet-unreleased 2007 album The Wrecking Moon have rued the fact that Charles' spiked and ambling, wasted yet eloquent rock hasn't been embraced by more. He has taken himself out of the limelight and has been fairly prolific; and in December he will be releasing his first release under his own name, Rough Music, recorded with Ben Thompson (The Rational Academy, Pale Earth) and Cam Smith (Ghost Notes, Tape/Off) on band duties. Highly literate about bruising ennui and catharsis, filled both with gutting hubris and garish gallows humour, Charles' songs will make you laugh, cry, and be happy to be alive. I will write more as the album comes to the fore, but in the meantime, here is a taste of what's to come...

One of my all time favourite artists in Australia right now is one of its weirdest outliers - Orlando Furious. The Melbourne provocateur has now moved into the hinterland of Queensland's Sunshine Coast, but his warped sense of humour riding a gnarled seductive lysergic techno ooze is firmly, synthetically intact. 'Sedyouse' is the perfect example of the cracked genius that OF is capable of. Every line is barbed with sardonic wit fused with silliness, but the beats are real - these songs are designed to bewitch. Performance art which revels in acerbic hilarity and ridiculousness - it's Liars for the Bi-Lo generation. I fucking love it.

It's fitting then to segue into Yaws' newie, 'Yuek', seeing as Orlando Furious both stars and directed the video. The techno noisenik is now back in London, but his sojourn back in Australia has only helped to fuse his warped dystopias with a wider zeal... Doubt is an amazing 12" (the first release from Purely Physical, you can get it here), and this video does everything to amplify the dazzling weirdness. The Squatter board game? Cyclone screen doors? Yaws google searches, thus promotion within promotion? Orlando trance dances? A ball pein hammer? A candle in a bar fridge? The ritual to be Yaws is complete.

Let's finish on brand new band Life Strike, who features members of Deaf Wish, Dollar Bar and The Rational Academy. The first sounds to come out of this collaboration merges The Kinks, The Chills and The Cannanes, with a smidgen of Robert Forster there as well - warm hooks that feel evergreen, yet with a 90s Gaslight Radio-meets-Sekiden geeky-pop-with-an-edge opaqueness that throws shadows over the pastel tones. This is likely to become murkier - the boys promise apocalyptic visions mixed with noise rock and punk as well. But for now, ride these two bliss bomb waves like Snake Plissken and Peter Fonda.

Better Late To The Miasma Of Bevis Frond Than Never

I had heard a lot about London psych folk stalwarts The Bevis Frond yet knew nothing about them - a band to have escaped my battered ears. But it wasn't until I spent a night beating the flu out of me with booze at The Mucky Pup here in London that I actually got to hear them (which makes sense - leader Nick Saloman used to do the excellent pub quiz here). Their first album Miasma is on their excellent jukebox, and it blew me away. Was it the cold? Was it the eighth jar of Guinness? There is a warm crossover of Smiths wash, Erickson wow and Pollard panache for me to want to launch myself headlong into their back catalogue. Fire Records have made it much easier for me too, re-releasing Miasma and Inner Marshland on Record Store Day in aqua and purple vinyl respectively. The guys are playing a one-off-for-the-year show in London at Birthdays July 10 - Ill be there, front row.

Friday Cover Up - Rats Ride Over This Velvet Morning

Dutch post punks Rats On Rafts brought out an excellent record last year in the form of Tape Hiss. They blew me away in their support slot for Blank Realm at Shacklewell Arms, and continue to impress on new 7" Some Velvet Morning/Last Day On Earth. Their cover of Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra is pretty much a ROR special - a chugging, squalling psych purge with added distorted and haunted vocals. It's absurd and disturbing, and pretty brilliant. They play the Moth Club in Hackney this Sunday, as part of a supergroup that includes the mighty Pere Ubu, before returning in their usual guise supporting PU at Tufnell Park Dome, March 24 and a straight-up set on their own at Lock Tavern on the 26th. Get on board, and while you're at it get your copy of the 7" through Fire Records here.

Trying Not To Be Spooked Or Schooled

I have been the sole inhabitant on Planet Masala for some time now – Paul and Ani fled some time ago, and Fred is too busy playing with the cool kids to hang out in the basement (AKA life). That said, Fred still lurks around the Records side of things, and I always hope to entice him into doing the rare obtuse review. One of the first he did for Sonic Masala was for Edinburgh band The Spook School. They return this month with new record Try To Be Hopeful (out through Fire Records) and it stays true to form, offering cantankerous guitar pop that still focuses squarely on being different, and how that is awesome. Having thrashed things out in the bustling UK queer punk scene (which sees the likes of Teenage Caveman and As Ondas plying their trade), it is clear that the four-piece are just as indebted to Joanna Gruesome and C86 navel-gazing, especially on the buoyant noise that permeates hook-laden tracks like ‘Friday Night’. The album opens with ominous named ‘Burn Masculinity’, but isn’t as subversive and evasive as this may sound – it’s a blast. Yes, The Spook School is being more upfront lyrically when it comes to exploring sexual identity and how labels can be still so arduously constricting and caustic. This is evident in vocalist Nye Todd's physical presence too - going through a trans identity transference, which has seen his voice change over the course of the recording process. A true transformation in more ways than one, Try To Be Hopeful is ebullient, a joyous kicking out at the pricks and embracing of the awkward, the marginalised, and being proud of it. This is mostly encompassed by 'Binary', a propulsive rocker gem that questions gender norms and embraces the messiness of it all. I'm thinking that I'm hexadecimal, indeed.

Totally Mild Time

I stumbled across Totally Mild pretty much by accident in February 2013. The year before I'd asked Melbourne troubadour du jour Lehmann B Smith to come up to Brisbane to play a show for a Lofly gig. I missed it due to an emergency operation, but we kept in touch, and I finally caught him in the flesh when I was in Melbourne to see the MBV & Drones ATP (also playing that night at Bar Open - The Menstrual Cycle AKA Snowy Halliwell Nasdaq et al). He was playing in a friend's band which was - yep - Totally Mild. I really dug it.




It's great to see Elizabeth Mitchell's brainchild not only metamorphose into a larger band concern, or because my memory that night has always been hazy (I raced into Bar Open after two days of drinking at the Altona sweatbox, and had just finished up with Einstürzende Neubaten). It is that Mitchell's melodic music is excellent and deserves to be tickling at everyone's spine. Down Time is TM's debut LP (out through Bedroom Suck and Fire), and it is chock full of pop altruisms and melancholic mantras, knitted together with an elegance and a subtle mischievousness that is impossible to ignore. 


 
A stunning achievement, Down Time can be grabbed here.

Blank Longing

Brisbane's kaleidoscopic pop mavens Blank Realm are keeping their high strike rate with 'River Of Longing', the new single from their upcoming album Illegals In Heaven (which I will review shortly). 'River Of Longing' continues the glossed psychopomp rollercoaster, sped up and shuddering, Sarah Spencer's synth refracting in all directions like a smashed prism, Dan Spencer's vocal stylings extending from last year's 'Reach You On The Phone' as he powers through giddily psychedelic altruisms such meet you on the other side/ and we’ll make up for stolen time. The track mirrors the band's trajectory to be honest - starting out in the outliers of improv noise, slowly compressing into a whirled psych band, while pop machinations ooze through the cracks as the centrifugal forces rise in speed, intensity and insanity... Cracked genius.



You can pre-order Illegals In Heaven from Bedroom Suck and Fire Records. Blank Realm are coming to the UK in September/October:

                                                             14 Sep - Paris - Espace B

15 Sep - Antwerp - Het Bos

16 Sep - Hamburg - Hafenklang

17 Sep - Berlin - Monarch

18 Sep - Offenbach - Hafen 2

19 Sep - Tilburg - Incubate Festival

20 Sep - Rotterdam - Roodkapje

22 Sep - Amsterdam - Sugarfactory

23 Sep - Barcelona - BAM Festival

27 Sep - Dublin - Workmans Club

28 Sep - Glasgow - The Hug and Pint

29 Sep - Brighton - The Prince Albert

30 Sep - Bristol - Start The Bus

01 Oct - London - The Shacklewell Arms

Cosmic Comet Ritual

Here is some late night light psych from stalwarts Comet Gain. Their four-track EP Fingerprint Ritual opens with a twelve minute ‘Breaking Open The Head Pt 2’ (a continuation and tangent from the part 1 found on their seventh LP Paperback Ghosts), using a slow, soft oscillation and backwards guitars to build a mist-like mantra that envelops and engrosses. ‘That Lucifer Summer’ feels more garage-lite, taking the psych into the basement, draped with velvet curtains and amber lights, lounging around and jamming. Something that continues into ‘To The City’s Core’, which purportedly features the abnd’s first funky break and a farfisa organ played through a mangled fuzz pedal. Its insidious insinuation of the city as a virus belies a late 60s Blue jam vibe. ‘The Insignificant Dignified’ ends it all, a hushed protest that plays along with the Animals/Troggs rousing template, getting properly fuzzed out and jammed to the edges and beyond. Feeling vintage and straight from the source, Fingerprint Ritual sees the veterans remaining on course for the sun. 
Get it (in red vinyl) here.

Triple Bardo Pond Record Store Re-Treat

Record Store Day Trilogy is the new offering from Bardo Pond, an amalgam of their last three RSD EPs (2013's Rise Above It All, 2014's Looking For Another Place, and this year's Is There A Heaven?) that Fire Records is collating for us all. Rise Above It All was a two-hander, featuring covers of Funkadelic's 'Maggot Brain' and Pharaoh Sanders' 'The Creator Has A Master Plan.' Apart from loving Bardo Pond for years, and their set a couple years ago in Brisbane blowing my psych-addled mind, this EP is monumental for me for finally making me indulge in Sanders' work. An article in The Wire on him not long after this had me delving into the free jazz genius' back catalogue, and I've been lost ever since. And the version of 'Maggot Brain' sees the band drift off into the stratosphere for 22 glorious minutes. Looking For Another Place saw the Philly five-piece turn their attention to Eno (a harsh squall rendition of 'Here Come The Warm Jets' that with Isobel Sollenberger's vocals plays out like a dream pop song stretched to sixteen minutes) and Velvet Underground ('Ride Into The Sun', which is wonderfully messed up). And then the triptych was completed back in April when Is There A Heaven? - and for me their best cover yet, Bryan Ferry's 'In Every Dream Home A Heartache'. I am a closet Roxy Music fan already, but the devastating 14-and-a-half version here slays me with its slowburn menace - it's almost unhinged but not quite (one thing about this band - they let go but are always in control). The other offering is Albert Ayler's 'Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe' which is even further in the bottom end of the psych doom spectrum.

If you haven't heard these songs, you must. Check out 'In Every Dream Home A Heartache' below, and pre-order Record Store Day Trilogy here.

Surfing Still

Tonight NZ band Surf City hit The Stillery in Camden Town as a precursor to their shows as part of The Great Escape festival down in Brighton. They have just released their new record Jekyll Island (out through Fire Records), which alongside Melbourne band Chook Race’ s About Time has been the first “summer” record to spin incessantly at my house. The album seems more indebted to reverb wash and psych inflected tangents than their last sojourn We Knew It Was Not Going To Be Like This (at least in my opinion), it is clear that the four-piece is solidifying this approach and becoming a stronger unit because of it. What I like the most though is that there is unashamed attraction to the traditional pop structure aesthetic, as it is with a country of talent that are consistently indebted to the Dunedin years, and of which I am eternally grateful. When looking for gnarled and diseased subversion of such an approach to an electric guitar led son, it’s easy to forget why guitar pop is popular in the first place. Putting out Dollar Bar’s third album Hot Ones this year (with their avid love of all things Robert Pollard) alongside living with one of the world’s greatest fans of Stephen Malkmus last year has really hammered that home to me – and I warmly embrace Surf City with open arms (plus their penchant for Krautrock aspersions is truly present and accounted for on the album, which everyone knows is one of my many vices). You should too.

Novel Place In Space On A Fantastic Planet

Sarah Lipstate’s work under the Noveller moniker has been a masterclass in subtle delineations of guitar squall - . With her latest release Fantastic Planet (out through Fire Records), she has embraced her love of cinematic soundscapes and held an elliptical mirror up to the landscape of her native Austin, The LP is a journey through eclectic sonic terrain, blending rich waves of synth with soaring cinematic guitar lines, guiding the listener through Noveller's most diverse and compelling release to date.

Kicking off with the brooding behemoth 'Into The Dunes' (which is surprisingly less than five minutes long, such is the power of its desolate muscularity, playing like Slint and Earth collaborating on scoring a lurid, ominous, hallucinogenic arthouse Western), Fantastic Planet seems intent on transporting the listener from one lurid landscape to the next - 'No Unholy Mountain' as a lime-green-and-lilac alien moon dune, the crystalline cyber-synth effects undulating like an otherworldly Exorcist score; the surreptitious drone underpinning the sparkle of 'Rubicon', evoking glistening distortions of light-headed fantasy; the 8-bit hiccups and harmonising of 'Sisters', taking the listener into a synapse-frayed mainframe dream. The light majesty of 'Concrete Dreams' aims for the same heartfelt stars as fellow Texans Explosions In The Sky albeit with a sparser, more synthetic edge (the song's title fits well). 'Pulse Point', the longest song here at seven minutes, is most interesting when the myriad effects at Lipstate's disposal all intersect into a static-infused quagmire of pulsating dark light - its alienness makes it the most entrancing track here. 'In February' has some some of the Morricone-meets-science-fiction cadences; 'Growing' is underpinned by a beating heart, the throb ever present and domineering the oscillating-on-a-knife's-edge guitar - and when the beat disappears, the darkness truly seeps in.

Live, Lipstate is renowned for the amassed gear and equipment she has collated in order to replicate these looped and oscillating sounds in a live setting, and one imagines that such an experience can be quite awe-inspiring in itself. The beauty of Fantastic Planet is how identifying how each note, shimmer and shudder is created isn't as important as the apocryphal journeys that fluidly come into fruition - a silken opiate for the enlightened masses. Grab Fantastic Planet (in aqua vinyl) here.

Novels In The Dunes

I have somehow missed the myriad delights that solo guitarist Sarah Lipstate has put into the ether under her Noveller moniker, but with Fantastic Planet due out on Fire Records next year, there is no excuse. She has been around since 2005 though, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Plus she has collaborated with the likes of Lee Ranaldo, Cold Cave and Parts & Labor, so her explorations of the electric guitar form is well versed and admired. And my first taste of it rose the hairs on the back of my everything. The haunting ethereal grind on album opener 'Into The Dunes' is spacious, dark, gritty - it's as if Lipstate has taken some of the contemplative latter-day musings of Dylan Carlson, run it through a crystallised synthesiser, distilled it in a modular vacuum, headed back to 1968 and handed the results to Stanley Kubrick. It could go for seven times the size and still be as astrally hypnotic. Fantastic indeed.

You can pre-order Fantastic Planet (on delectable aqua vinyl) here.

Mirroring Martyr Privates

 

There's going to be a nasty rumour going round soon that I am in Martyr Privates, such is the blanket love I have given their debut album of late. Having written the review of it for both The Music in Australia and The Quietus in the UK, suffice to say that I am a fan. Not much else needs to be said that I haven't already written. That said, I thought Id fling a couple sentences together to try and explain why I like it. Because Martyr Privates is in some ways derivative; in other ways wholly unimaginative. Because opinion is so subjective, it seems apt yet also trite for me to say that their influences are fine when I often lambast other bands for wearing their influences so blatantly and carefree. The difference here is the playability factor. When I first listened to the album I thought the Brisbane trio of Cam Hawes, Ashleigh Shipton and Sam Dixon had captured their live persona well, but it was still that heady pastiche of downer rock and shoegaze space oddity that made them familiar and yet innately alien, at least on the Australian music scene. But the more I listened to tracks like 'You Can't Stop Progress' and 'Something To Sell' I realised the influences that came to bear - Kitchens Floor, Spiritualized, The Black Angels, Spacemen 3 - were just as refracted from the worldview of the trio. Martyr Privates is dipped liberally in the shoegaze psych mould, but it isn't a part of such wide-ranging genres either. As elegantly wasted as 'Rope & Tarp' is, this is a Hawes original, not a Pierce cast off; as much as 'Somebody's Head' lurks in the shadows of the Passover of The Black Angels, they aren't squatting at the foot of the table scrounging for scraps. There is a otherworldly vibrancy and dour desperation that always stands at loggerheads within the band - the engine forcing the machine forward yet refusing to make allegiances easy. It won't be the best album of the year; it may not even make the list. But it is the best Martyr Privates album of 2014, which actually says a hell of a lot.

Martyr Privates - You Can't Stop Progress from BSR on Vimeo.

Martyr Privates is out through Bedroom Suck and Fire Records - grab it here and here respectively.

The Moles/Blank Realm

Before we post the chat I had with the Spencer siblings from Brisbane musical excellence du jour Blank Realm in a couple days' time (after they are hopefully basking in the spotlight granted them after their stints at Glastonbury this weekend), I thought I would shine a light on the London show they will be playing this Wednesday. They play an instore at Flashback Records which you would be stupid to miss, then they trundle up the road to smash up The Lexington. They will be joined by The Moles.

WHO?

The Moles is an Aussie band that were around in the early 90s, obviously indebted to The Clean, The Bats and other Flying Nun alumni, with more than a leaning towards contemporaries The Go-Betweens and Underground Lovers. This is the project of Richard Davies who has gone on to other things. But with Fire Records reissuing the two records they put out in their own right, the wider world can finally revel in the beauty of this undervalued songsmith's penmanship. Listen below, head over and buy the record here, and get along to Wednesday's show - you won't regret it.

Spend A Full Ugly Afternoon With Me

We have written about Full Ugly in the past. We've liked what we've heard. But there was always something a little hollow for me, like as if the Melbourne outfit were having us on. As if the band were taking the piss, just playing the jangly slacker pop that has become a blessing/curse in this country because they could and nothing more. It's not like I didn't think Full Ugly could be good - they have members from Milk Teddy and Totally Mild taking up space. But they have released their debut LP, Spent The Afternoon, and there is so much going on here that I just did NOT expect to hear. The secret ingredients? Nathan Burgess' laconic, at times wistful vocals and lyrics ('Hilly Street'); the pastoral reverbed twang of the guitar - ESPECIALLY the guitar - taking us into an Antipodean Americana meets countrified Built To Spill ('Mount Barker'); the chugging faux-psych of 'Smug S' - I love the band's propensity to veer away from what's by now expected of sounds of this type. They still do that well too - songs like 'Nervous' reminds me of a larrikin Kinks supporting The Easybeats if they played the Town Hall Hotel at 3pm on a Friday afternoon. Its a deceptively strong album, one that is haunting me in daydream reveries and warming me at the surprising twists and turns. Thanks boys.

Grab Spent The Afternoon through either Bedroom Suck (Aust) here or Fire Records (Euro) here. Full Ugly are playing Brisbane this Friday night at the Brightside (what used to be Electric Playground - where Ela Stiles played a few weeks ago) alongside Rites Wild, Martyr Privates and Thigh Master. Other dates:

May 10 - The Metro, Adelaide w/ Parading + Bruff Superior

May 16 - The Brisbane, Hobart w/ Treehouse, Pines + Heart Beach

May 23 - The John Curtin, Melbourne w/ Bitch Prefect, Totally Mild + Moon Dice

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.

Nothing to do with Full Ugly

I've always preferred tea to coffee. It's the warmth without the hype. It's having the time to sit down for a minute and listen to what's going on around you - without really having to engage with any of it. That's what kinda makes life worth living, I reckon. It's no fucking Moccona ad, romancing through the streets of Paris, it's watching your dog stretch itself out in the sun while you do the same - having something to do that has nothing to do with anyone else.

Full Ugly brew that feeling. They never percolate it. They're all the better for it.   

If you pour over all the Bedroom Suck releases like you should, you'll know 'Hanging Around' is out on said constantly excellent (and now Fire affiliated) label now.

Living In Electric Scraps

Laura Hill continues to impress. For those who have seen her myriad shows around Brisbane as Scraps, you are already on the bandwagon - but for most of you, her knowing-naive-synth-pop knows no bounds. In fact Hill has gotten so attuned to finding the infectious groove in the dirtiest, tinniest, trapped-in-a-metal-bin beat that it becomes a surreptitious delight, sneaking up on you in usually inopportune moments, hooks bearing fruit in your mind days or even weeks after the song last rang in your ears. Her plaintive disco wraith stylings may seem simplistic but are anything but - Scraps is a dark electro-pop force to be reckoned with.

And as is the way with a bunch of great Brisbane bands (Blank Realm being the most obvious), UK label Fire Records has latched on Scraps' inimitable wasted disco jams, putting out her Electric Ocean record (it's due in March). The brilliance of this album is what makes Australia, and indeed Brisbane, such a beguiling and creative dustbowl of musical innovation - Electric Ocean comes solely from Hill's viewpoint, living by the day, scraping together vignettes of sullen ennui that occasionally spikes in a glorious winning moment, but can just as inexorably spiral into sweat-stained exasperation. And its through the music, a pastiche of childhood rememberings and upbeat anthems shone through a prism of close-at-hand instrumentation and world-weary battles, that Scraps overcomes. What I'm saying is, Scraps is the real deal, a triumph in belief over matter. It's there in every fiber. Dancing in pain; dancing for pleasure.

You can pre-order Electric Ocean here.

Never Grassed In(n) In A Blank Realm

I don't think there are many bands who have had such a bell curve evolution that I personally know than Brisbane's Blank Realm. The Spencer siblings (and Luke Walsh a sibling by proxy) started out making dirty, decidedly weird motorik psych, relying on mantras, improvisational hiccups and repetition all whilst hiding behind the cacophonous noise that bled forth. They were great, released some solid small releases, and cemented this with the dingy album Deja What. But as their confidence grew, Blank Realm's parameters shifted. They got tighter, more charismatic, and to an extent more flamboyant. Dan Spencer's ventures out from behind the kit resembled the barely contained energy the likes of Future Islands' Sam T Herring harnesses; Luke Spencer began to really lock down the spine of their sets; Sarah Spencer's headshaking shimmies and keyboard flourishes became an integral element to the song's construction, not just the presentation; and Walsh's guitar lines shirked masking distortions to find sinuous portals to other, incandescent worlds. In other words - Blank Realm discovered pop.



Go Easy easily exemplified this shift in dynamic - from the New Romantic/neon decadence of the cover art, to the tighter melodies and song construction. It wasn't a blast into the mainstream by any stretch of the imagination - there were enough jagged edges in songs like 'Growing Inside' and 'Acting Strange' to be cerebral and abrasive; 'Pendulum Swing' pinned down the histrionics evident from those early psych days. But the elongated amble of 'Cleaning Up My Mess' is an unmitigated delight, whilst the closing title track was by far the best thing they had ever written, a song wrapped up in tired apprehension, a wasted drift down a sun-drenched highway in a car without air-con.



So it goes to show that new album Grassed Inn continues to follow in this stead - in many ways a far poppier proposition from its forebears, but also promising more left-turns, sidesteps and leaps of fantasy. It's great to finally have 'Falling Down The Stairs' on record, an insistent gem that is a crooked sideways glance into the rearview mirror, a heady pop hiccup that promises a dancefloor stagger, eyes glazed, lost in the trance of the insistent rhythms. 'Bell Tower' is a languid creeper, the notes slightly askew as to denote unease, Dan Spencer's vocals ramping the tension. 'Bulldozer Love' holds the jangle, Walsh's guitar holding down the rhythm, Sarah's synth lines bubbling underneath before cascading and washing away halfway through this sinuous long play, before the heightened release that becomes a busy squall by song's end. It's these all-encompassing sepulchral moments that exemplify Grassed Inn as such a wonderfully elliptical release - within the majesty and fluorescence lies kernels of darkness, of abject truths, of nighttime confessions, of fear. The B-side shows more restraint - 'Violet Delivery' is a buoyant travail into the backwaters of 80s lipstick chic synth-lite musak; the orca warble that injects 'Baby Close The Door' wans to become a subterranean shanty electrified by retrovision and languid verses, a Bauhaus warehouse populated by Eric Burdon and JJ Burnel's strangled backing band; closer 'Reach You On The Phone' is possibly the closest musically to combining Joy Division and New Order into an organic entity, with Dan's best use of vocals juxtaposing amusing ripostes with maudlin reveries, all delivered with that off-kilter, crooked pitch.

Grassed Inn (out through Bedroom Suck and Fire Records) - frontrunner for album of the year. Pre-order it here and here.

Younger Lemons

Fire Records are reissuing The Lemonheads' first three albums Hate Your Friends (1987), Creator (1988) and Lick (1989). Most people (myself included) don't credit the band for being anything other than the mainstream group we know and love (and of course Evan Dando's constant battle with various demons). It's refreshing to hear Ben Deily's punk snarl, and Dando's Mascis emasculation - kids just breaking out. Some of these songs, like 'Out', are discarded gems too. I have to say that these albums are pretty great, and I for one am pre-ordering them right now, you should too.

Sliding Down The Honey Flowers

Once again stupid life has gotten in the way of a good time - doubly so, seeing as I haven't been able to write about good shit for about three days (believe me, that is a looooooong time). Back in June I was offered tickets to go to London trio Honeyslide's 10" launch (put on by Critical Heights) at Stoke Newington's The Waiting Room. This sounded serendipitous seeing as the vast majority of Sonic Masala shows have been held at Brisbane's own Waiting Room. Yet I declined, and although I didn't waste my evening - I went and saw William Basinski and Fennesz play in a Hackney church - I felt I was letting the SM side down a little. It was a little more painful when I found out that the supports included personal fave Scott & Charlene's Wedding, pencilled in as a "special Guest". Seeing as I missed their own album launch the following week because I was flying back to Oz, it smarted. Nevertheless, I can't complain - at least I have Drippin/Deep Architecture to listen to. The 10" offers a seven minute sloping squall in the form of 'Drippin'' which bleeds into an untitled miasma of swirling ephemera. It reminds me of Gaslight Radio, one of the most underrated Aussie bands of the late 1990s/early 2000s, albeit without the tongue-in-cheek lyricism. The back side offers more bite-sized versions of the same - 'Deep Architecture' holds sway, whilst 'Sugar Routine' saunters along jauntily, a bouncy, languid ride into the sunset. You can grab the EP here.

The reason I came back to Honeyslide was because of the minimalist yet showy fuzz of another London trio, Flowers. Their Until You're Dead 7" (out on Fortuna Pop - you can grab it here) has been the one link I have had to the world of sanity in the past few days, which bled into the things I found most enjoyable about the Honeyslide release. Admittedly Flowers are a little more saccharine and overtly shoegaze (which makes sense seeing the label they are aligned with), but there is an effervescent yet gritty sheen to their sonorous noise pop that sees them drift markedly further from the twee vortex than others that court this terrain. The titular track is the perfect example of this - a crunching guitar, high, breathy vocals, and a steely mesh of noise underneath that propels everything forward at a bracing pace. 'Clover' follows a similar mode, then 'Stuck' offers a stripped, stark, bare counterpoint. It is all done with flair and aplomb - and with the presser boasting that many Flowers tracks are written within an hour, fully formed, we should hear a hell of a lot more soon.