AA Roman Typo

Another of the acts we have on Tuesday's Sonic Masala showcase, Roman Typo is a new London band that have me champing at the bit. It's clear the trio have that post-punk angularity etched into their DNA, but rather than the Joy Division route, or even the Wire route, we have a cross-Atlantic reference that we don't hear too much these days - that of seminal band Fugazi. Sure, the vocals share a tonal affinity with Mackaye and Picciotto, but there is a languid fluidity to the grooves that are laid down before things blast through the breakers. The inflections, the dragged notes, the melodies that feel ominous - it is all there, fermenting.

Many Ways In To Europe For Fraudband...One Way Out

On Tuesday is the next Sonic Masala showcase at Power Lunches. Joining us all the way from Melbourne is powerful, sinuous instrumental duo Fraudband, on their European tour launching their album Many Ways In...One Way Out. It's a great record too - there are moments of sparseness, and the entire album floats in its own fermented space, even when things get loose-limbed and frenetic. It reminds me of Dirty Three, without Warren Ellis but with his ghost infiltrating the elegant mass left behind, filtered through by crossroad blues, cathartic caterwauls and genuflecting nuance. It's a nebulous work that feeds off impulse and intuition, knowing when to slip into and out of a rhythm, when to stay clean and run roughshod over a build-up, when to hold back and when to purge. It's a classy yet rambunctious affair, and I cannot wait to see it heat up that small mirrored room next week. Buy Many Ways In...One Way Out through Kasumuen Records here.

Holding On To The Briggs

Jackson Briggs used to tear up the guitar in Brisbane's unique Outback Gothics Nikko. He is now out on his own, chucking his middle name in there and has an equally ramshackle band behind him as Jackson Reid Briggs & the Heaters, and is preparing to release 7" Holding On. It's loose, rambunctious, rough around the edges rock and roll, tired yet desperate to dispel the demons, or drown in amber trying. It's the kind of singalong that has a whiff of hope come from the cracked lips of a broken man that refuses to lie down. Holding On is coming out through Kasumuen Records (home to SM faves Fraudband) - get it here. Jackson is a bit of a restless shaggy soul, traipsing all over Australia and Japan in the past, and he is coming to Europe in July. He will be playing the next Sonic Masala showcase here in London alongside Hygiene, Primetime and Tense Men. Splash some amber sods and let him know that he's holding on - he will get there.

Some Fraudulent Things

Melbourne instrumental jammers Fraudband are back in the saddle with new 10” record Some Things (out through Kasumuen), and it is just as tightroping juxtapositions of tight and loose kinetics as last year's First Songs. The five track offering charges into rollicking territory from the get-go, the guitar-and-drums duo taking a bare-bones approach to roiling repetition. ‘Find Something’ starts off incrementally, silence giving way to shuffles giving way to rumbles, culminating in a one-note riff and rolling it through the wringer, the loose-wristed drumming stuttering and propelling to a feedback finish line. It’s a track like this that echoes back to the embryonic days of the Dirty Three, when they were less magisterial and more cantankerous and wild. The blues growl that permeates Fraudband’s DNA risibly rears its head in behemoth ‘Starting Over’ (albeit with a two minute feedback missive) and the cleverness in its apparent simplicity – repetition and familiarity is key to much of what’s on offer here, yet delivered with a raw crunch and intelligent sense of adventure and discovery in the miscues and drones. I have always loved Fraudband, but on Some Things it is finally apparent just how fun this all is – instrumental rock is not about dour pretension and hallowed intention (and was never meant to be) but about finding the rhythm and fucking it over and over again. And believe me, you will enjoy it.

Zooming Through with Voiceless oOo's

I have received a few emails from the band oOo. At first I thought it was that witchgaze dude oOoOO (or whatever that bloody "genre" Salem supposedly started) and whilst always intrigued I've always managed to put it on the backburner (turns out he's nothing really like Salem, and pretty good - more to come on that). Plus there has been another band that has come into my aural periphery of recent weeks, the Boredoms offshoot of OOIOO.

Yesterday I finally opened one of the emails and realised it wasn't that guy but a trio from Slovenia who are into improvised guitar music (complete with improvised lyrics) who are pretty bloody prolific. They have a great album from the tail end of last year called Zoom Yourself, and only last week released new jam 'How Can You Be Quiet?' I listened to these ambling, rambling, unhinged pieces all day today whilst doing a job application in the middle of torrential rain - the combined total effect being one of disorientation, slight psychosis and manic glee. Discordent, disembodied, delirious and about as far from witchgaze can be whilst still casting a pall over your senses. I could imagine the nooks and crannies of Ljubljana these guys create this music in - church naves, hollowed trees, graveyards, the kitchen... Nothing and everything is left to chance. Intriguing stuff.

Video Vacuum - Fraudband , Juan Wauters, Brief Candles, Weird Womb

It's hump day, let's loosen up a bit and watch some vids, yeah?

'(I've Got An) Eastern Block' by Fraudband from Kasumuen Records on Vimeo.

Fraudband come from the Neumusak realm in Melbourne (Faspeedelay being another acolyte). Their improv breakdown EP was pretty great. Here is a clip that is all about letting loose and freaking out. It's funny, weird, freaky, goofy, and a loose jam turned into flesh. Try these moves out at work - go on, I dare you...

Juan Wauters. Any more necessary? OK how about a weird and funny VHS film clip based on a show that I'm assuming shows film clips then people ring in and vote on whether to - yep - make or break it. In all honesty, Wauters would fit right in here in Australia. Goofy film clip, plaintive songs, silly sense of humour...and Coolio?

Brief Candles are a band I mentioned in 2011 that were taking the shoegaze fanaticism and running it through the sharpest filters, showing a leaner, meaner approach with the right degree of sugar and light and were all the better for it. Their new song 'Terry Nation' is significantly darker than much that was on their great Fractured Days album - it has some krautrock leanings, some rusted freakouts, and a killer filmclip pastiching 60s/70s television into an amazingly intricate and bewitching watch - especially around the 4 minute mark when the band break into a feedback wielding meltdown. And there are Daleks - a childhood nightmare/favourite. These Milwaukee kids have got it going on.

Saving the most NSFW video for last, here is Tuscan, Arizona's Weird Womb and the visceral and hilarious film clip for their newie 'Tanned Tits'. What is a grotty and offputting sex scene becomes a "when violated women fuck back" as the girl puts the headphones and starts to show this sweaty demon what it means to get down and dirty. This is a V/H/S clip without the horror. Weird Womb are a pretty incredible band, and to finish off here is their previous track 'Pale Piss' - yep, they are that kind of band...

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Fraudband For Everybody!

In keeping with great vocal less acts/releases today, here is the debut release from Melbourne duo Fraudband. Imaginatively entitled First Songs, the five tracks on display offer a brutal, minimal/maximal approach, driving by pummelling drums, an unrelenting rhythm that the guitar runs roughshod over, a charging bull. But there is a balletic kineticism at work here that underpins it all - its the work of two guys who are intricately dancing with one another, weaving their disparate instruments into a seamless whole, a weapon of mass disruption. Think early Love Of Diagrams or Faspeedelay, yet with a harder, Fugazi-centric bent (yet on 'Tangled Up' we go into more outback-tinged fare, something that an early, more frenetic Dirty Three would have approved of). The sixteen minute ramble 'I tried To Tell You, A Few Times' is my favourite though - but I'm a sucker for those kinds of things... Out next month on new label Kasmuen Records, First Songs is a great document of a duo already setting sight on the stars, if only to send them crashing harmoniously to the ground. Preorder it here.