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.