VIDEO VACUUM - King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, True Widow, Greg Charles, Big Business, LVL UP, Holy Wave, Brunch, Giant Burger

This weekend I thought I would pull some of the old staples back out of the bag. So let's get into some videos, with a pumped up version of Video Vacuum!

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are bloody unstoppable, aren't they? You blink and they have put out an album and have played three festivals. They are about to tour their own festival Gizzfest around the Australian nation, and have just gone on the record saying they plan to release FIVE albums in 2017. No wonder the likes of Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall love their moxy. I had planned to show some of their stuff that they released during the months' sabbatical I had - 'Gamma Blade' from this year's Nonagon Infinity is exceptional - but they already have this up. 'Rattlesnake' is the first taste off new album Flying Microtonal Banana (see? After John Dwyer's heart!). The tonal change is a deliberate experimentation - they have put limitations on themselves to play modified instruments that play in 24-TET tuning - this includes keyboards, harmonicas, and a Turkish horn called a zurna. The boys get their trance on, and it's bloody great.

In my opinion Texan titans True Widow are one of the most underrated bands doing the rounds the past few years. Their latest album, double LP Avvolgere, has their "stonegaze" aesthetic particularly claustrophobic and euphoric, perpetually toying with these supposed oppositional forces. The single 'F.W.T.S:L.T.M." perfectly encapsulates this dichotomy - a slow gloom and doom dappled by the occasional cold shard of light. The brooding, slowburn film clip is stark, beautiful, and a perfect complement to this great song.

Greg Charles launches Rough Music December 2 and it promises to be a rollicking yet bruising rock album of personal wrack, ruin and redemption. Charles has recorded his own video for opening track 'Doin' It Clean', and its a lo fi winner. Anything that glorifies a Gold Coast Timezone  amidst more stock footage of passenger window landscapes and spinning lights is going to be a hit with me - but the frivolity yet frayed freneticism to the work mirrors the strength taken to rediscover the muse when the narcotics that fuelled the fire are gone. The demons have been hunted - this is only the beginning.

LA doom duo Big Business are back with Command Your Weather, a more "palatable" slab of gurning dirge metal. The film clip has suited businessmen laying down the law to punk rock women, before the women turn the table in a The Craft via Troma way. The pink polo shirt wearing dude who gets turned into a butternut squash is a particularly nice touch. The tribal cymbal run will get me every time too. Welcome back boys.

New Yorkers LVL UP are finishing up their very extensive US tour tonight in Ann Arbor in support of Alex G, dragging their excellent Return To Love, their first on Sub Pop, and will be plaguing the UK and Europe in the spring next year. The album veers wildly across the spectrum of the new label's oeuvre, with 'The Closing Door' caught between retrospective whimsy and 90s guitar rock meltdown. The indie movie vibe of the clip, as nature documentary as it is slo-mo The Kings Of Summer rites-of-passage fantasy, is slick and very impressive.

El Paso psychers Holy Wave are halfway through their North American tour too, in support of their new LP Freaks Of Nurture. 'Magic Landing' is a short lysergic surge, a fisheye animation of the band playing amidst spinning pastel colours and fishes. A quirky trip, highlighting the brevity and the brashness of this underrated band.

Let's finish off with two lo-fi efforts from London acts. First up is 'Taxi Feelings' from Brunch, a taster off upcoming album Big Water. Its a bit of scuzzy guitar pop that if you are familiar with the bands we have championed and put out on our label would know it really strikes a call. The super slow motion of a terrible attempt to scull a third of a pint glass and the painful (although no vomit flies on camera) consequences. Silly boys do silly things - at least it can be thrashed out with a good tune before the obligatory taxi home and cleaning up fee.

Then there is 'Tono Tono', Giant Burger's offer from their Giant Burger Forever record. The agit-pop flavour common with lovers of the band is present and accounted for, a louche and loose post-punk wind down, and the film clip has the humour front and centre. Lots of running around parks and side streets, shouting into the camera lens, pictures of ceiling fans, Persian rugs and toads amongst plenty of other weird shit, and a light at the end of the tunnel that leads to a tabby cat. Fair play. Their next show is a corker too, alongside Goldblooms, Dog Chocolate and The Jelas, at DIY Space - see you there.

Video Vacuum - King Gizzard, Green Buzzard, October Drift, Chesta Hedron, Decorum

Who has a Monday death march hangover? Hopefully these tracks can help you get through the pain...

Multi-limbed garage nuts King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard have yet another record out in the form of Nonagon Infinity - and goddamn if it doesn't sound like it'll kick all kinds of goals. 'Gamma Knife' is a great song in and of itself - possibly my favourite Gizzard single! - and this circular amphitheatre pagan occultist 70s metal throwback imagery and madness is brilliant. Gamma.

Now onto Sydney band Green Buzzard. They piqued a lot of people's interest when they were signed to I Oh You (Violent Soho, DZ Deathrays) before having even played a show. They are taking a Strokes swipe at throwback guitar pop that is glossed enough to really get under the skin, but with much more irreverence. The film clip sees the five-piece dressed in white, talking on landline Telecom keypad phones, wearing aviators and exaggerating their best crooning faces. They released their debut EP Eazy Queezy Squeezy on Friday - should be a good'un - and have announced they are touring Australia supporting DMA's. 2016 looks like a big one for these boys.

This song got a hell of a lot of airplay last week on Planet Masala. Somerset rockers October Drift have burst forth with a killer building track on 'Losing My Touch' - the shoegaze drop around the 2:45 minute mark may be done in hundreds of songs, but goddamn if it doesn't help to push things to another level here - and an excellent film clip to go along with it. Old guys filling in for the band, in between drinking Irn Bru and eating dirt chicken with the rest of us. A seriously good song, this one.

Back to Australia now - specifically Byron Bay - and another new band in instrumental psych warriors Chesta Hedron. They have some pedigree - one of the band used to play in Berlin-based dudes Strange Forces - so it shouldn't come as any surprise that 'Hash Monster' is a surf-rock surge, a stoner rock dirge, a psych rock purge... The film clip is shot in a landscape that looks otherworldly, desolate and barren, as a four-faced acolyte dances, drags and divines, a tantric groove within and without.  Then the animation and the ball of light hits, and things get deliciously stranger...Looking forward to seeing where these guys roll out to - they just supported Richard In Your Mind, so I'm expecting a lot to happen there.

D E C O R U M — H I G H O R D E R from Decorum on Vimeo.

And let's finish off with the post-punk stutter and menace of Brooklyn band Decorum. The film clip for 'High Order' is simple yet effective - black and white footage of a hooded figure being chased, at night, with torchlight following her every move. All from your point of view too - it is the viewer who does the majority of the chasing here. The two bass attack heightens the shadows, the heart murmur, the livewire tension.

Now get back to work!

Virgin Cracks

The last Sonic Masala show of the year featured some amazing bands (Ruiners, Furrow, and an incendiary set by Japan's The Piqnic = one of the best things I have seen in forever). I was pleased to see Virgin Kids again too after I saw them support Surf City last year. They are tighter and more boisterous, somewhere between Ty Segall and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. 'Cracks In A Colour' is the first track off their incoming album Greasewheel (out in March on Fluffer and Burger Records). It's a killer blast that rollicks along, managing to be both lethargic and manic.

Mooning Weird Jack

Jack Name (touring guitarist for White Fence) has brought out a new album, Weird Moons, and it is pretty weird. It has a plethora of touchstones, both past and present. I can see why Castle Face Records were drawn to the record, especially seeing as they also recently put out King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's latest LP. The woozy opener 'Werewolf Factory' could have come out of that band's think tank, with references to Ariel Pink, Thee Oh Sees and Warren Zevon mashed into the cracked centre. Its a seriously warped melange of sounds - the warble of 'Lowly Ants' reminds me of Air if they had lowered themselves into a Pink mire; the opening of 'Running After Ganymede' sounds like a stomach wind; the spectral swagger and stagger throughout 'Waiting For Another Moon' holds in thrall. In fact this entirely bizarre album holds one in thrall throughout, whether there is a glam rock blast-out, like King Tuff strung out on Numan's supply on 'Watcher Talk', the sun-warped sci-fi yacht rock of 'Io' or the maudlin introspection of maximal minimalist 'Lowly Ants'. This is an album that is made out of time and out of mind, and deserves to be huge. It won't be - but it deserves to be.

Grab Weird Moons here.

Video Vacuum - Yes I'm Leaving, Mesa Cosa, Cobwebbs, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, USA Nails

I don't know about you, but today is a drag. Let's punch through the walls with some raucous noise coupled with stupid visuals!

Yes I'm Leaving have inexplicably built up a true head of steam with the incumbent launch of 3rd LP Slow Release. I'm not saying it is unwarranted - far from it; I have maintained everywhere, including this here blog, that the Sydney trio are one of the best live acts in Australia and have been for the past couple years. But just seeing these guys in reviews and post on US music sites has been a bit of a weird notion - I mean, they still are lucky to pull ten punters to shows in their hometown! Well people better start taking notice, because they are brilliant. Aren't sold? If the nightmare/hilarity of 'Fear' doesn't hook you, you are probably dead (at least to me).

Mesa Cosa is another band that are slaying the stages across Australia, although their brand of rock is certainly more party friendly. The Melbourne garage wild boys have launched into the zombie zeitgeist with latest track 'Creepy' - well, hordes of pantyhose-wearing acolytes anyway. It's stupid and awesome in equal measure, and the bulk of noise that comes out of  the backend of this band is truly felt here. 

It always feels like self-promotion nowadays when I talk about a band that has released material through Sonic Masala Records - but things need to be seen (and heard) to be believed with Brisbane's Cobwebbs. Having just released their second album WORLD WIDE WEBBS through our label (on 12" orange vinyl no less, and now at much more affordable digital prices), the dudes have just come away from a support slot with Iceage and a Sydney show alongside another group that should be on everyone's radar at the moment, Exek. Here is the decidedly batshit crazy video for second single 'Easy', filled with everything that makes Cobwebbs tick - airplane interiors, fast cars, Dubai, models, and bad CGI, amongst other snatch grabs of brain-frying ephemera. The world we live in, eh?

Who wants some 60s B-movie 3D? King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have you covered. The latest clip for new track 'Cellophane' has a bored night in front of the idiot box transformed by psychedelic robed hippy red-blue-yellow madness - there's fuzzy lines! There's gold chains! There's flying! The last couple of seconds are amazing too. A great all round trip.

I'm  finishing with USA Nails because, well, this band just slipped into my slipstream this morning. 'Sometimes I'd Rather See It All' has a clip that feeds into its title, which is always an added bonus. The strobes, the sliding blood, the interfered-with facial close-ups - it's all disconcerting. The London band (really) play out like a more crystallised A Place To Bury Strangers - something I am extremely excited about. Hopefully you are too.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!!

Weird Ovaries In The Rain

Man, I love me a straight up moniker. And whilst Lux Ovarye's Weird Time isn't exactly an easy mouthful, it sure is a weird time. Playing out like a paisley Thee Oh Sees offcut with Ariel Pink taking the reins whilst asking all and sundry where he can score some MDMA, 'In The Rain' is a beautiful jangle with a soaring melody that nevertheless feels sketchy, flaky, borderline psychotic. But the band keep it together, enough where you drop your guard and start to really enjoy yourself. Then you open yourself to it properly, and the rain spears into your being - it's like being out of yourself on the side of a highway that you have no reason to be on, with someone who you DEFINITELY shouldn't be with, yet knowing that the walls are coming down... Spinning around, arms outstretched as the sun rises over the industrial complexes... Not really knowing where you are, and not caring. That's what 'In The Rain' does to you, be it real or imagined. And that makes it a dangerously good song.

Praising A Peopled Musical Garden...And Technical Errors

Goddamn Monday. It can be a right bitch. Today is something else though; it’s one of those Mondays when even your computer, a nonplussed automaton, wants none of it. Everything is “not responding”. So sorry People’s Temple. I really wanted to write up something special about your excellent record that you just put out on Hozac Records, Musical Garden, that I managed to snap up this weekend. The way the band sways from modern day garage rock nonchalance to 60s woozy pop, like high fives between John Dwyer (‘Fast Thrills’), Ray Davies (‘Male Secretary’) and Bobby Darin (‘I Heard You Singing’) over a beachside prawn cocktail, really impresses. No song reach three minutes yet all feel fully realised. This is how you do it, King Gizzard – focus and integrity can still be imbued into tracks that experiment and are brimming with fun. But that’s all I can do, because this "not responding" shit is for the birds. Time to step away and enter the Musical Garden… Grab this great lil record here.

Video Vacuum - God Bows To Math, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Sleepy Sun, Sex Jams

Videos, yay!

God Bows To Math is one of Sonic Masala's favourite bands, live and recorded, and it's very exciting to think 2014 will see a second album from the anarchic trio. This dark video comes from the split they released with Shanghai heathens Pairs - the track itself is as typically tightly-coiled, abrasive and destructive as always, whilst the clip is simple, and simply weird. Little Black Riding Hood?

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, being weird? Never... The Melbourne menagerie continue to confound with a bizarre psych pop ode to the yeasty spread of Aussie patriotism, 'Vegemite' (lyric sample - It's strong as hell and black as night...). The video itself is decidedly off-kilter too, more in line with a Mighty Boosh skit than anything else. Coming after their albums of garage rock, spoken word Morricone and psych weirdness, though, nothing should really surprise us about these guys. (And I do like Vegemite too).

Sleepy Sun however have stuck to their woozy psych roots from the beginning, and 'The Lane' is evidence that it's business as usual. A very slick vid sees floating above landscapes, weather patterns, rose petals in the sea, a dark house with a naked female silhouette in the window, galaxies exploding, lots and lots of triangles... it's all so dramatic!

Then there's Austria's Sex Jams, being raucous as ever. The VHS 'found footage' of badass girls out of control, smoking, burning and lighting things up in homemade balaclavas, 'Junkyard' is an abrasive delight. Dishevelled melodicism disguised in destruction.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Video Vacuum - King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Gooch Palms, James X Boyd & the Boydoids, Transistors

Let's get into a brace of Antipodean audio visuals to help this Neck-Yourself Tuesday fly by...

Melbourne's seven-headed beast King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard are prepping to pump out their 3rd LP in as many years, Float Along - Fill Your Lungs, and '30 Past 7' is the first hit off the bat. It is yet another curveball from the band that refuses to sit still - nary a glimpse of the blase scuzz nor the windswept psych of their past releases, this is more spaced-out, a pastoral Spiritualized. The VHS dystopia is a bizarre fit - but it does indeed fit. These boys are a force of kinetic nature



Now for what is currently my favourite video clip of the year. Newcastle wastoids The Gooch Palms are looking to drop a dump of lo-fi garage tunes in the form of NOVO'S. Here is 'We Get By', a soul garage splurge that shows the duo gettin' dumb and havin' fun. It's fun, funny, and has a Merv Hughes pin, a boxing kangaroo flag, and Leroy surfing WHILST PLAYING GUITAR. That's all you need to know, now watch it.



My bastard James X Boyd has flown the coop, hunkering down in dusty ol Europe for the time being, but that doesn't mean he and his Boydoids aren't still kicking their kicks all over the continent. Here is a new track that, like 'Elissa Says' before it, again showcases no-fi video potential, is excellently choreographed to provide chuckles and unexpected chagrin, and perfectly incorporates Boyd's drawl and lackadaisical way of looking at the inanity of the world - there is really nothing more you could want here.



Let's finish off across the pond with Transistors, some frenetic, sunny punk put into informercial form. It's silly, stupid, filled with combed down hair and tucked in shirts, motivational speakers, a sleazy blonde and one cleaned up and happy customer. The track 'Your Life Could Be So Easy' is a catchy number, but in my opinion is one of the weakest links on their latest LP Is It Anything? - which shows the calibre of the album.



NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Neighbours Are Your Best Friends At The Para Vista Social Club

 

Australia is rife with skronky grungy slacker rock, yet almost every single band that peddles the stuff have their own slant on it. Eddy Current Suppression Ring offer a feverish post-punk stiltedness to their garage cauldron, overseen by a manic and unpredictable wordsmith with countless neuroses. Twerps saunter down suburban streets in the afternoon, sitting on the verandah drinking beers whilst listening to the stereo. You have the silly (Tiny Migrants, Cannon, Gooch Palms), the psychedelically crazy (King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Drunk Mums), the cocky retro kids (Velociraptor, Go Violets)…then you have Scott & Charlene’s Wedding.

The product of Craig Dermody, Para Vista Social Club (which actually came out in Australia last year) is raised up not just by the wonky yet addictive instrumentation and melodies, but his takes on working class malaise, heartache, and world-weary commentary on the ills of the slightly disenfranchised are fascinating ('Gammy Leg', although not found here, is one of the best songs of the past couple years PERIOD). Imagine The Go Betweens making their earlier albums in the 21st century in a scum-stained corner of the urban sprawl, playing good cop to Matt Kennedy-led Kitchens Floor’s bad cop, and you have Scott & Charlene’s Wedding down…or, if you were like me, you had me at “Scott & Charlene’s Wedding”.

 

Unfortunately Dermody has flown the coop to search out New York’s realist corners (a la Curtis Wakeling from another unheralded Aussie gem, Velcro). But thanks to Critical Heights Records, Para Vista Social Club is getting a UK release (grab it here!). When Dermody first put out the album, he created each vinyl sleeve from scratch, using covers from other albums and defacing them in some way (check them all out here). Those are all sold out now - I'm not sure if you Europhiles will get similar treatment, but trust me, you are in for a treat. You can grab the LP here – this is a goddamn great record, yet another testament to the goods that are coming out of this vast wasteland...

 

Scott & Charlene’s Wedding – Footscray Station
Scott & Charlene’s Wedding – Rejected
Scott & Charlene’s Wedding – Back In Town

Big Sound stuff

And so it begins...The 2012 Brisbane Big Sound conference and live showcase promises to be the biggest yet, and already is touted as the Southern Hemisphere's fledgling answer to SXSW. Big shoes to emulate, but there is credence in such claims. With the likes of Steve Earle and the like taking part in Q&As, panel discussions and masterclasses, it has the potential to be an industry icon - as far as that goes, I suppose. I for one can see why some people consider these kinds of things a bit of a wank, but it gets people interested in all facets of music, which can't be a bad thing.

But the most exciting thing about Big Sound is...the sound! Big Sound Live showcases 120 bands within a two block radius all playing over the next two nights. There are some amazing bands that are playing, some of which I have spoken about at length in previous posts (Violent Soho, Transistors, Kirin J Callinan, Velociraptor), but there is a huge list of great acts doing the rounds. Below is a "hitlist" of artists to try and check out. Have a listen, then if you are on the ground check out where/when they are playing here. Ill be around and about reviewing, taking snaps, and other things I won't dare to mention here. See you on the beach!

Straight Arrows



Super Wild Horses



Step-Panther



King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard



Courtney Barnett



Bearhug



Drunk Mums



Go Violets



Geoffrey O'Connor



Jeremy Neale



Shady Lane



The DC3



The Gooch Palms