It Doubles

It Records has two great new releases to announce (after the excellent 1, the album from Taipan Tiger Girls that I wrote about here). First up is power doom electronic duo Armour Group. Their LP Purge (jointly released by Trait Records) promises to be a punishing listen if the title track is anything to go by. Four minutes of pounding percussion, distorted loudspeaker spittle sermonizing, a looped sample of someone stating that to psychologically advance he must purge himself... Obsessed with the darker proclivities of human desire, Purge is nihilistic, obliterating, devastating.

Secondly there is the announcement that gothic electronic act Mollusc is also joining the fold. The duo have just released this tape as a precursor of a new effort. The six tracks here interlace to create a soundscape of domination, electronic vice and gloss veneer with a seedy underside. In short, it's the kind of gritty goth post-punk that should score a 21st remake of Cherry 2000 directed by Kathryn Bigelow (and if you don't know what I'm talking about, head here and sort out your lack of Melanie Griffiths knowledge stat).

Border Kenny Fetish

Liam Kenny is prepping another attack on the senses. Having explored the musical cover artform on his A Kenny For Your Thoughts project last year, the Bitch Prefect/Peak Twins/et al musician is punching out his first solo record under his own name. Called The White Man Is Oppressor, it promises to be pretty gnarled and visceral, if first taste 'Border Fetish' is anything to go by (which, due to his chameleonic back catalogue, isn't much - this album could be anything). A chugging, snarling punk sprawl, Kenny sneering as he garishly cuts into the psyche of the white Australian male. As hard and harsh as Cobwebbs at their most insane, 'Border Fetish' circles around the blood in the water, scraping metal distortion back and forth, a chaotic oscillation, with Kenny coughing, grunting, spitting and snarling. An attack on the privileged platform that he himself is inherently a part of, The White Man Is Oppressor is going to be an acerbic, bitter punk pill to gnash on - and one that was desperately in need of being made. You will be able to get the album through Eternal Soundcheck, but until then, hit Play and self-flagellate.

Wallowing In Vintage Violence

After that interview with Liam Kenny last week, I thought I would continue with another Adelaide funk out that features a Liam Kenny that isn't Liam Kenny. The drone in the punk synth wail of Vintage Violence (not to be confused with the Italian punkoids of same name) evokes John Cale (seeing as they cribbed their name from one of his albums, that is a fair if obvious make) and more insidious gothic synth lurkers like 'Desert' and 'Nerve damage'. This Liam Kenny (of excellent unhinged boozehounds Wireheads) is joined here by fellow Old Mate old mate (and a Peak Twin) Ben Quici. The seven-track album moves along at a oozing pace, the industrial crawl emblematic of the bleak Gothic claustrophobia Europe continually pumps out of the pores of its desecrated earth. Especially when you hear 'Back To You', which is as desolate and dead-eyed as they come. It's brooding, barren, brilliant. Out through Format Records as a digital download or 100-run cassette, both from here.

INTERVIEW - Liam Kenny

This is an interview I actually did with Liam Kenny (Bitch Prefect, Peak Twins, a veritable shit tonne of other things) in accordance with the release of his "solo" record, A Kenny For Your Thoughts. Seeing as I cannot get 'Avalanche' and 'I Am The Ocean' off the stereo at the moment - and seeing as this should have been posted in December - I would launch into it now.

SONIC MASALA: The album/project on paper sounds like an inebriated conversation that has somehow sprung into fruition. How did the idea come about? Was it something that once conceived came together pretty quickly, or was there a fully-formed idea from the onset?

LIAM KENNY: Yeah it started as a joke and many would say it remains a joke... Really we just thought it was an interesting and weird thing to do. For a relatively young person to do a kind of Bryan Ferry, Rod Stewart, middle age style covers record, we just thought that'd be funny. And then once you have an idea you don't hate you may as well do it. 

SM: Kate (Reid, of it Records) has said to me (and its official, seeing as she's put it in the newsletter) that she started the label for this express "joke". When did you realise 'you know what, this dumb idea isn't so dumb after all'? Plus I like the idea of Liam Kenny, the middle aged crooner. I'm also a massive fan of Roxy Music - make of that what you will. Was there a thought to go 'full sell-out' mode, wear white suits and hit the RSLs and jazz clubs around Melbourne, somehow transform into a lounge lizard? There are moments, such as Billy Idol's 'Eyes Without A Face', where that warped vision could very well have been a reality.



LK: Yeah I mean ultimately we don't just see it as a joke because it's a lot of effort to go to for a joke. Jack (Farley) and I are proud of the music and we obviously think it works on a 'serious' level... and that's probably why the idea of dressing me up in white suits and kind of creating a character or whatever never really occurred to us... I'm really not into that sort of thing... I'd rather the tongue be kinda always half in the cheek than be devolving into total shtick. And of course we love Roxy Music and Rod Stewart, who doesn't? Well, maybe some people don't. But yeah, the balance between laughter and tears is one that needs to be navigated in life at all times. When doing it in music it's gotta be subtle. Something like Johnny Telefone, that's one of my favourite artists in the country. You could argue that he's playing a character, but there's an honesty to it and a depth of emotion that goes beyond humour or seriousness and ends up being both and neither. It's elusive. That's where you wanna be.

SM: Were there songs then that you originally had in mind but then had to be discarded due to the shtick element? It can be a tightrope after all (which you thankfully command well - it's a great record, something I should have said from the outset ha). Why no Roxy/Rod specific music/language? It's funny you mention Johnny Telefone - because there are artists in Australia that do mine this territory quite well, even if for differing reasons. Donny Benet is another, although he might fall into the shtick category that you are artfully avoiding.

LK: I didn't have anyone in mind, just reacting to the imagined "Kenny For Your Thoughts lounge Variety Hour." Although now it's not sounding so bad........ I don't think there were any songs we decided not to do for that reason. We've still got a really long list actually, we'll probably do a second album. I reckon a good Roxy Music one to do would be 'If There Is Something' from the first album. That thing is an emotional rollercoaster.

SM: Oh man that would be killer. The highs and lows of Kenny and Farley... Speaking of which, as you are pushing AKFYT as a collab between the two of you, can you tell me more about the relationship in the making of the album? I notice that iT Records are still promoting this as AKFYT by Liam Kenny - is that merely a superficial misnomer, putting your name on the label to draw in sales? (I'm not trying to be facetious or anything here either - I am honestly interest in the connection and collaboration between you two, and indeed with iT Records).

LK: It's definitely a collaboration more than it is a solo record, (as) half the ideas are Jack's. But it probably gets referred to as a solo record because that's how it's presented - as a singer doing a covers record. The idea of two people doing a covers record doesn't really have a rich kind of aesthetic history or whatever, it's better for the show business / Las Vegas side of it for it to be billed as a solo record, if that makes sense. But to be honest we really didn't actually think about any of that, we just let Kate get on with it. As for our relationship making it, we made it over maybe two years. We'd work on it pretty rarely. We were living together at the time and Jack had a studio set up in the home. Occasionally we'd just do another one. Me and Jack are very good friends, I have a lot of respect for what he does, he's an exceptionally talented individual. It all happened very comfortably.

SM: Jack has been getting a fair bit more work over the past two years too - did you find that his ideas grew or even diversified each time you came back to the project?

LK: I'm sure I might have noticed if I was looking but to be honest when I'm working with Jack I just expect everything to go perfectly. It's when something goes wrong that I begin to notice and then question him and probe him and make him feel bad about himself. That's the appropriate dynamic.

SM: You have to keep him on his toes! The "conceptual" status of AKFYT fits into the idea of conceptual art that Sol DeWitt upholds - "the idea becomes the machine that makes the art"... Is that how you feel about the eight songs that make up the album?

LK: I dunno man... I mean I don't know if it applies here really... I mean its just a collection of recordings and ideally they'd all work individually... We didn't reject anything because it didn't fit with the idea, if anything the idea expanded to accommodate the different recordings we were making. Frankly though I wouldn't be looking too much into this stuff, I can guarantee none of this ever occurred to us. I'm struggling to articulate any kind of thought process in what we did. We just recorded versions of songs we liked. I'm even uncomfortable with the notion that it has any artistic coherence or worth at all. It's basically just meant to be a party record.



SM: Haha. I didn't mean to make AKFYT out to be any more cerebral or "artful" than it is - maybe I'm over thinking things. I will say that these songs do work individually. I heard 'Avalanche' and thought "shit, why don't we have this kind of dirge-lite dance music in Australia more?" It's easily my favourite on the album. But outside more "lounge-friendly" fare that plays into the joke readily ('Sea Of Love', 'Eyes Without A Face'), then you have a somewhat faithful version on Neil Young's 'I'm The Ocean' (almost an obscure choice, with Pearl Jam as his backing band) and All Saints' 'Never Ever'. Both could stand as karaoke songs.

LK: I reckon there's heaps of stuff in Australia with a similar sound to 'Avalanche' nowadays. It was pretty inspired by groups like Repairs and Nun. It's pretty derivative, from my end anyway. The way I'm singing and playing on all of the songs is all trying to sound like different other things. That's part of the reason there's so many guest musicians too, it's just meant to be a massive pile of thievery and appropriation. I'm usually not trying to sound like other things currently happening when I record music, usually I'm trying to avoid it, but on this I just copied everyone a lot. I reckon it works for the idea of a covers record. If you're not gonna have original songs you may as well do them in an unoriginal way as well. But again I don't think me and Jack ever had this conversation, that was just how I looked at it myself. Jack would obviously argue that he is focused on breaking new ground at absolutely all times. If the album has any 'original' kind of achievements they're all Jack's. Apart from the title, that was all me.

SM: What drew certain guest musicians (Zond's Justin Fuller, Super Wild Horses' Amy Franz, Ela Stiles Twerps' Martin Frawley et al) into the fold then - how did you feel they fit into the AKFYT idea?

LK: We just got heaps of guests because recording with mates is an enjoyable thing to do and we knew it would improve the album and make it less boring. It works with the idea like I said because -  the whole record is about other peoples' work. May as well have more other people on it.

SM: If it's about other people's work - how did you choose the final eight tracks? What was it about these that appealed?

LK: Again there was no real thought process. We just kept doing them until we had a half hour of music. They're songs we like, that was the only criteria.

SM: Fair enough really! Is there much thought in the way of playing these songs live, or is going to remain a release-only endeavour?

LK: Nah no live shows, we were thinking about doing a one off show when the album came out but it didn't really end up happening. I get sick of everything having to be done live, there's always this pressure to play live all the time, especially in Melbourne. It's over the top. Why does there have to be a thousand shows every night? Sometimes a recording should just be a recording. There's enough fuckwits up on stages already.

SM: Haha, there is certainly a flood of music in Melbourne. Do you have a particular favourite from the album?

LK: Yeah I like the Bob Dylan one the most, it's the saddest one.

Grab A Kenny For Your Thoughts here.

Fair Maiden

Ellen Carey has crafted a strongly unique voice under the Fair Maiden pseudonym by taking familiar genre grafts and draping over them a gossamer sense of sparseness, tempered eloquence and eccentricity. The eight tracks are distilled through Carey's voice, ensuring there is a continual sense of the game shifting under your feet without your knowing. 'India' ebbs and flows like Bedroom Suck alum Ela Stiles with a Warpaint bent. This is thrown by the faux Christian folk battlecry of 'Lord' - this irks me a bit if I'm honest. There is an uneasy undertone that adds to the anguish. Then the country bounce of 'Wait For You' flounces in, and the disorientation continues. While the song is warm, amusing, and spot-on genre wise, it stands at odds with what's come before. And so it continues: the melancholic shuffle and groove of 'Poison'; the excellently stark, elegiac mantra of 'Sad Song'; the bluesy attitude (kept to a hush) of 'Blue Moon'; the Bobby Darin rush of 'Darlin'... Fair Maiden often feels like a patchwork, the disparate niches lacking a common through-line. But if you take 'Lord' out of the equation, there is a strange otherworldly dawn AM station vibe here, a curio of night-time driving through more innocent times. The threads - the brooding grooves of 'India', 'Sad Song' and closer 'Lady Of Fortune' juxtaposed by the nostalgic twitches of 'Wait For You', 'Poison' and 'Darlin'. The sound is fleshed out by some creative collaborators (Steph Crase, Liam Kenny, Joel Carey), but it is Ellen’s mesmeric presence that captivates and ensures such eclecticism remains anchored. An intriguing yet rewarding listen.


Grab Fair Maiden here. It's a little belated, but the album launches in Melbourne next Friday November 21 at Dane Certificate's Magic Theatre, supported by Sarah Chadwick, Totally Mild and Moon Dice.

Wireheads Spend 8:19 In Tenth Court

Brisbane scrappers Tenth Court Records have been pumping out some great releases since kicking off this year - with the likes of Thigh Master, Martyr Privates and Dag (plus others yet to mention) putting out tapes. The newest edition is Country Space Junk, the new EP from Adelaide loose cannons Wireheads. Coming off the back of their excellent record The Late Great Wireheads that came out earlier this year (we loved it), here are seven wonky tracks of - well - cowboy space junk. This clip is for opener 'Eight Minutes & 19 Seconds', complete with "space outfits", "space helmets", "space ship", "cowboy drummer" - Trimboli's lyrics about explosive machines and scientific magazines suitably hypnotic and laconic, whilst his vocals are as scratched and unrelenting as ever. It's a great song, a great film clip, a great band.

You can (and should) buy Cowboy Space Junk here.

Video Vacuum - Dean Blunt, A Kenny For Your Thoughts, Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders, Las Tetas

Normally I do a Video Vacuum for the weekday when the working grind is bearing down on us (me). This Sunday I am buried in bed, watching British folk horror movies. And these music videos. Come nestle in beside me.

Dean Blunt a force unto himself - a part of the enigmatic genius of Hype Williams, and just as beguiling on his own. Here is the clip for 'Trident' - half slow motion inner city unease with ambient brew, before the discordant groove finally smashes through. The otherworldly beats and Blunt's voice echoing from the dark depths, equal parts aggression and ominous croon, combine to present a narcoleptic spiral into a disturbed netherworld. Excellent. And for good measure - here is 'Trident Pt 2".

Liam Kenny's solo downward slide A Kenny For Your Thoughts is something else, right? And finally we have some visuals to go with this electronic melting pot of eclectic nihilism. 'Avalanche' is such a great industrial grind pop song (or something), and the smoky dinge, sordid card games and lurid Aussie currency pile is custom-built for Kenny's skewed work. The fade out B&W and the bleeding colour swaps add to the mind melt pyrotechnics. Brilliant.

Jackie Lads (Jack Ladder to you) and his Dreamlanders are bailing Hurtsville and have a podium riding Sharon Van Etten in tow for 'Come On Back This Way'. His is a truly idiosyncratic approach knows no bounds - this is 80s lounge croon, C&W twang brood, and with a slide guitar solo from a man with a glowing hook for a hand - just in time for some good damn coffee. Now where is that backwards talking dwarf when you need him? Brilliant.

And we finish up out on The Plains with Las Tetas. A film clip that plays out like a kitchen-sink realist approach to Gummo, middle class Antipodean style, this video has me transfixed. There isn't anything overly sordid about the whole piece, but (for the second Lynchian parallel) there is something hidden amongst the grass behind the white picket fence here. Especially digging that fat bassline that reverberates over the top of everything, refusing to stay buried (just like that bloody severed ear). Brilliant.

Metronomic Time Keeping

One of Australia's newest and most intriguing labels is it Records, mining the experimental outliers of electronic pop excess (see: White Hex, A Kenny For Your Thoughts). Now they bring to our attention a newer label, Nice:NOISE (curated by it's Kate Reid, Dual Planet and Jenny Branagan from NUN), which aims to go even further in mining the depths of, to quote the crew, "the best in electronic squelches, squeals, analogue hums and various fodder." This could mean a hodgepodge of avant-garde alchemists, but with the first release it feels like there is a educated stab at bringing missed opportunities into the refracted spotlight. Time Keeping 1979-1985 is a compilation from Melbourne minimal wave trio The Metronomes, and it's an album that showcases both a hazed approach to synth malaise, the end result a languid, vaguely sinister unravelling of synthetic minds and spirits. My pick - 'A Living Person'. Pre-order it here.

Old Mates Is What They Is, Ey?

One band that seemed to both be confined by and outstrip the ill-fated "dolewave" genre pigeonhole was South Australia's Old Mate. It may have been in the name; it may have been in the droll drawl that lead Pat Telfer (Bitch Prefect) delivered his sometimes-weary, sometimes-jacked-up lyrics. But just as many of the bands that were tarred with that brush over the last two to three years have moved on by incorporating stranger tics and tricks to their bag, Old Mate's new album It Is What It Is (out through SDZ Records) explodes, its core aesthetic spreading in every direction like the impact of a paintball on a white wall. Don't let the kangaroos boxing on the cover dissuade you from acknowledging that we are entering a whole new world.


'Medicine Man' is a gargantuan jazz blues number - seriously. Sure, it's used and abused and flung in the corner to dry, but the 12 bars, the solos, the howling space, the husky vocals are all present and accounted for. It's a strange opener - it's a strange choice, considering the band's back catalogue - but then nothing should surprise you with these guys (remember the other half of Bitch Prefect is the chameleonic Liam Kenny...). From then on we are taken to one surrealist vignette to the next, in a battered limousine al Carax's bizarrely brilliant Holy Motors film from 2012, with Telfer the ever-present ringmaster of the macabre. 'Requesting Permission' is back on terra firma, a downer jangle with dour vocals a la Brisbane act Dag, with a melancholy that reminds me of the solo work of Neil Young in his early years - really - or that first recipient of the Grant McLennan Fellowship back in 2007, Charles Curse. But this isn't the needle and the damage done. We step up with 'Something', a vocal that sounds like Macka from The Onyas having a go at an acoustic number. It isn't overtly funny though - the tempo, the backing vocals, the 'hey hey hey hey hey heeeey, hey' lending a desperation to proceedings. 'February' is a lament in a netherworld saloon - the Gothic drawl reminiscent of another dormant Aussie act, Nikko - holding that plodding, maudlin beat for its entirety, and drags you down with it.

Then we hit a sonorous contemplation with 'Stressin'', a lysergic percolation of languid rhythms (for some reason Im tracking back to some of those subterranean grooves the Stone Roses often doled out) in what is generally an instrumental track, except for some growled, rolling-around-the-mouth vocals (and yet another video featuring that post-Soviet kid in the nightclub, which really looks like a sequal to the film Orphan); the sax burbles into the fervour underscoring 'Know What He Wants', a fine addition here; 'Him' re-enters the Young orbit, albeit in a warped fashion, offering layered nuance that promises more than it gives, with lyrics that imply never learning from mistakes; and closer 'Truth Boy' evokes another crooked minstrel of the Australian musical landscape, Nathan Roche, although there are no Sydney references in sight, just some Aussie sardonic sneers...

It Is What It Is is a bizarre and inexplicalby attractive record. The title tells it all, thus making this review, or any really, redundant. Old Mate, Telfer, the music - it is what it is. Deal with it - get it here.

Friday Cover Up WORLD EXCLUSIVE - Kenny Has Billy's Idol Without A Face

It's always nice to open Friday with something special - a present before the gift of the weekend to come. And Liam Kenny doesn't want to disappoint so he is pulling out all the stops with the next track from his upcoming A Kenny For Your Thoughts LP (out soon through it Records). The cover he has chosen? None other than Billy Idol's "classic" 'Eyes Without A Face.' The almost six-minute track is a candy-cane kaleidoscope of confection, featuring some lovely echoing backing vocals from Amy Hill (Constant Mongrel, School of Radiant Living). Kenny does well to sound many things at once here - fragile, vulnerable, confident, sultry, ironic, ardent. You could just about see him belting this out at an RSL near you, all sequin jacket and knock-off Ray-Bans worn indoors, a faux-Stevie Wonder waver of the head in the process. But its the instrumentation that pushes this into the stratosphere - offering the emotional heft that Idol could never achieve. There is something about basic drum machine beats with Kenny Loggins groove and a surreal sonic swirl that plucks one's heartstrings, doesn't one think? Yes, one most definitely does.

  

A Kenny For Your Thoughts is Kenny's first solo album, and it promises to be something incredibly unique, on a par with the other outre projects he has on the burn. Jack Farley's production here can be seen as a collaboration of sorts, whilst Kenny is helped out by the cream of Melbourne music's crop - alongside Hill, Martin Frawley (Twerps), Ela Stiles (Songs/Bushwalking), Joel Carey (Peak Twins), Justin Fuller (Zond), Al Montfort (Dick Diver/Total Control/UV Race/Lower Plenty/Eastlink), Pat Telfer (Bitch Prefect), Amy Franz (Super Wild Horses) and Jack Mannix (Circle Pit). Can't bloody wait.

Friday Cover Up - Cohen, Get A Kenny Up Ya

Liam Kenny, he of Bitch Prefect/Peak Twins/The Friendsters et al, is finally going it alone. But as usual, you can't take the guy for granted, for he is soloing on an album of demented covers, brilliantly titled A Kenny For Your Thoughts. First bite is this insane rendition of Leonard Cohen's 'Avalanche' - a sound-squall of siren-strapped guitar swirl, electronic attacks and beat marches that is as relentless in intensity and fever as it is somewhat macabre. It's fantastic, in other words. A Kenny For Your Thoughts will be coming out on the newly minted It Records (White Hex), which was actually started so that this album could come to fruition - I think the gamble's paid off.