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.

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.

EXEKUTIVE DUB

A deliberately sparse and haunting siren call of leather steampunk caught in the dub excess of William Gibson's less lucid moments, Melbourne nightcrawlers Exek really have hit a nerve with their new release. The ex-Slug Guts and Martyr Privates vehicle is the closest thing yet to a Melbourne band actually living on the outer regions of all parallel universes. 'A Hedonist' feels like Ennio Morricone on a space-age Rastafarian bent, with instruments frayed and blasted from time and neglect. The experimentation with instruments (glockenspiel, saxophone, violin, triangle, glasses) to create an ephemeral bedrock for Adrian Wolski's disembodied warbles creates a languid wasteland with which the songs float, in a green room of wavering consciousness and emotions. It's a brooding beast of a release, but Exek proves there is life on other much, much more distant planets than this one.


Buy Exek from TIME /\ SPACE Record Co. here. They have played shows recently with the likes of Cobwebbs and White Walls, but have gone underground for a while. In between the lines and minds. But stay intuned...

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

Interview - Keep On Dancins

2013 has been an interesting year for Keep On Dancin’s. The four-piece came into the year having released a warmly received debut album The End Of Everything and with an extensive playing schedule under their belt. Supports for the likes of Velociraptor and Dan Kelly were becoming commonplace. But the band deliberately fell off the radar, a belated cassette release Black Lassie the only hint that the band were still in action.

“For a good year now we’ve really reined things in,” drummer Alex Dunlop explains. “Jacinta (Walker) and Tegan (Rickard) wanted to focus on Tiny Migrants, and Yuri (Johnson) had Teen Sensations, and we all just needed a rest from it all. We were playing so often – it never approached the level of burnout, but we overexposed ourselves a bit. Then after that time we got back in the saddle and started playing a couple shows, and it felt right to be moving forward again.”

The main focus for the band is the upcoming release of sophomore record Hunter, and the process has seen them approach the art of music in a more calculated manner.  

“We didn’t realise how many people liked (The End Of Everything) until after we had a break, and it changed the way we looked at things,” Dunlop stresses. “We didn’t really roll it out properly; we just played and played and sold bits at shows. We have tried to be cleverer with it, the whole experience. Before we played more like a lot of bands do, that is to play until we drop without thinking about what we were doing. This time we are weighing up what to do with film clips, we’ve planned the single (Grey Ghost), we’re doing interviews; we are picking and choosing what and when we play… Before we were playing every little dive because we said yes to everything, and it didn’t do anything for us.”

This new approach obviously bled into the writing and recording of Hunter also. “We recorded with Sean Cook, and we took things really slow; we spent a whole week on one song,” Dunlop emphasises. “We may have spent more money, but it also allowed us to take our time with it, adding bits here and there as they presented themselves to us. Because of that it feels really layered; there are drum loops involved, it’s quite metronomic, so it’s obviously very different to what has come before.”

Hunter won’t hit our ears until 2014, but the band are prepping us with the launch of two tracks from it, Grey Ghost and Baby, the second track of which has its own film clip which follows the four-piece as they wander around a day at the Ekka. The video was put together by Dunlop himself, something he admits was a great experience.

“We got a friend to bring his Handicam and follow us around the Ekka, just having some fun, feeding animals, playing games, going on rides and stuff. I got it together and chopped it all up into something. There was no song designed for it though, because there was no lip syncing or anything, so I just picked Baby because it had a dreamy quality to the whole experience. But we had decided that Grey Ghost should be the single a while ago, but wanted to show both off.”

Keep On Dancins launch the single/s tomorrow night at Black Bear Lodge, with Roku Music and Martyr Privates in able support.

Happyfest Playlist

I haven't spoken much about Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ other than in passing, but suffice to say it is the only way to hear decent music on this side of the world on the radio (of course you could stream WFMU, but I like my wireless). Anyway, they have a mega old transmitter of death, it's on its last legs, and the station has been raising funds (aiming for around $30 000) to replace it. Good news is they have almost done it. Better news, you can help get em over the line by going to a cool boutique festival they are putting on this Saturday, at the last show at the sadly defunct(ing) Woodland. The festival's called Happyfest, and the lineup is pretty radtacular. As far as outside bands go we have Lost Animal (Melb), Kirin J Callinan (Syd) and Ghastly Spats (Syd), with the local contingent led by Blank Realm, Feathers, Dreamtime, Martyr Privates, Nite Fields, Per Purpose, Cannon, Outerwaves, The M-Humm...Jesus tittyfucking! For a palty $20 you can be there, have the time of your life, see off Woodland in style, and help save your local musical taskmasters. Win-win, kids. And if THAT doesn't win you over, check out this lil playlist. See you there punks.

Blank Realm - Full Moon Door
Feathers - Wild Horse Mountain
Dreamtime - Robe
Nite Fields - Come Down

Say Bon Voyage To Neon Mountain

The 2011 Brisbane Festival is the best one yet, bringing together all creative muses to create a multimedia extravaganza right across the city. The music contingent is quite high too, with a variety of eclectic artists frequenting the Spiegeltent in King George Square over the next fortnight (such as Syl Johnson and Gareth Liddiard...).

Another event that is sure to take the locals by storm is Neon Mountain. The two events showcase some of Australia's underground musical talent. The first, curated by Andrew Tuttle (Anonymeye, Micronations and all round good guy), is on this Saturday (17 September) and focuses on audio projects such as DOT.AY and Qua. This will be an incredible, immersive show - get your tickets here.

However the second Neon Mountain show is more conducive to Sonic Masala circles. Curated by Dan Lewis of boutique record label Bon Voyage Records, it focuses on underground rock. Headlining is Sydney slacker noise outfit and SM favourite Naked On The Vague, and will be supported by Melbourne witch-house mystery Horse MacGyver; Brisbane’s own dark psych circle, Secret Birds; and local noise-pop outfit Martyr Privates. Projections on the night come from visuals duo syncingboat. This one will be held on Saturday September 24 (the final night of Brisbane Festival). Get your tix here. Both events are held in the Metro Arts carpark, so weather permitting, it will be an unforgettable series of shows.

The event precedes what is set to be an exciting end to the year for Bon Voyage, with vinyl releases forthcoming from Brisbane’s psych pop girl-group Feathers, Martyr Privates, and St Etienne les Orgues no-wave duo Looks Like Miaou. Circulating on vinyl and tape media, as well as digitally, Bon Voyage specialises in short-run limited editions, taking in psychedelia, lo-fi, noise, avant-pop from Australia and across the sea.