Happy New Year! Thought I would do the whole two birds/one stone thing on the first day of 2016 and talk about Vacant Valley and Bruit Direct Disques releases...
Let's start with Bruit. I posted about some previous releases the other week (The Frightening Lights and Wonderfuls), but the current release is the 1st LP from French all-girl outfit Badaboum. It's a hard one to describe without getting your ears dirty and diving right in. It's eerie - high-pitched, elongated, distorted vocals that play with and subvert several languages, mournful B-movie organ, percussion that goes from wind-chime irregularity to tropical punk insistence, deliberately swerving from any given holding pattern. Imagine if Trash Kit took a bunch of sweltering Quaaludes while holed up in an Alpine chalet against their will, listening to the B-52s while listening to a cassette language translator on a Walkman with the batteries dying, with dwindling food and water - and maybe Badaboum would be the result...maybe. The bizarre thing? The shifting veils of madness are hypnotic and ultimately a lot of fun. I'm getting my head around it - you should too.
Australian champions of the damaged sonic underworld, Vacant Valley, are priming for another large, eccentric year, so before we unveil their undertakings in the upcoming months, I thought I would shine a sickly light on three of last year’s releases that deserve further scrutiny (and you can get all three here).
In chronological order, we have Melbourne solo artist Squirrel Pancake (AKA Jen Tait of Go Genre Everything amongst other acts). She has taken a fuzz-fucked approach to askew song structures, giving semblances of convention before blasting it with overzealous strumming, flailing distortion that is shaking under its own dereliction, and capsizing the ship with bolts of guitar shredding in the more literal sense. Every song seems to have been edited to frustrate – the long songs far too long, the shorter tracks dissipating before they really dig in. In some ways this is the charm – a fever dream that traces over and eradicates the skeleton, a double-vision of perceived and actual happenstance. Deconstruction as destruction. ‘Wigs & Ruffles’ sits best with me – this is no-wave meltdown, 80s Gordon/Moore style – but the rest sits precariously in that nether region between art and artifice. It stays on the right track almost by sheer will – Squirrel Pancake maintains an obtuse animosity that manages to perturb, staving off the apathy enough to be something worthwhile, even if it’s in your dreams/nightmares.
Brisbane has had some garrulous member in the VV stable (Per Purpose, Psy Ants, Cured Pink), and Bad Intentions now joins them. Everybody’s Doing It showcases the warping talents of Nicola Morton (Club Sound Witches, ) and Rebecca Hlodich. The cassette is made up of recordings from two performances at the sadly now defunct Real Bad Music space (which Morton co-ran), one of the last bastions of outlier music left in Brisbane, back in 2013, and it is two sides of a sonically fractious coin. ‘She’s Onto It’ is a metallic industrial lullaby, distorted lyrics coming through a distorted Dynamike (so it sounds), astral projection into the very outer limits, that invariably starts to fray and unravel, spluttering to many false stops before sifting the corrosive layers away, leaving low-level murmuring (from the crowd) to slowly replace the space. ‘Don’t Take It Personally’ is even less constructed in some ways (a misnomer as both sets seem to be largely improvised), guitar and drumming so out of sync (not just with each other but what equates to actually playing) that what starts out like two musically-base children strapping into instruments at Allen’s Music for an eighteen minute flurry of hands and feet, making noise because, becomes a little more – almost an epiphany just before it fully forms, a realisation dawning – the Moorooka Mile equivalent of the monolith scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey, perhaps? It’s something that doesn’t hang as well as the first half, but posits that the physical experience would have been far more rewarding.
Finally we have Kompact Development. It seems Adelaide bands don’t like their C’s (another band from this crowd is Kash Konverters). The outlet for Freya Adele (from the aforementioned band as well as Theta and Botox) is both the most abrasive and cohesive of the three releases, an industrial Commodore-64 space battle within the blood. What? ‘Harr’ opens up and stretches for over twenty minutes, spraying a trancelike sonic adhesive over you, captivating in its stuttering remnants of a synthesised kosmiche march, tape-coiled bleeps and Cold-War computer code rolling forth in two-dimensional industrial theatricality. It manages to sound like the beats are the only constant, traversing time, space and variable technologies, warped and manipulated wherever it lands before scurrying through another wormhole to another time/head space. I actually thought this was brilliant – and seeing as the month has been top-loaded with (admittedly excellent) guitar pop for me, such a jolt of decomposing electricity was a pleasant shock. The other three, much more digestible yet still cold and anarchic tracks follow in its stead – ‘Cole’ is a robotic Goth Wave shudder, crudely executed, the vocals called spectrally forth with deadpan ice; ‘Diet’ is a metallic, eye-popping nightmare, a hyper-industrial fever with Pazuzu appearing in blocked, excruciating increments; ‘Nore’ a dot-matrix-and-internet-dial-up annihilation of nerve endings.
I tend to do these about once or twice a year - a catch-up of all the stuff that has come through the letterbox that I haven't been able to post about before now. So, what have we here?
We have been massive fans of the elusive and strange Texans demigods Quttinirpaaq. Yet somehow I missed commenting on their 3rd record, Dead September - although I think I might have been in Australia at the time when it arrived, and on return played it within hearing distance of my girlfriend who promptly stated she wanted to "chop her own hands off and beat herself to death with them" rather than listen anymore. I'm not sure how you could do that - but I think for Quttinirpaaq, that is a compliment. The album itself is white noise ephemera, either bleeding out of the speakers or blasting forth like a sledgehammer - but then static tsunami sometimes shifts to give you a troglodyte psych rock gem like 'Dead Birds'. A lot of people will be indifferent to violently retching - I think it is ominously brilliant.
Sydney's Scattered Order have been around for eons, sampling experimental electronic noise seemingly before anyone knew what it was or could be. Listening to so many weird Australian outlier artists over the past five years, it is clear that 99.9% of them are indebted to these cracked pioneers. So it is great to see them releasing a new record, Some Men Remember Music, later this month. Hypnotic, surreal, mind melting yet also oddly euphoric in an organic sense - Scattered Order have done it again. The outfit launch the record at Bar Open next month with help from SM faves Fraudband and Halt Ever (+ Italianz).
Oakland trio Love Moon brandish a sludged up version of rock and roll that's almost at odds with the majority of their brethren from the Bay Area. Clouded Bliss is like listening to Kyuss, Bleach-era Nirvana, Melvins...and ZZ Top on a mixtape that has melted on the dashboard of a discarded car shell. It's different in many ways, but there is an innate hardened familiarity here (the members have played together in bands before, so are tight despite the sliding distortion on display) that allows it to get its hooks in (still don't know where the name Love Moon fits in though...)
Liverpudlians Cavalier Song are releasing their new LP Blezard through God Unknown Records later this month, in preparation of a support slot with the excellent veterans of psych-stretched sonics Mugstar. I got a copy in the mail not too long ago - and WOW. The way that everything fits together, like a dystopian jigsaw, ratcheted up with piano-wire precision. Motorik suites for the paranoid - there is something almost Ballardian about the sweaty pulse that permeates some of these tracks, like a shadowed imprint of the base desires of man hiding just beneath the brittle, brutal surface. I am making Blezard sound like a punishing listen - it isn't. I have been blindsided to be honest - how such a prescient live-wire of a rock act, both effortlessly eloquent and chaotically kinetic, has escaped my attention until now. Pre-order it here.
Now we get to a couple Fuzz Club releases that have been languishing on the kitchen table for a few months... First up is Singapore Sling from Iceland. Their new album is called Psych Fuck - it is emblazoned on their cover art, thick black lettering on a blood-red background - and it says so much. 'Dive In' opens, a slithering dirge that pulls downwards into infinite despair - there is no fall, it's an inexorable march. 'Let It Roll, Let It Rise' is more psychedelic swamp through a grease-smeared monochrome-and-static lens. 'ÆJL' mines the White Hills, with a primordial Stooges whisper. 'Na Na Now' and 'The Underground' give some levity, taking a pastoral Spiritualised tangent into the ether, and it's needed - 'Try' lurks in the darkness, gnashing its acrid teeth amongst the desiccated bodies; 'Dying Alive' an industrialised cacophony uttered in a cavernous tomb, breaking forth into subterranean weirdness on the other side of the album. There are pauses and spaces here, it isn't as brutal, but it seems much more defeated ('Shithole Town' feels broken and resigned - like early Raveonettes with the gloss torn away). Psych Fuck is a wonderfully dark journey.
Swedish trio The Orange Revival brought out their 2nd LP on Fuzz Club, Futurecent. It is much more recognisably "psych rock" than the Singapore Sling release (that isn't a derogatory comment, for either side), caterwauling across narrow gaps in time and space, always pushing the distortion and sun-blasted wails. Again White Hills comes to mind, as does a more ramshackle, more hard-edged Spacemen 3. For some reason I am digging the more immediate offerings - such as 'Saturation' and 'Speed' - than the drawn-out jams that are usually my draw. But the ponderous yet spiky 'Carolyn' is great - so the long and the short of it is Futurecent is worth the pennies.
In keeping with the heavy guitars, Austria's Doomina released their self-titled album last year, a post-rock behemoth that treads the fine line between gossamer beauty and grinding brutality with finesse and grace. I have always been a fan of post-rock, despite the label offering diminishing returns and heated hate over the years - and this is why I keep faith. I have been putting this on while I get back into my writing - it is neither contemplative nor debilitating, yet shudders with a veracity all its own. Head over to Noise Appeal Records to get a copy, in either orange-black or grey-black marble vinyl (you can get plain purple too, but why would you?)
Peacock Affect is a young dude from Exeter in England who is pretty down about things. At least that is what his new EP, Image 27, seems to suggest. Literate hangdog navel-gazing has been the bread and butter of the UK troubadour for decades now, but this isn't Smiths-lite - these are slow-motion, mist-covered vision, ruminations, a self-made chrysalis of sonic isolation. This is the kind of lo-fi folk for the heavy-hearted that isn't designed to callously sell - it's designed to inspire. Image 27 certainly succeeds there.
I don't know much about Nude Tayne, other than they come from Florida, they are a five-piece, and they have crafted a bizarro math/psych/experimental rock self-titled album. Their songs are all really long too, especially for this type of act. It's like listening to At The Drive In channelling Deerhoof channelling Miles Davis spewing forth Primus (or if you lived in London and ever saw Mayors of Miyazaki - kinda like them, but longer, much longer!). There isn't really any reason to explain it other than that - it is spiked, brazen, offputting, outrageous and energising. Try it - an acquired taste, but one that I enjoyed (and would love to see performed live).
If you get high on GBV supply, then you will dig Graham Repulski. The Philly resident has pumped out a plethora of lo-to-no-fi releases over the years, and his latest LP is Success Racist (he has an EP, High On Mt. Misery, out later this year). Seeing as we released Hot Ones by Brisbane's own Pollardytes Dollar Bar last year, it goes without saying that this kind of barbed basement guitar pop would be right up my alley. Seventeen tracks, imperfectly fractured yet perfectly formed, all in under half an hour. Try 'I Shot An Arrow In The Air' for example - everything sounds out of sync, dissolving, disintegrating - yet a harmonised closure sees the song soar, a barbed pop gem hiding in plain sight. The varying fidelity helps to further augment the likability of these tracks too, rather than detracting from them - these are true crystallised songs, their production an indelible part of the charm. Each listen to Success Racist has me liking it more and more.
Time to whip out the Paris punk with Cheap Riot. Ballroom Portraits is a good album because it delivers louche garage rock with the right amount of swagger and anger - the latter something a lot of bands forget about in this day and age when image is paramount to impact. That said, my favourite track so far has to be 'Night Bus' - mainly because I catch a lot of them so it holds a degree of prescience - and the slower 'The Next Election'.
Bruit Direct Disques have distributed some great records over the past twelve or so months, including one of our favourites of 2015, Kitchens Floor's Battle Of Brisbane. The Frightening Lights are a Melbourne-based two-piece, with Elizabeth Downey's breathy vocals floating over Dan Hawkins' at times obtuse instrumentation. Downey's fascination with confessions and European folktales combine to create a slightly disturbing, almost post-apocalyptic literate fairytale. Sparse yet cluttered with eccentricities, it seems discombobulated yet it's anchored by the gauzy, smoky tendrils of the sonic world they have created. The Frightening Lights is a strange one, but incredibly beguiling.
Also from Bruit Direct and from Brisbane is SM faves Wonderfuls. No one I know does damaged despair and nascent self-flagellation like Bobby Vag, and on Only Shadows Now his downer confessionals float across the abyss in an almost ethereal manner - making this both a spiritual journey and a testament to tragedy and its tyranny on the soul. You cannot help but feel yourself drowning in the desolation, but in awe at the flayed emotions laid bare. Haunting, devastating, utterly brilliant.
The last two releases are cassettes from Inner Islands, the label that actively encourages aural euphoria and ecstasy through manipulated noise - an organic, natural synthesis. The first is Clouding Indefinitely by Portland's Ant'lrd. Rushing water, soaring sonorous synth, a distinct earthen feeling, being caught in the wilderness, enveloped by it, losing yourself in wild epiphany. 'Slow Hood' grinds away at you though - it's a drone, yet an approachable one, a distortion clearly guitar oriented (hence part of the warmth) but also somehow both aggressive and inviting. I don't know how to explain it, other than I wish it went forever, literally forever.
Selaroda is from Oakland. His release, Viaje a través de sonidos transportative (Spanish for 'Transportative Journey Through Sounds') is more of an experimental piece - starting with a more direct dronal piece before a simple drum commands 'mgeni ngoma safari mduara chama', with layered voices filling the background; plaintive acoustic guitar flourishes, oscillating sonic whirrs, piano, a dulcimer... Different tones, pace, drawn out notes to open up new worlds. An intriguing listen to end off on. The mailbox is empty - let the year begin.
