Hits From The Box #76 - Graduation Shenanigans

Another year, another Schoolies Week. Yep, the Year 12s have fled the castle that has been their education prison for the large part of their prepubescent lives, and run rampant in the epitome of degradation and sleaze excess - The Gold Coast. I remember when I went to Schoolies - a friend of mine was beaten up for his shoes (he probably deserved it), I got a lift home one night with a Dominos Pizza delivery dude, I had Clayton's sex in an elevator, drank a bottle of Midori because that was a cool thing to do, saw Jebediah and a whole bunch of other crap that is embarrassing to acknowledge. I did play a mean round of mini golf, discovered my love of copious amounts of beer and copped a feel from a girl I always deemed was above my station, so it wasn't all bad. Teenage years, eh? As it will be for the thousands of pulsating bags of hormones that are running around Cavill Ave this week. Eccies, bikies, neon lights and Ripley's Believe It Or Not - Jesus, just drop a bomb on the place, let the 2014 seniors start afresh....

I imagine there will be a bunch of blokes with faux barrel chests in their singlets loving their status as hardcore drinking legends this week. Drunk Tigers. That also happens to be the name of this DC band, whose self titled EP (out on cassette through Funny/Not Funny) is a blast of rollicking power chords and enough Replacements vibes to melt asphalt. Listen to 'Taillights' alone and you will want to throw the flannel shirt on and throw a cup of beer in the air. Music that was made for drunken ranting and spilt drinks. Serendipity abounds - I wrote about Invisible Hand the other day, and now the two bands are on the same bill tonight in New York's Baby's All Right venue. If you're in Brooklyn tonight, head down.

We were at Nathan's place on Sunday, listening to a hell of a lot of music submissions, and we almost overlooked 'Lift Up', the single from Kentucky spaced warblers Street Gnar's new EP Shrine. Last night I was at my mate Jim's place, listening to records and playing about, a fair few beers in, and we had a long discussion on how certain chords or sounds will be replicated ad nauseum, because they are destined to be together, to be played in that order, to sequence together. The chorus here does that for me. The slightly shonky song with its melted beach whimsy takes on a different sheen when that chorus kicks in. Heartfelt yacht rock by heartfelt idiot savants. This song is meant to be - a worldwide hit in a parallel universe. I really dig this. You can buy Shrine (out through Atelier Ciseaux) here. The guys have just come off a mini tour where they've played alongside the likes of Blues Control, US Girls, Alex Calder and Black Dice - expect to hear more of this brilliance in the near future.

Dude York are a trio outta Seattle (via Walla Walla, Washington - I feel it's necessary to say that, just because I come from Australia, the kind of place that has plenty of similar named towns) that are prepping to launch their debut album Dehumanize in January 2014. 'Cannibal' is the first acidic listen from it - a slice of agonised energy and feverish intensity - the brain fizzes before it fails, faculties become redundant, all that is left is the hunger. That bassline around the minute mark is like the Pied Piper, an inherent tug at the heartstrings, drawing your lifeless body to the cliff's edge. Can't wait to hear what else is in store here.

Minneapolis quartet Brilliant Beast are calling Where Do You Want their debut, even though it's their third release since 2010. Maybe because the evolution has finally kicked off in earnest - the quartet have grown into their skin, leaving behind the tentative folk roots and launching forth with a rollicking, distorted aesthetic that seems far more comfortable. 'A Child On Fire' starts off feeling a little shoegaze-lite, but the nature of this beast (pun intended) is far more overt and restless, whilst 'Nepotism Shakes' is a beauty of a slow-burner that echoes through the bones - it's no wonder why the guys at Guilt Ridden Pop have snapped them up.

Africantape are always putting out interesting stuff - one band they have championed for ages has been Swiss rock band Ventura, and current 7" Ananasses is a killer. I feel like I'm listening to a woodchipper mix of Bob Log III, Primus, The Melvins and the Devil. The B-side here is the first song played backwards - and it's fucking amazing. You can buy the Ananasses 7" here.

And let's come back home for the finishing band, The Strange. The Melbourne garage outfit have this double A-side out, Sugar Boy/Cherry Pop, and it's pretty tasty. I feel they are still growing into their aesthetic, but here's as good a place to start as any, right?


Happy Saturday everyone!

Friday Cover Up - Bela Lugosi's Bite Is Bigger Than Your Dog

I wanted to finish off the week with a Blondie cover. I have seen two movies this week that included Debbie Harry - the John Carpenter/Tobe Hooper Creepshow wannabe Body Parts (where she plays this camp sexual alien nurse - very Rocky Horror really...) and in a disappointing art-themed serial killer movie with Willem Dafoe, Anamorph, where she plays a disgruntled neighbour of Defoe's and says two lines in one throwaway scene. It's that kind of peripheral "Six Degrees" nonsense that I always get a kick out of...

But then I heard this. Atlanta's Dog Bite released LA, a four-track EP blaze through Carpark Records a month or so ago, and I was planning on writing about it - but then I heard 'Bela Lugosi's Dead', their cover of the Bauhaus classic, and it stopped me in my tracks. Not because it is particularly innovative or changes the form of the song itself - no, their 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' changes the form of Dog Bite. Rather than mold the song into their aesthetic, the four-piece have allowed themselves to be corrupted, to be fused with the Goth kings' DNA, and the result is a raw, broiling slowburn that is arresting in its darkness. Just so you understand what I mean, here is LA...


And here is the cover track...


I really like what has happened here, and I sincerely hope this bleeds into the band's future releases too. We won't have long to find out either - their sophomore LP Tranquilizers is due out in January 2014.

Have a good weekend people!

Scratching ones Big Itch

The Big Itch is a club night in Dublin Ireland that heralds simple music for simple people. It's a myth however, that any music is simple. To make noise worth listening to (even for a one minute ten seconds) is some kind of accomplishment. This new 7" celebrating the Big Itch miscreants is both simple and worthwhile - especially the #1s on side A. And yeah, let's face it, the #1s will probably never have a number one, but hey, who will? And what does it matter where you land up? If I was listening to this bunch of bands in Dublin and knew they owned a majestic Labrador, I'd be happy.

The whole shebang is out now through Bachelor Records.

And if you're chasing some more #1s, then get on to this from Art for Blind (give them a look). Unfortunately it's already sold out though, so you cannae get on wax for ye'self.

Crying Chips Never Gets Old

I'm in the process of making an 8-bit oriented mega post (any suggestions of great chiptune albums of 2013, throw us a line), and it has all come about because of 'Bodega Run', the third track from NY trio Crying's EP Get Olde. This is saccharine noise pop run rampant, but with the Game Boy twist - and holy shit is it awesome. When that mosquito-like whine kicks off the album, it could be a stab in the ear, but as soon as the guitars and drums kick in, and Elaiza Santos' vocals float effortlessly into the mix (This band is boring me...), and it all makes seven levels of sense. The chiptune effects are more prevalent on other tracks, such as the miasma of blips and squelches that infuse minute-shy intro 'Open' or the RPG-sweet 'Vacation', but nothing can beat the innate joy that bursts forth from 'Bodega Run'. Get Olde is the kind of upbeat lightweight sugar-punk shtick that I don't get into very often, but that Game boy aesthetic here lends everything a new lease on life (especially as it is this element that above everything else feels intuitive; the natural instruments are tight, yet perfunctory in function - it feels harsh seeing as 2/3 of the band are from the great LVL UP, but there you have it).

Seriously though, Get Olde is worth getting just for 'Bodega Run'. Out through Double Double Whammy - give me some of them dank Doritos and jalapeno Cheeto-ooo-ooos...

See You On The Beach Tonight

(poster by Matt Deasy)

Really looking forward to this one. Brave the wet to see something truly special at the Beetle Bar tonight as Melbourne-via-San Franciscan Michael Beach officially launches second LP Golden Theft in Brisbane. It's one of my favourite albums of the year hands down; he is a super rad guy; the supports (Tape/Off, Tiny Migrants, Soda Eaves) are all incrediballs; cheap sangria; $5 schooners (it's Carlton Draught, but there are better beers on offer like Coopers Pale Ale too). All for a tenner, and Soda Eaves kicks off at 8pm. Come!!!!!

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.

The Life, Death, And Sort Of Life Of The Longdrone Flowers

I have been meaning to write about northern England's warped weirdos The Longdrone Flowers for a few months (this is becoming a lame excuse, I know...). I've been a big fan of their Cesare Runs Away EP since it came out in June, what with its Eastern wooze, its stoned organ, its out-of-tune tunefulness, the weird nether region they straddle whereby you can never quite tell if their psych squalls are shtick or legit - its dark, raucous, and seductive, regardless of whether its tongue is jammed in you cheek or steadfastly ensconced in its own.


Then last month the UK dark wanderers unleashed another EP, She's Stranglehold Too. Doing away with the monikers such as Neurotic Wreck and Dirty Kraut, things are certainly more seriously understandable - 'Quiet' is anything but, a cacophonous no-wave grind that blows away all efforts before it; 'Wildfire & the Non Story' is like the Kinks tuning down and playing at being a lysergic Velvet Underground; 'My Sister, Drusilla' brings it all to a suitable chaotic close, starting off like an atonal guitar pop dirge before exploding/imploding/exploding/imploding, the expulsion of anger and anguish always in constant fermentation, never fully released until the last note dissipates. Brutal, and vital.



Fast forward to the present day, though, and the band are no more, burnt to the ground from fission, friction, and base predilections. But as is often the way with these things, this isnt the end of the story, and the main duo Rick and Dan have formed the somewhat aptly titled The Neropolis Felines. Stay tuned...

Rebirth Of A Dead Meadow

I'm a massive fan of psychedelic rock music of all kinds, but especially the heavier, dirgier kind. I think the genesis of this may have come with discovering Led Zeppelin with my dad (who, whilst not a musical aficionado, did also introduce me to Johnny Cash, Australian Crawl, The Boss and 'Brothers In Arms' era Dire Straits, which I still have a soft spot for). The first album I can recall truly grabbing me in this mould though was The Warlocks' Rise & Fall, which was playing at the old Rockinghorse Records store PA back in 2002 (and a record very close to my heart). I've been a hapless acolyte ever since...

I haven't had the pleasure of bathing in the cavernous dirge of Jason Simon and his Dead Meadow brethren as yet - but again I have a sort of origin story for these guys too. Before wholesale piracy was passe, I remember being stuck out in the middle of nowhere in 2003 (Roma, Queensland to be exact) on my first stationed education position with nothing to do, so I delved into Amazon's then music website, CDNow. I discovered some pretty amazing things that year through that thing (Neutral Milk Hotel, Explosions In The Sky, Mono, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead), one of them also being Dead Meadow's third LP Shivering Kings & Others. From there it was The Black Angels, Black Mountain - further down the spiral I would go.

As the years have gone by I have drifted somewhat from the "lightening" of Dead Meadow's aesthetic - despite the excellence of Feathers (2005), 2008's Old Growth didn't grab me at all, whilst I only gave 2010's Three Kings a cursory once-over. I have to say though that new album Warble Womb is a true return to form (some people will strenuously argue that the form never dissipated - whatever). Certainly more sonorous and less kosmiche than compatriots Wooden Shjips, Dead Meadow does have the same propensity for creating a cyclical, familiar groove that permeates their records - Warble Womb is no exception. But when you have the lackadaisical, off-kilter wooze of a track like 'Mr Chesty' or a roiling magma purge like 'This Song Is Over', you can't deny the trio's inimitable power. And this might be a bit of cribbing (who doesn't in this genre?), but 'I'm Cured' sounds like the sun-blasted paisley malaise of The Warlocks - full circle.

They aren't mellowing out so much as becoming one with their mystical powers, and Warble Womb may be the moment that I fuse with them. They are still masters of the domain, after all...

Warble Womb is out through their Xemu Records label - I have no idea where to get it. Hassle them I guess? But never fear. Stream the entire record here.

2010's Three Best Things...by Civil Civic

Civil Civic just do their thing, which is amazingly energetic and dancey instrumental rock. They dont go much for publicity and such, liking to keep it short and sweet and getting the music to do the talking. So when I asked the duo to submit a list for the end of 2010, what they produced was pure CC - punchy, vibrant, funny.

BEST LIVE SHOW 2010: Iggy Pop @ Hammersmith Apollo
"He stage dived on me. He felt like a hot wet eel."

BEST MEAL 2010: RASA - Church St, Stoke Newington

BEST RECORD 2010:


Check out their ace blog too.

Video Vacuum - Ty Segall, Harmony, Best Friends, Shearwater doing Xiu Xiu

Its coming to the end of the year. I know, we still have six or so weeks left - but that will be gone before you know it. 2013 has been such a topsy-turvy year on Planet Masala too, to the point where we got to see The Nation Blue play TWICE without seeing sister group Harmony at all, Ty Segall has barely graced these hallowed halls, and Shearwater, rather than developing a new album, have released an LP of covers of bands they have toured with which I'm a big fan of (still want them to hurry up and come here though). Then there is a bunch of dudes having a good time in the Midlands, bizarrely in the sunshine. So much weirdness to overcome, to embrace, to love...that's 2013 for ya.



It has been a while since irrepressible hellhound Ty Segall has blasted onto these pages - there was one stage where reincorporating the blog to Segall Masala seemed appropriate. I haven't written about his latest album Sleeper all that much - not because it isn't good, it's excellent, but because so many others said it better already - and new outfit Fuzz is something I aim to rectify in the upcoming days. SO let's ease back in with 'The Man Man', a track off Sleeper that showcases the shift in gears Segall had here, and perfectly encapsulates the slowburn tension inherent in the song. The video



Another act steeped in creating tension, albeit one of working class desperation and Gothic backwater gnashing of teeth, Harmony have released this black-&-white plaintive to promote single 'Diminishing Returns' (the 7" comes out on Poison City Records on Friday). The band and choir are submerged in subterranean, inky shadows, dressed in black (Tom is ALWAYS dressed in black anyway, although this shirt looks decidedly devoid of wellworn holes) and wracked with emotion. There isn't a band like them, and 'Diminished Returns' is anything but.



We all need best friends, even if they give us nosebleeds every once in a while. Sheffield's laconic punks Best Friends presumably get the claret flowing from sun-bleached moments of street cricket, beer swilling and goofing around. Nothing wrong with that, I'm sure you'll agree. 'Nosebleeds' is the B-side to their Happy Anniversary 7", which you can buy here.


Let's finish off with some spaced-out shorn water from the valley below. Shearwater's covers record Fellow Travelers is almost upon us, and their Xiu Xiu spin 'I Luv The Valley, Oh!' is rife for the plucking. Videotronics here include space desert isolation, bulbous pustules, and a bizarrely doll-like astronaut. We're entering uncharted waters...

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

Bludgeoning The Bunny

Improv bands can be ugly beasts - there is only so much noodling "jams" one can take before murderous rampages are the only acceptable retaliation. Then there is Spirit Bunny, a relatively new Brisbane band born out of the marvelously maladroit meanderings of FEET TEETH (supported here by Ghost Notes/Tiny Spiders skinsman Cam Smith). Their take on their shtick? "Grit Hop - Phat beats and twee melodies through a haze of circuit bent Casio noise and C64 synth." It's an apt description for what is an incredible melange of squelched cross-pollination hip-hop instrumentation, a Frankenstein's monster of noise, melody and insidious beats. Listen to 'Gold & Brown' - awesomeness, until the breakdown in the final thirty seconds scares the shit out of you...

Caught Outside In The Grey Rain

Hot on the heels of the excellent The World Is Well Lost, the shoegaze gem from Tel Aviv legends Vaadat Charigim, comes another stellar Israeli band with a guitar-heavy, melody-laden elegance. Afor Gashum (Hebrew for grey rain) released the exultant album From The Inside at the beginning of the year, but it deserves some serious attention, not in the least from the emotive core of Michal Sapir's songs which share some of the opaque eloquence of likeminded outsiders Polvo. The marriage of fragility and grace with isolated space and the occasional crushing feedback blows is a tumultuous one, swinging from maudlin ('Likuy Yare'ach'), shoegaze malaise ('Adama Mugenet') and bludgeoning beauty ('Aeroplane') - and on 'Hypnotoxic', all three nestle together in deafening glory.

From The Inside is being re-released next week through UK label Land Speed Records - and visiting these shores couldn't come sooner for this guy, right here. It's a stunning album that came from left of field, buried itself into my olfactories, and refuses to let go. You can also read Sapir's excellent blog Loose Grains of Sonic Dust here.

Stroke The Illegal Squirrel With Invisible Hands

Haha, lewd innuendo, always gets the Interwebz a-goin...

Charlottesville pop transgressives Invisible Hand released a cool little cassette a little while back called Squirrel Jail on Funny/Not Funny Records, and I've heard naught about it. A crying shame, because it is 19 songs - that's right, 19 songs - of awesome sonic flavours. What's more, it isn't an album but a large collection of demos and outtakes, on a cassette, so there is no reason why this should be as great as it is. Instead of lo-fi farts leaking out from the bottom of the funeral pyre of a thousand sacrificed vanity projects, we have infectious hooks ('Eating Out'), raucous energy that echoes of the better side of British paisley rock from the 60s on steroids ('Lowbaude'), warped Beatles-baiting psych melts ('Squatters Rights'), broken GBV spits ('Wounded Eels') and languid space-outs performed in aeronautical hangars ('Everything's Fair Game'). Brandon Flowers wishes he had written 'LIES LIES LIES'; Nathan Williams can't muster the warmth of 'Smile Forever' from a million smouldering alien bongs; and closer 'A Song Called Krautrock' has the gall to run almost eight minutes, play loosely with more 60s paraphernalia (this time pastoral psych pop) and be worth every second of the beautifully elongated outro. Stop it, Invisible Hand - it feels too good to be right - but how can this be wrong?

You can still buy physical copies of Squirrel Jail for $4USD here - far too generous of you!

Faux Discx Comp Tape

Here's a cool little compilation from Faux Discx. It includes tracks from Cold Pumas, Sauna Youth, Teardrop Factory and heaps of other ace UK and Canadian acts. Let it fuel the countdown to a debaucherous weekend.

Friday's Cover Up - Super Chunky Misfits In Heat

It's a week late for Halloween specials, but The Simpsons air their Treehouse of Horrors whenever the hell they want, so why can't I?  Especially when it's as good as this Superchunk cover of the Misfits' 'Children In Heat'. Its thrashy, trashy and so goddamn sweet. Listening to the Misfits in a dingy Goth bar in Collingwood is one thing; hearing Chapel Hill's finest belt it out is something else again - but on a par. Superchunk are playing The Tivoli next Tuesday alongside the inimitable Neutral Milk Hotel - colour me all kinds of excited.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Yeesh!

I wrote about Yeesh first back in 2010 when listening to their debut EP Little Stabs Of Happiness. The Chicago trio have stepped a little away from the schizophrenic angularity-Sparta mold that I saw them in back then, and the new self-titled EP sees them take darker turns, tempering their absurdist lyrical predilections for more forward-running fare. Not that it's fully disappeared if 'Japanese Jabberwocky' is anything to go by... It's out now on cassette on Already Dead Tapes & Records.

Sonic Masala Presents - Perfume Garden/These Guy - TONIGHT

Sonic Masala holds its fourth Campfire Tales solo session at The End tonight at 8pm. Tonight's collaborators are Perfume Garden (Errol from Stress Waves) and These Guy (Joe, formerly from Tabletop Lamps). Perfume Garden has been crafting some insidious looping dark-pop that Im keen to see in the public realm, whilst These Guy's electronic genre leaps are inventive slices of eclecticism (as can be witnessed on his reworking of one of Andrew Tuttle's songs from his Brisbane Rezoned remix album). Come.

Beloved New Gods In The Caravan Park

One of my favourite all-time novels is Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I only read it for the first time last year (thanks A-Rey). The idea of the gods of ancient civilisations being brought to America, only to be lost as their followers turned away from them and focused on other democratic forms such as money, media and celebrity - and this devotion has in turn created new gods. It's an incredibly evocative alternate world that Gaiman creates (anyone interested in his fantasy creations, especially The Sandman brace of comics, will know what to expect) and I implore anyone and everyone to read it.

New Gods has formed out of the ashes of Little Red (remember them? no?) with other members from Eagle & the Worm and the Ground Components, and the new guise has galvanised their efforts tenfold. The debut album Beloved (which you can download for free) contains enough references to older rock gods of the 90s before turning their backs on them to focus on other, as-yet-unnameable entities, yet coalescing it all around base Australian experiences and emotions. It has this discombobulating effect where the songs languish in dappled light and half-shadows, yet a warmth emanates that makes them imminently entrancing.  Dom Byrne's esoteric-yet-obtuse lyricism accentuates this effusive realm that the instrumentation builds, yet it is all in the epic central song 'Caravan Park' that we see the band effectively take all they know dear from the old gods - the quiet/loud dynamism, heartfelt aesthetics, ruminative slacker pop - and throw it into a opaque blender, pouring the contents all over working-class suburbia and the outer fringe. The Gothic detritus that infiltrates this track - essentially a spotlight on the aimless, destructive, ultimately inescapable ennui of a lost youth in the titular park - is so palpable that it plays out like a darkly skewed reinterpretation of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. The Caravan Park of Bogan Delights, if you will. It's an incredible song (with a nice rhyming couplet with Fruity Lexia, "heaven in a cask"), the beacon on what is a surprisingly hypnotic album with the power to capture the senses. Like the "true" gods, then.

You can buy Beloved here, and you can stream/download it with a interactive photographic slideshow here.

Peaking through double-vision

There is something here amongst all this squelch. Once when I was having a bad time I listened to a lot of Roy Orbinson, BRMC and The Smiths. 'Well done, great creative choices, you really went out on a limb there, didn't you?' I hear you say... Well, fuck you, I didn't have time to go searching far and wide while I was balling my eyes out wondering why nobody thought about me before they went off and did what they did. But, man, I wish I had've had this then. At least then I would have been able to carry off besieged Romeo with a little more aplomb.

Peak Twins new self-titled album oozes cool - slowly. It comes from a big empty room next door where there are people who have 'been there too, man'. They just handled it way better than you did.



You can nuzzle up to your very own copy here. Out now through the infallible Bedroom Suck.

Brutally Populating Narrow Lands

Fresh out of the hellwaters that fork from the fiery rivers of Tenzenmen Records and Octopus Pi comes Sydney band Narrow Lands' Popular Music That Will Live Forever. It may surprise some to introduce the four-piece as such, seeing as their self-titled EP, whilst a decidedly dark affair, was a moody crawler with whiffs of post-punk inebriation; this record is much more bottom-end brutality. Heaviness pervades, the feedback much more condensed and foreboding, and whilst the tongue-in-check acerbic barbs still litter the record, this is more than cajoling the masses into the pit - this is lunging out of the shadows with a sledgehammer stuff. I mean, listen to the doom dirge that opens up awesomely-titled first track 'Triple J Drive Time Hit' - it's disturbing in all the right ways, ratcheting up the tension in a way that listeners instinctively know must burst in an avalanche of throat-tearing vitriol. It's electrifying stuff - you can see why they have shared stages with Yes I'm Leaving, for example - and a welcome addition to the burgeoning pantheons of modern Australian noise rock gems.

You can pre-order Popular Music That Will Live Forever here - it doesn't come out until Nov 20 - hopefully Sonic Masala or someone equally as rad can bring these guys kicking and screaming into the Queensland sunlight soon.