Posts Tagged ‘Australia’

Starting out as a recording project between Angus Lord, Claudia Serfaty and Stephanie Hughes, the germ of what would eventually become the Stroppies was formed around a kitchen table in Melbourne’s inner west early 2016. The initial idea was to create open ended music, collaged quickly and haphazardly together on a Tascam 4 track Portastudio that drew on stream of consciousness creativity and a DIY attitude a la Guided By Voices and The Great Unwashed. The desire to move beyond the pre programmed drum patterns available on their Casio Keyboard led to the addition of Rory Heane on drums and a more conventional band dynamic.

In Late 2016, Alex Macfarlane recorded the band in their lounge room direct to 4 track, capturing 7 songs that would become their 2017 self titled cassette tape debut. The songs were bounced back and forth from tape machine to computer to tape machine to computer again. In keeping with the bands initial aesthetic, dubs were laid over a 4 month period incrementally on different devices as members had babies, explored intercontinental love affairs and set up homes together. Since the release of the tape, Adam Hewwit has joined the group on third guitar as they settle down into exploring the new band dynamic and focus on their next recording project.

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The Stroppies is composed of members of many Melbourne and UK bands (Claudia is originally from London) including Dick Diver, Primetime, Possible Humans, White Walls, Boomgates, The Stevens, See/Saw to name a few. They make modest, idiosyncratic pop songs that reward with repeated listening.

Released October 27th, 2017

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Melbourne singer Anna Cordell plays tender yet deceptively complex folk music that belies a
childhood spent her childhood learning the piano, guitar and musical theory. Her voice is rich and warm yet lyrically her music is filled with angst and conflict, a emotional impact heightened by her penchant for the minor key.

Next month will see the Melbourne based artist Anna Cordell release her long awaited and much anticipated debut album “Nobody Knows Us”. Having shared its first two singles, the subtle drama of ‘You’ and the spiritual title track late last year, she now shares the earnest and vexed third, ‘Tried So Hard’. Musically, a delicate underlying drift carries the song’s slow burning dynamic forward tracing both its contemplative subject matter and Cordell’s intimate and emotively inflected vocal as it oscillates between the breathily philosophical to the angelically quizzical. She explains the meaning behind of the track thus;

“It’s (about) asking for love in the face of different ways of seeing the world, a song that grapples with the insecurities so many of us have in understanding our capacity to love and be loved.”

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As far as debut album’s go, Nobody Knows Us comes via rather unconventional means. It’s one where Cordell’s lived experiences and long, albeit fragmented, symbiotic relationship with music palpably shines. Few artists releasing their debut album would have a backstory that involved quitting music for a decade, having and raising five children, and forging out a career and successful boutique label in another artistic endeavour — fashion design. At the same time, few artists could end up making a debut this thematically mature and delicately nuanced with such an un-guardedly honest self awareness.

Listen to ‘Tried so Hard’ will be self released on February 14th. the forthcoming album, ‘Nobody Knows Us’, 

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Three chords and boredom are a powerful concoction. Just ask Australian “shed rock” trio The Chats, just back off a sell-out UK tour on the back of a full-length debut. The sheer explosion of teenage joy at each live date proves they are more than viral-video sensations (yeah, you love “Smoko” – we all do!) but they are the garage-punk heroes we need right now. Revelling in the mundanity of modern teenage life, The Chats write tongue-in-cheek odes to smoke-breaks, masturbation, online issues and not being told what to do. There is complexity in their simplicity with solid, driven rhythms propelling the garage rock riffs. It’s perfect punk party music.

Sometimes just living life, how you want to live, is a revolutionary act. The Chats live that, and even if they don’t, they don’t care! They are readying a punk classic for 2020.

Band Members
Josh Price, Eamon Sandwith, Matt Boggis
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The enchanting spell that Hatchie (aka 26-year-old Australian singer/songwriter Harriette Pilbeam) spins on her stellar dream-pop debut, “Keepsake”, is heady and hard to resist. “Obsessed,” easily the most delicious of ear wormy-y melodies here, gets its host toe tapping along instantly. She sings in earnest of an experience of love so innocent and unselfish: “You are the one who told me to run/Give it a try/Just have a life”—that whatever misgiving the album might harbor is happily forgotten in the whir of jangly guitars and the fuzz-drenched wash of her breathy vocals.

Pilbeam cut her teeth in the Brisbane indie scene, playing bass on other people’s songs. After eight years, she stepped out on her own under the Hatchie moniker with her 2018 EP, “Sugar & Spice”. If she was still unsure of her prowess, a remix of “Sure,” the EP’s standout, by Cocteau Twins’ guitarist Robin Guthrie should have dissipated any doubts.

She has a knack of borrowing from the genre’s best progenitors and current practitioners, but also folds in mainstream pop and emo—musical styles that should be at loggerheads—yet in her capable hands, succeed and soar. Her airy vocals can slide satisfyingly from chesty to high, head tones in one breath; and has a timbre remarkably similar to that of Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries. Often, as in “Without a Blush” and “Keep,“ songs are anchored in evocative lyrics, rooted in that desire to give voice to emotions once suppressed or fleeting moments that need to be savored over and over again.

“Fate keeps trying to find me/I’m not the kind of/Girl to let it define me,” she coos on the shimmering “Not That Kind.” It’s beyond just a pithy observation of a girl caught up in the machinations of romantic love; it functions as battle cry for how she regards her career in music.

Australia’s Hatchie has shared the new video for ‘Stay With Me,’ a brand new track from her debut record ‘Keepsake’ to be released on June 21st via Heavenly Recordings.

‘Stay With Me’ is taken from Hatchie’s debut album ‘Keepsake’ out June 21st on Double Double Whammy, Heavenly Recordings and Ivy League,

Stay With Me” may be her most straightforward dance floor pop moment yet.”
– The Fadar – 

Stay with Me” has the pulse of a Madonna hit from the late ’80s and early ’90s, and fits right in with similarly themed “crying-in-the-club tracks” like the entirety of Lorde’s Melodrama and, of course, Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own”.
– Consequence of Sound –

“It’s a Crying-In-The-Club style sad banger, a real bop that fuses her drifting, hallucinogenic guitar effects with something upbeat.”
– Clash Music – 

“The yearning chorus of ‘Stay With Me,’ punctuated with ethereal stabs of ‘90s synth, is delicious in its desperation and incredibly catchy.”
– Paste Magazine – 

The Melbourne band Twerps had a solid near-decade run as a melancholic, melodic guitar-pop band. Twerps guitarist Julia Macfarlane’s current solo project, J. Macfarlane’s Reality Guest, gets stranger and cuts deeper to the heart and bone. Ta Da’s first track is a mood piece, with ample silence; it’s a signpost of Macfarlane’s experimental approach to pop and it’s a preparatory step, getting us in a proper head-space of caution and anxiety. The songs have the ecstatic optimism of exploration, working through ideas in skeletal form.

Musically think of the Raincoats’ Odyshape, the primitive and visceral sound of early rock guitar, a one-person homegrown Stereolab, melodies you dream about and try to recapture when awake, small Casio keyboards trying to play psych epics on their own.

“Ta Da” is also a sustained exploration of heartbreak, over one dissolved relationship but also the whole of humanity. It’s the sound of someone realizing a relationship has become a dreary series of cold transactions… or realizing life itself might be becoming a dreary series of cold transactions on a planet nearing its end days.

Cheerful music, yes? But it is…and invigorating, exciting, adventurous, emotional. It ends with a gorgeous ballad aiming a direct question at the universe: “Where are you, my love?”

From the album “TA DA”, available though Night School Records on vinyl, CD, and digital https://nightschoolrecords.com/produc…. Originally released through Hobbies Galore.

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From across the world, Melbourne, Australia seems like a city filled with youthful bands breathing new life into old formulas of melodic guitar-pop. Each of the last few years, the number of great bands coming out of Australia, especially the city of Melbourne, has steadily impressed. The Stroppies‘ self-titled 2017 EP was a great rough-around-the-edges work of experimental pop, with an air of Flying Nun Records to it. Their album Whoosh!”is comparatively next-level — anthemic and multi-layered yet still driven by a loose DIY impulse. The voices of Gus Lord and Claudia Serfaty alternate, overlap and complement each other, as the instruments do much the same. Theirs is a comfortable, familiar-in-a-good-way sound that also feels fresh and exciting.

Taken from the debut album, Whoosh, out 1st March 2019.

Cable Ties, photo by Spike Vincent

Melbourne trio Cable Ties have announced their second album, ‘Far Enough’, will be released on March 27th through Merge Records and follows their excellent 2017 debut.

They precede it with the record’s lead single ‘Sandcastles’, debuted via the Danny Cohen-directed visuals below.

“‘Sandcastles’ is a criticism of the idea that an effective activist community can be created by shouting down and casting out anyone who doesn’t abide by the social norms or language of an exclusive community or group,” explains vocalist Jenny McKechnie.

“The song is aimed at a figurative individual who doesn’t have any interest in making positive changes in society or participating in open and productive discussions about political and social issues. Rather, they set themselves up as the gatekeepers of progressive groups by aggressively policing language and immediately casting out anyone who doesn’t abide by the codes of behaviour they have created. This turns purportedly inter-sectional, progressive groups into exclusive clubs only accessible to people with homogeneous opinions, social and economic backgrounds, and ways of speaking.”

Jenny McKechnie, Shauna Boyle, and Nick Brown will release the album “Far Enough,” out March 27th, 2020.

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have dropped two new live albums on their BandCamp. The records, Live in Paris ‘19andLive in Adelaide ‘19, are the first live albums released by the band, with all proceeds going towards Wildlife Victoria and Animals Australia in the wake of the Australian wildfires that nearly a billion animals have died from.

Both records were mixed by frontman Stu Mackenzie.

The recordings draw a majority of their sets from the band’s recent “Fishing For Fishies” and “Infest The Rats Nest” albums (one is psych-pop, one is heavy metal – go figure), with both clocking in at 18 and 19 tracks respectively.

The band is set to kick off their 2020 with a huge North American tour that will see them performing three-hour sets, including two nights at the acclaimed Red Rocks Amphitheater. Not bad for a group of genre schizophrenic rockers.

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Live at L’Olympia, Paris, France, October 14, 2019.

100% OF PROCEEDS GO TO WILDLIFE VICTORIA

released January 10th, 2020

The Band:
Drums: Michael Cavanagh
Guitar / Keys: Cook Craig
Harmonica / Vocals / Keys / Percussion: Ambrose Kenny-Smith
Vocals / Guitar / Keys: Stu Mackenzie
Drums: Eric Moore
Bass: Lucas Harwood
Guitar / Vocals: Joey Walker

Mixed by Stu Mackenzie

King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard have released a third live album to raise funds for Australian wildlife charities.

All proceeds from the new Brussels live album go to WIRES Wildlife Rescue, while proceeds from the Adelaide album go to Animals Australia, and proceeds from the Paris album go to Wildlife Victoria. Bandcamp has also agreed to donate its share of the revenue from the releases to fire relief charities.

This third recording of two Brussels concerts, captured October 8th-9th, 2019 at Ancienne Belgique, joins the two live albums the prolific psych rock group released on January 10th in their first fundraising effort. Those were recordings of their July 12th, 2019 concert at Adelaide’s The Barton Theatre and their October 14th, 2019 show at Paris’ L’Olympia.

Live at Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium, October 8th and 9th 2019

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The Band:

Drums: Michael Cavanagh
Guitar / Keys / Vocals: Cook Craig
Harmonica / Vocals / Keys / Percussion: Ambrose Kenny-Smith
Vocals / Guitar / Keys: Stu Mackenzie
Drums: Eric Moore
Bass: Lucas Harwood
Guitar / Vocals: Joey Walker

Mixed by Stu Mackenzie

Tracks 1-9 recorded on October 8th
Tracks 10-17 recorded on October 9th

King Gizzard Lizard Wizard live albums Adelaide Paris fundraise

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard drop live albums in support of bush fire effort,  the group, highly regarded for their incredible live performances, have yet to grace us with a live album – until now, and they’ve gifted us one, but two! live albums all available on their Bandcamp site.

The band has dropped Live In Adelaide ’19 and Live In Paris ’19to help with raising money for animals affected by bush fire’s, the former of which’s proceeds will go to Animals Australia and the latter to Wildlife Victoria.

East of Melbourne, everything shrouded by smoke… bushfires have been destroying some of my most treasured sacred spots,  An amazing encapsulation of the genius that is King Gizzard. With so much music in their catalouge you never know what to expect from their live sets and it keeps things fresh and invigorating. These guys are truly a treasure and I love that these live album sales are going towards Australia in their time of need.

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Live at The Barton Theatre, Adelaide, Australia, July 12th 2019
released January 10th, 2020
The Band:
Drums: Michael Cavanagh
Guitar / Keys: Cook Craig
Harmonica / Vocals / Keys / Percussion: Ambrose Kenny-Smith
Vocals / Guitar / Keys: Stu Mackenzie
Drums: Eric Moore
Bass: Lucas Harwood
Guitar / Vocals: Joey WalkerAdam Halliwell (Mildlife): Flute on Hot Water and Head On/Pill

Mixed by Stu Mackenzie