Maple Glider is the project of Lismore-born, Melbourne-based songwriter Tori Zietsch, a brand new face on the scene. She’s also a brand new signing to Pieater, the Melbourne record label home to Big Scary, #1 Dads, Airling, and more.
Zietsch originally rubbed shoulders with the label during their Pie School initiative, where she entered a winning demo and ended up recording a track with label head Tom Iansek and the crew. The single unfortunately never saw the light of day – it was recorded under a two-piece band Zietsch was in at the time which has since folded. The music I create as Maple Glider exists because I write to make sense of my experience, to learn, and because to me, it has always felt like my easiest form of communication. However, it wasn’t to be the end of her story. In 2019 Lansek was enlisted once again to produce and record a series of songs Zietsch had written for her solo project, Maple Glider. “As Tradition” was the first song to be released from that collection of tunes, and you can see why the label wanted to sign her.
My songs centre around the lyrics, exploring intimate themes that are often cathartic to write. I don’t have rules when I make music. I play around, express freely, let go of my expectations, have fun, and stay open
Many of you will know I started working with Pieater last year and it has been the best ever. More recently, I have signed to the incredible Partisan Records to release these songs worldwide. I am so grateful to be working with such a hard working and passionate group of people!!! I want to say a massive Thank You to everyone who has worked on the release of “Good Thing” and supported it thus far. It is a song very close to my heart and I’m damn lucky to be able to do this.
After a break of over four years between album releases, Australian duo Big Scary announce fourth LP ‘Daisy’. Their most playful collection to date, the tracks are full of drama – a little bit spooky and a little bit silly. It’s ok to LOL when you listen (and do a little boogie), but equally there is a thoughtfulness to be discovered within the themes and arrangements. The pair of Joanna Syme and Tom Iansek reflect broadly on superficiality, naivety and fantasy, compared with the complexities of reality, and the ongoing exercise in thoughtful living. Dynamic relationships are explored, between lovers old and new; and with the voice in your head.
Since releasing their last album ‘Animal’ in 2016 the pair have dived into broader creative projects. Tom has released three albums across solo project #1 Dads and duo No Mono, and produced or engineered releases for Maple Glider, Tom Snowdon, The Paper Kites, Airling and Bec Sykes. Jo created a second label imprint Hotel Motel Records (the first being Pieater, run with Tom Iansek and manager Tom Fraser); releasing four LPs, eight EPs and many singles; and toured Australia and Canada with the likes of Quivers and Cool Sounds, as well as working the Pieater releases.
All songs written and performed by Big Scary, except for “Bursting At The Seams” where extra percussion was performed by Jim Rindfleish and live strings were performed by Emma Kelly
Hailing originally from Melbourne, Australia, Heligoland have been making oceanic dreampop for over 20 years, forming in 1999 and having released their debut album in 2003. The band’s inspirations are pretty clear, right down from their name (which means “Holy Land” in Dutch), drawing from the gentler side of ’80s/’90s shoegaze and slowcore. Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie produced their third album, 2010’s All Your Ships are White, which tells you a lot but their sound is more in the Slowdive (Mojave 3 )/ Low / Cowboy Junkies style, evoking sun-baked cracked earth and sand as much as the sea.
Heligoland went dormant after All Your Ships, though they popped up from time to time with new EPs, all produced by Guthrie. They also left Australia for the suburbs of Paris. Now just the core duo of Karen Vogt (vocals, guitar) and Steve Wheeler (bass, guitar), Heligoland are back with their first album in 11 years. Guthrie is back for this one as well, and in addition to producing the record, he also plays on it — everything but guitar, contributing drums, bass and keyboards. No real surprise, but This Quiet Fire is gorgeous stuff. Vogt is an emotive singer, a quality you don’t usually associate with dreampop like this, sounding closer to Tracy Thorn than Elizabeth Fraser. Her voice elevates stunners like “Hope,” “Running” and “Palomino,” distinguishing This Quiet Fire in a genre that in too many less-skilled hand can play like ethereal wallpaper.
Multi-award-winning Melbourne contemporary folk outfit, The Maes (formerly The Mae Trio) is the brainchild of sisters Maggie and Elsie Rigby. Touring in Australia and overseas, audiences are moved by their striking song writing, intricate instrumental arrangements, and stunning vocal harmonies. Find all that and more on their gorgeous new self-titled album.
Our new lockdown single, Glad That It’s Over is a lockdown special, it was written and recorded in COVID 19 lockdowns and it is about lockdown as a time for reflection both with the nostalgia associated with times when we could travel, hug friends and see live music but also having the time and space to process events from our pasts with the wisdom of hindsight. In particular, a six-month, family camping adventure in which a family band was formed, a post-school backpacking trip in Europe and a past relationship.
New Zealand-born, Melbourne-based singer/songwriter Sarah Mary Chadwick’s previous effort, 2020’s “Please Daddy”, if you were feeling fragile, you could almost insulate yourself from her painfully honest song writing style, training your focus only on, say, the soaring horns on “When Will Death Come,” the blues-rock boogie of “Let’s Fight,” or the wistfully jazzy flute of “The Heart and Its Double.” But there’s no hiding from the broken heart of Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby—Chadwick fully embraces emotional catharsis, stripping her songs back to solo piano and vocals only, and you have no choice but to follow suit. Just as she worked wonders on a 147-year-old pipe organ for her 2019 record “The Queen Who Stole the Sky”, Chadwick crafts an album of untold power not in spite of her focus on one instrument, but because of it. With “Please Daddy’s” diffuse textures out of the equation, the songwriter can only take a fearless inventory of her interior turmoil, turning a truly harrowing series of events—after the deaths of her father and a close friend, and the dissolution of a long-term relationship, Chadwick attempted to take her own life in 2019, just weeks before the Ennui sessions began—into an album that will knock your heart on its ass.
Chadwick’s unusual vocal delivery and unsparing, darkly funny song writing combine to make Ennui’s stark sensibility unforgettable, and Chadwick never flinches, wondering of her struggles at one point, “Is it all for this song? / If it is, is that wrong?” It will take all of your inner fortitude to answer her.
‘Every Loser Needs A Mother’ is the first single to be lifted from Sarah Mary Chadwick’s forthcoming 7th LP ‘Me And Ennui Are Friends, Baby’ out February 5th 2021 via Ba Da Bing Records & Rice Is Nice Records.
Australian rock outfit King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are starting the new year with the arrival of another new single, “O.N.E.”. Released on Thursday, the latest recording from the workhorse rock band follows the track “If Not Now, Then When?” shared back in December.
Opening with some gentle, slightly-mystic notation to start the 3:40 minute song, the music quickly livens up with a Middle Eastern swing and just enough added distortion to match their trademark fuzz-rock sound. The band continues to explore notation and melody arrangements often heard in older parts of the world within their own song writing, and do so without forfeiting the energizing, adrenaline rock production for which they’re known and loved.
The song’s animated music video was directed by Alex McClaren, who added of his efforts in a statement,
The song itself feels as if it’s constantly moving along so I tried to keep the visuals continually moving forward and sliding into different visual styles and landscapes. I felt the mix of stop motion and collage through the use of found imagery and the band would help compliment the track’s lyrics and themes as I interpreted them, of dreams, nightmares, climate change, dystopias, and utopias, as well as referencing events that took place during the making of the video over 2020. All video of the band was shot by Ambrose during the second lockdown restrictions and I had to give notes on shooting and direct remotely which was strange but so was everything during that period.
“O.N.E.” and “If Not Now, Then When?” are both expected to appear on the band’s next studio album, L.W., which would follow the surprise arrival of K.G. back in late November. The Middle Eastern music-inspired album was one of the selected works included in Live For Live Music‘s “Best Psychedelia Albums Of 2020” staff picks. This forthcoming album is reportedly one of three records the band plans to release in 2021.
There’s a certain beauty within Angie McMahon’s music that’s always present, but never quite the central focus of her work. It’s something that underlays the potent emotion of her earliest work in 2017 – “Slow Mover’s” strange mix of uplifting ache; “Keeping Time” soaring choruses – right through to her 2019 debut record “Salt”, an 11-track collection of songs that encapsulated AngieMcMahon’s charm as both a musician and storyteller in a similar vein to some of her biggest comparables and influences – Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Nicks.
However, this remarkable and almost unexplainable pocket of beauty is something that really reaches a fever pitch in Angie McMahon’s live show, at the points where her live band step away for a moment and leave Angie alone in the spotlight. It’s here where Angie becomes her most brilliant; the lyricism and storytelling that underpins her work’s emotional richness entering the forefront to the point where you can’t brush it away or focus on anything else – you simply have to stand there and take it all in.
It’s something that really shone in this video filmed with her in 2018, where Angie – amidst a tour with Canadian musician Leif Vollebekk – stripped back the then-unreleased If You Call to its most subtle and remarkable, backed by the greenery of Victoria Park florist/plant store Green Bunch. With the production of the single’s recorded form replaced by only gentle piano, guitar and Leif Vollebekk’s devastingly-beautiful vocal cries, the moment is something that can draw you to tears from the get-go, even an entire year following its original release:
As it turns out, the acoustic live cover was the catalyst for the now-arriving “Piano Salt EP”, a stripped-back collection of tracks from her 2019 debut LP Salt, along with a few covers too. “The version of “If You Call” on this EP was recorded by Pilerats in Perth when we toured Australia with Leif Vollebekk,” she explains. “It was this wonderful day where we set up inside Green Bunch, a lovely plant shop/cafe, and filmed and recorded the duet. That was probably the seed being planted for this EP, because by the start of this year I was practising new versions of other songs off Salt too and was able to find a place for all of those with this release.”
The full collection of tracks that form “Piano Salt” ahead of its official release tomorrow, October 2nd. It’s a gentle seven songs that really flesh out this aforementioned beauty that swirls around Angie McMahon’s work when its stripped back to its most raw and subtle, indulging in the richness of Angie’s vocal and how she’s able to turn the emotions of Salt – and a few other special songs too – into potent, devastatingly beautiful moments that encapsulate Angie’s talents as one of Australia’s most brilliant songwriters and vocalists.
It opens with a swirling, piano-backed cover of Soon that feels almost like a modern-day reimagining of classical music, and its ability to tell stories and emotions even at music’s most minimalist and acoustic. This trait really shines amongst Piano Salt. When Slow Mover is pulled back to its most subtle, the soft sense of cathartic release that floats amongst the single’s cries are replaced by an almost-haunting presence that on a surface level, makes you feel the track’s lyrics underneath a new emotional lens. Keeping Time provides a similar moment – a favourite of Angie’s catalogue that many would associate with their introduction to the Melbourne musician painted in an entirely new light – while the EP-closing Pasta aches in a way that’s conveyed in the original, but emphasised this time around.
The EP also gives the opportunity for Angie McMahon to shine in another area she’s long-adored: covers. “It’s been a real treat to release second versions of some songs, and have an excuse to do more covers too,” she says. “I love covers.” Her Isol-Aid set early on in the festival’s existence seemed to encapsulate the whole event’s beauty , and a big part of that came through two covers that Angie performed; one of Bruce Springsteen’s The River, and the other of Lana Del Rey’s Born To Die.
TheBorn To Diecover is a highlight of the EP, joined by a video also premiering today, filmed The Perch Recording Studio, Castlemaine. It’s a cover that pays tribute to Lana’s distinct performance style, and how she – like Angie – are really capable of highlighting this deep sense of emotion through their work. “This cover of Born to Die was just so fun to play. I love the way Lana sings, so deep and emotive, and I wanted to pay tribute to that way of performing because it has inspired me as an artist in the way I write and sing my own songs too.”
The whole EP – and the covers included within it – are a coming full circle moment for Angie too. “Piano is the first instrument I learnt and the one that made me first love singing. My favourite piano song when I was young was k.d lang’s cover of Hallelujah. So this EP feels like a return to my piano-cover-loving inner kid,” she explains. “It’s been a really nice creative opportunity to recreate the feeling of some bigger songs off my first record, give them a new life, and cover some of my favourite songs too. It gave me something to do when we went into quarantine.”
The end result is something remarkably brilliant.
This is a mixture of footage from my home in lockdown, when everything went slow, and the Hozier tour that I joined in November last year, when everything was moving so fast. We were travelling around America, my sound engineer Jono and I, following the Hozier bus and having our own adventures every day. I’m so grateful he kept the go pro on for that month, and that the audiences were so warm, and that I have a safe and comfortable home to slow down in now. Thank you to our friend Lewis Parsons who edited all of this together so flawlessly. this version of Soon almost made it onto the Salt record, there has been a band version and a piano version floating around for a while, and in the end we decided on the band version. It’s so nice to be able to bring this one out now, and I hope it connects with people.
“Slow Mover” by Angie McMahon under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings Ltd Released on: 2017-10-09
Flyying Colours have announced a brand new album. The Melbourne group are set to release their second album, “Fantasy Country”, on Friday 26 February.
“This album was supposed to now be 6-12 months old,” said songwriter and guitarist Brodie J Brümmer of the album.
“We take touring and supporting our music live quite seriously so it would have been very difficult for us to put out this album in the early stages of the pandemic… but here comes a time now where we need to get these songs out there and make it work in any way that we can.”
The band have announced a tour in celebration of the release, which will kick off at Adelaide’s Grace Emily on release day. They’ll then head to Melbourne’s Corner Hotel, Brisbane’s The Brightside and wrap up at Sydney’s Lansdowne Hotel.
“Big Mess” by Flyying Colours Released via Club AC30 (UK & Europe) and Poison City Records
As unexpected as it is to find Luluc closing out 2020 sharing a producer with pop behemoth Taylor Swift, it seems like a fitting end to this liminal, otherworldly year. The kinetic Aaron Dessner beat that opens the Australian duo’s fourth album is as much of a departure from the more muted tones of their previous work as its siblings brought to folklore – and yet, just as those propelled Swift’s heroine east from St Louis, this synthesised pulse also takes the listener on a journey.
The opening “Emerald City” began in a world halfway between the Melbourne of Luluc’s beginnings and the Brooklyn the duo have since come to call home: in Berlin in August 2018, where, on an invitation from Dessner,Zoë Randell and Steve Hassett flew out to perform at the PEOPLE festival. There, in an old East German radio-station-turned-venue-and-studio, the frequent collaborators – together with drummers JT Yates and Jason Treuting, and CJ Camerieri on trumpet – sought to translate the restless energy of the streets of New York into music.
Friends, festivals, transatlantic flights: the “Emerald City” origin story couldn’t be further from the Australian coast where Randell and Hassett finished mixing the album, seeing out the pandemic in isolation. And yet the thread that runs through “Dreamboat” is primarily an introspective one: of wild horses and weatherbirds, Wizard Of Oz metaphors and waking in the night. Luluc’s dream world, like the real one, is still complicated: at times as idyllic as the vision of “blue water and sunshine” in the Carpenters-esque “Dreaming”; at times a claustrophobic nightmare roping you in against your will.
The frantic buzz of that opening track is straight from the fast-paced, pre-pandemic world in which it was occasionally played live – but the anxieties tied up in its frenetic layers, punctuated by panicked bursts of trumpet, will be familiar to anyone who has lain awake these past few months, “tumbling and twisting” with “too much” in their head. The song is a stream of consciousness set in those anxious moments before sleep; above the noise, Randell’s voice a steady ship, with lines that seem prescient now. “Like Dorothy on the run,” she sings, “breaking my will, I stay in”.
The track is one of two to feature a Dessner co-production credit, Randell and Hassett handling the majority of the album solo. Combined with their decision to release independently rather than through long-time label Sub Pop – an amicable decision, Randell explains, driven by the duo’s desire to release this music into the world at their own pace – the implication is of full creative control. The simplicity at the core of the duo’s song writing remains intact, but the confidence that comes with experience allows them to lean into different choices as the songs dictate, be it duelling drummers, tenor saxophone or a touch of New York jazz guitar.
Wurlitzer and walking bass lend “Hey Hey” a vintage country feel, jazz drummer Dalton Hart working with Hassett to keep the song at a simmer until a melodic burst of sunshine shoots through the middle. “Weatherbirds” is built around another Dessner beat, but it’s the brightness of Hassett’s guitar and backing vocals that carry the song; and Arcade Fire touring member Stuart Bogie’s saxophone brings the pink flush of sundown to “Out Beyond”, a harmonious Randell-Hassett duet from the edge of the world.
But sometimes, the songs call for nothing at all. “All The Pretty Scenery”, a feather-light beauty in which the narrator’s gaze turns from her own interior world to that of another, features only Randell and Hassett, some vocal doubling the closest thing to trickery. “Gentle Steed”, recorded live in Berlin with Hassett on piano and Caimin Gilmore on double bass, falls somewhere between old folk song and mythology, Randell’s vocals timeless and pure. Her voice carries something of a myth-making quality in its timbre, making the everyday details that creep into her lyrics – a reference to “booze”, an affectionate “my man” designation for a partner – twice as charming.
The real world creeps in as it must: as the sound of cars “rolling their way into my notebook” among the diary-esque lyrics of “Hey Hey”; in the shape of an arachnid in “Spider”. But behind it all, a self-possessed Luluc in isolation, daydreaming of friends apart until they can once again cross the sea.
“Dreamboat” released through Sun Chaser Records October 23rd, 2020
Australian four-piece Flyying Colours are set to release their sophomore album ‘Fantasy Country’ on the 19th February via London-based independent label, Club AC30. Taking inspiration from the early 90s UK psych/shoegaze scene, ‘Fantasy Country’ is rich in sonic texture and shimmering atmospherics with a heavy dose of melody.
Formed in 2011 by school friends Brodie J Brümmer and Gemma O’Connor, Flyying Colours released their debut single ‘Wavygravy’ in 2013 with a self-titled EP following later that year. Honing their explosive sound on the Melbourne live scene and picking up numerous accolades along the way, the ‘ROYGBIV’ EP followed which received heavy rotation across worldwide radio including BBC Radio 6 Music and KEXP.
Having released their critically acclaimed debut album ‘Mindfullness’ in 2016, Flyying Colours have spent much of their time on the road with headline shows across the UK and Europe. “While it’s been a long time seemingly between records it doesn’t feel like that so much for us. We have previously been able to throw ourselves into recording over a period of time, however with this record was about creating that time in between touring and life. We are real people who work to pay our rent and to be able to go on tour,” says Brümmer.
From the swooning, sludgy ‘Goodtimes’ and urgent noise-fest of ‘Big Mess’, to the gorgeous melodic pop of ‘OK’, Flyying Colours look to redefine noise within the context of pop music. Elsewhere, ‘It’s Real’ is perfect, summery dreampop while the crushingly loud ‘White Knuckles’ and chugging ‘Boarding Pass’ is a hazy, echo-laden spaced-out affair.
“This album was supposed to now be 6-12 months old. We take touring and supporting our music live pretty seriously so it would have been very difficult for us to put out this album during the early stages of the pandemic. We are very lucky to be in Australia right now where shows are starting up again, and we of course hope to be touring internationally again soon,” says Brümmer.
Flyying Colours have toured with Johnny Marr, Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Jesus & Mary Chain, The Black Angels and A Place to Bury Strangers and are set to return to the UK in 2021 with a 7-date April tour.
Flyying Colours is Brodie J Brümmer, Gemma O’Connor, Melanie Barbaro and Andy Lloyd-Russell.
The Fat Angel Sings 