Suburbiopia is an epic exploration of the upside of being in a suicide cult. Below is their new clip; filmed in a parallel universe by Oscar O’Shea, you will be enlightened and inspired once you’ve gazed through it’s glory hole into the third eye of your Raëlian overlords. TFS put out this 7″vinyl which sold out in minutes featuring Suburbiopia and a cover of The Saints song The Perfect Day with Amy Taylor from Amyl & The Sniffers on vocals and Sean from Surfbort on the tubs
Suburbiopia is an epic exploration of the upside of being in a suicide cult.
Filmed in a parallel universe by Oscar O’Shea, you will be enlightened and inspired once you’ve gazed through it’s glory hole into the third eye of your Raëlian overlords. FiFi sings, RKO helps with the singing Gaz plays guitar and programs beatz Sean Powell plays the drums and monotron synth Amy Taylor plays the OP-1 synth Dan Kelly plays the Protech Kinder Keyboard
The first single off the new 7″ out on Flightless Records 3rd of April
Highly anticipated second album, 1.5 years after their critically acclaimed debut LP. If the end times are coming, we’re grateful to be spending them with the carnage of Tropical Fuck Storm’s sophomore album, “Braindrops”. The band have outdone themselves this time around (no small task following their incredible debut) making something that both captures the chaos of our real world and serves cynical narratives of a future and past that never were, corrupting the corrupt into imaginative despair and colorful mayhem that always reads as poetic. The album’s title track opens with the band’s manipulated sounds and a nimble groove that eventually devolves into the unhinged with layered percussion, soulful breaks, and all the mangled narrative poetics of Gareth Liddiard at his best: “you’re like a snake with its arse up its head man, stop thinking / its enough dealing with this heat and stink / school bus, street pus, the crushed skulls of a watermelons / flowing down a drain the colour of indian ink.”
Featuring members of the now-defunct band The Drones.
Recommend If You Like: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Nick Cave, The Slits, Protomartyr, The Drones, Gang of Four, IDLES.
“I’ve invented fake news as a genre of music,” Gareth Liddiard observes with a laugh. Heʼs talking about “Maria 63”, the closing track on Tropical Fuck Stormʼs sophomore LP ‘Braindrops’. The song takes aim at the once-marginalized alt-right conspiracy theories that now seem to be a driving force behind the rise of fascism in global politics. “It may be the most stupid song ever written,” Liddiard jokes. Heʼs wrong, “Maria 63” is emblematic of Tropical Fuck Stormʼs keen ability to mine the extreme edge of pop cultureʼs periphery for potent musical and conceptual spice.
Tropical Fuck Storm were formed around 2017 in the city of Melbourne, Victoria along Australiaʼs south-eastern coast. The band released their debut long-player A Laughing Death in Meatspace on Joyful Noise Recordings in 2018. Each of the bandʼs four members bring considerable experience to the group. Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin were part of the long-running and critically-acclaimed act The Drones, while Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel have performed in a variety of well-received projects. Perhaps itʼs that wealth of rock and roll experience that allows Tropical Fuck Storm to so expertly deconstruct and distort the genreʼs norms. “Everything we do, we try to do it in a weird way. The whole album is full of weird beats, and just weird shit everywhere,” Liddiard explains. He cites Doc at the Radar Station-era Captain Beefheart as a key sonic touchstone, and Braindrops certainly shares the Captainʼs penchant for pounding abstract grooves. Tropical Fuck Storm have achieved a uniquely off-kilter sound on Braindrops Liddiard partly credits this to the groupʼs use of unconventional equipment, “We use lots of techno gear to make rock and roll because rock and roll gear is boring, and all sounds like Led Zeppelin.” Liddiardʼs own description of Tropical Fuck Stormʼs sound is nearly as interesting and evocative as the music itself. He describes the LPʼs title track as “Fela Kuti in a car crash,” and talks of creating a sonic atmosphere that “sounds like chloroform smells” for “Maria 62”.
Tropical Fuck Storm is Gareth Liddiard, Fiona Kitschin, Lauren Hammel and Erica Dunn.
A recurring theme on Braindrops concerns the various ways the human brain can be manipulated and controlled for exploitative gain. The bracing “The Planet of Straw Men” is a study of human behavior inside the social media comments section, a place where otherwise reasonable people are seen gleefully engaging in psychotic chest-thumping rhetoric. Listening to Braindrops is a jarring and exhilarating experience, full of pulsating grooves, dissonant experimentation, and unsettling dystopian plot-lines.
Braindrops is an unrelenting work, from an unrelenting musical ensemble. “Tropical Fuck Storm is a full on thing,” Liddiard offers. “Everything we do, we do it to death.”
releases August 23rd, 2019
Tropical Fuck Storm play everything except the violins, happy apples, nylon string chalk guitar and soviet space organ on MARIA 62, MARIA 63, and DESERT SANDS OF VENUS which are played by JP Shilo.
“It’s a love song, but it’s about killing an immortal Nazi witch… so, I don’t know.”
Gareth “Gaz” Liddiard is sketching out a broad roadmap to “Maria 63,” the closing song on Tropical Fuck Storm’s sophomore album Braindrops. The “Maria” in question is Maria Orsic, an immortal Nazi witch who communicated with aliens via telepathy and was absolutely, positively real—at least to some far-right conspiracy circles. “She got plans for space propulsions engines from aliens telepathically, and she gave them to Hitler,” he says over the phone from his home in Victoria. “In the end, she was spirited away to Aldebaran, a planet a few light years away.”
On “Maria 63,” things turn out a bit differently: In disguise as her own daughter, Orsic flees to Argentina with the rest of the disgraced Nazis, and spends her years in exile until she’s assassinated by a Mossad agent posing as an interviewer; the violent conclusion is contrasted with repeated allusions to “Ave Maria,” that universal signifier for purity and devotion. It all adds up to what Liddiard declares, with pride, “the most convoluted love song in history.”
This devious sort of mindfuckery lays at the heart of Tropical Fuck Storm (or TFS for short), the psych-rock project Liddiard co-founded alongside his partner Fiona Kitschin in 2017 after their old beloved band, the chameleonic art-rock outfit the Drones, went on hiatus. With drummer Lauren Hammel (of Collingwood extreme-metal outfit High Tension) and guitarist Erica Dunn (who also slings riffs for the indie-punk outfits Palm Springs and Mod Con) in the ranks, Tropical Fuck Storm technically qualify as a supergroup. To that end, elements of their collective back catalog crop up on both Braindropsand its 2018’s predecessor, A Laughing Death In Meatspace: Hammel’s militant drumming, Dunn’s bristling, post-punk-inflected fretwork, Liddiard’s sardonic drawl, Kitschin’s piercing alto. But TFS’ was a chimera incubated in the dystopia of the here and now: a group reaction to all the environmental destruction (a subject Liddiard and Kitschin are very familiar with as survivors of the 2017-2018 brush-fire season, the worst in Australia’s history), inept bureaucrats, and fascist insurgencies plaguing the globe.
“The first album is more political crap going on, more didactic shit,” he explains. “With this, I wanted to make an apolitical album—which is impossible. I structured most of the songs about being love songs. Whether they’re reliable or unreliable as a narrator, I don’t know. In the end, they end up being political and weird.”
That so many of their romps center around obscure conspiracy theories (consider the aformenetioned “Maria 63,” orA Laughing Death In Meatspace’s “Shellfish Toxin,” which is all about how the CIA gave fighter pilots decoy coins laced with a lethal shellfish toxin so that they could commit suicide if they were captured—allegedly) only buttresses their thesis further: in a post-internet, post-truth world, who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t?
“I find there’s a parallel with dadaism,” Liddiard explains. “That was all between the wars back in the early 20th century, and shit at that time was getting really ridiculous. The real world was so outrageously crazy, so satirizing it didn’t work. How can you parody Hitler? How can you parody Donald Trump? You can’t out-stupid stupid. Now we’re back at the same juncture, I guess, so it’s more of a dada thing. Instead of pointing out something going wrong, you just ape the shit out of it. We’re just dealing with the weird and ridiculous.”
Highly anticipated second album, one and a half years after their critically acclaimed debut LP. Featuring members of the now-defunct band The Drones. Recommend If You Like: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Nick Cave, The Slits,Protomartyr, The Drones, Gang of Four, IDLES.
“I’ve invented fake news as a genre of music,” Gareth Liddiard observes with a laugh. Heʼs talking about Maria 63, the closing track on Tropical Fuck Stormʼs sophomore LP “Braindrops”. The song takes aim at the once-marginalized alt-right conspiracy theories that now seem to be a driving force behind the rise of fascism in global politics. “It may be the most stupid song ever written,” Liddiard jokes. Heʼs wrong, Maria 63 is emblematic of Tropical Fuck Stormʼs keen ability to mine the extreme edge of pop cultureʼs periphery for potent musical and conceptual spice.
Tropical Fuck Storm were formed around 2017 in the city of Melbourne, Victoria along Australiaʼs south-eastern coast. The band released their debut long-player A Laughing Deathin Meatspace on Joyful Noise Recordings in 2018. Each of the bandʼs four members bring considerable experience to the group. Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin were part of the long-running and critically-acclaimed act The Drones, while Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel have performed in a variety of well-received projects. Perhaps itʼs that wealth of rock and roll experience that allows Tropical Fuck Storm to so expertly deconstruct and distort the genreʼs norms. “Everything we do, we try to do it in a weird way. The whole album is full of weird beats, and just weird shit everywhere,” Liddiard explains. He cites Doc at the Radar Station-era Captain Beefheart as a key sonic touchstone, and Braindrops certainly shares the Captainʼs penchant for pounding abstract grooves.
It’s a amazing doozy, perhaps even more so than its predecessor — and keep in mind, this is coming from a band known for slinging tales of Soviet chess machines, shellfish-related conspiracy theories, and “antimatter animals.” Consider the tremulous guitar riff leading off album opener “Paradise” a facsimile for the record’s sun-poisoned strain of dadaist pop: an prolonged, paranoid sirens’ song peppered with references to Pokémon, Eugene Leary, global warming, and leg-humping dogs. Highlights include “The Happiest Guy Around,” a rowdy cut that, with its chattered vocals and ebullient energy, recalls a Beegees simulation gone awry; and the bristling title track, a sprightly, staccato race against the doomsday clock.
Tropical Fuck Storm have achieved a uniquely off-kilter sound on Braindrops.
TFS is the new band formed by Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin (from Australia’s epic art punk psych maniacs The Drones) with Lauren Hammel (High Tension) on drums, and Erica Dunn (Harmony / Palm Springs) playing guitars, keys and other gadgets.
We’re not sure why so many Aussies got bit by the bad-band-name-bug, but Tropical Fuck Storm were certainly not exempt from the plague. If you can pardon their unfortunate moniker, however, and focus on their music, you just might find yourself smitten with their manic psych-rock.
from TFS album A Laughing Death In Meatspace and available on TFS Records/Mistletone
They released a totally bonkers-in-all-the-right-ways record in 2018, the weird and wild A Laughing Death in Meatspace. Fans of the now-defunct The Drones might recognize Tropical Fuck Storm’s lead singer, GarethLiddiard, who was a founding member of the former band back in 1997. Liddiard is still working with Drones mate Fiona Kitschin for this new project TFS, but it’s a completely different animal. They recruited two Melbourne vets, and now it seems like the four of them might be Australia’s version of Diarrhea Planet, a kind of mythical live act and purveyor of noisy pop-punk. TFS aren’t for everyone, but if they’re for you, we’re pretty sure it won’t take you long to get on board.
Tropical Fuck Storm – You Let My Tyres Down Recorded Live – Paste Studios – New York, NY
With Australian garage-psych group The Drones on hiatus, Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin joined forces with drummer Lauren Hammel (High Tension) and guitarist/keyboardist Erica Dunn (Mod Con, Harmony) to form Tropical Fuck Storm, who had only started to write/practice when invited to tour North America with King Gizzard and Band of Horses. A record born on the road, A Laughing Death in Meatspace picks up where The Drones left off and instantly goes in a dozen new directions. “It sounds like it looks,” Gareth wrote on Facebook when TFS revealed the LP’s vivid, psychedelic cover art. Everyone sings in the band, which gives them a unique energy and, sometimes, a poppier side than The Drones. It’s a big, bold and brash LP, putting a post-apocalyptic spin on politics, our screen obsession, or recounting chessmaster Garry Kasparov’s 1996 match against a computer. Not subtle, but neither are these times.
Just another day at TFS HQ, captured on cellulite by the Fellini of Thornbury, Chris Matthews, AKA Flagz of Defero Productions. You Let My Tyres down is from the soon to be released debut album A LAUGHING DEATH IN MEATSPACE (Released MAY 4th).
Recommended If You Like The Drones, Nick Cave, Dinosaur Jr., Iceage, Protomartyr. The phantasmagorical debut album by Tropical Fuck Storm, A Laughing Death in Meatspace, delivers a fraught vision of algo rhythmic apocalypse. The debut dive-bombs into the realms of mortality and immortality, moralizing and amorality; the passing of time, and how little we have left.These are lurid songs, urgently told through Gareth Liddiard’s barbed and byzantine lyricism, abrasive guitar slashes, drum adrenalin, raunchy bass and electronic undercurrents. They’re raging, rapscallion, and funny, lyrically delving into everything from internet shaming to the kuru “laughing death” disease of the PNG highlands to Russian chess great Gary Kasparov’s portentous loss to an IBM computer. Live, Tropical Fuck Storm are a force of nature, conjuring chaos at every blistering performance, with zero shits to give for corporate music hegemony. “Kneel down by the advertising, don’t you make a single false move” calls out the female chorus of Fiona Kitschin and Erica Dunn echoing the dismay of our time as we bear witness to the sinister seductions which social media surveillance has entangled us. A Laughing Death in Meatspace doesn’t show us the way out of this situation, but it howls along with us as we peer into the maelstrom ahead.
The Fat Angel Sings 