The Curse of Company – ‘All The Mines’

Well! Dappled Dave has created himself a new band with a few of his fellow musician friends and they call themselves The Curse Of Company. It’s very conceptual and if you do get into the arty cue card and the cleverly designed website and the beautiful photos before listening to this song then it’s an easy ride to their collective musician minds. What? Oh, you probably haven’t got the instructions. I’ll just cut and paste it down below here then:

Hey Bloggers, With the amount of support you’ve shown Dappled Cities over the last few years, I wanted to not-so-formally introduce you to my brand-spanking-new band The Curse of Company. It’s a real band (not a supergroup!), and one that I’m hugely proud of, and it’s sightly birth is quite exciting! So call this a make-shift advance press release if you will; some info on the band to be used at your mercy:

The Curse of Company consists of myself as Wiley Rennick (songwriter, co-producer), the redsunband’s Sarah Kelly, Tim “Jack Ladder” Rogers, Mr Bungle and Secret Chief 3’s Danny Heifetz, and Gerling’s Burke Reid (co-producer). The debut album, titled Leo Magnets joins a gang, is due for release later this year in Australia and USA through Hollywood-based indie label Dangerbird Records.

The debut single, All The Mines, was taken to JJJ and FBI last week and was immediately slapped on high rotation on both. RRR are also in the loop. And just and hour ago, I put the All The Mines Single Bundle up on www.thecurseofcompany.com for FREE DOWNLOAD for the duration of one month. The bundle includes the single, the filmclip, the demo, and the photographic artwork files. And yes, the free download is literally ‘buried” in the site, so only the cluey visitors may actually find it… ummmmm good luck!

The Curse of Company play our debut full-band show next Tuesday 27th May at the Hopetoun Hotel, with special guests Adrian Deutsch and Des Miller, $8 tix. There will not be many shows like this for us – I imagine the next batch will occur later in the year following the release of the album.

That’s it! A press shot is attached, as is a bio card with some more formal info. Go crazy…

thanks, dave wiley rennick

http://www.myspace.com/thecurseofcompany

Paris Wells – ‘Dat Du Dat’

Non-sensical titles worked for The Police, but will they work for Melbournite Paris Wells? No, probably not. Visually a cross between Gwen Stefani and latter-era Christina Aguilera, Paris is somewhat of an enigma. How do you market a girl who’s pushing ostenible pop tunes, but has spent time playing at St Jeromes and jazz bars in Melbourne, and supported both Jamie Lidell and Justin Timberlake?

A lot of records labels are still under the delusion that it’s the late ’90s – that people will still buy CDs and that pop is the easy selling medium. Judging by the sounds on her MySpace, her label could have as easily (and better, in my opinion) marketed her as the next Sia, infusing soul and jazz melodies with bottom-heavy beats (check out ‘What Do I Deserve?’ on her website, it’s Sia circa Healing is Difficult for sure, and sounds like a great track to boot), but as it is, releasing ‘Dat Du Dat’, a fragmented and stilted tune, Paris will land herself squarely in the dance-pop corner. That’s a shame because evidently she’s a grass-roots girl playing commercial pop, and the shoe doesn’t seem to fit. Something like ‘Grace Baby’ would have slipped nicely into the slipstream of acts like Gabriella Cilmi, Amy Winehouse, Adele and Duffy, and would have had a far better chance of finding Paris success than a song with the lyric “I can feel you in my Dau Du Dat.” Uhhh… what?

Let me speak to all those involved in record labels – don’t insult and underestimate your audience. They’re smarter than you think.

http://www.myspace.com/pariswells

Chasm – ‘Rise of the new’ (feat. Damajah, Jeswon & Tuka)

My knowledge of hip hop, to be honest, is pretty limited. I know what I like, but I couldn’t elucidate the reasons. Questions like ‘Why are the Hilltop Hoods so massive when someone like, say, The Herd isn’t?’ go unanswered. If the beats make me nod, if the synths are melodic and if the rhymes are smooth, then I’m into it.

So it is that Elefant Trak’s omnipresent DJ, Chasm, has corralled all his friends together to release what I reckon is a pretty top-notch example of Aussie hip hop in the form of Beyond the Beat Tape. For a man who’s worked with Ozi Battla and Astronomy Class, it’s unsurprising that the beats on here are quality. There’s a tonne of excellent MCs featured within – Ozi Battla, The Tongue, Pegz, Dialectrix, Diafrix, Muph (sans Plutonic), Hau from Koolism and probably more whose names I don’t really know, though I’m sure there’s people picking up this CD yelling, “Holy shit, JESWON is on this fucking CD!”.

‘Rise of the new’ is a sweet track, and one of my faves from the disc. Now’s your time to get excited if you’re a Jeswon fan.

http://www.myspace.com/chasm1 

Dan Segal – ‘Revelation’

It feels good when somebody from your school is doing good things in the music world. My place of learning has produced a fair swag of highly successful commercial artists, including Valentino-cum-Juggernaut Dan Stricker, Macromantics, bass wunderkind Tal Wilkenfeld and, of course, Ben Lee. Next in line to the graduate crown is Dan Segal, a highly talented, multi-instrument-playing generally lovable kind of guy.

Dan used to front the funk band Camera Four, who were moderately well-known but eventually stagnated, prompting Segal to pull the cord and go it alone. In hindsight, that was a very good decision. In a solo context, Segal can fully spread his wings, taking on lyrics, vocals, guitars, bass and whatever else he can fit in a song, recording it all on his home computer in Maroubra (for international readers, yes, that is where The Bra Boys come from. Please note that Maroubra isn’t really such a scary suburb in reality!) Segal is a bass player at heart, and that comes through in all his writing, which are guitar-lead but really bass-heavy. Ever the wounded romantic, most of his tracks centre around unrequited love, or love gone sour. But sometimes, as in this case, Dan just feels like waxing lyrical about life itself.

‘Revelation’ is the kind of track you want to play at your next party. It’s got that killer, pogoing bass line, MSTRKRFT-esque handclaps and some seriously whack vocoder shit going on. It’s like a ballad in an electro song. If that sounds interesting to you, that’s probably because it is. And there’s a seriously Daft Punk moment about two and a half minutes in, where the effected guitars go mental and it feels like ‘Harder Better Faster Stronger’ all over again. God knows we all need more Daft Punk in our lives. Dan’s also a designer, so he creates all his own cover art, and even has a patented ‘Pixelman’ concept which I can’t reveal or I will be gunned down outside my house. He’s doing an album launch at Will and Toby’s in a few weeks, with his band, who are cutely labelled ‘The Pocket.’ If you dig this track, head to his myspace or hit up the show. Rock on.

http://www.myspace.com/segalsongs

Evidently, lately we haven’t stuck to the Who the Hell ethos of giving you a blog post every day of the week (excluding weekends when we inexplicably turn into trashbags and lose the ability to construct sentences). This boils down to two reasons: one, because I’m playing Editor at The Brag for the next couple of weeks so free time is at a miniumum and two, my home computer has been infected with the world’s most annoying adware virus – if someone can shed some light as to why someone would invent such a virus (seriously, who’s dumb enough to click on those ads??), that’d be awesome.

Here’s something new from one of my favourite Aussie acts, Pivot, currently in the UK no doubt blowing audiences away (maybe Tash will fill us in on that). ‘In the Blood’ is the first official single from the band’s forthcoming second (but Warp Records debut) album, which finds the three-piece venturing into new wave territory and, as Pivot like to do, fucking with it. The filmclip looks like what would happen if Adam Jones from Tool was given the duties of creating a Thunderbirds episode.

http://www.myspace.com/pivotpivot

Cog – ‘Bird of Feather (Daleese Remix)’

Got this one in the mail yesterday, just in time for my interview with Cog boys Luke and Lucius on my nocturnal radio show, on the eve of their largest headlining show in Sydney tomorrow night at the Enmore Theatre.

Remixes are fairly ubiquitous these days; their resurgence in popularity thanks to indie kids remixing indie kids, or (in the case of the solipsistic Van She) indie kids remixing themselves. But I’ve found in the past that the process doesn’t transpose to those genres that crank the guitars up to 11. They often become rock songs with an 808 beat.

I’ve only had a limited time to digest this new remix of Cog’s ‘Bird of Feather’, courtesy of Daleese Studios, home of Dan Sutherland (of Many Machines on Nine/Switchkicker fame), and my overriding thought is ‘why?’. If you’re familiar with any of Dan’s musical output, you’ll instantly recognise the Trent-Reznor-at-a-rave feel of this remix. And this isn’t a sleight at Dan or Cog – if anyone’s read whothehell.net enough, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of both these acts – but the remix itself seems superfluous and more an experimental exercise for the two.

Lucius said to me last night that Cog are always interested in pushing the perceived boundaries of their music, and particularly with this remix they were interested in seeing how other people interpret their tunes. In that respect, ‘Bird of Feather’ does its job, but it’s essentially an electro version of the same song, and doesn’t take it to new levels like when Kieran Hebden or Richard James get their hands on a track.

But my opinion is obviously clouded by personal judgement. Like Nick Hornby wrote, reviews are expected to exist outside of space and time. I prefer a remix that completely rethinks the song, but if ‘Bird of Feather’ turned into a Autechre-esque beatfest, would it sound shit to most people? I’m interested to know your thoughts on this remix.

Cog also let slip that they’ve been talking of collaborating with The Presets. Now that would be way out!

http://www.myspace.com/cogrockmusic

Here’s the film clip for The Seabellies’ new, digital-only single, ‘Heart Heart Heart Out’, combining tighter pop song structures than those found on their debut EP Wave Your Fingers to Make the Winters with their wistful indie ornamentation that echoes the textured instrumentation of Canadian indie acts like Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene.

One of the best bands going around at the moment, hands down. I could say more but it’s a busy day today. Enjoy some visual for today.

http://www.myspace.com/theseabellies