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LISTEN: Lower Plenty – ‘On the Beach’

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It has never been more apparent how diverse the Melbourne music scene is than right now. It is a petri dish of musical experimentation where interchanging combinations yield different results and nearly each mutation leads to acclaim.

Case in point: Lower Plenty. Named after a Melbourne suburb, Lower Plenty is one of those bands that’s made up of musicians from other noteworthy groups (all Melbourne based) but manages to make a name for itself thanks to good music, not just goodwill.

For the curious, parent bands include UV Race, Total Control, Deaf Wish and The Focus. Take note though: Lower Plenty sounds different from all of these bands; less dissonance and more down-tempo honesty. Think acoustic pop – really low key but not under produced.

‘On The Beach’ is a song stripped to its bare bones. It’s soft and drawling, focusing on the minute details of musicianship to show how a good tune can be made up entirely of subtleties. Softly pattering drums, guitars dipped in languor and equally wistful vocals, with lyrics consisting of lamentations and daydreams; ‘On The Beach’ is a fantastic slow burner that eschews sharp peaks or crescendos in favour of graceful meandering.

Lower Plenty are releasing a new LP, Life/Thrills on Bedroom Suck in late June, the follow up to their acclaimed previous effort, Hard Rubbish. I’d keep my eyes on the horizon for this; it’ll be a good’un.

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INTRODUCING: Kučka

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I wouldn’t be surprised if Kučka‘s (aka Laura Jane Lowther) voice actually spun fairy floss. The latest single from the Perth native, ‘Unconditional’, is a decidedly smoother pop song than those on her debut EP, where her experimental tendencies (see ‘Polly’) saw her layer those sickly sweet vocals over glitch samples and sparse, syncopated drum machine beats.

‘Unconditional’ refines her penchant for the pop hooks and harmonies that were generously sprinkled over her debut, opting for a more structured approach to production that sees her embrace a (slightly) more traditional pop song structure. The slow-jam synth beats in the verses dissipate into a breakdown featuring a lone vocal melody before building back up into an R&B style call-and-response chorus line. It’s still avant-pop, but with a straighter synth pop vibe in place of the experimentalism of her debut.

Somewhat presciently, US rapper A$AP Rocky sampled Kučka on his 2012 single ‘Long Live A$AP’ – then asked her to contribute backing vocals to ‘Fashion Killa’. The brush with pop royalty perhaps reflects the future arc of Kučka career – or, at the least, it’s been a catalyst for her new off-kilter pop sound.

On top of that (and aside from the obvious Grimes comparison), the polyphonic textures and bright production on ‘Unconditional’ show more of an optimistic side to Kučka’s music. Must be all that Perth sun.

‘Unconditional’ is the lead single from a new EP, due out later this year. Kučka is launching the single at the Bird in Perth this Saturday, 7 July with support from ¹fm¹, Mudlark and DJs Rex Monsoon and Salut Barbut (The Monarchy). RSVP on Facebook.

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PART 3: Remission & Other Songs – Interviews with Australian Musicians in Healthcare

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Anna Davidson

Illustration by Geoffrey A Thorsen

ANNA DAVIDSON

When you really think about it, there are so many distractions to forget how limited we really are. On a day-to-day basis, the incentives to participate in or manipulate the environment from which we find ourselves are often fairly daft. Anna Davidson‘s cartoonish drawl is mostly straight to the point and as a sufferer of chronic illness; her perspective as an artist is intertwined with her experiences as a consumer of health services.

“After slitting my wrists and taking lots of drugs my housemate dragged me to the car and drove me to the hospital, where they stitched and bandaged me up. I had to wait in a weird courtyard with some kid who had drunk an entire thing of goon and a whole packet of Panadol. Waiting there for an entire day and did not help my situation at all. Once I got into the hospital 12 hours later, my really crazy roommate was screaming all the time and it was really stressful. I would go and tell the nurses that I felt uncomfortable and they just didn’t give a shit.”

Considering some of the difficulties she has experienced within the health system, Anna’s her artistic output is not terrifying or depressing for the matter.

She recently relocated to Melbourne from Brisbane, where the rest of her primary outfit, Major Leagues still resides. On the day of the interview, Anna and Fergus Miller (Bored Nothing) had just completed their self-titled EP for their outfit Revenge Surgery. A Lennon/Yoko-esque project, the EP was self produced and written and recorded by the pair in six-days.

MS: Have you met any other creative people in hospital?

AD: Definitely. On the day that I was committed for the first time, I had been bandaged up and stuff. You have to go into a waiting room and I was there all day, just waiting for a temporary bed or whatever. I barely remember it, but that day this other guy, who overdosed on purpose, was being committed too and he ended up going to emergency to get his stomach pumped. We were in hospital for probably a month together. He was a really great artist. Mostly graphic stuff. He was extremely talented. There was another guy who was an indigenous painter and he gave me a little canvas.

They have art sessions, once a day usually, so you could do drawing and stuff. They have a guitar but you could only use it with someone watching you for an hour or something. The second hospital I was allowed to use a guitar, but yeah same kind of deal. I didn’t have to have supervision but I had to return it and sign a thing.

Do you think most people who work in mental health have a mental illness? Like they got into it because they were trying to solve their own issues?

I never thought about that. My first psychiatrist was just really clinical and cold and it was stressful. It made me more anxious having to talk to him. Lots of the nurses in the public health system seem not to care about the patients very much. Some of them weren’t very nice at all or understanding. But in the private hospital, the second psychiatrist I had was super lovely.

I guess it depends on the person, but I’ve had both ends, like this person actually cares about my mental health and this person shouldn’t be doing this job.

Do you ever think playing a live rock show is kind of absurd?

Yeah, of course. I feel like that about everything.

How do you deal with that?

I guess I get some kind of enjoyment out of it, which I don’t get from other things in life. Drawing and playing music is all I really enjoy doing and lots of the time I don’t really enjoy either of them.

[The illness] is part of my personality and my personality is obviously a part of what I create. So many of my experiences have just been being really depressed. I’ve thought I just want to stop music so many times, but I just get bored. I guess now its just habit as well. I think I feel pressure from my family to do something with my life and luckily they are very supportive with my music stuff. I question why I continue to do it. So, I guess this is me quitting music right now [laughs]. 

Who wrote the songs on Revenge Surgery? Did you write them collaboratively?

Fergus wrote two of the songs, but the other four I wrote the skeleton and then Fergus added guitar and wicked cool drums.

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How does doing something like Revenge Surgery differ from your other band Major Leagues?

It was definitely more fun. I thought about quitting Major Leagues because everything can be so stressful. We are looking at tour stuff at the moment and we’ve come to point where we are supposed to play with bands that will pull the most people, so we can sell the most tickets but I don’t really want to play with those kinds of bands. I just want to play with bands that I like, who I want to watch play three times on a tour. That side of things is difficult.

(Read the full interview below.)

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INTRODUCING: Bugs

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Bugs is the solo effort of Connor Brooker, lead singer from Sunshine Coast surf pop/goon rockers Pro Vita. He’s borrowed from the surf pop roots of the group but left any semblance of polish (and fruity lexia) behind. There are distorted shoegaze vocals, earworm-y hooks and gnarly guitar riffs crawling all over Bugs’ debut EP, Home, Alone. It’s lyrically sparse at one turn and raining feels at another. The back and forth between the two keeps his debut effort interesting, pushing away surf pop’s tendency towards monotony with one hand and embracing the structural simplicity with the other. Bugs’ penchant for pop-punk riffs is something that could have been plucked right out of Dylan Baldi’s head, a melodic sensibility that’s obvious in the noise pop delight ‘Get to Know Me’, a standout from the EP. It’s surf pop covered in gravel, but it goes down a treat.

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INTRODUCING: Rat Columns

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David West started Rat Columns in Perth, where he also played in a bunch of punk, experimental and hardcore bands, including Burning Sensation, Whalehammer and Pauline Manson. When he left for San Francisco, he took the Rat Columns moniker with him, on top of joining local post-punks Rank/Xerox and maintaining a role as a touring member of Total Control. More recently West formed a fascinating protopunk/disco outfit, Lace Curtain, alongside the omnipresent Mikey Young and Total Control drummer James Vinciguerra.

 

In contrast to these projects, Rat Columns is a vehicle for introspection – a counterpoint to the forward-looking extroversion of punk rock. The bent drones and damaged pop of the self-titled EP and first album, Sceptre Hole, hit on the same zone between desperation and disaffection occupied by Shocking Pinks, the alias of mopey New Zealander Nick Harte. On early single ‘I Wonder’, the nihilism conveyed through West’s flat intonation and submerged production is offset by the prettiness of the riff and the warble of a theramin. It’s loneliness rendered with a pure pop heart. Like Shocking Pinks, Rat Columns’ urgent, home-recorded drumming sits at the forefront of the tracks and sounds like someone kicking the shit out of a cardboard box.

The latest Rat Columns single, ‘Another Day’, abandons some of the dust and grit of West’s earlier work, instead delivering the sheen and wide-eyed romanticism of British New Wave. It moves in a similar direction to ‘Flesh War’, the brilliant new track from Total Control. West’s upcoming album, Leaf, was recorded in San Francisco by Kelley Stoltz, on a tape recorder that reportedly belonged to avant-garde obscurantists the Residents. It features contributions from Young, Vinciguerra and San Francisco band members Jonathan Young and Matt Bleyle. Leaf should be arriving in record stores next week, via R.I.P. Society.

 

Rat Columns will be joining an excellent line-up at the Opera House this Saturday for R.I.P. Society’s fifth birthday bash as part of Vivid LIVE. The live band changes depending on West’s location; the current incarnation features the Stevens’ Alex MacFarlane and Callum Foley. West can also be caught playing solo sets as Lace Curtain, including a sneaky appearance at MONA’s Dark Faux Mo on 21 June.

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PREMIERE: Baptism of Uzi – ‘Believe’

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2013 was a good year for Melbourne’s Baptism of Uzi. Their single ‘Stray Current’ was on high rotation on triple j, and it received a bunch of positive reviews – including from the King of the js himself. They performed at Laneway Festival and scored a slot at Splendour in the Grass as winners of that year’s Unearthed competition.

So it came as a surprise when in February a series of elliptical posts showed up on B’uzi’s Facebook page that seemed to announce a hiatus, or even a premature split for the band, the last post closing with an ominous ‘To be continued…’.

As it turns out, Baptism of Uzi were experiencing something of an identity crisis in the wake of the Daft Punk/MJ-inspired pop excursions of the Stray Currents EP. This is, after all, the same band that once took its cues from Tony Iommi and toured alongside Krautrock greats Michael Rother and Damo Suzuki.

With the departure of drummer Leif Gordon-Bruce earlier this year, the tension came to a head. Singer Bojan Stojanov told me:

“After the success of ‘Stray Current’, which was an experiment with pop, B’uzi were a divided band. … We come from a ‘heavy’ background and the tune was a departure, and it split B’uzi in two sides: the pop side and the rock. This made for some pretty weird shows, with power metal songs like ‘Fist of the Western Suburbs’ being pitted against songs like ‘Believe’. In the end we stopped playing those pop tunes and just did our rock set because it seemed more like us.”

B’uzi are now airing the last of the material produced during the Stray Currents period in order to move on, in search of The New Sound…

First up, we’re premiering the video for ‘Believe’, the EP’s breezy second single. The clip was directed by Thomas Russell, who’s also responsible for the band’s previous video and album art. It features Bojan in a starring role, as he prepares a neat conjuring trick with romantic results.

According to Bojan:

“[The video] combines a few influences: the show Around the Twist, sigil magic, the movie Evil Dead and the idea of being committed to a belief regardless of how incredulous it seems. Some people call it a ‘leap of faith’, like that guy Kierkegaard. T. Russell did a great job with the edit and Artemis Ioannides was terrific and a good sport to get in the freezing cold water in a dress at a beach on the Mornington Peninsula. It was filmed at a spooky old house in Sassafras and Half Moon Bay.”

Finally, guitarist Tom Battersby has made film clips for a couple of ‘Stray Current’ remixes – one by the Go! Team, the other from Melbourne’s own Yolke.

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PART 2: Remission & Other Songs – Interviews with Australian Musicians in Healthcare

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(Read Part 1 of the interview series here.)

Djarmbi Supreme

 Illustration by Geoffrey A Thorsen

DJARMBI SUPREME.

Tensions can arise when a young professional also wants to try their hand at art, especially when that art is their “outlet for all the dodgy shit [they] would love to be able to say everyday but they know isn’t politically correct”. Djarmbi Supreme is the pseudonym of a 29 year-old Aboriginal health education officer, who writes lyrics that would make most of his colleagues cringe, or at least reconsider whether this closet “sociopath” should remain in their email network. Although, that’s only because they view Djarmbi Supreme within the hospital that they work in and not from within the parallel universe where the self-described “cage rattler” exists.

“I’m a new-school version of Barry Humphries. Djarmbi Supreme is like Sir Les Patterson. He’s a concentration of all my sleaze-bag, outspoken instincts that I actually have. It’s an extension of me. It’s not me, but just an outlet for me to be able to produce exactly what my instincts are telling me to do and not wonder if it’s somehow going to affect me personally…”

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MS: So you do the Djarmbi character so it doesn’t clash with your professional life?  DS: Yeah, that’s one of the big reasons I’m fairly anonymous. I try to make it clear that it’s just a stand-alone entity. Because of the work that I do I have to be able to retain a certain amount of respect socially, in the community and professionally. When I’m at work, I’m someone who people are supposed to listen to and trust my words and actions. I’m an educator. If they heard the music that I’m making as Djarmbi it would be really hard to retain any respect. It’s a technique of being able to have this outrageous personality as well as have this sensible professional career at the same time.

Professional wrestlers are not at home in costume smashing their kids over the couch. They are just regular people when they are off duty. That’s what it’s all about. Finding out how you can be an authentic artist or entertainer and just keeping it there. I still dip in and out of it. I’m on Twitter all day as Djarmbi Supreme but I’m still at work doing my stuff. I kind of get a thrill out of thinking I’m getting away with something. It’s an indulgence. I’m pretty vain in that regard.

You seem to want to elicit anger through the character Djarmbi Supreme. Where does your anger come from? 

There was a lot hard shit in my youth and teen years. I sort of battled a bit. I suppose I learnt how to express all that through other avenues instead of lashing out. I’ve seen my role models being not very good at doing that, which made me better at it.

Can you tell me about what happened with Andrew Bolt?

[Andrew Bolt] went to court and was found to be negligent in his journalism and was found to be a racist by law. Since then he has been attacking people and perpetuating the Darwinist theory that light-skinned Aboriginal people aren’t authentic and we’re sponges on welfare. Through his careful choice of words, he has basically got a whole army of ignorant people thinking that he is true and everything he says is gospel because it makes so much sense to them because they haven’t got enough education to know any better. He is sort of like Davros or something. He has all these little Daleks running around aiming their lasers at light-skinned Aboriginal people but they don’t have brains of their own to actually stand back and learn. They refuse to learn. So I wrote a fake open letter to him. It was a play on the fact that lots of people in the community were writing open letters to him and feeling like they had to elevate their language to reach his level. I was trying to make a point that we should be lowering our intelligence to communicate with him because he is such a fucking bottom-feeding, shit cunt. I took it down to the street level.

He’s trying to label me as a sponge because the work I do is government funded. Well, fuck. He is funded by Gina Rinehart. What’s worse? How can such extreme conservative thinking be mainstream and accepted? You asked me before about what makes me angry. That’s it. How does that get through the gates? People think they are scared and sitting in danger so they think we need to freeze Australia the way it is.

I’m interested. You are seemingly misanthropic at times but you also work in healthcare.

Well, I don’t hate humans. I’m just a fucking snob.

 

(Read the full interview below) (more…)