Dead Letter Circus – ‘The Mile’

First off – no, Bert Newtown isn’t in this band! (For those who don’t know, Bert Newtown is a famous Australian TV personality.) 

Whichever country you go to, regardless of musical trends, you’ll always be able to find what could be termed “pocket scenes”, or even “mini scenes”, where a group of bands stick close together, and it becomes almost incestuous, but not in the nasty kinda way.  One such scene is the Brisbane underground alternative scene, with a bunch of high quality bands all coming out of the same area, and the same half a dozen or so bands have the same MySpace top friends.  Yep, MySpace has finally become a cited social marker…

To me, the band that stands at the apex of that Brisbane scene is Dead Letter Circus.  They take a leaf out of the book of bands such as Dredg and U2 and lay on the delay and reverb thick and fast, but as a self-confessed delay junkie I like the tones that they’re making here.  They’re also creating alternative music that’s a bit more intelligent than the norm.  Bassist Stewart Hill plays excellent melodic bass lines, choosing not to simply follow the root notes of the guitar chords, and Kim Benzie’s soaring vocals add to the music a more dramatic mood, akin to someone like Clint Boge from The Butterfly Effect. It’s fair to say not everyone’s going to like his voice, but that’s a matter of personal preference…

The band have just finished recording their debut EP with producer Forrester Savell, best known for his work on Karnivool’s album Themata. I’m hoping they soon make the trek out of Brisbane and head down my way to Sydney because I’m quite keen to see how they sound live, and to hear some more material from these guys who I feel have quite a lot of potential.

http://www.myspace.com/deadlettercircus

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Blackbird – ‘A Tainted Breath’ (mp3)

A couple of years ago – 2004, actually – I was searching through the Triple J Unearthed website for bands.  One band I came across was an all-girl group from Wollongong, NSW called Blackbird, and I was completely intruiged by their description.  However, there were no MP3s and they had no website.  I had nowhere else to go on my search until one day I saw a poster up at my uni saying that Blackbird were playing a show at the Palm Court Hotel in Corrimal (it’s a suburb near Wollongong).  So I went along and was very impressed by their great melodies and intelligent song structures.  Sure, they weren’t perfect, but they definitely had something captivating.  Touches of PJ Harvey, sprinklings of Muse, and great use of their dual guitar attack.

I’ve seen them a few more times live and still thoroughly enjoy their tunes.  They released a poorly-recorded EP Trimmings in 2005, which doesn’t really capture what they’re all about, but it’s better than nothing I guess.  They’ve won a fair few band competitions and supported some good Wollongong acts, but they haven’t played much around Sydney.  Just recently they lost their drummer Sally Wiggins (so if you’re a drummer and looking to play in a band, contact these girls).  They’ve been fairly quiet lately due to their drummer-less situation, so hopefully they find someone to hit the skins soon because I’m really keen to see what’s coming next for these Wollongong girls.

http://www.blackbirdsounds.com/
http://www.myspace.com/blackbirdsounds

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Carlos Santone (Blue King Brown)

Welcome to the best awards ceremony of the year… it’s just a shame the weather wasn’t going to help proceedings.  The inaugural AIR Awards took place last night in Sydney at the beautiful Blacket Hotel (it’s hidden away so I never knew how great a hotel it is).  AIR is the Australian Independent Records Labels Association, and last night was organised to honour those Australian independent artists who had achieved so much in the past year.  It would have all been perfect had the weather not decided to change and catch everyone completely off-guard.  After sweltering in the Sydney heat for the past couple of days, the mercury dropped by about 10 degrees Celcius and a strong wind blew up as well – not helpful when the ceremony is held in an outside courtyard 9 storeys above the Sydney CBD.

Aside from the weather, everything else about this ceremony was fantastic.  It was a great crowd and I met some lovely people.  The food and drinks were top-notch – I ate my fair share of kebabs and drank quite a few beers.  Former Triple J and current Vega FM radio DJ Angela Catterns was the host of the awards and although she didn’t say a lot, she did a pretty good job.  It’s also the shortest awards ceremony I’ve been to – ever! I think all awards ceremonies should take a leaf out of AIR’s book!

We were also treated to some amazing live performances from Gotye and The Basics, two of Who The Bloody Hell Are They’s favourite bands (check out Jerry’s review of last week’s Gotye/The Basics Melbourne show here).  It was great to watch two quality acts in such a small venue.  Gotye was amazing as always, treating us to some songs off his album Like Drawing Blood during the middle of the awards. He was very relaxed and joked with the crowd.  He played solo most of the time (just Wally on the drums and a backing track) but was joined by members of The Basics for the final song of his four-song set. 

Once the awards were completed, The Basics, in all their 60s pop glory, entertained us with their catchy tunes, and they may well be the best dressed band in Australia.  I was hooked when they opened with ‘Rattle My Chain’; just a fantastic way to open a set.  I was worried that the small PA and high winds would have affected the sound, but there was no problem at all.  I got to meet Wally (aka Gotye) and Kris from The Basics, both of whom were fantastic guys.  For anyone heading to Homebake on Saturday, seeing both Gotye and The Basics is a must.

Congrats to all at AIR for putting such a great awards ceremony.  No doubt it will continue to grow over the years, but selfishly I hope it doesn’t because it works so beautifully on a small scale.  Anyway, here are the winners:

Best Performing Independent Album
Hilltop Hoods – The Hard Road

Best Performing Independent Single/EP
Blue King Brown – Blue King Brown

Independent Artist Of The Year
Hilltop Hoods

Most Outstanding New Independent Artist
Gotye

http://www.air.org.au
http://www.myspace.com/ozindies

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I’ve fallen in love lately with The Basics, a band featuring the drumming and singing talents of Wally de Backer, better known from the amazing Gotye project.  Now we at Who The Bloody Hell Are They love everything that invovles Mr de Backer and this song by The Basics is awesome.  It was recorded live at the Empress of India in Melbourne in August 2006.  It’s a great live recording and really showcases the live spirit this band possesses, as well as their immense talent.

Previous post: The Basics, Gotye & The Basics: Live

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The Suitable Few – ‘The Fringe Of Society’

When something becomes extremely massive, it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the subject of parody.  Enter The Suitable Few and their song ‘The Fringe of Society’.

They’re not exactly hip-hop, but they’re not exactly rock, and they’re sure as hell not rap-metal or nü-metal or any of those late 90s alternative disaster scenes.  This Sydney five piece have been kicking around for a few years creating their own special brand of live hip-hop.  They released a self-titled EP in 2004 which contained a lot of live favourites, but didn’t properly capture their great on-stage energy.  It’s been their live set that has propelled The Suitable Few up the social music ladder, especially their ‘Topic Jams’ – improvised songs where MCs Adikkal and Balistik freestyle about topics suggested by the audience.  It’s so simple, but its brilliance lies in its simplicity, and the audience responds so well to them.  The fun nature of The Suitable Few is infectious, and you can’t help but smile and dance along to their tunes.  They’ve supported some of the biggest names in the local Aussie hip hop scene such as The Herd, Downsyde and Fast Crew but also more rock-oriented acts such as 28 Days and Spiderbait. 

And that’s where ‘The Fringe of Society’ comes in, The Suitable Few’s brand new song off their as-yet untitled EP, due for release in 2007.  This song is hilarious and takes a shot at the ultra-serious emo scene.  It was only a matter of time before someone did an emo parody, and thank God it was these guys because they do it so well.  Live, this song is even funnier because often the emo kids don’t think it’s a parody! There’s also a great filmclip to accompany this song, which can be viewed at the band’s website.

http://www.myspace.com/thesuitablefew

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The Instant – ‘Fight The Valentine’

I was complaining not too long ago about the lack of instrumental rock (or dare I say, ‘post rock’) bands coming out of Australia. Then out of nowhere, all these awesome instrumental bands have started appearing, many of which I’ll blog about in the near future, but at the moment a band that’s pushing all the right buttons for me is The Instant, a four piece out of Newcastle, NSW.

I don’t know much about these guys, and their bio doesn’t help either: “The Instant are the bastard offspring of experimental tunings, savage precise drums and a mining town filled with minimal and spacious industrial sounds that echo throughout their debut album Notes And Errata.” Said album is a beauty I must say, and it was The Brag’s Indie Album of the Week in last week’s mag. It brings to mind the angular guitars of early 90s acts such as Sonic Youth and bands of that ilk, but it’s instrumental and the lack of vocals is by no means a noticeable omission. In fact, it’s the singer-less nature of the music that makes it so endearing and so emotional.

I’ve heard that these guys are only around 17 years old – I don’t know if that’s true or not, maybe they’ll drop by and correct me, but if it is then they’re doing an awesome job for a band so young, and I can’t wait to see what else they’ve got coming up.

http://www.theinstant.com.au
http://www.myspace.com/theinstantmusic

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Bushido – ‘Romeo’

With no blogs from me in quite a while, I’ve got a backlog of artists to write about. But since I couldn’t decide who to blog on, I just picked up the first CD in the pile.  And that’s how we’ve all arrived at Melbourne three piece Bushido.

*Edit – so previously I had written that Bushido’s account had kept being deleted by the MySpace hierarchy, which it had.  But I’m happy to say that’s it been reinstated and all the issues have been cleared up.  Check out Bushido’s MySpace page at http://www.myspace.com/bushidomusic and you can read about the whole situation.  Anyway, back to your normal blog reading…

But Bushido have been kicking around for a few years, playing some major Aussie festivals including the inaugural Pyramid Rock Festival and supporting the likes of Cog and Karnivool.  And it’s no surprise really – these guys are riff masters and pull the shit off live as well with precision.  I’ve only managed to catch them live once and they definitely got the room moving with the grooving tunes.

Their debut EP Last Breath is completely sold out, but their brand new EP Mercina is available from Rare Records.  They’re not creating earth-shattering original music, but it’s groovy as hell and if you’re a fan of heavy music like I am, Bushido are following the right path.

http://www.bushidomusic.com/
http://www.myspace.com/bushidomusic

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