Posts By Melissa Tan

PREMIERE: All The Colours – ‘Second To None’

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We’re stoked to be giving you the worldwide premiere of the video for ‘Second To None’ from All The Colours.

Everything director Guy Franklin touches turns to gold (see previous Kimbra clips). He apparently dreams in monochrome too, and has lent these thoughts and penchant for stuff that floats to the gorgeous cinematography in this new clip.

All The Colours kick off their ‘Second To None’ tour tomorrow.

Friday 8th February – MUM @ World Bar, SYDNEY
Saturday 9th February – Upstairs Beresford, SYDNEY
Saturday 16 February – The Toff, MELBOURNE
Saturday 23 February – Edinburgh Castle, ADELAIDE

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EXPAT: Civil Civic

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Civil Civil’s music kinda sounds like Sonic Youth soundtracking a porno in space. Which is good if you like Sonic Youth.

The Aussie born, now London residing expats met in Barcelona. Aaron Cupples met Ben Green after a tip off from mutual friends The Drones. Emails were exchanged, Ben flew to Barcelona ‘blind-date’ style to meet Aaron, they made some tunes. Now the the duo spend their days on an indefinite working holiday with a flashing LED box for a drummer.

Upon their triumphant return to Oz for their upcoming tour, we asked guys to fill us in with some photos. They sent us some snaps of themselves near yachts and mountaineering topless in Italy.

Captions by Ben.

We visit monuments and ruins and go “Ooooooh, don’t have one those back in Melbs!”. So here we are at some historic spot near Verona with our our Italian handler, the magical Paolo Vizio. He was one of the only people in Italy who wasn’t ashamed to be photographed with us.

 

One of the most obvious but frequently overlooked things about touring is that it is a form of tourism. When me and my good buddy Aaron ‘Flopsie’ Cupples are actually setting up or soundchecking or playing we are a band. Total professionalism, no fucking around.  But the rest of the time we’re just a couple of dorky Australian tourists. I mean look at us.

We’re dickheads on a weird, boozy working holiday.

 

 Whenever we’re flogging our hire-car through the Maritime Alps we usually take time to climb a mountain and take some creepy, homo-erotic photos of ourselves.

 

We stare and point and laugh at anything we don’t understand. Here we see Aaron trying to figure out what to make of what appears to be a massive, overpowered scooter with a barrel-themed trailer at a German servo. I’m just out of shot pointing and laughing.

 

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LISTEN: POND – ‘Giant Tortoise’

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If you feed seagulls Alka Seltzer or Diet Coke, they don’t wind up in purgatory floating past stained glass windows as this cover suggests.

They keel over and foam at the mouth. Feeling a little bit like that after listening to this new one.

Snag a free download of ‘Giant Tortoise’ here. New record Hobo Rocket will be out soon – but in the meantime, catch Paisley Adams taking his Vitamin C meds and the rest of the POND guys at Laneway this weekend.

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PREMIERE: PVT – ‘Evolution’

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PVT have spent the last two years working on their new record, Homosapien. Starting today, one track from their new album will be released through 9 different blogs around the world. We’re super excited to be the first blog chosen to premiere the first taste of their new track, ‘Evolution’.

Church With No Magic (2010) was the last we heard from the experimental Sydney/London trio. The first track off the new record begins where the last track of the last album left off. Listening to ‘Only The Wind Can Hear You’, the final track on their last record, it seems that PVT never fully ‘resolved’ the album. Like most PVT tracks, this last track on Church With No Magic ended in one giant comma, a slight refrain and a soaring fleck of noise that strays out into the ether.

PVT seem to front questions rather than solve them. As for new track ‘Evolution’, it’s as the name suggests. While it’s not a radical change that’s happened between albums, there’s been a slight shift in their sound – a kind of spatial awareness if you like. This track was written early on, and encompasses some of the themes Richard Pike was exploring at the time.

He notes:

“I watched a documentary called ‘All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace’ by this guy Adam Curtis. It talks a lot about the development of the internet, Ayn Rand, Silicon Valley, JFK and the cult of celebrity – you name it, it’s all in there. The ebb and flow of influence, cause and effect in society, and what makes us who we are. As individuals and as humanity on the whole. Big ideas.”

‘Evolution’ explores all these “big ideas”. From the burgeoning warble of Roland synth in the intro, to Laurence Pike’s steady drum hand feeding the machine, the track is playful galactica one moment, subtle catharsis the next. These elements have always crafted the bulk of PVT’s work, but listening to the new track and comparing it to the band’s older material (2008’s O Soundtrack My Heart), the previous atmospheric tweaks-for-the-hell-of-it have been traded in for a sense of greater clarity.

I’ve always found PVT’s work interesting. But if this track is anything to go by, it seems PVT have again proved that they don’t revel in resolving ideas, but creating them.

Homosapien is out Feb 8th through Create/Control

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Listen to the rest of the album over the next 9 days on these blogs:

‘Electric’ premiering on One A Day on Thursday, January 31
‘Cold Romance’ premiering on Pigeons And Planes on Friday, February 1
‘Love & Defeat’ premiering on Your Music Radar on Saturday, February 2
“Homosapien” premiering on The Line Of Best Fit on Sunday, February 3
‘Vertigo’ premiering on Indie Shuffle on Monday, February 4
‘New Morning’ premiering on Music From Go To Woah on Tuesday, February 5
‘Casual Success’ premiering on Circle.Square.Triangle on Wednesday, February 6
‘Ziggurat’ premiering on IS050 on Thursday, February 7

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LISTEN: Cull – ‘Good People Disappear’

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Alex Watts wrote for our blog back in 2011. He’s good at a lot of things not limited to banjo and the internet, including siting in various musical positions for Brendan McClean and Chance Waters.

Cull is Alex’s new side project. He plays guitars in Cull with his pal Chumpy Ly (Polar Knights) on vocals. (I hope Chumpy is his real name).

The first few bars of ‘Good People Disappear’ does have an obvious Tame Impala tweak (watch the kids go cray). But apparently so does every other song made in history with a sturdy melodic minor guitar chord progression and phased out vocals. While everyone is still aroused by anything that sounds remotely like it was touched by the hand of Kevin Parker, this first tune from Cull is still a great psych-pop gem in its own jamtastic right (refer 2:00 onwards). Ride the wave Chumpy, ride the wave.

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LOOK: XMAS FUNRAYS ft. Them Swoops, Harts, House of Laurence + Two Bright Lakes DJS

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Us internet folk try to do some nice things sometimes. We spend our spare time trudging through all your submissions so we can say some nice stuff about your band in return for no money, minor thanks and getting expired cider at label parties. That being said, the joys of the internet are alright – ie: receiving things like this remix of ‘Absolutely Everybody’ in our inbox yesterday…

Last Christmas we decided to be good blog folk and raise some funds to help The Song Room. These guys spend their time implementing music programs and sending teachers out to disadvantaged schools in non-English speaking and indigenous areas. Good stuff.

We thought this was a worthy cause, so we gathered our fave bands, hung a shitload of Christmas trees from the roof of the Workers Club and turned and threw a damn good Xmas festivus to help raise funds for these guys.

House of Laurence bestowed some shoegaze goodness and their generous haircuts on all. Harts and his band, all dressed in white, did well at  doing the best live Prince hologram anyone could have asked for. There’s no lingering doubt that Them Swoops sound like Phoenix…but that’s never a bad thing, especially when your crowd wants to party like it’s 2009, or 1901, or whatever ya know. Eliza from Oh Mercy joined the guys on stage to shake some maracas for a cover song at the end of the night which I forget the name of because I was too wrapped up in warm fuzzy Xmas vibes/free Sailor Jerrys. And then Marty + Zoe +Tig from Two Bright Lakes turned up, played the best tunes and errybody spent the rest of the night prancing around to R&B jams and kicking around fake ‘snow’.

It was a damn festive FUNRAYS. Big thanks to the bands, dudes from Two Bright Lakes, Triple R, Sailor Jerry’s, Workers + everyone who helped us raise profits for The Song Room.

Real snow. Next year.

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MAP January 2013

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35 dayum reasons to wet yourself over neo-psychadelia from Romania, Finnish grooves or maybe our own D.D Dumbo… who kind of sums up the sound of THE WORLD in our minds right now anyway. Enjoy the first round of MAP for the year.

Click the play button icon to listen to individual songs, right-click on the song title to download an mp3, or grab a zip file of the full 35-track compilation through Ge.tt here.

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ARGENTINA: Zonaindie
El Festival De Los Viajes – Los Altos
El Festival De Los Viajes is a psychedelic rock band with a sound that has an epic atmosphere and lyrics that play with your imagination. Los Altos is our favorite track from La Reserva De Los Lieros, their third album.

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AUSTRALIA: Who The Bloody Hell Are They?
D.D Dumbo – Tropical Oceans
Oliver Hugh Perry is D.D Dumbo. Perry makes music from his house in Castlemaine, a small rural town 120km from Melbourne. Tropical Oceans is a perfect cue to his unique brand of technicolour lo-fi that spans genres, blues hooks, African folk – and a sound that no one else from anywhere is really making at the moment. Sometimes the best releases never receive as much credit as they deserve, and this is one of them. If music is supposed to make you feel goddamn otherworldly, 2013 is going to be a good year for D.D Dumbo.

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AUSTRIA: Walzerkönig
Nowhere Train – Ashes
Nowhere Train is a project of seven folk musicians from different bands. After a train tour through the country and a documentary about it, the supergroup’s first album, aptly named Station, recently saw the light of day. It was featured on national television and Austria’s most popular website. Ashes, a song about a perfect moment, was written on tour by globetrotter Ian Fisher (Missouri/Berlin).

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BRAZIL: Meio Desligado
Tulipa Ruiz – Cada Voz
Tulipa Ruiz is one of the major new Brazilian singers and is acclaimed by critics and the public alike. Cada Voz is the track that closes second album Tudo Tanto, available for free download on her website, and has its instrumental performed by the experimental band São Paulo Underground.

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CANADA: Quick Before It Melts
Daniel Romano – Middle Child
Get out yer hankies, ‘cuz this one’s gonna make you ball like a baby. Daniel Romano’s transformation into the reincarnated George Jones is now complete, right down to the leisure suit he wears on the cover of Come Cry With Me, his third solo album in as many years. The former Attack In Black frontman has become an impeccable storyteller, and this tale of an estranged son trying to make sense of the senseless will break your heart by the time he gets to the first chorus.

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CHILE: Super 45
Motivado – Ferrer
For lack of a better label, the music of Motivado (Mario Martínez) could be classified as ‘space Latin house’. After the praise he got for Bobby Fischer, his debut EP, Motivado delivered his second EP, Stasi, just as the past year ended and it exceeds what he accomplished on his first work. Yes, this is experimental music, but extremely danceable. Ferrer is one of three tracks on Stasi EP, a free download from the Discos Pegaos netlabel.

CHINA: Wooozy
Summer Fades Away – Thank You
Summer Fades Away is an instrumental/post-rock band from Changsha. They released their second album We Meet The Last Time, Then Departure through 1724 Records last November, which features more classical elements. Though the band announced they were going on hiatus, fans still hope they could be back soon to make more beautiful music.

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DENMARK: All Scandinavian
North Fall – Curve
Originally a one-man project by singer-songwriter and guitarist Anders Belling, North Fall turned into a full indie-rock ‘n’ alt-folk band in 2011 and released their first EP late last year, from which Curve is taken. The whole, excellent thing is yours to download on SoundCloud along with seven tracks from Belling’s time as a lone rider.

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: La Casetera
Dkano – El Bolo Bolo
Rapper Dkano mocks the rise and fall of a fictitious dembow artist nicknamed Bolo Bolo, in reference to so many one-hit-wonders that this local genre produces, as opposed to true hip-hop. El Bolo Bolo is taken from Dkano’s upcoming album Señales.

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ECUADOR: Plan Arteria
Fabrikante – Chanteoma
Making songs only with the voice is a risk that can produce impressive results. Francisco Valdivieso, better known as Fabrikante, is an artist who uses the flexibility of his voice to create unique compositions based on a powerful beatbox and original vocal loops. Chanteoma is the first single from his debut album, which will be out early this year.

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ENGLAND: The Guardian Music Blog
Public Service Broadcasting – If War Should Come
Public Service Broadcasting is the operations name of one J Willgoose Esq and his cohort Wrigglesworth. Imagine the Pet Shop Boys if they were obsessed with the war. They’re an electronic duo from London who use samples from old public information films, archive footage and propaganda material from WW2 and ally them to a variety of beats and backing from krautrock to drum ‘n’ bass. If War Should Come, from The War Room EP, is typical of their approach, with its found voices and sense of looming menace as the broadcaster warns of impending battle.

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