New. Australian. Music.    

Darryl Beaton Band - ‘Shoulders’

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I thought it was high time someone blogged on these boys, seeing as they are ludicrously talented and need some serious exposure upon the release (finally!) of their album. Sydney-based band leader Darryl Beaton is pretty well known in muso circles; he writes tracks for everyone from Aussie Idol Guy Sebastian to Ego-Maniac Kanye West.

Essentially, that means that he’s the bomb. But no bomb works without a fuse, which in his case is his backing band, with whom he plays at Melt Bar in Kings Cross every Thursday night. Largely comprised of the Chilean Martinez brothers (who play bass, keys and guitar), this outfit is a sight to behold. Though Darryl is largely steeped in the soul genre, these kids have latin-funk coursing through their veins, and you can hear it all through through their debut, especially in the syncopated rhythms of drummer Kevin Mendoza. Anyone who loves sweet soul music will dig this. For fans of Prince, Jamie Lidell and Stevie Wonder.

Bonus points: it’s safe to play around your parents, and you’ll enjoy it too. If you live in Sydney, you’d be mad not to check them out. After all, they play for free and continue on well into the wee hours of Friday morning. And who really does anything on a Friday, anyway?

http://www.myspace.com/darrylbeaton

teenagersintokyo - ‘Very Vampyr’

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teenagersintokyo - ‘Robocat’ (Knife Machine remix) (mp3)

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I’m very late on this one, but in case you haven’t heard our friends teenagersintokyo are finally making headway into the UK scene where they just finished their first tour. They’ve signed to BackYard recordings, the UK home of Chromeo and The Gossip. Their latest single is a good old fashioned dancy grrl riot anthem. Sydney based remixers Knife Machine have also made a banging electro incarnation of the track ‘Robocat’ fit for the best of ravers out there.

www.myspace.com/teenagersintokyo

Princess One Point Five - ‘I’m Onto Something Good’

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They’ve always been one of those acts that have been lurking in the shadows, but perhaps it’ll be their third record Vous Je Vous that thrusts them into the limelight.

Princess One Point Five (or 1.5, depending on where you read it) is the brainchild of Melbournian Sarah-Jane Wentzki (who, from memory, is Princess 1.5 - well at least she started creating music on her own under this moniker) who joined forces with drummer/producer Richard Andrew, who was the stickman for cult faves Underground Lovers.

‘I’m Onto Something Good’ is the first track from the band’s new record, a positively upbeat indie pop tune which reminds me, for some reason, of Frente. And that’s never a bad thing. It’s a movement towards organic music, as her debut disc At Long Last, released in 2005, relied heavily on soundscapes and synthesisers to create electronic music more akin to Decoder Ring circa Fractions.

If you like the sound of P1.5 and you’ll be in Sydney on Saturday night, they’ll be launching Vous Je Vous at Spectrum on Oxford St.

http://www.myspace.com/princessonepointfive

theredsunband - ‘The Eagle’

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Sydney based indie fuzz band theredsunband returns with a not-so-shoegaze quickie ‘The Eagle’. They’re down to a two piece now to siblings Sarah and Lizzie Kelly, which is good because they’ve been so quiet I was under the impression that they disbanded, especially seeing that Sarah is in Dappled Dave’s new venture The Curse Of Company. I liked a few songs from their last album but as a whole it was a bit of a let down. Let’s see where the new songs takes us this time.

www.myspacepage.com/theredsunband

Firekites - ‘Same Suburb, Different Park’

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Since the release of The Bowery, the Firekites‘ stunning leave-me-speachless debut album, I’ve been yammering on about it to anyone in earshot who’ll put up with me for more than 20 seconds.

Put simply, I fell in love with this record from the first moments I heard ‘Last Ships’. Coming out of Newcastle in NSW, Firekites feature a roll-call of musos from other established acts: Tim Mcphee from post-grunge instrumentalists The Instant, Jane Tyrell from hip hop outfit The Herd and Jason Tampake, who moonlights as a member of Josh Pyke’s backing band.

Where the Firekites truly excel is in the guitar work of Tim and Rod Smith - two acoustic guitars playing symbiotic countermelodies, notes woven together in choreographed harmony. The way these two work together is magic, and it’s the beauty of their intertwined lines that lays the foundation for the Firekites’ idiosyncratic music. When Jane’s vocals kick in, it’s like waves of warm melody crashing over the guitars. She plays off the more subdued and introverted male vocals; vocals which murmur and accompany the guitars rather than overshadow them.

I’m at a loss though to label Firekites’ music, or even find a reference point, although acts like Kings of Convenience and the early work of The Sea and Cake mirror similar musical sentiments. Firekites could be referred to as indie folk, but that doesn’t encapsulate the melancholic aesthetic or mood. Tim’s guitar work from The Instant is still recognisable, so it lacks the strummed chords of traditional folk, and you could almost claim to hear some echoes of jazz in there. Plus, throw in Jason’s violin, intermittent distorted guitar frenzy and electronic beats - and handclaps - and you get a sound that truly defies genre casting.

http://www.myspace.com/firekites

The Curse of Company - ‘All The Mines’

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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’

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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)

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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’

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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)’

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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

Karoshi - ‘Like Air From Your Lungs’ (mp3)

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A dreamy new offering from Sydney based electronic artist Karoshi, full of glitchy beats, melancholic melodies and deft, sublime ornamentation. ‘Like Air From Your Lungs’ is the first offering since the release of his wonderful debut EP, and combines the left-field beats Fourtet with Boards of Canada’s inate sense of ambience and melody. Karoshi is a master of digital music, and ‘Like Air From Your Lungs’ is another example of his abundant talent.

http://www.myspace.com/karoshimusic

Dash and WIll - ‘Pick You Up’

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When I got into the car to drive to work I had Tegan and Sara’s The Con in my head so I fired up the iPod, put that song on loud, and then put on a few more pop gems from the twin sisters before arrived at the office. As soon as sat down I opened up an email encouraging me to download Dash and Will’s new free track called ‘Pick You Up’.

The email unfortunately described Dash and Will as Australia’s answer to Tegan and Sara, which forced me to compare the two acts and since T&S is still fresh in my head from this morning’s drive, D&W’s offering seemed underdeveloped and repetitive. This is an unfair comparison of course seeing that T&S has so much more life and songwriting experience than D&W, but I’m guessing that’s how most listeners would feel too. Nevertheless I’m also sure that like me most people can also see that D&W is bubblling with promising talent and that this choice of single is not indicative of their carreer path. You can hear the obvious distinction in their voices, as opposed to T&Ss hard-to-tell-apart similarity, is going to be a strong point in their songcrafting endeavours.

If you venture to their MySpace there’s a couple more tunes ready for listen and can stand their own ground even in the shadow of a certain popular songwriting sister duo. Looking forward to hearing more.

www.myspace.com/dashandwill

Dead Letter Circus - ‘Reaction’

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Dead Letter Circus are one of those lucky bands who have already worked out what their signature sound is going to be, even before they’ve released a full-length album. However, they are in danger of recycling the same tones and sounds, particularly if they don’t soon switch off the delay pedal. People like familiarity, but not when it becomes repetitiveness.

Having said that, ‘Reaction’ is DLC’s most solid song to date, particularly for vocalist Kim Benzie who’s stripped back the stratospheric high notes that were abundant on the group’s debut EP but which he consistently struggled to hit live. (I hate to say it, but that’s what you get when you use Auto-Tune.) It’s a more natural range for Kim, allowing him not only to add some well-placed harmonies but make his vocals far more rhythmic and laconic, creating an infectious counterpoint to the frenetic instrumentation that’s sitting underneath.

It’s not a deviation from the EP, but more of a solidification of their musical style. ‘Reaction’ is a promising sign of things to come for these Brisbane boys.

http://www.myspace.com/deadlettercircus