Tagged By melbourne

PREMIERE: Contrast – ‘Pipe Dreams’

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CONTRAST-band

WOULD YA LISTEN TO THIS?! I keep having deja-vu that we’ve written about these guys somewhere on this blog before, but I’m just probably under the auspice that everyone should know about Contrast already.

The Melbourne band describe themselves as ‘just a coupla blokes who like skateboarding and loud music’. Humility. Nice sentiment. The behemoth of whatever the heck is happening here really deserves your ears. Contrast play a sort of pepped-up ‘dreamgaze’, something that perhaps Slowdive coupled with a bit Primary Colours-era Horrors could have plotted in a small echoey bathroom. There are a lot of dull shoegaze bands out there, but this track is a decent show of how Contrast have cut up the genre’s lineage and nailed it right down the line. ‘Pipe Dreams’ is a reasonably huge track; everything from the explosive percussion to the euphoric pedal-driven swell diving in and out of Jack Crook’s casual delivery just DOES IT.

You can catch Contrast launching ‘Pipe Dreams’ on Friday the 7th of March at the John Curtin Hotel in Melbourne, with supports from Hollow Everdaze, Sagamore & Atolls. 

‘Pipe Dreams’ is the first single from Contrast’s upcoming EP, set for release on April 4th. Super impressive band.

 

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INTRODUCING: Ohms

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ohms

There are a couple of things Melbourne four piece Ohms do well. Firstly, they’re great at making rowdy garage punk. It sounds something like the Ramones clashing with The Vasco Era in a death match. They also do anthemic really well. Their songs seem to be created specifically to cause ruptures in your vocal chords from all the coarse shouting matches you’ll be having with your stereo. Ohms also exemplify that rugged, sticky-carpet feel of your favourite punk dive; the songs from their debut album Pity are like sweat personified.

The main point of Ohms is to get your heart pumping as hard and fast as humanly possible. I think the band must have made a blood oath to get all of Australia jumping up and down screaming, ‘No social life!’ at the top of their lungs and air-guitaring the shit out of ‘Great Riff Your Majesty’. And who are we to deny them their destiny? Just succumb to the loud, noisy bliss of Ohms and thank us later.

Ohms have a couple of gigs coming up in Melbourne – details below:

Friday, 28 February  – Old Bar with Spacejunk, Motel Love, Waterloo and DJ Von

Friday, 21 March – Cherry Bar with Magic Bones and La Bastard

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INTRODUCING: Edward Francis

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phia&francis

Edward Francis is the lyric-based songwriting project of Melbourne-born, Berlin-based composer and sound designer, Edward Gould. In October last year, Gould dropped a two-track album, Saxophone: the first part, on Bandcamp. Though it received some attention in Germany, the release was almost completely passed over by the Australian blog machine, and it’s only now beginning to get some serious plays on triple j.

Recorded and arranged on Gould’s laptop, the tracks are made primarily for guitar, vocals and, unsurprisingly, saxophone. They evoke the work of Blood Orange in their restraint and downright steeze, as well as the chamber instrumentation of Rhye’s smooth, organic R’n’B.

Single ‘This City’ features fellow Aussie expat Phia (Sophia Exiner) on vocals. (The beat programming also appears to make use of some of her trademark kalimba loops). My favourite track here is the pensive opener, ‘Hose Rock Love Song’ – if only because I find the romantic overtures to Berlin on ‘This City’ a little cloying. Both tracks, however, are intelligent and light of touch, focusing on the play of tension and release rather than on any conventional pop structure.

Gould has also released a minimal house track as Francis George called ‘Float This’, which, like Saxophone, uses a palette of woody timbres and muted beats. His Soundcloud profile also features some conceptual sound art pieces and cello-based compositions, including a remix of Gabriel Prokofiev’s ‘Float Dance’, as performed by celebrated cellist Peter Gregson.

The most recent upload is an Edward Francis reworking of the lead single, ‘Do You Ever’, from Phia’s forthcoming record. Gould’s version is delicate and expansive, opening the original song up and taking it from sweet to graceful.

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PREMIERE: Grand Prismatic – ‘Footscray and Fancy Free’

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grand-prismatic

 

Grand Prismatic have been pretty quiet since the release of their debut album, Birds and Beasts, back in 2012. They have been dabbling, mind you – a couple of tracks came out early last year, and singer Brendan Clarkson and percussionist David Freudenstein both featured on the Peking Tapes compilation that we reviewed last week.

But today they’re back with the first single off their forthcoming EP: an ode to Melbourne’s inner west called ‘Footscray and Fancy Free’. The track comes on strong right from the start with a swaggering intro, before slowing to a folksy canter that has the cheerful circularity of a drinking song.

Grand Prismatic show a different kind of chutzpah here than on the Supergrass-style kook of earlier single ‘Bells Will Ring’. The new one’s all about the sing-alongs and the horn accompaniments, the whole circus led by Clarkson’s eccentric vocal (think Tim from Dappled Cities, minus the acrobatics). Expect some more bombast from these guys soon – the Footscray and Fancy Free EP is due out in March.

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LISTEN: Mangelwurzel – Dead Pets EP

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mangelwurzel dead pets

I was a couple of glasses of wine down on a packed Friday at the Evelyn, when Mangelwurzel, hit the stage dressed in costume. There were flowers, disco-balls, smiley-faced bras – everything a tipsy twenty-something could want. Mangelwurzel even brought an actual mangelwurzel*, celebrating in style for the release of their debut EP, Dead Pets.

The EP clocks in at just under ten minutes and wastes no time getting things done. Each track seems to subvert itself half-way through, careening off in different directions before finding its way back to the opening phrases. There’s a sporadic, almost bi-polar feel to the songs and the EP as a whole, where the seven-piece will swing from surf rock to hip hop, from smooth jazzy pop to heavy cymbals and distortion. Yet, there’s a complete coherence in the tracks as well. It’s like when someone walks into a messy room, cries “HOW CAN YOU FIND ANYTHING IN THIS DUMP?”, and you reply  “Shit, mum. I’ve got this”.

While each of the tracks are great in their own little right, the actual recording of the songs is a little underdone. It’s short of bedroom-style production, or rather (and in the nicest possible sense) there isn’t any production. During their set, the band revealed they recorded on an eight-track straight into Vegas. It’s a shame really, as there are points in the EP where the dense layering or dynamic shifts in the tracks could really have been strengthened by some extra production pointers. However, Dead Pets is indicative of Mangelwurzel’s potential and ability – a band that will still manage to sound great on a live recording when most others wouldn’t stand a chance.

If you have an opportunity to see Mangelwurzel live, drop everything, bring some friends, and do just that.

*Did you know these things even existed?!

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LISTEN: Peking Tapes – Summer Lovin’ 2013

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peking tapes bc copy

Last year Sam ‘Rusty’ Crockett and Richie Shilton of cassette label Peking Tapes decided to collect a stash of their friends’ unreleased material for the Summer Lovin’ 2013 compilation. Coincidentally, Rusty and Richie’s friends play in just about every band in Melbourne, so they had loads of stuff to trawl through. The result is a fascinating document of the workings of this thriving little scene from Brunswick, and hopefully a sign for the future.

Summer Lovin’ features old mates Lachlan Denton from The Ocean Party, Curtis Wakeling of Velcro and Zone Out’s Ashley Bundang, who, as usual, has the reverb turned up to ‘desert mirage’. There’s also Wizard Oz’s excellent chillwave cover of TV Colours’ ‘Bad Dreams’ that had the kids frothing at the mouth in 2013.

But there are a number of revelations in here, too. Most exciting is the work coming from the sub-constellation of musicians around the band Big Tobacco, which features Peking Tapes honchos Crockett and Shilton alongside Tom Bradbury and Cam Hassard. Hassard’s contribution, ‘New York’, is far and away the highlight of the compilation. Channelling Bruce Springsteen without a care, Hassard belts out a tale of American wanderlust replete with bangin’ 80s-style sax solo, which is performed by Cam himself. As far as I’m aware, no other solo material by Hassard has yet been released, but here’s hoping.

Big Tobacco also do the 80s just the way it should be. They sound like the Jesus and Mary Chain meets the Church on their track ‘Broken Telephone’, with vocals from Bradbury that have just the right amount of ache to make the song feel anthemic.

‘Happy’, Bradbury’s own track, comes from his 2011 EP, Dream About a Girl. Its buoyant melody is underscored by a churning acoustic riff, with some low-key strings to round the edges.

As for the remaining contributors, Jordan Thompson of the Ocean Party offers a synth-interpolated alt country ballad which is the other clear standout here. Romantic but not a love song, ‘The Carnal Embrace’ seems to be about the disappointment of sex for its own sake; a track in the tradition of ‘The Wrong Girl’ (but better), with Thompson singing, ‘I don’t wanna know what he said/don’t wanna know what she said/don’t wanna meet a girl like that’.

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