Tagged By New Music

INTRODUCING: HEADS.

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The full stop next to HEADS. name is so freakin’ on point. Listening to this band is a no-nonsense pummelling, where bullshit has been replaced with snarling riffs and looming malevolence. If you thought that perhaps the Jesus Lizard could’ve done with a little more angry focus, then this is band for you. If you’ve been struggling to find a band to practice kickboxing to, then this is the band for you. If you just like really heavy bands, then this is the band for you.

HEADS. fit in alongside several other Aussie bands that like to signal the apocalypse with their music – like Yes, I’m Leaving, Zeahorse and Primary Colours. Their debut self-titled release comes in at a clean 27 minutes, as mean and guttural as a coffee date with Attilla the Hun. Album standout ‘A Mural is Worth a Thousand Words’ refuses to lay down and die, a steamroll of bass guitars and throat-shredding war cries. If HEADS. and Steve Albini ever hooked up in the studio, the result would be catastrophically amazing. (Can someone make that happen?)

Although HEADS. aren’t technically Australian – all three members live in Berlin – frontman Ed Fraser is an expat from Melbourne, so that’s enough of a qualification. Really, any excuse to get the noise out about these bastards will do. If your life is lacking in putrid, blackened noise-rock, then mill around in the shadow of terrible indie rock no longer – HEADS. are here to help.

HEADS. is due out on 8 May through Ballarat-based Heart of the Rat Records. Hear ‘A Mural is Worth a Thousand Words’ and latest single ‘Chewing on Kittens’ below.

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PREMIERE: Human Face – ‘Bottom of the Hill’ video

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Session bands too often make the best prototypes for other bands (too long in the shadows, right?). Jumping from a dub reggae jam band to synth-pop doesn’t seem that hard to fathom, but surely the odd urge surfaces. Human Face first started as an avenue for Dan Marsh to venture outside the bounds of his previous role in reggae outfit, The Red Eyes.

The Melbourne outfit are releasing a record in a few months, featuring collaborations with a roll call of Australia’s pop best – Ainslie Wills, Tommy Spender (Spender), Jaye Kranz (Brighter Later), Hailey Cramer and Evan Tweedie (Husky).

Their new video, ‘Bottom of the Hill’, was filmed by the band at Mt Macedon in Victoria. Like the location of the clip, there’s something kind of brooding and redemptive about this track, with its springboard synths and hollowed vocal – “My body’s just a shell at the bottom of the hill, where the wind picks up the dust and draws a line”.

Slowed down at half-speed, the lyrics and rural setting of the clip easily conjures this chirpy synth number into something more sinister. We’ll leave it as friendly pop for now.

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Human Face are playing the Spotted Mallard on Wednesday April 22nd.

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INTRODUCING: Asdafr Bawd

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You should always trust a conservatorium student who pulls apart hooks long forgotten. That’s what Asdafr Bawd (pron: az-das-ah-fah bow-d) has done to xTina’s ‘Can’t Hold Us Down’. It’s part of a two-track release out through Solitaire Recordings (run by I’lls very own Hamish Mitchell). ‘Nobody’ – which uses Aguilera’s hook – should be commended for giving relevance to someone whose star has faded, along with flip-phones, low-cut denim and the stand-alone MP3 player.

Asdafr Bawd (real name Alex Clayton), is a classical piano and percussion student at the University of Melbourne, and he seems to be someone whose music knowledge would extend well beyond your usual chitchat. Presumably, his studies are routinely making him note the difference between augmented, diminished and suspended chords – so don’t get all high and mighty when you realise he’s put Caribou through the works on the second track, ‘Love’.

Underneath all of this is one suave producer who you could place on a spectrum with UK garage at one end and the current post-dub / post-Jamie xx world that electronica is in right now at the other. So pop 19-year-old Alex Clayton on your next playlist – alongside the wealth of young producers Melbourne’s got going for itself right now.

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LISTEN: Kirkis – ‘Hypno’

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Melbourne’s Matthew Kirkis once described playing live as “trying to do a handstand on a giant dragon all the way to Disneyland,” and that’s certainly what it sounds like.

Anytime you sit down to listen to an offering from Kirkis you’re inevitably blindsided. You’re excused for looking like Elaine each time your body tries to move to his time signatures. Before you even get close to working out what you think he’s trying to say, a cluster of rapid-fire melodies all shout at you at once.

So spare a thought for the man behind it all. He’s out with a new track titled ‘Hypno’, building on the hybrid jazz-cum-future soul he’s had quite the knack for – otherwise known (on Soundcloud) as #kirkis. The single comes off a forthcoming LP to be released through Eglo Records, thanks to a chance meeting with label reps at the Evelyn Hotel during Melbourne Music Week.

For a musician who isn’t formally trained, countless hours of consuming myriad influences have sure made their mark. It’s telling that he first studied Painting at the Sydney College of the Arts before jetting off to the New York Art Students League, considering he told us that “colours and moving picture play a large role” in his work. What that work is can’t be pegged solely to his music: he’s a painter, he’s also Anti-Kirkis (his experimental electronic alter ego), and he dabbles in a bit of set-design, too.

‘Hypno’ then, is yet another expression of this guy’s desire to create. He seems to have this boundless energy that you need to see in person if you’re ever given the chance. To describe him, best take a leaf out of the Hiatus Kaiyote playbook, because there has to be a Kirkis equivalent of ‘multi-dimensional polyrhythmic gangsta shit’. ‘Doing handstands on giant dragons’ is halfway there.

 

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INTRODUCING: Leather Towel

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Some songs make you feel tough as hell – you walk down the street listening to them and even if you don’t like fighting you’re daring everyone you walk past to start something. This new single from Melbourne’s Leather Towel, a band that features members of Nun, Ausmuteants and Exhaustion (!!!), is kind of one of those songs – but it’s also kind of just about Mexican food. And that’s what I like best about Australian punk music: so much of it is fucking hilarious while being, simultaneously, downright terrifying.

‘Nacho Chips’ (apparently from a forthcoming record due in February through Aarght and Hozac Records) is on edge for the whole of its less-than-two-minutes runtime. From the jittery high-hats to the frantic vocals to that bass riff that makes me feel a bit sick but in a way that I like a lot – the whole thing is wound up like a spring that goes off almost immediately. It also seems like it’d go nuts live, but Leather Towel don’t play much and only in Melbourne. Still, an excellent song.

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INTRODUCING: Chores

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Man, fuck chores, amirite? Stuff Mum and Dad, I wanna watch some goddamn TV! Power Rangers is on, and they can go SCREW THEMSELVES if they think I’m missing these brightly coloured karate robots getting up to some GODDAMN shenanigans.

Chores are, sincerely, the worst thing on the planet – right after cinema clerks who ID you at MA15+ movies and that dickweed of a maths teacher, Mr. Graham. Yeah, nah – that seems about right.

It’s kind of odd that a band – especially a band as awesome as this one – would name themselves after the worst thing on the planet. Maybe it’s like that metal thing where you name your band something controversial, like Fuck the Fitzroy Doom Scene or Gay Witch Abortion.

Chores sound like Jebediah being gutter stomped by the fuzz pop of the Mint Chicks. Their debut EP Yeah, Nah contains six songs of Dischord-era emo gargled with a hefty dose of feedback. If it weren’t for the droning guitars, Chores could be a punk band. Instead they’re an awesomely weird amalgamation of shoegaze, snot and guitar solos.

Although taking out the rubbish and feeding the dogs are literally the worst things the planet has thrown at you, Chores are the best band to lay into your earbuds as you begrudgingly go about your tasks so you can earn some freakin’ weed money.

Chores’ Yeah, Nah EP is available as a name-your-price download on Bandcamp.

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LISTEN: Day Ravies – ‘Under The Lamp’ EP

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I’d always thought of Sydney’s Day Ravies as a kind of over-earnest band – one of the best things to come out of this shoegaze/psych revival period, definitely, but not particularly fun. With this EP, they’ve proved me well and truly wrong.

One highlight is the overblown synth on ‘Perennial’, the most dramatic and upbeat track, with the teasing vocals in the chorus (‘I left you wondering’) taking joy in their own mystery. Then there’s that distorted guitar on ‘Sleepwalk’, almost country at times, playing a lead line that stumbles all over the song, knocking everything else out of its way and having a great time doing it. The raw buzzing slab of noisy guitar on every song balances out the breathy vocals beautifully, and acts as a strongly grounded base from which the lighter layers of their sound can spiral out.

With ‘Under The Lamp’ Day Ravies have made their sound fresh again, and maybe finally kicked that ‘jangly’ tag that’s inexplicably clung to them  since their first release. They’re also a band that’s extremely confident and respected in what they do, so it’d be cool to see them push things further and get more experimental with future releases – go a little Frank Reynolds and get real weird with it.

‘Under The Lamp’ has been released on the band’s own brand new label Strange Pursuits, and you can get it as a cassette or download from Bandcamp.

Catch them on tour along the east coast in support of their recent ‘Hickford Whizz’ 7″:

Thursday, 12 March – The Curtin, Melbourne, w/ The Ancients + White Walls

Friday, 13 March – The Hotel Metro, Adelaide, w/ EMU + Yabbies

Saturday, 21 March – The Foundry, Brisbane, w/ Per Purpose + 100%

Saturday, 28 March – Union Hotel Newtown, Sydney, w/ bearhug + Weak Boys

Thursday, 9 April – The Phoenix, Canberra, w/ Black Springs + Mind Blanks

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