Tagged By New Music

LISTEN: Rebel Yell – ‘Never Perfection’

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Pic by Glen Schenau

Pic by Glen Schenau

Some people have a tendency to dismiss music that has too strong an aesthetic – from artists who’ve taken more than one second to think about what people might like to look like as well as listen too. I reckon that’s super reductive of what music is, and, most usually, sexist as hell.

I love Grace Stevenson’s (who’s also in 100%) solo thing Rebel Yell because it’s vibe and sound and image, form and function all coming together to deliver maximum impact. Her first single ‘Never Perfection’ is dark industrial electronic music that you can dance to if you want – but it’s not really dance music. It doesn’t matter that much if you’re having fun, as long as that bass keeps pumping you’ll keep moving. The lyrics are completely unintelligible but she’s delivering them like a manifesto, insistent and direct. There’s a trend for punk shows in Brisbane lately to have a synth band/artist opening or playing after the headliner and it’s worked both to break the three white dudes with guitar monotony and to encourage electronic music with some darkness and muscle to bloom.

 

 

The video, done by Helena Papageorgiou, is all purple smoke and strobes flashing over Stevenson’s striking face, and does a great job of recreating the vibe of a Rebel Yell live show – slightly elusive, always making you want more. I also like that although it’s shot like a underground-rave scene, you can see it was filmed under someone’s house, so it’s more like you’re at a really good house show with about three minutes before the cops arrive.

 

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Before now, the Brisbane bands that have become most popular interstate have usually been of the sunny garage pop or likeable-stoner party rock variety. But maybe we don’t care so much about being liked any more. Maybe now we wanna make music that’s cold, distorted, and bold. And look fucking good doing it. It isn’t just me that thinks this has real widespread appeal – Rebel Yell just signed up to work with Rice is Nice on her EP Mother of Millions, out August 19.

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LISTEN: Treehouse – ‘She’s A Mystic’

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treehouse

‘She’s a Mystic’ is the first single of a forthcoming cassette called Centre of Their World from Hobart three piece Treehouse. Everyone I know has been spending their work lunch breaks looking at Hobart real estate and dreaming about getting away to that picturesque but vaguely sinister island. But maybe it isn’t so dreamy – there’s a lot of good loud cranky stuff coming out of Tas at the moment (I’m thinking of Naked here as well). Which, you know, makes it way more interesting.

The song goes for almost six minutes, usually a bad sign in punk music, but the incessant-ness is hypnotic rather than boring, especially with that melodic aching lead guitar driving through the middle. You can’t call things scuzzy any more cuz it makes people think of Dune Rats, but if you could maybe this song would be kinda scuzzy. Singer Callum Cusick is doing some good strangled shouting, like he’s coming apart at the seams. He sounds like he genuinely might feel Bad, and that’s always good listening.

There’s a break in the middle, and then the song amps up a bit, like Cusick wondered out of the room for a beer and came back with more grievances to air and renewed energy to yell. The last minute is especially desperate, and this song is a great example of the power of repetition to build tension. The end isn’t much different from the start, but it feels twice as intense.

There’s no date yet, but expect Centre of Their World out on Vacant Valley sometime soon.

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LISTEN: Civil Civic – ‘The Hunt’

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Civil Civic the Hunt

It’s been five years since Melbourne expats Civil Civic released their debut record Rules – a driving mix of noise, post punk and math rock. The duo met via email in 2009, and began trading ideas between their homes in London and Barcelona. It could be a slow, convoluted process, but the results were manic and immediate, and often gleefully nerdy, with fast-paced songs changing key and time signature mid-flight.

Since then, the band has released a single with outsider artist and lo-fi pioneer R. Stevie Moore (it sounds a bit like the Cure fast-forwarded to 160 per cent), and guitarist Aaron Cupples produced the Drones’ outlandish new record, Feelin’ Kinda Free. Along the way they worked on a follow-up record, describing it early on as “a big, ballsy expansion and escalation of the sonic turf we staked out on our 2011 debut Rules, with more high emotion and destruction and joy and carnage.

“Even at this stage, with the long and punishing mixing process ahead of us, we’re already scared of the results.

“This thing is going to give people brain tumours (the awesome kind). All we wanted to do was make a jaw-droppingly awesome record, not some sort of hyper-music-weapon that gets us ‘black-bagged’ in our sleep and end up working for the C.I.A.”

First single ‘The Hunt’ has finally landed, making its Australian premiere right here. It’s an acrobatic number, veering between shimmering, harmonic chords and blinding electronic passages, all underwritten by relentless 909s, prog solos and a wash of noise – kind of like Fuck Buttons spliced with TNGHT. Aaron sums it up like this:

“You wake up late afternoon, your hair a mess. You smell like a bin. Breakfast is the rest of the falafel from the night before. You’re volatile, energised, funny as fuck. You don’t give a single shit what others think of you.”

‘The Hunt’ will be out 24 June on Civil Civic’s Gross Domestic Product label, via Believe Digital, with an album to follow in spring. Check out the teaser below:

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LISTEN: Melt – ‘Neighbours’

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Melt

Here’s a word you don’t often associate with Canberra experimental, improvisational guitar artist Melt (Jordan Rodger from Wives, Primary Colours): concise. But here we are, with this concise, immediate guitar pop song as the first single off his upcoming record. He only allows himself a few bars of meandering guitar before it becomes rhythmic and driven, and drums come in and we’re pelting towards the end. ‘Neighbours’ is even more focussed than previous single ‘Sydney to Canberra’ off last year’s Theta Waves, though it shares the same tight, top-heavy drumming.

Roger has also kept up with the collaborative vibe of Theta Waves (which featured guests like Orlando Furious and California Girls), with Snowy (Liam Halliwell) of The Ocean Party, Cool Sounds, No Local etc on vocals. Here Halliwell does that thing where he follows up cute everyday observations with the perfect heaps-real line in ‘the neighbours watched me sleep, I didn’t mind/ Remember what we could stand about each other?’. There’s maybe four sentences of lyrics in total, repeated over and over. Then an abrupt stop. Then a little more pretty guitar to coax the track to a close. But that’s all they need to make sure you’re left with a strong feeling of nagging desperation.

There’s a little disclaimer on the Soundcloud for this song, letting you know that the rest of Melt’s new record probably won’t be this easy. It’ll probably just be beautiful, cool and surprising instead. Keep an eye out on Friday, 20 May for the cassette, out via Cinnamon Records.

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LISTEN: Tralala Blip – ‘Oceans of Love’

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tralala blip

With all the kind of dark-leaning, ‘go the fuck off’ electronic music we’ve all enjoyed listening/ getting trashed to lately, it’s sometimes a relief to just bloody relax. ‘Oceans of Love’, the title track from the new (…ish) EP by Tralala Blip is about as chill and pretty as it gets.

Tralala Blip are from Lismore in northern New South Wales, where cashed-up sea changers and real-deal hippies collide in beautiful mountainous bushland. This might be why they sound like not much else around at the moment – they’re isolated enough to do their own thing, but close enough to Brisbane to catch some ears (this latest LP is out on Bris label Tenth Court). They’ve been around since 2007, releasing albums of super intriguing experimental pop at a relaxed pace.

‘Oceans of Love’ is pure escapism – pools of water and light and all that nice stuff. The bass grooves along at the perfect head-bobbing pace, never deviating from its mission to make you feel real good. The video features a turtle swimming around looking at stuff, which is exactly what you feel like watching when you listen to this song.

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There’s a lot of hypnotic, out-there sounds on the record to love, with many of the songs mining more unsettling territory than this one, if that’s your vibe. You can hear and buy ‘Oceans of Love’ via Tenth Court.

Tralala Blip are playing the Opera House on 25 May as part of TEDxSydney.

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LISTEN: Carla Dal Forno – ‘Fast Moving Cars’ / ‘Better Yet’

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carla dal forno

Carla Dal Forno has previously released stuff as part of Melbourne/Berlin experimental acts Tarcar and F ingers, who’ve got those  ‘bleak’ ‘dark’ ‘cold’ ‘difficult’ tags stuck on so tight, mostly only weird dudes can really be bothered to get into them.

But I reckon you could get pretty into this track, weird dude or no. In ‘Fast Moving Cars’ Dal Forno is having one of those calm ‘this is how I feel, take it or leave it’ conversations that you have in your head but which never come out right in real life. But somehow Dal Forno’s made it come out perfect; you know exactly what she means when she’s telling whoever to ‘do something exciting’ and ‘yeah, come on, be reckless’. The song’s all subterranean bass and vocals, with an undercurrent of spacey buzz. Taunting vocal melodies delivering lines like ‘I get turned on by fast racing cars’ bring a bit of attitude – if not exactly ‘personality’ to her hypnotically monotone delivery.

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The video is simple and cool, too – for a song that’s about the desire for new experiences and the exotic and exciting, it has this typically Australian bush setting, recognisable from school trips and family trips and friend trips. It’s nostalgic but kind of spooky, following a girl as she walks down a path through the trees, into the river and swims away. Probably just to the other side but ~who knows~?

The B side, ‘Better Yet’, is maybe a little more typical of the cold electronic stuff we’ve been hearing a bit of lately, but it’s even more spookily beautiful – hooded robes/ candles/ ‘trying to find your way out of windowless rooms’ shit. It give me an intense feeling of unease.

 

Dal Forna lives in Berlin these days, ‘Fast Moving Cars’ is out on London label Blackest Ever Black and it has about 11,000 views on YouTube by now, so she’s already doing better than me or you. Still, have a listen.

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LISTEN: Tim Richmond – ‘Come to Papa’

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Tim Richmond Come to Papa cover 300

A chef and a publican (he co-owns the lovely Longplay in North Fitzroy), Tim Richmond has been composing songs, slowly and steadily, since 2008, using a guitar he first bought as a teenager. His last record, Dot, consisted of stark, skewed guitar pop, as idiosyncratic as you might expect from a businessman with the freedom to experiment, tinkering determinedly after hours.

Richmond’s first two solo records were made with local stalwarts like Declan Kelly, Nick Huggins, Kishore Ryan and James Cecil. For the latest Tim Richmond Group release, What’s in the Middle?, he’s convened another all-star team, with Mark Monnone of the Lucksmiths, Monnone Alone and Lost & Lonesome Recording Co. on bass and Joe Alexander of Terrible Truths and Bedroom Suck Records on drums.

Lead single ‘Come to Papa’ sounds slick and dense compared to Richmond’s earlier work. In place of Dot‘s spidery riffs, he’s opted for bright chords and effects pedals, and a characteristically agile bass line from Monnone is well paired with Alexander’s featherlight drumming. Cheerful, wry and just a little creepy, the track’s basically a football anthem for cool dads – with a sneaky change of time signature to underscore the strangeness of this chorus: ‘Come to papa / Bada bing bada boom … Booya!’

What’s in the Middle? is out on 1 July via Lost & Lonesome. You can catch Tim Richmond Group supporting Cool Sounds at Hugs & Kisses on Saturday night, and at Lost & Lonesome’s Gasometer residency on Tuesday, 17 May.

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