www.myspace.com/allindiaradio

Laura Jean - ‘Yellow Moon’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve posted about Laura Jean before and her I’m a Rabbit, I’m a Fox song. This is her newie and it’s just as tender, moody and chilled. Recommended.

www.myspace.com/edenland

Nucleus - ‘Dissolved Girl’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sound familiar? Sydney’s proponents of prog-rock goodness, with a penchant for Tool and Dream Theater, Nucleus have lent their hand to a reinterpretation of Massive Attack’s ‘Dissolved Girl’ on the band’s second EP, Circumvolution. The whole EP was an in-house affair: the band’s guitarist Dylan Mitrovich produced, engineered, mixed and mastered the six tracks, and for a home studio the quality of the Circumvolution EP is top notch. And this isn’t a bad cover, either!

Sydney-siders, Nucleus are launching Circumvolution at the Excelsior Hotel in Surry Hills on Saturday August 9 if you feel like some heavy guitars for your post-Splendour weekend.

http://www.myspace.com/nucleusband

Snowman - We Are The Plague

The 2008 Melbourne Film Festival has a music documentaries program called Backbeat, there are some very interesting features like Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story and The Night James Brown Saved Boston. Most of them are foreign documentaries, why is this I’m not sure. I guess we hear about local acts enough to not want watch a whole documentary of it. But there is a screening of local music videos called Orbit that looks interesting. I’ll unashamedly admit that it’s also a good source of content for this blog, so for the next couple of weeks we’ll feature some of the music videos here, including some artists we weren’t aware before, like the intriguing sounding All India Radio.

www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au

Snob Scrilla - ‘There You Go Again’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It’s not a name you’ll soon forget, and with a new EP fresh on the shelves and a run on the upcoming Parklife tour, you’ll probably be hearing it a whole lot more pretty soon. Snob Scrilla take the grit out of indie rock, the master lyricism out of hip hop and wind up somewhere on the edges of the genre-playground, like those cool kids in school who didn’t quite fit in anywhere but wound up being friends with everybody.

www.myspace.com/snobscrilla

ted&francis - ‘erlend’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

It seems that the French isn’t sick of nu-wave/electro/rave yet because the Pedestrian.tv guys announced that the Kitsune label has just signed Sydney unknowns ted&francis for an album. I wonder if by the time they get their LP ready everyone will be over this sound.

www.myspace.com/tedandfrancis

Birds of Tokyo - ‘Broken Bones’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Although I haven’t really settled down and got cosy with Birds of Tokyo’s new disc Universes just yet, my initial reaction to the album is that it’s a fairly hit-and-miss affair. Having said that, ‘Broken Bones’, which is essentially the opening track on the disc (there’s an ambient intro song), is a wicked tune, and the best track on Universes.

http://www.myspace.com/birdsoftokyo

Ellen Kibble - ‘Bridge Song’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I was catching up with Sui Zhen who was in Melbourne for a few performances. She had Sunday afternoon slot at the Empress in Fitzroy and I arrived early enough to catch Ellen opening the proceedings. Her voice was just perfect for an easy afternoon day at the pub, so full of character and pleasing to the ears. She somewhat reminds me of Laura Marling. Talking to her after the show she told me that she hasn’t really been gigging for about 6 months and is only doing every now and then. I hope she picks it up a bit more because with the right songs she can really make some headway into this scene.

www.myspace.com/ellenkibble

Gin Wigmore - ‘Stealing Happiness’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Couple weeks ago I saw Gin performed a very short media showcase, she was very down to earth and her stage demeanor was very far from the image that I had built based on her voice. Her manager said she’s steering away from the nu-soul angle which is a good move cos everyone will probably get tired of that soon. You can download this track for free from her website once you register your email. According to her site John Butler plays ukulele on one of her songs, and another whothehell.net favourite Pnau is planning on working with her as well, exciting!

www.ginwigmore.com.au/ecard/

Wowsers. The second video for this song, the first one came out about a year ago.

http://www.myspace.com/midnightjuggernauts

Brisbane’s pop pixie Kate Miller-Heidke has teamed up with Jefferton James, one of Sydney’s most favoured artists when it comes to indie acts, to create an animated video for her latest single - and highly likely, last from her album Little Eve - ‘Mama’. Expect some new KMH material by the year’s end.

http://www.myspace.com/katemillerheidke

Featuring not Ladyhawke but Holiday Carmen-Sparks of Bridezilla.

Mercy Arms - ‘Half Right’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I know I posted this song before but this is a new version and remains my favourite track of the band.

www.myspace.com/mercyarms

Snowman - ‘Daniel was a Timebomb’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

While the proprietors of Who the Hell argue over the merits of Snowman’s brutal new beast The Horse, The Rat and the Swan, I’m unequivocally on the “Pro” side for this album. It’s fucking menacing, like a Birthday Party record, completely visceral and incendiary; it feels like the four piece won’t just bring down Perth, but the whole of Australia with the force behind these songs. The music darts from raucuous punk rock like that found on ‘Our Mother (She Remembers)’ - what an opener! - to the weighty darkness of ‘The Blood of the Swan’ and ‘She Is Turning into You’, two songs that’d fit almost too well in the soundtrack to Wolf Creek or a similarly evil Aussie outback film.

‘Daniel was a Timebomb’ is the closest thing Snowman have to a pop song on this album - that is, if you like your pop songs to explode your eardrums.

http://www.myspace.com/thesnowmanempire

Mailer Daemon ft Catcall and Peach - ‘Bad Move Baby’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Mailer Daemon is a Sydney based dj/remixer, and this is his first original track that I’ve heard with vocals and he’s enlisted Catcall and Sydney radio dj Peach. On his website there is a story on how there three got together in a party and ended up with the idea for this song. He’s got an EP coming out (or is it out already?) featuring collaborations with Kobra Kai and Damned Dirty Apes.

www.blackgallant.com

Lisa Mitchell - ‘Neopolitan Dreams’ (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I think I mentioned here before that I don’t really watch TV that much and definitely not Australian Idol, so I don’t really know the background story to Lisa Mitchell reality tv exposure. Nevertheless this cute pop song, complete with glockenspiel undertone, sounds like a promising start for a 17 year old teenager having a go at a music career.

www.myspace.com/lisalisamitchell

Hi all. Well, it’s middle of summer here in London and we are experiencing a raging average temperature of about fifteen degrees (so please, no more emails about “how cold” it is in Sydney. Pish!) and yet summer festival season is in full swing. It’s like everyone is in town to get silly, including the usual culprits Operator Please (still working super hard-they play almost every night in a different town). Midnight Juggernauts at LOVEBOX festival next weekend with Howling Bells, who have returned to their second hope with a new bag of tunes! And of course Sparkadia who have the best booking agent in town (I was told it was the same one as “a small band called Nirvana”) as they are playing every major UK festival possible, including Oxygen and T in the Park this week in Scotland. So this blog is mainly going to focus on two newcomers to the scene, and it’s a rampant one at that.

First up, The Galvatrons…*cue a sigh from those sceptics out there* I know, I know, I’m the last one you have to convince that the irony of such a band, who fuse AC/DC thrust with DEVO-esque cheese. But crikey, they played to a crowd who were won over with their 80’s gyration synth and 70’s guitar. The there is that half time slow down (re: ‘When We Were Kids’) as vocalist Johnny chucks his wispy white mullet around and sticks his index finger to the sky. It should have been kitsch, but somehow it wasn’t, and everybody dug it! Even me… They really give it everything, and it’s tuneful despite also being gimmicky and if there is one thing that helps a band along in the UK, to sell records, pack out shows and get people remembering them is having that point of difference, a trademark, and GALVATRONS are onto it… Also, don’t forget the all important premise of the arts, whether it be music, dance or theatre, and that it should always aspire to entertain, and The Galvatrons are first class when it comes to this. They’ve signed some sort of deal with AM+AK (another music + another kitchen), which is an uber-forward thinking team of music biz boys who hold a weekly night at Proud Galleries. AM+AK are in the know of what’s happening on the scene, so can’t wait to see what can happen with their latest Aussie recruit.

The second newcomer to town is Ghostwood, a band whose tunes I’ve always been really fond of, a rock band with their fingers in a Jesus & Mary Chain socket connected to a Primal Scream’s melody maker. I went to almost every one of their gigs in the couple of months leading up to when I moved to London, over a year ago now, and so seeing them play again it was awesome to see how much they have changed and progressed. They played a short stint on a Tuesday night at Artrocker’s night that hosts many an up and coming band, donning super sized shirts that nod at Manchester circa 1989, Ghostwood’s tight distorted pop was well received, with the instrumental jam-out at the end a relatively new addition to their sound, but fitting and not unlike the acid-dance of Stone Roses. Many people are of the mind that ‘rock’ is quite out of fashion at the moment, with electro/sampled pop music a.k.a Ting Tings..ect dominating the music market and the minds of critics. But I’m of the mind that if you’re good, and get the right people behind you, it doesn’t matter what tune you play too. And I think the U.K are ready for the next big Aussie rock force post-Vines. Though they’ve had their dance off with the likes of The Presets, Cut Copy and Pendulum… it could well be the right time for Ghostwood.

Will be back in two weeks with a review of Aussie’s at LOVEBOX weekend London…

www.myspace.com/thegalvatrons

www.myspace.com/ghostwoodband

Hunz - ‘Draw The Line’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Brisbane based Hunz’s project have been in the works since the 90s, he was a vocalist for Beanbag and when that finished up he concentrated on his own beatpop project. This song is a clean chill out tune that displays his vocal skills and experience with melody making. Sounds like a promising set up for a good album.

www.myspace.com/hunz

Recorded in a 50 year celebration of Johnny O’Keefe’s hit. You might recognise the song as music program Rage’s theme song.

THE DEATH SET - AROUND THE WORLD from Demonbabies on Vimeo.

TIMTIM - July 2008 Mix (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

… is Tim from Damn Arms. Since they’re on a hiatus, Yama is busy doing G.L.O.V.E.S, Simon is with the Lost Valentinos, Ben Browning is shredding for Cut Copy, and Tim is touring Japan to DJ! This set is a pretty good LCD/Cut Copy disco-vibe mix perfect for Friday.

www.myspace.com/timdudetim

The Dolly Rocker Movement - Get Up and Go Go

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I first came across this band on a rainy Anzac day, wandering through the Essential festival at the Gaelic Club on the back of a rather large musical bender. The Dolly Rocker Movement were shoved into one of the smallest upstairs rooms. It was way too crowded, smelled vaguely of feet and a series of audio problems meant we stood there in uncomfortable silence for at least 15 minutes, but when the band finally started, well – it’s a tad clichéd, but it was all worth it.

They’re about town quite a bit these days, so if you haven’t caught their warm fuzzy percussion yet, move a little faster, people.

www.myspace.com/thedollyrockermovement

Violent Soho - ‘Love is a Heavy Word’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

A bit of groove rock now, Violent Soho is a young four piece from Brisbane whose vocals remind me of the rockier grunge bands of the early 90s. I suppose comparisons with Children Collide would not go amiss. These guys are doing back to back touring with Reptiles, Cut Off Your Hands and The Mess Hall all the way to September so you got no reason to miss them.

www.myspace.com/violentsoho

Deep Sea Arcade - ‘Crouch End’ (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sydney youngsters with a penchant for The Beatles and Elliott Smith. Deep Sea Arcade could have done a lot worse with their debut offering to the world. An underwater adventure in the yellow submarine with Lennon at the helm, ‘Crouch End’ is a dreamy psych-folk tune that floats along and takes you in its current. I reckon it won’t be long before you see Deep Sea Arcade and fellow Sydneysiders Richard In Your Mind sharing bills together; they’d compilment each other perfectly.

http://www.myspace.com/deepseaarcade

PNAU feat. Ladyhawke - Embrace (Fred Falke & Miami Horror remix) (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

We have here the world exclusive to a track by Australia’s hottest electronic artist PNAU aided by our favourite and future pop star Ladyhawke, getting the retreatment by a collaboration between Melbourne’s Miami Horror and French electronic bassist Fred Falke. This remix will be released as part of the Pnau’s third single Embrace, out in the next few weeks. Since the success of the their album release the boys have relocated themselves (as have Ladyhawke) to the United Kingdom to push their album in the Northern Hemisphere markets. Catch them.

www.myspace.com/pnaupnau

www.myspace.com/ladyhawkerock

www.myspace.com/miamihorror

www.myspace.com/fredfalkemusic

WOW - Icy Cold

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Sydney based trash electro noisemakers WOW played at a Levity night in Sydney recently to debut themselves as the label/brand’s latest artists. I’ve always thought brand funded record labels would be a viable way for new artists to break into the scene. Levity is Levi’s Jeans funded record label, whose labelmates include Cut Off Your Hands and Mercy Arms. This is a fairly small marketing exercise compared to Toyota Scion’s label effort in the USA who put out 500,000 copies of double cd compilation for free every three months, which include some pretty cool special remixes by upcoming artists. While it’s hard to measure just how much ‘cool association’ with up and coming artists would translate into dollar spend, I’m glad that at least there is effort being put into coming up with an alternative to the traditional consumer driven record labels.

www.myspace.com/wowsydney

Funnily enough moments after this picture were taken, WOW got booted off stage by the owner of the pub because she didn’t like the music much.

Cut Off Your Hands -  ‘Expectations’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This is the new rerecorded version of their debut album You and I, due out in October. The guys are touring the single this month so catch them at:

Thursday 24th July Rocket Bar Adelaide*
Friday 25th July Corner Hotel Melbourne*
Saturday 26th July Transit Bar Canberra*
Sunday 27th July Oxford Arts Factory Sydney*
Friday 1st August Amplifier Bar Perth

*Violent Soho supporting

www.myspace.com/cutoffyourhands

The Chaperons - ‘Trigger Man’ (mp3)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Raucous and bluesy… it’s what we’ve come to expect from Sydney duo The Chaperones. ‘Trigger Man’ is looser and more raw than what I’ve heard from these guys in the past, imbuing some of that live energy into their recorded material - which is the eternal struggle for the live vs studio personas of any muso.

An EP of the same name is due out August 23. Already sounds like a step up from their self-titled EP. Good work kids.

http://www.myspace.com/chaperones

Directed by Beaufort.

Empire Of The Sun - Walking On A Dream (Sam La More Remix)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

As posted earlier by yours truly, Empire Of The Sun is a collaboration between Sleepy Jackson’s Luke Steele and Pnau, which stemmed from Steele’s vocal participation in Pnau’s fantastic third album. I have heard some of the songs off the album and they sound amazing. If your favourite track of that Pnau album is the very first song, then you’re gonna love this project. Unfortunately you’ll have to wait for another couple of weeks before we get to blog album tracks, this remix done by Sam La More is the only thing that is available for consumption at the moment. You can get it for free from the website below.

www.walkingonadream.com

The picture above is a still from one of my favourite childhood movies called, you guessed it, Empire of the Sun. It was set in Japan in World War 2 and starred a very young American Psycho/Batman Christian Bale. Yes that’s him in the photo.

Mission Control - ‘Chariots of Fire’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

These four guys from Melbourne describe themselves as “electro jams, psych guitars and sci-fi atmospherics”, and quite rightly so. After touring with Mercy Arms, Damn Arms, scoring a V Festival slot with Presets and CSS, they now give us the first single ‘Chariots of Fire’ off their upcoming album out through local label Etcetc.

www.myspace.com/missioncontrolmusic

Hercules in NY - ‘Long Time Coming’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Melbourne based Hercules in NY makes easily digestable electronic pop whose song arrangements are obviously influenced and encouraged by the success of the Melbourne electronic scene. Hercules’ melodies however go beyond the dark dance soundscapes occupied by the Juggies, choosing to explore the broader songwriting palette of the pop genre. This band kinda remind me of an American band I saw last year called Walter Meego.

www.myspace.com/herculesinny

End Of Fashion - ‘Kamikaze’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Perth pop rock boys are back with a new album, a string of residencies in Sydney and Melbourne and a free download of songs. You can get these songs if you go to one of these residency gigs and get a download card which gives you further instructions on how to get these free tracks. This song is one of those three tracks.

www.myspace.com/endoffashion

Cassette Kids - ‘Forwards Backwards’

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 6 or above) is required to play this audio clip. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Those crazy kids and their cassettes are back with a newie, this one sounds like a fresh one after their signing with biggie SonyBMG. I hope an album is out soon. They’re touring with The Presets in July, check them out.

www.myspace.com/cassettekids