A. WALLACE / TOM HALL split CS (Sunshine and Grease)

Funny playing field, isn't it, when a cassette release is more of a step up than a CDr, or a download. Sometimes I wonder if it's some odd form of nostalgia at work – but then again, cassettes are a nice format. Maybe it's nothing more than that, or maybe there's some kind of weird-arse cassette manufacturing spot somewhere in Victoria that all these thing are coming from, and it's just about using that service. There's been so damn many recently – I certainly can't keep up, but I like the things, as is possibly clear from the bulk of this blog.

All of which is to say that Aaron Wallace and Tom Hall (the Melbourne one – not the guy from Brisbane, though I have a few things to say about his gear as well, but don't think about that now or you'll get confused) have released a cassette on Sunshine & Grease. 

I got the damn thing and it's been getting the treatment alright. I even listened to the sucker in bath, which was totally great. You should get this, get a pot of some sort of weird tea going and get into a tub of hot water and do the low rent float tank.

Okay. The content.

I gotta tell ya, I have had this spilt for quite some time now and I had all but pressed enter on a review that favoured T Hall over A Wallace and that was totally where I was at at that very point, except that I couldn't quite commit to it. Aaron's mourning keen was fine and luscious, but even the loose structure of his song forms weren't quite there for me. I had some idea that he needed something more before he could truly let rip with the song he obviously heard between his ears, and I was eager to hear it as well, it just wasn't on this cassette. However, before I really tease that out, I really need to deal with Mr Hall.

Tom Hall does a lovely meander on his side that starts with a simple pattern and kind of slowly draws a wobbling loop around and around it, as if he is hurriedly drawing an infinity symbol on a piece of courrgated cardboard with a Biro – the image keeps the same basic pattern but the line goes all over the shop. If you don't get that, go get the Biro and a bit of courrguated cardboard (it has to be corurgated) and draw an infinity symbol - and keep tracing it. Do it with some speed, as there's beat you have to keep to and you'll notice that you don't' quite stick to where you started. You over the edge and it roughens the shape, varies it, makes little slivers here and there or other interactions of line and form keep on occurring. That's how Tom Hall's untitled side is – it stays in one place to go somewhere. It's a beautiful, involved evolution of a musical pattern that really drew me in as a listener from the get-go and only enriched itself more with me over time. I was much more impressed by where it was heading than I was with Aaron's side of the cassette and I was all ready to say so in pixels, but then, well I wasn't.

Thing is, I was not quite sure if that was really the verdict and wondered if it was me and left it to marinate. In the meantime, the cassette itself got a hiding; it became the thing with which I largely make risotto – you kn ow how you hang out in the kitchen and drink some red wine and keep stirring and adding stock? You really need music at that point and Wallace and Hall are nearly my best cooking companions – all sorts of ham-fisted metaphors about simmering and slow boiling aside, I found a domestic groove with this, standing in my socks on a wooden floor.

Over time, A Wallace's tunes really opened up, and it all transformed. It's a great recording and there is a distinction and I do ultimately dig what Hall is up but Wallace is a hell of guy whose plastic take on the song and it's borders fascinate and involve. It may all change again, and that's the mark of a good anything - it's depth becomes clearer with time spent, return listens are rewarded with more complex appreciation. Which I get with this.

In the meantime, as I considered, the whole tiny run of this great thing sold out. I'm even gladder than I ever I got one, and I suspect that will grow rather than diminish.

But don't let that put you off as you can stroll over to this here blog that the dudes aforementioned run, or something, and just download it and see what you make of it all.

EXTRA FOXX

 

knicked this from Eternal Soundcheck
It's taken me a bit of time but I'm getting to quite like this guy. His CD, The Saddest, on Bedroom Suck is reviewed below.

SCUM Compilation cassette (spilt release from Destination Failure and Magic Crowbar)

Oh,  Oh, for fuck's sake.
This thing – and thing it is – is a wonderful mess. I enjoy listening to it when cutting up pictures of Parkway Drive and sticking their heads onto hardcore gay porn from the 70s (I recently found just such a stash in a junk shop – gold), and other wholesome fun; it's just that I have had to work far too hard to work out
which song is fucking which on this compilation, given that my copy of the tape had no FUCKING INDICATION WHATSOEVER which side was which and I've actually
had to – get this – pick my FUCKING way through all these band's attendant myspaces to try and work out what the fuckery was going on. So, despite my basic liking of this cassette comp – GET FUCKED.
REALLY, GO AND GET FUCKED.
Would it have hurt you to have drawn a dick on one side – or ANYTHING?

Mm. Got that off my chest.

Now that I'm not annoyed anymore, yeah, SCUM is okay. It's not stellar and it's not some overly anal document, it's more like an attempt to capture a certain flavour, so I don't think the scene is all that well represented by this collection of screechering blurts and blats, unless you consider this to be a sort of abstract expression of the scene in question, because all the songs butt up against one another, vying for supremacy and writhing about like little grubs. Thing is, I found that working for me in the end, but as mentioned above, splitting tracks apart was a bit of a chore. I need not have took such a ridiculous exercise on, and just enjoyed the mess for what it was, but some bits stood out more than others and I NEEDED TO KNOW what the fuck was going on.

If I'm correct, the best single track came from SUPER FUN HAPPY SLIDE, but there were also moments of enjoyable pants mess provided by COLLAPSED TOILET VIETNAM and OCCULT BLOOD – this angle is more my speed of ferocity than, say, SUFFER ( this act were a wee bit too straight hardcore for me, and I'm pretty over hardcore these days ) or THE KILL. SCUMMY GUMS did something for me as well, though what I'm not sure, there's just something about it – I found their track distinctive and engrossing. It was nearly the pick, but SFHS had to get the mention - what a wonderfully stoooopid band. I feel like drinking beer and eating bisucuits in a paddling pool of my very own urine just thinking about them.

The liner notes indicate that this was all mixed by one Robert Mayson and I think his contriubtion, apart from anything else, was to really squash all the cuts into one, making me think that what was being gone for wasn't a strict representation, but an expressive reaction using the band's material as a starting point. I sort of like that idea and I'd like to hear a more amorphous version one day, where it all does just turn into a chunk of screaming meaty goodness.
Some mention must go about the lovable cover art - it's by well-known punk try hard and trendy art wankstain, the wonderful Stewie "Wolverine's Gay Brother" Cole - go look at his blog, he's doing some of the best stuff he's ever done right now.
Order this cassette from the weirdos over at Magic Crowbar.

ABSOLUTEN CALFEUTRAIL Braybrook (Sabbatical)

One the better small labels in Australia currently, responsible for a range of excellent releases, Sabbatical are hard to pin down – Noise and it's attendants seem to be a focus, but beyond that, the real interest would seem to be quality. One can rely on a Sabbatical release being a fine example of whatever wedge of the sonic spectrum it's emanating from. Basically, I recommend all available product. Releases are limited editions of at the most 200 so sleep not.
I'm fortunate enough to have a fine selection at my disposal and I really should have written more about it all some time ago, but well, I didn't. I aim to rectify this slowly over the coming weeks, beginning this sharp winters day with a pungent confection from Absoluten Calfeutrail entitled Braybrook. A short run of 40 on cassette has allowed few to hear this so it really does want discussing so it's existence can be acknowledged – because it's decent, at the very least.
Braybrook, if we mean the industrial suburb in Victoria, Australia, is not a trendy inner city suburb. Wikipedia tells me it's got a decent immigrant population, and that there is a pentecostal church in the area. It's described as suburb where people live but commute to work elsewhere – a bedroom suburb. I'd not heard that term before today, but it seems to be a fair summation of not only this place but a great many like it that exist the world over. Inhabited but tired and weary, places to sleep. I might be unpacking a little too much from the packaging of this cassette, but it seems to be a puzzle to be picked at; Mark Groves, the author, is cursed with being a deep thinker and it may be that I'm required to engage on a certain level – to submerge myself in this small yet significant release – to get the most from it. Its' easy enough though, really, if I allow myself to go with my first thought – the discussion is class, economics, money based. This would not be all though;  Side one is a planing tone of sound the evokes distance, aircraft flying overhead, a whining sonic that is a giant drill, a flock of mechanical insects, distant traffic and transport which one sleeps and eats in and does little else but watch Hey Hey it's Saturday every Wednesday. Side Two takes a different tactic, as a warbling bleat keeps a kind of rythym underneath which drums of objects turn and voices seem chruned into non-intelligble sound before an eruption occurs then decasy into muttering befoe the final track brings us to another shaking beat that decasy into a an alsmost pathetic thumping before the silence arrives, completing the journey into Braybrook.  It's bleak. Of course it is. It's from a place that is nowhere, nothing.
It's just that it isn't. There are people in Braybrook, there's a community centre, a catholic school (of course there's a catholic school. Catholicism is synonymous with the working class in Australia). There's life. More than that, there's history.

So is this cassette, named for a suburb, is not a hymn to the nothingness of working class lives, but something else, for Mark Groves is cursed with being a deep thinker, and to suggest that this exploration is a trendy Fitzroy wanker freaking out about the horror of the suburbs – well, no. Braybrook is an attempt to discuss history and change in a tiny pocket of Melbourne. I had to research to get that but I've been spoon fed by track names and imagery and it's easy to see the arc of narrative on this release – and I really must say, a noise cassette that's about the history, about the rise and fall of a suburb? That points to the industrialisation of agriculture and all that is implied by that moment for Australia itself? Using the small to point to the large? I never would have thought of that, not being that much of a student of Australina history,  and now I have and I'm the better for it. This sonic reaction to historical moments and events is a well-defined and thoughtful piece that evokes questions and encourages me to think further.
This is an excellent release; the sounds contained herein are interesting impressions of the patterns of history, informed by research and crafted with care. Meticulous, thought out and controlled, they demand a cool listen coupled with thought and research to unpack, although they were pretty good just to have playing while I made dinner as well.
If you can find one of these small gems, get it. Braybrook will satisfy.

The Slugfuckers - vintage footage

Good grief, this has turned up on Youtube, and I am quite blown out by it.
I actually recall seeing a Slugfuckers vinyl in Eduardo's the import record store that supplied Hobart in the 70s and 80s. I had no idea what it was and no money, so a life-changing moment slipped through my fingers until Chapter Music released Can't Stop it and I finally got to hear the Slugfuckers- and yep, I have no doubt this is great stuff. Anyway, there's a film these people made, that has some kind of plot and is some sort of art thing, that someone has GOT to release, which this is a clip from. I nearly fell over when I found this via the Magic Crowbar blog.

White Cop

So, after trawling about and checking out the happy family of bands in Brisbane, i found this thing, and I seriously think I could well be in love. What a bunch of jokers !

BEDROOM SUCK RECORDS

Well, the charmers at Bedroom Suck – a Brisbane based label – sent me a wad of their dung to sniff, and let me tell you, I'm digging this stuff into the garden during winter because it's earthy and fruitful. It seems, from this far-flung outpost, that Brisbane is damn fertile ground for new and fascinating music these days, and this chunk of fine compost seems to just confirm that from art wangery to drug scuzzery to bedroom tossery., there's fine organic vegetables and fruit available for the discerning palate.

I have this personal idea about fragments. I like art and music and writing that even it is neat and entire, has the feel of being a fragment of greater whole, as if this tiny artefact hints at something more; as if one is not getting the whole story. It could be just the way I view existence, as in it's a random collection of glittering shards that are strewn about my path, the pattern one I impose. Hmm. EXTRAFOXX – The saddest - has this kind of a feel – you know, here's an idea, get it down, there it is. Is he stoned? Is he a shut in? It seems that these things could be true, but there's another hint beyond the sound – the cover art for this CD of 35 songs (Cripes!) is of a tiny home-job tattoo and that's as good a metaphor for this work as any I could muster. Etched onto the skin with the available means, the roughness being the charm of the aesthetic, there was enough skill for the design to be clear, the image is read and then all I'm left with is these small songs, made of the barest of things. Simple lyrics that sometimes hit home, a voice that has a bit of sadness in it, something stumbling and a little flattened – awkward – about the delivery? Guitar strummed clean, something in the back round filling it all out, but not too much, it's always going to be pretty bare and that would seem to be important to what ever this is – a sketchbook, a diary, a bunch of fragments. Some are brighter than others, but it's a collection and the only way to make any sense of it all is to examine the whole thing – because you could just say 'bedroom music' and leave it there, which would not be untrue, but there's a little more to it. There's some comedy and some throwaway stuff that is in some ways the best aspect of the whole thing, but the guy has tones and a something of a palette – sometimes, he just doesn't give a rat's arse. I mean 'why are they trying to turn the hippies into punks / why are they trying to turn the stoners into drunks' and that 's a whole song, basically. There's another song – 'A story' that keeps turning up as well, which would appear to be some kind of punctuation or some such.

Overall, this is pretty good gear, but I'm willing to be that if I knew the guy I'd think it was fucking sublime, and maybe that's a flaw overall, but until the day I meet the dude, if I ever do, this postcard from the outer edges of an ordinary life sung sweet will do me fine.

Totally from the other end of fucked in the head is an old album from LOOK! POND! - dates from 2006 in fact and it's a big wailing thing that could have been recorded better maybe but in the spirit of at least documenting something, they got it all down and here's a CD which sold out but then it was discovered that there was a box on top of cupboard covered in crap or something I got one to listen to – and yeah, I feel lucky, because it's good gear, all mucked up and screeching – look you, kind of know the drill here , because there's long running Australian music trope where a wretched guitar is strangled into a riff that jerks about like water in a pan of hot olive oil, the drums sound like a big stomping swamp bunyip having a wank in the bushes, that sort of deal. Sometimes there's songs and sometimes a sound is wrung out of the air and you can smell the sweat and anger. It's primitive and rushed and slammed together and that, people, is the way it should be – punk primitive of an antipodean variety, which some jerk is surely going to describe as No-Wave or post-punk and that jerk can fuck right off out of it like a bastard. This is not that shit, it's a couple of doors down and it probably never heard No New York. It's just as likely the sound is derived from the quality of equipment these people had access to at the time this existed because there's no attempt to de-construct or any of that horse anus here, more like they write some punky shit, drank a goon, recalled seeing Lubricated Goat on Rage and remembered someone had to get a bus later ,so the set was raced through and then there was a bucket bong with a bunch of kinder surprise toys floating in it and no beer. That'd piss me off and we might record the guitar part again, if we even were getting that sophisticated, which I doubt. LOOK! POND! Is not sophisticated, it's all energy and surging response to whatever the fuck wasn't going on in Brisbane in 2006. Music that leaps out and feeds back and thumps out epic fucking sludge grunts, songs that sound like rolling ten gallon drums down a massive drain, like the 15-minute plus album closer Village – that's one decent track there.

Apparently this is some kind of Ur-Band for the Brisbane scene now – members went on to Slug Guts, Kitchen's Floor and No Anchor, and this does feel a lot like some kind of big bubbling pot that beasties crawl out of and scurry off to do evil, so that works. It's a nice one to hear if you can find it.

I'll shut the trap with MARL CARX for now. Another band that no longer exists from Brisbane – dang, these kids turn over fast. The album that they left in their wake, 'sits obvious' gets a real tick of approval from me for sounding right in that realm that God Is My Co-Pilot charted some years back and then very few followed in what was deadly territory – like, you kind of really need to have good idea of what you're up to attempt to climb this particular cliff – or at least keep it as simple as possible. The last time I heard anything slightly in this world was long-gone Melbourne act JEMIMA JEMIMA who I dug a whole damn lot and never saw, and I'm not going to see this either – coincidence?

I'm sure that helps anyone trying to work out what the hell Marl Carx is, but it's herky-jerky drumming and guitar with vocal lines that converse – these cats, Michaela Sophie Chin (drums) and Glen Schenau (guitar, who also ended up in Kitchen's Floor along with Matt Kennedy from LOOK! POND!) are talking to each other a lot. I wonder what the fuck that's about? We'll never know, and that's all part of the enigma isn't it? Spindly, spidery guitar with a fair bit of treble over some thump thump thumpery, drawling poetry and the occasional sleepwalk vocal bleeding over the edges – it's Spartan but not spacious: there's a real sense of it being tightly structured even when it sounds all messed about. It's also over really damn fast, which is often a good sign for this sort of music – it struts up, swigs your beer, pokes out it's tongue and then strides of, leaving one slightly stunned – and that's it, that's all you get, so think yourself lucky. And think yourself even more lucky that someone recorded this act at all, and that they released it and that I heard and that I can tell you it's worth investigating further. Because it's a rare sound here on this disc that not everyone is going to like because it's something that hangs off the edges of traditional punk – yes, of course there's traditional punk – it's just that this isn't it. Marl Carx has a list of influences over on it's myspace and yeah you can hear it all for sure, but in the end this does manage to rise out of that mire and have a bit of character, certainly enough to make the existence of this recording worth it.