New Release: Fuck Buttons

Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport
ATP Recordings (2009)

From out of nowhere, early in 2008, Fuck Bottoms dropped Street Horrsing and managed to make buzz, hiss and drone palatable for an audience outside of the noise scene. When I saw them play at the ATP festival on Mt Buller in January 2009, people were dancing. Dancing! And I’m not talking about fucked up hippies waving their arms around like Hare Krishna, I’m talking about kids with Sunn O))) tattoos and Metal t-shirts bopping their heads along with the freaks on stage making a bone splintering racket with Fisher Price toys. Amazing.

I wasn’t sure what to make of Tarot Sport when I first heard it. Fuck Buttons have taken their sound into a glitzier and more dance-friendly arena, with the help of rock/dance crossover guru Andrew Weatherall. I wanted less rhythm and psychedelic keyboards, and more dense layers of swirling drone.

The thing is, I eventually realised I was approaching Tarot Sport from the wrong perspective. It’s no longer about adorning noise with subtle melodies to expand its horizons; Fuck Buttons have been there and done that. Now they’re taking the decay and erosion of drone and its noise brethren, and attacking popular forms of music from within. Tarot Sport mixes Post Punk extremes with the manic euphoria of Acid House. The four-to-the-floor rhythms that drive most of these tracks might be straight out of the nightclub scene, but the blown-out, in-the-red tones and the mantra like repetition won’t appeal to mindless bunnies.

It’s a much more cinematic record than its predecessor, especially on tracks like Olympia and Space Mountain with their soaring crescendos and bombastic beats. It’s not hard to see these tunes framing the finale to a sci-fi flick or British heist movie, albeit of the independent kind. At the other end of the spectrum, Fuck Buttons channel the playfulness of Black Dice on Phantom Limb and Rough Steez by hurling around sketchy rhythms and colourful squawks.

Rhythm is the key differentiator between Street Horrrsing and Tarot Sport; it’s a much more propulsive record. And maybe it says something that my favourite parts of Tarot Sport are the moments between each track, where the sound is ephemeral, weightless and blurry. It’s easy to lose yourself in these dreamy moments, before the boys get back to baking a spongy, layered cake smothered in colourful icing. And it isn’t the sugar high that keeps me coming back for more. It’s Tarot Sports’ sly ability to make every climax a penultimate one, so that euphoria is always enticingly out of reach.

New release: Shit and Shine

Shit And Shine: 229-2299 Girls Against Shit
Riot Season (2009)

This record makes me feel dirty, sleazy, slimy and hyper-masculine. There’s something about its rumbling low-end pulse that makes me want to strip off my clothes and molest inanimate objects. It has no fear or morals, and no objection to degrading itself. And it’s fucking awesome.

Shine and Shine come from London and Texas, two diametrically opposed cultures that crash together in an explosion of blown-out drums, weirdo electronics and heavy metal histrionics. Their live show features multiple drummers, and rhythm is just as important for them on record, where every single fucking noise they make is incorporated as some sort of percussive element. It’s all propulsive drums and repetitive heavy-as-fuck riffage cloloured with dabs of miscellaneous scree. Its hooks rarely lead anywhere, instead they ramble on and on, dragging the listener into some sort of ecstatic state.

The density of Shit and Shine’s sound is occasionally filtered through random samples of geezer-like conversation – it’s never clear if these come from the band themselves – which give the whole thing the feel of a drug fueled ritual. If there are actual vocals somewhere on this album, then they’re so distorted that identification is impossible.

With song titles like 13 Hotel Denmark (You 3 Ass, Pussy, Blow) and Pissing on a Shed, these guys approach their schtick with a definite sense of humour. But don’t let that fool you into thinking Shit and Shine are just another bunch of kids taking the piss out of their bedroom instruments. While it might sound like a jam, 229-2299 Girls Against Shit is meticulously constructed to grab the listener by the balls (or tits) and drag them over ear-splitting highs and menacing lows. These boys are pursuing the very outer realms of rock n’ roll and like I said, it’s fucking awesome.

Digging: Prurient

Prurient: Pleasure Ground
Load Records (2007)

There aren’t many artists out there whose music juggles violence and frailty so well. It’s almost a contradiction to think that something can be brutal enough to peel off your face but precariously positioned to shatter at any time, and yet Dominick Fernow’s harrowed screams and buckled electronics do exactly this.  Prurient exists somewhere entirely of his own; equal parts Black Metal ethos, soothing drone, Industrial clank and harsh fucking noise.

Pleasure Ground is made up of four 10-minute pieces; kicking off with stabbing dissonance and subtly mutating towards a finale of release.

Opener Military Road starts out with piercing feedback and then limps along on a hollowed out pulse that sounds like machine gun fire slowed down and drugged. Fernow’s lung tearing howls float around until a bowel loosening bass frequency swirls everything up into a thick gelatinous mess.

Earthworks/Buried in Secret picks up and massages this low end into a descending drone, distorted and repetitive like a mantra. As you begin to zone out the ‘tune’ shifts up numerous octaves into a cheesy Black Metal synth line. Fernow starts puking his guts up again as thumping kick drums reverberate in the background. Occasionally a snare drum snaps up your attention and eventually all the elements start bubbling away in unison, a wall of aching, beautiful but ugly sound. Possibly my favourite Prurient track yet.

Things take a detour from here. Outdoorsman/Indestructible is based on a barely audible bass sine (think menacing late seventies horror movie soundtrack) and a trickle of wobbly keys. Cymbals clang here and there, mutedly, and the vocals take on the guise of an apathetic spoken word performance.

Volume returns for the final number, Apple Tree Victim, where a distorted melody endlessly repeats while Fernow gets back to sandpapering his vocal cords. The effect is nowhere near as intense as the opening tracks; in fact it’s almost pretty. Without the screams you could be lulled into a daydream, albeit something that involves long-nailed creatures hiding under your bed.

What I love about this record (along with Rose Pillar) compared to what I’ve heard of his other work so far (which is all pretty fucking amazing) is that here Prurient manages to take you on a journey. Pleasure Ground has a strong character arc and when you reach the end of this record, you’re never the person you were when it started.

New release: HEALTH

HEALTH: Get Color
Love Pump (2009)

When Crystal Castles remixed HEALTH’s Crimewave tune into a droning disco killer, kids everywhere claimed HEALTH as their own without really knowing what the band sounded like. I read an interview with singer Jake Duzsik where he talked about audiences screaming for them to play Crimewave unaware that the band had already played the original, non disco version.

Despite feeling slightly burned by their brush with fame, HEALTH’s sophomore album is a step closer to the very far left of the mainstream. The shambolic nature of their debut has been reigned in and massaged into a more focused, but no less frenetic monster. Get Color is as noisy and ephemeral as its predecessor, but far more interested in juxtaposing sounds and atmospheres into cohesive fragments. Less random bursts of noise, and more slow-burning blow-outs create tension and a more memorable listening experience.

We Are Water starts out as a spacey, Euro disco number that’s glittery but uneasy. With the introduction of a snare drum it morphs into post punk territory, while the crystallised synthesisers and treble infused guitars build into a Black Metal wall of noise and blast beats. It stops for a moment, before returning with sedated hip hop rhythm reminiscent of Dalek and then fades away with a gently pulsing kick drum. These manic numbers are interspersed with dreamier tracks such as Before Tigers, which are content to amble along on pulses of reverb drenched noise and cascading drums.

HEALTH are obsessed with production, their manifesto revolves around music that is devoid of sensation or human spirit, and Get Color achieves this with overly effected instruments and studio trickery. Jake’s androgynous vocals are mystifying enough but it’s the prickly guitars and keyboards, like shards of glass shimmering across the floor, that give HEALTH an alien sound all their own. The guitars in particular have the treble cranked so high they make Big Black sound like a bunch of pussies. And when HEALTH allow some bass into their sound on Die Slowly the change in pitch is crushing. All these effects are cleverly offset by BJ’s live, natural drumming; although even he rarely falls into a standard rhythm, preferring to play his kit in a tribal manner similar to that of Liars (an extra set of floor toms are abused by various band members during their live shows).

Get Color is an intense experience. The ups and downs can get tiring and it’s not easy to decipher where HEALTH want to take you. That said, the progression between their debut and this is seriously exciting, and their willingness to push the boundaries of their sound suggests that the band could have a perfect ten album in them yet.

Digging: The Cherry Point

The Cherry Point: Night of the Bloody Tapes
Troniks (2005)

Imagine standing underneath the jet of a Boeing 747. Someone starts the engine. It squeals into life and then whirls into a deafening roar. Physics bares its claws and demands that you’re sucked into the jet to be minced up like the piss-weak piece of flesh that you are. But you resist, although the roar is so loud that your bones are turning into jelly, which makes it more and more difficult to ignore the beckoning black vortex above you. The sound of a thousand mechanical elements grinding in unison blocks out everything else in the world, yet every now and again you swear that you can hear music in there somewhere. A haunting groan here, a mesmerising sigh there, all tempting you to lean further into the jet’s kaleidoscopic winds and closer to death. Welcome to The Cherry Point and Night of the Bloody Tapes, people. Officially mixed by John Wiese.

New Release: Polvo

Polvo: In Prism
Merge Records (2009)

It shouldn’t be possible to sound this good after a 12 year hiatus.

Some say Polvo started math rock, which is bullshit. Odd time signatures and stop/start riffs aside, Polvo cut a path all their own during the 1990s, one that paired rock stylings with dissonant melodies based on Asiatic scales, and some of the strangest lyrics in forever. They peaked with a head-fucking double album called Exploded Drawings (the coolest record title ever. Period), and settled down with a sombre, unfocused follow up called Shapes before disappearing.

Now, here they are again as if they never left us. In Prism is nothing but a logical extension of their best work, and a refined culmination of what they may have wanted to achieve with Shapes. Like that album, In Prism veers between head jerking art rock and intricate reflection. With a little more money behind them, Polvo have benefited hugely from a significant improvement in production, which stops the album’s black and white shades from bleeding into grey, as was the case with Shapes.

The guitars on Right the Relation and Beggar’s Bowl are big, so much bigger than anything they’ve done before. Polvo’s signature, detuned chords have fattened up into something more powerful than your typical indie band. But don’t let ‘big’ tempt you into believing this is arena rock. The guitar licks still take left turns up the fretboard where notes are bent out of shape and snapped back into place again. Polvo will never be mainstream darlings.

On slower numbers, such as album highlight Lucia, Polvo extort their new sound to fold moody jangles into a swollen and hypnotic crescendo of metronomic guitars. It’s a lush noise that the band has only toyed with in the past, and even at eight minutes long, Lucia is over almost too quickly. Keys, strings and other miscellaneous debris have been strewn throughout the record, adding to the sense that the scope of their sound has increased while augmenting the unique nature of the band’s approach to instruments.

Polvo’s reunion is bound to have haters, many of whom will be chin strokin’ nerds of the 90’s dissing the lack of Lo-Fi ethos. Fuck that. Polvo’s intricate guitar work and complicated song structures have never sounded so clear or mesmerising. After 12 years it has to be expected that the band has matured somewhat, anything else would have been a disappointment. In Prism shows that the boys have still got it and look sure to keep giving it for some time to come.

New Release: Wavves

Wavves: Wavvves
Fat Possum Records (2009)

Singing about Beach Demons and Surf Goths, while your band/record title is purposely misspelt, suggests that you’re either annoyingly hip, charmingly naive or in need of a break from the spliffs. Based on 22-year-old Nathan Williams’ drugged-out, hot-mess of a performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival earlier this year, it’s easy to assume the latter, but more likely it’s a combination of all three.

Wavvves reeks of acid trips and bong mist. Based in San Diego, Williams’ music wafts out from the smelly bedrooms of lazy blissed-out teenagers living hippy surf/skate- lifestyles. California has bred a host of these bands recently, from Abe Vigoda to No Age. As if the ghosts of Laurel Canyon, sick of vapid celebrities taking over their hood, have wandered into more urban territory to possess the souls of 4-track recorders and channel noise-decayed pop songs through the bodies of young men.

Where No Age stem from the experimental edge of Hardcore, and Abe Vigoda have their Tropicana thing going on, Wavves is a retro beast. Think of 60’s girl groups spewing out of cracked speakers, and guitars that aren’t quite in tune.  The sound is blown out in a Black Metal kinda’ way, but the vocal harmonies needle into your brain and nest there. Like parasites.

The lazy recording techniques and Ramones-esque song titles add a cute naïve schtick to Wavves and his lo-fi pop. Songs like No Hope Kids (“Got no car, got no money…..”) and To the Dregs give predictable two-chord rock songs and apathetic drawls a noisy makeover, so that basic melodies become bulbous and weird. Plenty have used Lo-Fi to this effect before but Wavves has a knack for making his music feel like a warm and hazy memory. Something you want to remember but can’t. It’s probably the pot.

Where Wavvves becomes questionable is when he lets go of the hooks. Killer Punx, Scary Demons throws up twangy drones, organ trills and moaning voices, coming off as a sick joke instead of exciting experiment. And yet somehow it feels like Williams’ is having the last laugh, as he lights another joint, drops another trip and sees how far he can go. Which brings this review round full circle; Wavvves has a naive and playful charm that is a true delight, and who can begrudge Williams’ for indulging in some, ahem, outside inspiration? The problem is his hip, teenage nihilism and ‘I make noise therefore I am’ attitude. Maybe Evol Kween is showing his age but that false apathy gets annoying. And I fucking hate Hipsters.

Watch: Anvil: The Story of Anvil

Australia is going crazy for this documentary right now. Lips and Rob Reiner’s goofy mugs have been plastered across newspapers, tabloids and TV shows everywhere. Which is strange because when I saw this documentary at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year, no one was talking about it even though the screening was jam packed with middle aged metalheads sporting big hair and faded Megadeth t-shirts.

If you haven’t heard, Anvil are a Canadian metal band who, in the very early eighties, were on the cusp of super stardom before ‘the big four’ of Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth crushed them in their wake. Almost thirty years on, Anvil’s founding members Steve “Lips” Kudlow (vocals, guitar) and Robb Reiner (drums) are still self-releasing records and playing the odd bar gig, while working shitty jobs to survive. They look like they’ve stepped out of a time machine from 1981.

Director Sacha Gervasi has culled three years of footage into a 90 minute doco that follows Anvil on their ‘final’ tour of Europe and the release of their ‘last’ album. This isn’t about the metal scene, it isn’t about stardom or excess, it’s about two guys refusing to give up on their dream no matter what. And it’s actually quite touching. As underdogs, you can’t help falling in love with Lips’ and Rob’s boyish charms and dedication to all things Rock. The fact they live in suburbia with wives and children adds a distinct humour to the situation.

Gervasi gets laughs by focusing heavily on the tragedies faced by the band, and creates drama out of the tension this causes amongst the band and their families. It’s slightly voyeuristic at times, like laughing at some unfortunate kid who doesn’t know better. Yet overall, the film’s message is a positive one and if the recent spout of publicity is anything to go by, it’s doing wonders for the band’s profile.

There is a distinct lack of questioning around why Anvil never crossed over from cult band to fame in the first place. While watching the film one starts to wonder if Gervasi steered away from the topic so as not to embarrass his ’stars’. Early footage of Lips wearing the most ridiculous leotard and playing his guitar with a penetrative device made from rubber, suggests that the Anvil boys lacked the maturity and business nous of their peers.

Anvil: The Story of Anvil is a fantastic watch; funny, a little sad and definitely inspiring. Here’s  hoping their current ten minutes of fame doesn’t leave them in the lurch, because although they seem like genuinely nice guys who deserve to have their hard work pay off, their outdated brand of Viking metal ain’t going to win them many fans outside of deep Europe. Highly recommended.

News: Lightning Bolt strike Australia

Holy crap, Batman! The mighty Lightning Bolt are coming to Australia. It’s true that on record their brand of lo-fi, low-end garage thrash can get kinda old, but rumour has it that their live shows must be seen to be believed. The tour is well timed with the release of Lightning Bolt’s new long player called Earthly Delights via Load Records on October 13th. If you wanna see Brian Chippendale  and Brian Gibson rock the fuck out off-stage, on the floor with the crowd, in true DIY punk spirit then make it to one of the following:

Victoria
20 Nov – The Thornbury Theatre
28 Nov – Trades Hall Arts

NSW
21 Nov – Manning Bar, Sydney University

South Australia
27 Nov – Fowler’s Live

Apparently shows in Queensland on the 22nd and Tasmania on the 26th are still being finalised. Fingers crossed.

Digging: Magic Dirt

Magic Dirt: Signs of Satanic Youth
Au-Go-Go Records (1993)

Sadly, on August 21st Dean Turner, the quiet-achieving bassist and part founder of  Australian rock legends Magic Dirt, succumbed to cancer. He was only 37.

Not to focus on the local music industry’s loss, let’s praise a band that shaped an exciting era in Australian music. In particular, Melbourne’s scuzzy indie rock scene of the 90’s, when this gem of an EP hit the iconic shelves of Au-Go-Go records.

In a shroud of beer and bong smoke, Magic Dirt burst forth from Melbourne’s far outer suburbs, wrapped in Blast First/Geffen era Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr fuzz. Amplifiers were shredded, guitar strings were broken, and every 15 year old that saw Magic Dirt on stage during this period lost their shit inside dingy clubs during sweaty all-ages gigs.

Grunge had well and truly exploded in ’93, and while Magic Dirt maintained the second-hand, unwashed appearance that was all the rage at the time, they steered away from Metal infused Punk and trawled through cobwebbed corners of sonic deconstruction and pop hooks instead.

At the time of this EP’s release, Magic Dirt derived inspiration from Sonic Youth and other fragmented guitar bands of the time. Track three, Touch that Space owes a lot to the Youth’s Silver Rocket, the way its fuzzed out hook crashes into exploding amps and then winds itself back into a killer crescendo. Meanwhile, the haunting Supertear is lyrically reminiscent of Kim Gordon’s prose on female anxieties.

However, Magic Dirt were always more rooted in Blues and early rock n’ roll than Sonic Youth have ever been. They were unafraid to throw a wah-wah solo into the scree, and as a front woman Adalita channelled Suzi Quattro against Kim Gordan’s praying mantis allure. And where Sonic Youth has always been a guitar band, Dean Turner’s warm, slinky bass playing is an integral element of the Magic Dirt sound, which anchored the band in 70’s inspired stoner rock.

At a time in Australian music when indie bands were dropping EPs and singles left, right and centre, Signs of Satanic Youth rose above the racket. It was moody, slightly un-hinged, melodic, rocking and noisy. And in case you missed the point, it ended with a 36-minute drone of reverse-played guitars to remind you that this wasn’t your average rock band.

Over their next few releases, Magic Dirt polished their noise into a shiny fibreglass wall of guitars. The major label records they released during the last decade secured them a mainstream audience at the expense of the creativity and mayhem found in their earlier work. However, 2008 saw Magic Dirt release the highly experimental Roky’s Room (featuring members of Grey Daturas), Beast and Girl all of which harked back to earlier times, when their pop was decayed, sludgy and bad for your teeth. There was excitement around the band again.

As such, it’s sad that we mightn’t get to see what they were capable of in this next phase of their career. If this is your inspiration to pick up some Magic Dirt albums, dig way back to Signs of Satanic Youth for a glimpse into Australia’s 1990s underground, and to understand why more than 16 years on this band weren’t slowing down.