The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
Vale Lemmy. A great tribute from The Nation Blue/High Tension’s Matt Weston over at Noisey and a fantastic insight into his last days up at Rolling Stone. Fittingly, a memorial service has just been announced for the rock god at his favourite boozer, The Rainbow Bar and Grill on January 9.
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Turns out Deafheaven pretty much owned 2015, if the critics are to be believed. The divisive ‘blackgaze’ band might be false metal to some, but not the boffins at Pitchfork, who rated the band’s most recent full length New Bermuda as the best metal album of the year, and 26th in its overall poll. Meanwhile, Spin named the LA five-piece as their band of the year. Haters be damned.
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Punk’s not dead, it just deserves to be: With news that legendary NYC venue CBGB has been revived as an airport restaurant at New Jersey’s Newark terminal. As if the terrible film retelling the CBGB story wasn’t tarnish enough on the legacy of the once-great venue.
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READ
Closet Metalheads: Neko Case | Decibel
“One thing about metal that people often don’t talk about but I’m always curious: How was there so much crazy sexism and homophobia in metal in the 80s and 90s yet people just refuse to believe that Freddie Mercury and Rob Halford were gay?”
LISTEN
AFX – ‘T17 Phase Out’
Richard D. James has too much eggnog, posts another AFX rarity to his ‘User18081971’ Soundcloud account.
Radiohead– ‘Spectre’
Not good enough for the latest Bond film apparently, but good enough to give away as free download.
DJ Shadow – ‘Swerve’
And another Festivus miracle. DJ Shadow treats the world to a bass-heavy ‘battle weapon’.
WATCH
Seven Sisters of Sleep – ‘War Master’
Lemmy’s last interview
In which Mr Kilmister speaks with trademark candour about terrorism, religion, 40 years of Motörhead, drugs, punk and all else. RIP.
The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
NEWS
Radiohead’s OK Computer has been selected for preservation at the US Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in recognition of its “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance.” The organisation selects 25 recordings each year, and Radiohead’s seminal 1997 release joins The Doors’ 1967 self-titled album, Steve Martin’s comedy record A Wild and Crazy Guy and 22 other recordings ranging from the 1890 to 1999 to receive the honour this year.
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The HBO-produced Kurt Cobain documentary Montage of Heck which did the rounds with its debut trailer a couple of weeks back has been confirmed for a theatrical run in our little island nation. US sources point to an April 10 debut in cinemas before the HBO premiere on May 4, but that’s likely a US date; the only solid information on an Australian release points to June 25.
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Earth have struck up a deal with LA-based label / management company Sargent House, joining a stupidly talented roster of the world’s best power trios including Boris, Marriages, Helms Alee, Mutoid Man and Russian Circles. No word yet if this means a severance of Earth’s long-running partnership with Southern Lord.
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British book publisher Strange Attractor are taking pre-orders venerable UK mag The Wire’s latest foray into print publishing with Epiphanies: Life Changing Encounters with Music, a collection of the publication’s Epiphanies column which has been running for over 17 years. Contributors include Michael Gira, Jonny Greenwood, Simon Reynolds and Lydia Lunch.
“In his interviews and writings, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix — Liturgy’s singer and songwriter and one of its guitarists — rejected the common black-metal rhetoric of decay, doom and negative certainty in favor of the opposite: building, liberation and positive indecision. He wrote a manifesto about “transcendental black metal,” which he read aloud at an academic symposium and which was excerpted in a journal of poststructural philosophy. (For all of this he was called pretentious, as if black-metal bands of the early-’90s Norwegian period, with corpse-paint and bullet-belts and inverted crosses, hadn’t ever known pretension.) In any case, Liturgy’s music, and the predictable response to it, seemed based on what it was not — how it stood apart from what it sounded like.”
“While “alternative rock” was a nebulous descriptor even during the genre’s late-‘80s/early-‘90s heyday, Faith No More were the rare band to truly exemplify both halves of the term. On the surface, the San Francisco quintet resembled the sort of long-haired, ripped-denim hellraisers filling up the dance card on “Headbangers Ball”, but their absurdist take on rock owed as much to Zappa as Zeppelin. And their ubiquitous 1990 breakout hit “Epic” both defined rap-metal and defied it, gilding its atomic funk with progged-out synth fanfares and classical-piano flourishes, like a mosh pit choreographed by Cecil B. DeMille. ”
“From Anal Cunt to Cerebral Ballzy, there have always been bands whose names provoke a reaction, especially in the punk and hardcore scenes. Shock tactics and strong political statements are often at the heart of art—and, more cynically, marketing plans—but lately, several bands have been causing a backlash for the overtones of cultural and political appropriation evoked by their names. Prostitutes, Girl Band, and Viet Cong—who played at FADER FORT last week—all make very different music (techno, noise, and rock respectively) but the one thing they have in common is that they’re all made up of white men. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they’ve been at the centre of the discussion, with Viet Cong even having a recent university show cancelled by a promoter who deemed their name “offensive.” (The Calgary band have since issued a statement claiming they were “naive” in choosing their name and “never meant to trivialize the atrocities or violence that occurred on both sides of the Vietnam war.”)”
LISTEN
Godspeed You! Black Emperor — Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
That happened quick. Godspeed only announced their fifth LP in late February; Asunder… is out on March 31 and was made available for streaming earlier this week. Some of the cuts might sound familiar — I’m almost certain the opening of “Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!” was a live staple on their first Australian tour in early 2013. It’s a track mired in dirge and drudgery, anchored by a beastly symphonic below. In fact, dirge and drudgery abound on this record: after a few listens, it feels like the most apocalyptic record yet, as if the collective have traded in their hope for nihilism.
Tangled Thoughts of Leaving — The Albanian Sleepover
Speaking of dirge, Perth quartet and LIN favourite Tangled Thoughts of Leaving have debuted the first track from their forthcoming sophomore LP. At a second under 10 minutes it’s probably the album’s shortest tracks, but it showcases the band’s darkly melodic tendencies as fields of static rise and fall under a ten-ton-heavy riffage before a brooding interlude, a crashing crescendo and a “to be continued…” until we get to hear part 2. I’ve little doubt this will be one of the best records of the year.
Drowning Horse — Drowning Horse
The most punishing band in Perth are in the midst of work on a new record that, fingers crossed, will be out before the end of the year, and before they play their first show of 2015 at our five year anniversary show at The Bakery on April 2 (tickets here!), they’ve made their debut record for free, or whatever price you may feel like paying.
WATCH
Inventions — Peregrine
The first video from Inventions’ Maze of Woods is an eerie, home video-style piece of cinema that recalls cultist found footage, Jason Voorhees and Chuckie — an odd mix of aesthetics given the track’s relaxed tone, but it’s a fitting juxtaposition. You can stream more from that album at Inventions’ Bandcamp.
Joy Division + Teletubbies
It’s the film-noir fever dream you’ve always wanted.
The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.
NEWS
By now you’ve probably seen the trailer for the forthcoming HBO-produced Kurt Cobain documentary, but there’s another piece of film in the works on another tremendously influential Washington act and one of Nirvana’s greatest influences: The Melvins. The Colossus of Destiny is about halfway towards its $75,000 crowdfunding target on Kickstarter, and surely I’m not the only one who finds it absurd that the three-decade story of this band has yet to be given the feature treatment. Throw a penny or two its way over the next month and help tell a tell that absolutely deserves to be told.
“We’re one of the best rock bands ever. I know that. I just know it. Swans have congealed and are one of the most volcanic, eruptive, virile rock outfits ever. I think one of the things that makes what we do so powerful is that it’s generous.”
Mark Smith of Explosions of the Sky/Inventions:
“I always revisit Kid A and try to recapture the feelings I had when I first listened to it. It’s not possible — now I just hear the combination of experimentation and songwriting and depth that is somehow beautiful and scary and human and alien and illusory and random and planned all at once. But back then, my first listen was just confusing, my second was confounding, my third was love, and my fourth was infatuation. “Idioteque” in particular — the lyrics about scaremongering and “This is really happening” — seems like it’s pleading with us. I couldn’t get enough of it, and it hasn’t lost any of that effect for me. I love watching their old live performances of it, this insane urgent trance with Thom dancing and Jonny seemingly plugging and unplugging cables into a telephone exchange (or so I thought back then). It’s still my favorite thing Radiohead have ever done, but insanely, I still think they’re growing and evolving so I won’t be surprised if that changes.”
“I find the more polished realms of rock music to be really fucking boring. The more you autotune, beat map, and edit music, the more it winds up like electronic music. It winds up being music made on a grid. No offense to electronic music meant there, it just seems to defeat the purpose of being a living, breathing rock band. I’ve brought this up in the past a bunch, but I’ll repeat it here: when These Arms Are Snakes recorded with Jack Endino, the guy who recorded all the early grunge classics, he had a very casual attitude towards our takes. The record we did with him (our split with Harkonen) was the loosest recording we did in our career. Jack’s theory was that the tiny inconsistencies in tempo and pitch were what made all the classic rock records so enduring. The brain recognizes the flaws on a subconscious level, and those imperfections keep the brain interested in the song way longer than if it had been polished and quantized to perfection. We want things to be tight. We don’t like obvious fuck-ups to slide by in our music, but if you listen closely to our records there are weird little mistakes and flubs all over the place. We had a particularly hard time finding the balance between making things sound raw and live in a good way versus a bad way when we were making “Empros”, but hopefully we’ve found a good middle ground now.”
“I think some of those are the most powerful metaphors as poets and writers and songwriters, I think. Depending on your perspective on any given day, that which seems so important to us in any given moment is so minimal in the grand scheme of things. What are we to the ocean? What are we to the stars? What are we to the wilderness? Pretty pathetic little creatures, really. [Yet] part of that is the glory that allows us to create art and music, it’s this… I don’t know? Bizarre evolutionary trait to consider our own existence instead of just going with our instincts. I think art is a strange combination of both. I think it’s part instinctual and part self-reflective. I think the natural world provides not only these great metaphors—that’s probably how I use it most is emotional metaphors. It’s in nature where I, personally, find—with the one exception being making music, is where I find the most solitude and the most peace of mind. Walking through nature and just being, and soaking it in, and trying to be a part of it.”
LISTEN
Steve Von Til — A Life Unto Itself
Speaking of Steve Von Til, he’s just released the first cut from his latest solo album due out in May, the beautiful and folk-tinged A Life Unto Itself. Von Til’s voice is just as compelling singing what is essentially a ballad as it is exorcizing demons over the cathartic noise of his Neurosis bandmates, and on this seven-minute number he channels the soundscaping of Earth with just two guitar tracks and intoxicating story-telling.
NPR are currently streaming the new Lightning Bolt record in full, and at first listen it’s a rip-roaring collection of the duo’s most frenetic work to date. The mid-section on “Over the River and Through the Woods” might be the best three minutes of music I’ve heard this year.
WATCH
Peter Bibby — Goodbye Johnny
Who would’ve thought that the foul-mouthed, gravel-voiced troubadour who once spent his weekends annihilating his lungs on Perth stages as one half of Frozen Ocean would be touring the world so soon? Bibby’s on his way to SXSW this week and with that journey comes the video for Goodbye Johnny, a lo-fi home video about being unable to farewell the song’s namesake thanks to potent influenza. Again, just think about this: Entertainment Weekly is writing about Peter Bibby. What a wonderful world.
Fait — Slow Glow
Fait seemingly appeared from out of nowhere last year with the moody Surrender To and they’ve now returned with their first fully-formed conceptual clip in Slow Glow, a brooding and striking piece of short cinema filmed across the sprawling West Australian landscape. From lush meadows to endless deserts to crashing waves on a violent coast, this feels like the visual track to the kind of dream you don’t want to wake up from. (P.S.: Fait play our five-year anniversary show at The Bakery on Easter Thursday.)
Vale Lemmy. A great tribute from The Nation Blue/High Tension’s Matt Weston over at Noisey and a fantastic insight into his last days up at Rolling Stone. Fittingly, a memorial service has just been announced for the rock god at his favourite boozer, The Rainbow Bar and Grill on January 9. 
