Archive for the ‘Gold Class’ Category

Cam Durnsford’s Top 10 Albums of 2015

Monday, December 21st, 2015

LIFE IS NOISE’s editor Cam Durnsford shares his top ten releases of 2015.

To pick just 10 records in a year with so many quality releases is not an easy task – here are my favourites as it stands at the moment, with honorable mentions for Royal Headache’s High, Protomartyr’s The Agent Intellect, Chook Race’s About Time, Power’s Electric Glitter Boogie and the self-titled debut from Terrible Truths. All more than deserving of a spot in this or any list.

1. My Disco – Severe
This really was untouchable as the standout release of 2015. The Melbourne band’s fourth LP – their first in five years – is both a major departure from their previous work and a logical evolution of their take on post-punk and math rock. It feels as though the monolith on the album cover could crush you under its weight during any of the loaded pauses the band utilise so well on Severe; the rush that comes when they break these silences is truly visceral. Robert Forster once said the classic three-piece lineup is rock and roll in its purest – here the archetypal power trio plumbs new depths of sound and form.

2. Föllakzoid – III
Chile’s Föllakzoid have been doing their take on the motorik rhythm for a while now, fusing it with space and desert rock motifs that are somehow distinctly Andean. It’s on III though that they’ve really found their groove – a propulsive and hypnotic beast of a thing that stays constant across three of the album’s four lengthy tracks. These are simple, repetitive songs that chug along at a dancefloor-friendly 120 bpm – they could very easily find their way into the crates of a minimal techno DJ as much as an acid-fried psychonaut’s bedroom.

3. Floating Points – Elaenia
I’ve been a fan of Sam Shepherd’s work since first hearing his earlier bass-heavy compositions a few years back – a long string of singles, EPs and production credits spanning deep house, techno, dubstep (think Burial, not Skrillex), and hip hop, so hopes were high for his debut LP. Elaenia completely surpasses these lofty expectations, despite being quite different from his earlier work, and better suited to introspective contemplation than losing one’s shit on the dancefloor. His absolute mastery of sound and love of jazz shine through; live orchestral arrangements result in a lush and immersive suite of songs that demand start-to-finish listening.

4. Gold Class – It’s You
Every so often a band emerges fully formed, seemingly from out of nowhere, ready to capture the attention of a public that didn’t even know they were waiting for said band’s emergence. Of course, it’s never that simple – it takes years of work to be an overnight sensation and all that – but all the same, Gold Class’ debut It’s You is an assured opening salvo from a band who seem to be destined for greatness. Much has been made of Adam Curley’s commanding stage presence and distinctive baritone (with good reason), though the incredible musicianship on display is really what sets Gold Class apart. Post-punk can be so broad a term that it becomes meaningless, though there’s certainly touchstones here of moody UK Rough Trade bands in style as much as delivery.

5. Lucy Cliché – Drain Down EP
With more than 10 years entrenched in Australia’s musical underground with bands like Naked on the Vague, Half High and Knitted Abyss, and previous, more experimental releases under this moniker, Lucy Phelan’s take on live techno was always going to resonate with the punk kids. The DIY assembly of hardware she uses to do this is a welcome change from the safety (and predictability?) of the omnipresent Ableton Live, or the quantized perfection of the modern digital DJ. Drain Down owes as much to Severed Heads as it does to Sleezy D – a kind of industrial acid techno that would go down just as well at Berghain as it does at The Tote.

6. Blank Realm – Illegals in Heaven
After 2014’s exceptional LP Grassed Inn launched the Brisbane avant-pop band on to the world stage, Blank Realm’s follow-up could have easily fallen victim to ‘difficult tenth album syndrome’. Thankfully Blank Realm don’t seem to give two shits about how they’re viewed by critics or the ‘industry’ more generally – they focus instead on crafting sublime songs with psychedelic flourishes and irresistible pop hooks, while never losing sight of their experimental roots.

7. Fuzz – II
It’s been an unusually quiet year for the ever-prolific Ty Segall, with only his contributions (drums and vocals) to Fuzz’s sprawling double LP and a Ty Rex reissue to show for it. II is much more than the product of a Segall side-project though – Meatbodies’ Chad Ubovich and Ty’s long-standing collaborator Charles Mootheart (Epsilons, Ty Segall Band et al) forming like voltron and employing a collaborative approach to writing the songs for their second LP. It’s not going to win many prizes for originality, but this is as good an example as you’ll find of Blue Cheer/Black Sabbath worship.

8. Taipan Tiger Girls – 1
Australian synth pioneer Ollie Olsen makes a welcome return to a live band setting and the result is some of the most exquisite noise you’ll hear. Skittish free-jazz drumming, mountains of demented guitar feedback and Olsen’s propulsive synth combining to give us something that sounds like the Large Hadron Collider powering up, just before it banishes us all to the black hole. It’s not all nihilistic though – you could just as easily imagine the whirling dervishes wigging out to TTG’s brand of minimal synth drone.

9. Batpiss – Biomass
Batpiss further refine their sludgy take on punk rock on album number two. I hear more Jesus Lizard in there than on their debut Nuclear Winter – not just the absolutely monstrous tone of Thomy Sloane’s bass or Paul Portal’s slide-inflected guitar parts, but a similar pathos on display here too. As constants on Melbourne’s live scene, this band has become a fearful live act – if you’ve somehow managed to avoid them you clearly don’t get out much. Rectify that.

10. Institute – Catharsis
Austin’s Institute had me with last year’s Salt EP – a definite 2014 highlight. Their debut LP – yet another outstanding release on the dependable Sacred Bones label – sounds less pessimistic than Salt, with an ever-so-slight polish on this collection of songs. There’s still a sense of foreboding here, and an anxiety writ large by song titles like ‘Admit I’m Shit’ and ‘Cheerlessness’. Another slightly deranged take on the great post-punk revival of 2015.

Matthew Stoff’s Top 10 Albums of 2015

Saturday, December 19th, 2015


Regular LIFE IS NOISE contributor Matthew Stoff shares 10 of his favourite releases from the year that was.


Ten albums seems like way too few for a year as packed with great releases as 2015. Because of that, I wanted to talk about the albums that I keep coming back to, rather than trying to come up with a more definitive list of albums of the year. You might not think of these as the best releases of 2015, but they’re the ones that spoke to me the most. With that in mind, here’s my end of year list:

1. Algiers – Algiers
Cold wave, Marxism, and soul might seem like a funny combination, but after Algiers self-titled album I can’t imagine what my life would be without it. This is one of most innovative albums of the decade, and its hard-hitting, courageous, and challenging political commentary is the icing on the cake.

2. Gold Class – It’s You
I can’t get enough of Gold Class. They’re smart, passionate, and totally authentic. Their live show is amazing too. Gold Class are indisputably the best traditional-sounding post-punk band in Australia at the moment. Maybe even in the world.

3. Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love
Sleater-Kinney’s revival album could have been a lot of things. It could have been out of touch, or lacking energy, or just a simple rehash of their old material. What it was, was nothing less than a masterpiece. It feels as though they’d never left at all.

4. Ought – Sun Coming Down
Sun Coming Down is a weird album. It’s post-punk, but it isn’t really post-punk, with atypical vocals, rambling song structures, and pop-but-not-really-pop-at-all melodies. A singular experience.

5. Heat Dust – Heat Dust
Heat Dust play traditional post-punk really hard and really fast, and I liked this album a lot more than the similarly inspired recent release from Protomartyr. Your results might vary. They’re both incredible, high-octane albums, even if this is the one that made my final list.

6. Ceremony – The L-Shaped Man
Some people might see this album as a contentious choice. It’s pretty generic, and looking at reviews after the fact, it feels like mine is one of the only ones that presents the album in a positive light. But nostalgia is powerful thing, and my nostalgia for the indie pop-infused post-punk revival of the early 2000s is very strong indeed. The mix of that and Ceremony’s lingering hardcore influences gives this album a novel sound that keeps me coming back for more.

7. Deafcult – Deafcult
As far as dream pop goes, these guys are the reigning kings. Dense, melodic shoegaze with great production, played at ear-shattering volume from a Brisbane band. What’s not to love?

8. Mourn – Mourn
Everything about this band is so unlikely. Their place of origin, their age, their musical inspirations: everything that makes them who they are. But that’s why this release is so important. It’s got a youthful sound to it. A sense that anything is possible. And it largely succeeds at all things it’s set out to do. A truly inspiring album.

9. JuliaWhy? – Wheel
I reviewed this album once for 4ZZZ and never mentioned it again, probably because it falls between the lines of various genres, and was hard to compare with anything I wrote about for LIFE IS NOISE this year. But I wanted to mention it here, because it’s a fantastic album, combining high energy delivery with lo-fi production, and subtle feminist politics. My choice for sleeper hit album of the year.

10. Metz – Metz II
Sure, it’s a little shallow and not too different from the first Metz album, yet the brutal but fantastically melodic noise rock of Metz still brings a smile to my face whenever I hear it, and that’s enough for me.

Noiseweek: Hüsker Dü, MONO, Space Bong, Gold Class, Porches

Sunday, October 18th, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

NEWS

Hüsker Dü might be reuniting. Then again, Hüsker Dü might not be reuniting. The long-defunct trio have opened up an official merchandise page and hired former Meat Puppets manager Dennis Pelowski to get their affairs in order. In any case, it’s the first time anyone’s talked to each other in a long while. More at The Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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John Murphy passed away last week. A percussionist who began his musical career in Melbourne in the late 70s, Murphy had tenures in a number of influential post-punk, industrial and neo-folk outfits here and abroad, including SPK, Current 93, Shriekback, Whitehouse and most recently, Death in June. Photography and collaborator Zeena Schreck has written a lovely tribute to Murphy on her website.

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Mega-publisher Condé Nast has acquired Pitchfork, bringing the site’s “very passionate audience of millennial males into our roster” to an editorial stable that includes Vanity Fair, Wired and The New Yorker. On another, potentially unrelated note, Pitchfork has deleted the contributions of one of its early writers (and former Senior Editor to boot), Chris Ott, who’s since become a long-time aggravator and critic of the brand. In light of the acquisition, Ott was raising questions about Pitchfork’s ownership of old published material, which reviews of Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief and Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted. More on this story from Jason Sargent over at Gawker’s media news outlet, TKTK.

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David Bowie is never touring again. That’s not exactly news — Bowie hasn’t been on the road since the Reality Tour in 2014, which was cut short when he underwent heart surgery in Germany in June of that year. Now, former booking agent John Giddings has confirmed that Bowie’s road days are behind him, though he’s still keeping plenty busy, writing new material for the Off Broadway musical Lazarus and penning the theme for forthcoming British crime drama The Last Panthers.

(more…)

Gold Class — It’s You

Tuesday, September 8th, 2015

From the opening seconds of “Furlong,” with its tin-can drums, brooding bass and clattering guitars, I knew this album would be something special. When Adam Curley’s vocals kicked in several seconds later — a combination of Morrissey’s pleading moans and Ian Curtis’s raw, commanding energy — I knew that I was hooked. This is probably the best post-punk album recorded in the last few years, beating out Savages, Nite Fields, and even Wire to the title, with its retro-sounding minimalist production married to an impossible union of UK and American references. It sounds like it could have been made in the 1980s, but its laser focus on disparate regional styles of post-punk, with complementary shades of British goth, is all 2015, taking full advantage of the far-reaching vision of its genre that the modern version of the internet allows.

If you believe that any of that is hyperbolic, you mustn’t be familiar with Melbourne’s Gold Class. In 2015, their early singles received almost daily airplay on 3RRR, helping to establish stratospheric expectations for their debut release. That album came out at the start of the month, and it’s every bit as mesmerizing as expected, with its bleak, hypnotic guitar riffs, pounding drums, and relentless, driving energy. Curley is the most like Ian Curtis that the current stage of the post-punk revival’s ever seen, with the same unique mix of confidence and nervous energy. The authenticity and character of his performance is the first and most exciting feature that you’ll notice on the album. Evan James Purdley’s Television-inspired guitar riffs will probably be the second, and it’s them that really help to differentiate this from the crop of similar post-punk artists drawing most of their inspiration from the British scene. Put simply, it’s an amazing new release that expands upon, and even exceeds, the exciting example set by their early singles, and almost every track is vital here.

“Life as a Gun” was the most memorable of their pre-album releases, with its fast tempo, hook-laden guitar work and commanding foghorn vocals. But it’s not even the most exciting song you’ll hear here, with gothic dance-floor filler “Bite Down” competing for the spot of most infectious single on the album. “Perverts” is dreamlike and accusatory. You’ll lose yourself for hours in its swirling guitars. “Half-Moon Over” sounds like a dream collaboration between Television, Joy Division and Sisters of Mercy that should have been on Marquee Moon. “Pro Clank” dives a little into Algiers territory, with its soulful vocals and stuttering jazz beat, coupled with powerful, inspirational lyrics (“Nothing can stop me / I’m ten million strong”), whereas “Michael” is nostalgic and sweet, with a narrative focus and a soaring, melancholic chorus: “And it all falls down, when you don’t want it to.” Couple that with gripping tracks like “The Soft Delay” and “Athena” – with its thunderous drums and dissonant guitar work – and round it off with the beautiful piano-driven “Shingles,” and you have something close to the perfect album. It stands proudly alongside its influences and its contemporaries, an inspiration for the future and an evocation of the past, both ground-breaking and traditional. Melbourne seems to have a lot of post-punk inspired bands making awesome music lately, but It’s You establishes Gold Class as one of the best.

When Total Giovanni and Mangelwurzel finally release their debut albums we might have a fight on our hands, but until then Gold Class are in a league of their own. Australia often gets overlooked when it comes to post-punk and new wave, so it’s inspiring to see so much of it, of such competitive quality, coming out of the country lately. And that’s not even touching the booming local shoegaze scene. If you’re interested in post-punk, trad goth, or local alternative music, don’t let this album pass you by. It’s the best debut to come out of Australia this year.

It’s You is out now through felte and Spunk Records.

Noiseweek: Nardwuar, Blank Realm, Ought, Gold Class & Minor Victories

Friday, July 31st, 2015

The sights, sounds and words of the week in noise.

NEWS

33 1/3 have announced the longlist of pitches from their latest callout. Bloomsbury received a whopping 605 submissions for its call for submission which closed earlier this week. Included in the list were 8 pitches for for Tori Amos’ Boys for Pele, 6 for Weezer’s Pinkerton and 4 for Guns ‘N’ Roses Appetite of Destruction. There’s a fine selection of gems and modern classic’s in the list — Coil’s Scatology and Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders), Failure’s Fantastic Planet, two submissions for Fugazi’s In on the Kill Taker, Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s Lift Your Skinny Fists… and The Cure’s Disintegration amongst the highlights. You can check out the full list here. Series editor Ally-Jane Grossan says she plans to compile a shortlist of 100 titles within two months before making the final selection of titles by the end of November. Check out the full long list here.

READ

30 Years Of Eclectic, Eccentric Interviews: Nardwuar On Nirvana, Snoop Dogg, Blur And More | NME

“Time and time again people don’t take Nardwuar seriously — they either wish to end the interview or simply become dismissive or antagonistic. But gradually Nardwaur will charm them into submission. This approach has created some incredible interviews over the years: his research left Pharrell utterly speechless whilst it caused Slipknot to walk off mid-interview. He’s asked Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins about their penises and become a personal favourite interviewer of Snoop Dogg. Dave Rowntree of Blur, meanwhile, managed to put in one of the most horrifying on-camera interviews ever committed to tape with Nardwuar. Trying to sum him up in words is tough though: “I have a hard time explaining myself to myself, so I can’t imagine people trying to explain me to others,” as the man himself explains… ”

Turning Bridges into Music | The New Yorker

“As part of her research-and-development process, Di Mainstone has experimented with the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge in Omaha, Nebraska, which produced “a beautiful zapping noise,” she says, like “Star Wars” lasers. She has experimented with Tower Bridge, in London, which made “the sort of sound that would make your ears bleed, static and screechy.” She has experimented with the Brooklyn Bridge, in New York City, including a movement test using modified dog leads for strings. Currently, she is organizing a road trip across America—a “mobile laboratory,” during which she will test and refine the Human Harp prototype on bridges and other structures all the way to the West Coast. “Imagine a farmer playing a giant grain silo in Idaho,” Mainstone says. “Or a musical old lady playing a wind turbine in Colorado!” Her ultimate goal is to release the Human Harp as an open-source design, allowing others to build their own version of the instrument so they can play any resonant structure in the world, from a submarine to the Eiffel Tower.”

How to put on a mega-gig: the production manager’s story | The Guardian

“It used to be different. Up until 10 years ago, the record companies would give us money to fund tours. Now, touring is the main income, which is obviously good for my business. It’s almost snowballed, in that bands have needed to play bigger venues to generate more income. The productions have had to become bigger to catch up. This has driven an industry of companies who design massive productions and have created the means of taking them down and putting them back up again very quickly. If I can do two or three more shows a month than another tour, we’re going to be making lots of money, and by creating greater income, you can move things very quickly. We’ve got to be able to build a massive stadium show from grass pitch to doors opening within around 48 hours and we’ve got to be able to take it down within four hours, and clear the pitch for the next day. As a guitarist finishes with one guitar, someone will be packing it away. We turn smoke machines and whatever that aren’t going to be used any more off, and they’re in their cases before the show is over.”

LISTEN

Ought — Men For Miles

The second track from Sun Coming Down sees ought frenetic and scattered, but it’s that unpredictability that makes the Montréal outfit so compelling. Tim Darcy may never sing like a regular vocalist, but he boasts a remarkable range, at once fragile, confident, disaffected and threatening over Men For Miles’ six minutes. Sun Coming Down is out through Constellation on September 18.

Blank Realm — No Views

Ever-evolving Brisbane outfit Blank Realm are a restless psych-punk war machine on No Views, the raucous, harmonica-laden single from the forthcoming Illegals in Heaven. That record takes its name from the present refugee crisis in Australia and the batshit response from all parts of the political spectrum, as the band explain in an interview with Noisey. No Views feels like a head rush, an eruption of pure adrenaline speeding down the Autobahn where destinations don’t matter. Illegals in Heaven is out September 4 through Bedroom Suck Records.

WATCH

Minor Victories — Film One

Film One isn’t strictly a music video. Nor is it a short film, a teaser trailer or a preview, but all of these things at once. Minor Victories is the new collaboration from Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Mogwai’s Stuart Braithwaite, Editors’ Justin Lockey and a series of co-conspirators-to-be (including Mark Kozelek), and this intimate piece — half of which is virtually silent — does a great job of building intrigue in what’s sure to be an excellent collaboration, especially if the track that starts at 2:30 is anything to go by. Colour me very interested.

Gold Class — Life As A Gun

Adam Curley is disaffected as the Christ figure in this knife-play-heavy clip for Life As A Gun. It’s a trait reflected in his vocal delivery — distant, at times overwrought, somehow disconnected yet always compelling as he plumbs emotional depths over a barrage of jaunty rhythms and nervous guitars to create a post-punk noir tapestry. The single is taken from the group’s debut, It’s You, out September 4 through Spunk.