Experimental guitarist Julia Reidy moved to Berlin last year where, in addition to her solo work, she plays in a “thrashy improv” duo called Pales in “places you probably haven’t been to”. She bought her twelve-string guitar just 18 months ago but plays it neck to bridge as though she’s owned it forever, extracting an invigorating miscellany of sourness and warmth, twang and sustain. Themes ...
Kris Keogh is based in Nhulunbuy and his toddler won’t sleep without this music. As for others in the tiny Arnhem Land community, Keogh says: “I think zero people here like it.” I saw him last in 2009 at Newcastle’s This Is Not Art festival, pounding out a techno set on a monome. Even then, harp glittered around the edges and now, harp is all ...
The dissolution of two romances – the first with his partner; the second with Berlin – saw techno producer Rick Bull, better known as Deepchild, forge new ground with a new alias, Acharné. In “a radical pause to reflect on the shifting sands of a beloved city” Bull made a very lovely record, full of gently shifting sensibilities itself. In an interview with Native Instruments, ...
This is Wolf Shield’s debut but I’ve heard these songs before. Well, fragments of them anyway. These days Randy Reimann is best known as the founder of electronic act, Tralala Blip – composed of members with and without disabilities – but in the early 90s he was the vocalist of legendary Sydney hardcore/thrash/punk band, Massappeal. They were Sydney’s most ferocious live act and I’d come ...
Great shoe-gaze isn’t defined by wall-of-sound guitars – though they sure help. The vocals should elicit genuine pity because unless I think things are insolvably fucked I can’t languish in the lethargy of doing nothing about it – and that is shoegaze’s chief charm. Au.Ra make bliss-laden psych pop shot through the middle with Tom Crandles’ sultry, sulky, distinctly Mancunian drawl. It’s the formula for ...
Buzz Kull single Into The Void is a gothic dark wave classic that should soundtrack a club scene in a movie. Set to strobe lights on a dance floor dripping with drugsweat, the song has it all: pounding drum machine, stabs of frosty synth and vocals with a void where the heart should be. Buzz Kull is Sydney’s Marc Dwyer and this record’s been a ...
I used to think my obsession with the folk songs of Lindsay Phillips would wane. And it still might if he quit writing songs of stark potency that seem to slow time itself. In a farmhouse in rural Sweden, Phillips cares for his young son and summons songs from a steel string guitar, the wheezings of an heirloom accordion and a sorrowful baritone distinguished by ...
Drive 1,500 kilometers south of Alice Springs and you’ll reach Adelaide. Sixteen hours north is Darwin. These are the closest big towns. Alice (as it is known) is red dirt country – traditional home to the Arrernte people and four hours from Australia’s most famous rock, Uluru. A return flight to Alice from Sydney or Melbourne costs about $700. It’s no casual weekend away but ...
“This song is about underground communities and how they tear themselves apart.” Fifteen minutes after Shogun of Royal Headache said this onstage, I began to experience an offstage version. Only there was no catharsis; no song. In the gig washout, a message popped up on my phone. It was from the admin of a Facebook group I’ve been part of pretty much since inception. “We’ve ...
By the time 2016 ended, every artistic effort was either a statement on the year or perceived as one. And it is still bearing fruit. On his third LP as Blanck Mass, Benjamin John Power says his muse was “a year teeming with anger, violence, confusion and frustration”. In 2012 it had felt so right when three Fuck Buttons songs were used in the London ...
My name is Kate Hennessy. I am a freelance arts writer, editor and music critic. I contribute to publications including Guardian Australia, The Wire (UK), ABC Arts, The Saturday Paper, The Quietus (UK), The Australian Book Review, The Lifted Brow, Noisey/Vice, Limelight, Mess+Noise and others.