| #612 |
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2002 |
Perilous 612 This week we bid farewell to Kenny Sabir, founder of Elefant Traks, who heads overseas indefinitely to work as a volunteer in some of the world’s growing list of ‘troublespots’. Kenny’s contribution to independent electronic music in Australia in the last few years has been enormous. Apart from Sound Summit and his contributions to the This Is Not Art festivities in Newcastle, and the weekly Peanut Spell show on 2SER, the Elefant Traks collective has grown from a small group of friends into a successful label and The Herd has been busy recording the follow up to their extremely popular debut. The Herd has managed to remain politically active through the collective efforts of the crew despite mainstream popularity. Not only that, they have also managed somehow to find a place between the electronic and hip hop scenes. Kenny’s been also busy before his departure putting the final touches on his DaSE software, a multiplayer music sequencer that The Herd and the former incarnation of Dase Team 5000 use as the backbone of the live performance. DaSE is a pretty crazy conceptual piece of software and it takes a bit of getting used to but its now being farmed out to schools around Australia through a collaborative project with the Powerhouse Museum. Fortunately Elefant Traks continues on in his absence and the 2nd Herd album is due for a late 2002 release. Big up Kenny! And I’m sure you’ll be able to keep a tab on his progress overseas via www.elefanttraks.com. Staying with local stuff, Sydney crew dB Chills release their debut album on Perth’s Offworld Sounds label which is distributed by Inertia. Titled Broke N Sound it features a range of new and old tracks, some of which date back to when they used to be a three piece called The Geek Inc. (Maybe you remember their set at Freaky Loops in 2000?) Anyway, dB Chills have been forging ahead creating some nice rinsing floor filling tracks in a two-step/breaks style with some killer bass drops and the like. The standout track is Dub Vader, a track that wouldn’t be out of place in a DJ Zinc set. dB Chills’ history as a live act is apparent on the record with the drums having a particular ‘thin’ feel that at times weakens some of the tracks – especially when compared to programmed overseas counterparts. Similarly for some reason, the oldest track on the album, Tropic Of Dancer has been reworked and has a less over-driven bassline which lessens its impact compared to the original. The lack of a suitable regular supporting scene and vinyl pressing plants in Australia always affects releases like this because the acts that build up a repertoire to release an album do so by playing more traditional live shows rather than releasing vinyl eps to DJs. Thus their music is rarely heard in clubs through club sound systems (the ‘testing ground’ of dubplates is non-existent here) and whilst the production values can match those of overseas certain genres still remain more club-effective as computer/programming-based productions rather than as live ‘played’ sounds. It gets even more complex because from Australia it is virtually impossible to earn a living out of making music unless you play it out live, so the opportunities for acts working with styles like The Hive and dB Chills do is dependent upon their abilities as a ‘live band’. Compare this to UK producers who have the luxury of rarely having to step out of their studios or even DJ. Over the next two weeks I’d highly recommend people check out the various events going on around town in the What Is Music festival. There are some exciting nights at the Opera House Studio and some excellent collaborations between local and overseas musicians at the experimental end of electronic and improvised music. And Frigid is preparing for its 6th birthday which drops on August 18. Over the next two Sundays we have Bloq launching his album on Couchblip Records alongside Disjunction Reunion and Quark Kent on the 14th and the Autechre-esque Low Key Operations from Brisbane on July 21st. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
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