| #620 |
|
2002 |
Perilous 620 If you happened to be around in the late 80s you would remember the era of shoegazer rock. British bands like Lush, Ride, Slowdive, and of course, My Bloody Valentine. Androgynous, soft, semi-psychedelic the music was characterised by walls of feedback, drones, and vocals as texture. MBV’s fantastic track Soon with its Andy Weatherall remix was about as close as this scene got to the dancefloor despite the rave revolution going on around it. By 1992 the whole hard rocking grunge sound literally blew the shoegazers away. Well over a decade a later, German label Morr Music have released a tribute album to Slowdive. Morr Music artists like Lali Puna, B.Fleischmann, Manual, Isan, and Hermann & Kleine have been instrumental in the development of a naïve lo-fi melodic electronics of the last two years and along with Iceland’s Mum there has been a strong shift back towards words and guitars in the scene. Interestingly when these artists turn their attention to making covers of Slowdive the results don’t sounds that out of place and the compilation reveals strong sonic links to the shoegazers of the late 80s. Curiously, Slowdive’s biggest track in Australia, Catch The Breeze – their only track to employ a slow loping breakbeat – is absent from the covers. In Australia, too, a similar lo-fi electronics scene seems to have been brewing from a bleed between artists on the edge of the indie rock/pop scene and the electronic scenes. Adelaide’s Superscience, now called Clue To Kalo, and Melbourne’s Other People’s Children are the closest fit – both bringing fey indie-styled vocals to lo-fi electronics. Other People’s Children had a 7” out for Morr last year but their debut album is out on Melbourne microlabel Library Music which has also released a further two 7”s from them. A related label, Chapter Music, run by the Corduroy pressing plant has also recently put out interesting lo-fi indie electronic work by Letraset (as well as a new Jeremy Dower album). Keep an eye out for further developments in this arena as this may become the new indie very quickly. Autechre have a new EP out and the first foray into the world of DVDs for Warp Records. Packaged either as a 3 track 12”, a 3 track CD or a twin 3 track DVD and 3 track CD package, Gantz Graf is one of the more accessible inaccessible tracks from Autechre is ages. Tautological but true, Gantz Graf starts as a cloud of cross-bleeding hyper rhythms before distilling down to a sweet almost-melody. If you pick up the DVD/CD pack, which is the recommended combination, you get the incredible Gantz Graf video directed by Alexander Rutterford as well as 1994’s Bass Cadet from the Motion video pack, and a rather dull video remix of Chris Cunningham’s Second Bad Vibel clip. Rutterford’s Gantz Graf is sure to send you into an epileptic fit but in so doing you’ll witness some cutting edge 3D graphics and fast edits synced so perfectly to the audio that you’ll actually believe the video is generating the audio (rather than the other way around). It’s an amazing effect and is one of a very few video clips to have such a degree of synaesthesia. Moving on to all things Frigid, there’s the start of a very hectic September/October period. First from Melbourne and launching their new EP on September 8th is Pretty Boy Crossover (PBXO). Rumoured to have their first album nearly emerge on Skam before it was relelased by Adelaide’s Surgery Records, PBXO make some of the best greyscale lo-fi electronics in the country. Their new EP Any Number Can Play is a one-off release for Clan Analogue and contains five new tracks and three remixes by the sensational Melbourne sound designer Ai Yamamoto, Sydney’s Kazumichi Grime. Copies will be available on the night. PBXO are joined by 5000 Fingers Of Dr T and Kazumichi Grime and the other new Clan release, a predominantly Melbourne ambient compilation, Habitat, will be available too. Then on September 15 its all hip hop with the NSW heat of the Stealth MC competition. The state final of this comp will be held at Sound Summit in Newcastle and be judged by Anticon affiliate Sage Francis. Stay tuned for Tigerbeat6’s Kevin Blechdom (from Blectum from Blechdom) on the 29th joined by Melbourne’s Curse Ov Dialect and from Leaf Records the ultra-sensuous Manitoba on a special mid-week Frigid on Oct 2nd. Yellow Peril (www.snarl.org)  Goto
Snarl Texts Index Pages
|