These releases all available now in good record stores // distributed by Inertia distribution // 02 9698 0111 // www.inertia-music.com // info@inertia-music.com

fresh music for tired ears...

Animal CollectiveSpirit They’ve Gone(Fat Cat)Double CD combining the firsttwo albums from Brooklyn’smost astonishing group.Beautifully skewed pop ballads,fiercely ruptured noise-squalls,tribal rhythmic workouts andsimple folk songs.

Rachel’sSystems/layers(Quarterstick)Sumptuous new album fromavant-garde chamber group,equal parts neo-classicist andmoody post rock. Includes largerensemble sessions and fieldrecordings to make a rich tapestry of sound.

ManitobaUp In Flames (Special Edition)(Leaf)Manitoba’s genre-busting, wide-eyed masterpiece is now repackaged in a slipcase with 8 track bonus disc including B-sides, unreleased tracks andtwo video clips.

Tied & Tickled TrioObserving Systems(Morr Music)TTT’s debut on Morr Music is anon-purist vision of perpetualgrooves. Combining classic jazzarrangements, the cavernousrhythm structures of dub and the sophistication of modernelectronics.

Rhythm & SoundWith The Artists(Burial Mix)A collection from the Berlin-based electronic dub/reggae production team’s collaborations.Includes Cornell Campbell,Tikiman, Love Joy, Jah Batta,Shalom. Also available: TheVersions.

MatmosThe Civil War(Matador)An amazing, hallucinatory albumfusing cut and paste electronics,medieval English folk music and19th century Americana. Guestsinclude Radar Bros., Hrvatski,David Grubbs and BlevinBlectum.

RechenzentrumDirector’s Cut(Mille Plateaux)Famed Berlin and ex-Kitty-yorecording artists return with anepic, visionary project of soundand vision. A stunning electroniclandscape is accompanied by afeature-length DVD.

Boxhead EnsembleQuartets(Atavistic)America’s answer to GY!BEreturn after the acclaimed DutchHarbour Soundtrack. Previouspersonnel include members ofTortoise, Sonic Youth, Palace,Dirty Three, Isotope 217.

Village of SavoongaLive 14-09-2001(Hausmusik)Post rock visionaries (with members of Notwist, Tied &Tickled Trio, Lali Puna, Console)regroup for a stunning live tourde force, mixing electronic, jazz,rock and experimental music.

PsychonautsSongs For Creatures(International DJ Gigolos)Ex-Mo Wax artists release akiller, expectation-confoundingdebut album. Pulsing electronicfunk, lush pastoral pop and cinematic disco. Guests include James Yorkston andSiobhan Fahey.

David ByrneYoung Adam Soundtrack(Thrill Jockey)Superb score by Talking Headslegend for cult Scottish film.Sweeping orchestrations andpost-rock soundscapes madewith members of Mogwai, Belle& Sebastian, Reindeer Sectionand Delgados.

Motorpsycho + Jaga Jazzist HornsIn The Fishtank(Konkurrent)Ninja Tune’s 10 piece instrumental outfit Jagga Jazzistexperiment in the studio withNorway’s brutal Motorpsycho tocreate a cocktail of Stax soul,Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders.

Jackie O MotherfuckerMagick Fire Music(All Tomorrow’s Parties)Originally released as vinyl-onlyLPs on Thurston Moore’sEcstatic Peace and Fisheyelabels. Two breathtaking,poignant albums from this seminal American group nowavailable on double CD.

Rand & HollandTomorrow Will Be Like Today(Preservation)Debut from Sydney artist built onstark, disarming melodies. Thebalance between epic and intimate carried by a deeply resonant vocal. Dark, atmospheric, emotionally directand unaffected pop.

Triosk meets Jan Jelinek1+ 3 + 1(~scape)Acclaimed electronic musicianJan Jelinek (aka Farben, Gramm,Auch) collaborates with Sydneyjazz trio Triosk. A wonderful melding of the electronic andacoustic, based on samples and loops.

CharalambidesUnknown Spin(Kranky)A luminescent album full ofindescribable wonders fromthese channellers of theAmerican primitivist instinct. Animprovised minimalism fromguitar, pedal steel and haunting,wordless vocals.

PluramonDreams Top Rock(Karaoke Kalk)Incredible new album fromPluramon, featuring Twin Peakschanteuse Julee Cruise. Dreamypop songs with a powerful wallof sound quality, drenched inethereal electronic stylings.

A Silver Mt ZionThis Is Our Punk Rock(Constellation)New album from GY!BE offshoot.4 beautiful, emotive, powerful,long pieces (strings, guitars,effects) with an assembled amateur choir. This is exuberant community rallyingprotest music.

Cyclic Defrost free-of-charge so that new people canfind out about new music. And if you are just aninterested reader, make contact with us – becauseyou’re the other reason why we continue.

On to more pressing topics, this issue’s ratherdemented cover comes from Sydney artist TéchaNoble, whose mixed media works are currently onshow at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney,and who moonlights as a member of the infamousThe Kingpins. Behind the cover you'll find a CD –you've probably already pulled out and tried to readthe tracklisting. The CD is part of the Noise Festivaland is a joint venture between Noise and SBS RadioAlchemy, and Cyclic Defrost has provided the meansof distribution. Whilst you are listening to it, sit backand read the interviews with Melbourne producersQua and Adam Fisher AKA 8-Bit, Canberra/Sydneyduo Dark Network, Brisbane via Japan artist JohnChantler, and Sydney’s Robokoneko.

So what happens next? Luckily for you the nextCyclic Defrost is due in February, and will feature thesame informed, interesting and incenidary content,with the added bonus of yet another free cover CD.

Sebastian Chan & Dale Harrison Editors

Publisher & Editor-in-ChiefSebastian Chan

Art Director & Co-EditorDale Harrison

Sub EditorAparna Khopkar

Reviews EditorDale Harrison

AdvertisingSebastian Chan

Advertising Rates download at <www.cyclicdefrost.com>

DistributionInertia Distribution <www.inertia-music.com>

PrintingTorch Publishing

Web ProgrammingGiv Parvaneh, Qbique <www.qbique.com>

Web DesignLuke Elwin, Qbique <www.qbique.com>

Web HostingBlueskyhost <www.blueskyhost.com>

Guest Cover DesignTécha Noble

Issue 6 ContributorsChloé Sasson, Jordan Spence, BimRicketson, Angela Stengel, VaughanHealy, Alex Crowfoot, Bob Baker Fish,Lawrence English, Melinda Taylor, Ollo,Tim Levinson

Thank YouLisa Main and Sharon Longridge atNoise; Brendan Palmer at SBS Radio;Lucas Abela at Dual Plover; Nick, Ashand Ruby at Inertia, Natalie at TorchPublishing, Giv and Luke at Qbique,Chris Bell at Blueeskyhost, all theadvertisers.

We welcome your contributions and contact

CYCLIC DEFROST MAGAZINE PO Box a2073 Sydney South NSW 1235 Australia

info@cyclicdefrost.com www.cyclicdefrost.comISSUE 7 DEADLINE:JANUARY 27, 2004

StockistsNSW: BPM, So Music, Disc, Red Eye,Reefer Records, Mall Music, VictoryMusic, Metropolis, Freestyle, GoodGroove, Museum Of ContemporaryArt, Reachin, Recycled Records,Parade Music, Blockbeats Music,Music Bizarre (Lismore), Velvet Fog(Katoomba), Bloody Fist (Newcastle)

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SA: Big Star, B Sharp, Uni Records

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TAS: Aroma, Ruffcutt, CD Centre,Wills Music

ACT: Landspeed

NT: CasuarinaIf your store doesn't carry Cyclic Defrost thenget them to order it from Inertia Distribution

ISSUE 6CONTENTS

So here it is... Issue #6. It’s a bit of a milestone forus, as according to the original Australia Councilgrant this marked the last of six bi-monthly issues;the culmination of a year. But as you know, thingschanged, deadlines were blown out by opportunities,and Cyclic Defrost ended up not only travellingaround Australia, but visiting overseas. Now wehave finally completed what we’d set out to do andmore – back before Issue #1 we promised to do aSydney-wide magazine of 1000 copies only, but bythe time we hit the streets we were already nationaland printing three times that amount. In some ways,Dale and I were looking forward to a break – Cyclicwould be over, our weekly club night Frigid hasclosed down after seven years, and for Dale TheHerd’s touring stopped for two months. But like Isaid, things change.

Onwards to the future – we've decided to continueon with Cyclic. Our crew of writers is growing andthere are more and more artists, producers and labelsthat we want to cover. To end it now would besenseless. But that means that now more than everwe need your support. If you’re an artist or run alabel, think about advertising – we've set up thismagazine to be a space for independent artists andlabels to affordably advertise their releases andevents, and we feel strongly about keeping

www.cyclicdefrost.comLOG IN...STAY FROSTY

Extended articles

Music downloads of featured artists

ISSUE 6 EXCLUSIVE WEB CONTENT

Additional reviews

Exclusive on-line giveaways

MP3s of selected artists

+�

A New Audiences project, assisted by the Australia Council, theFederal Government's art fundingand advisory body, through itsAudience and Market Development Division.

4 TÉCHA NOBLEby Bim Ricketson

8 ROBOKONEKOby Angela Stengel

10 DARK NETWORKby Glen Martin

12 JOHN CHANTLER/INVENTING ZERO RECORDSby Melinda Taylor

14 QUAby Bob Baker Fish

16 SONIC ALLSORTS COMPILATION

18 8-BIT/THE CALCULATORSby Vaughan Healy

20 REVIEWS

30 SLEEVE REVIEWS by Alex Crowfoot

32 SELECTS: HERMITUDE by Sebastian Chan

34 DEAR DEGRASSI

EDITORIAL

The views contained herein are not necessarily the views of the publisher nor the staff of Cylic Defrost. Copyright remains with the authors and/or Cyclic Defrost.

4

Técha moved into the now defunct Surry Hillswarehouse gallery Imperial Slacks in her finalyear of study, modestly attributing any presentsuccesses to the time spent living there. ‘It was-n’t all love and roses but still worth everystranger on the couch, every cockroach, everybiff we had with the landlord ... the ImperialSlacks space started in 1998, motivated byMichael Schiavello and Léa Donnan, two Collegeof Fine Arts students. Back then it was calledHerringbone Gallery, named after the woodenstruts in the roof, which were stitched togetherin a Herringbone pattern. This original name alsopaid homage to the building’s original purpose asa clothing warehouse. Their intention was toopen an artist-run space that provided decentgallery rental for emerging artists, forging a linkto more established practitioners. It came in the

wake of the closure of some significant artist-rungalleries, including Pendulum that Léa had beeninvolved in. To be able to rent the whole ware-house floor and keep the gallery afloat andaffordable for artists wanting to exhibit, theybuilt the gallery in the middle of the space whilstlive-in studios skirted the periphery. Originallythere were four residents in the complex andover the five years it doubled to eight when wecombined an east wing.’

Técha continues; ‘I moved in during my lastyear of art school in the late 90s, a little appre-hensive about living with eight people, butended up loving almost every minute of it.During the golden years, the Projectroom wasoperating downstairs, with some of the peoplefrom Sydney DJ crew Sub Bass Snarl, electron-ic act Cindi (which subsequently spawned

Cover Designer Interview with Técha Nobleby Bim RicketsonWhen Técha Noble bundles into my living room one Friday evening, I’m very soonleft feeling exhausted in her presence. Racing from her day job as an illustrator tothe Primavera exhibition at the MCA, and on her way to dance class, Técha hadjust received a hefty fine for speaking on her mobile whilst driving – but for some-one with this much on her CV it’s hardly surprising. Técha is an illustrator anddesigner for Mambo by day and member of the hilarious drag/performance art actThe Kingpins and artist by night. She is preparing to tour a show around Asia andcurate another at the ACMI in Melbourne. No wonder the girl was caught talkingwhile driving – she has lots to organize and plenty to talk about!

THE KINGPIN AND I

fertilization of ideas, support network, sharing of tech gearand manual resources was what made it beneficial to ourpractices... plus the parties of course! Our most infamous andbiggest breach of fire hazard regulations was a three levelextravaganza that brought in a cast of thousands. I still meetpeople who tell me stories of their experiences on that auspicious night at our place.’

But during the same period Surry Hills was rapidly chang-ing. Rents were rising, forcing out much of the youngerartists and dodgy characters that gave the suburb life. Téchaexplains; ‘over five years we saw a shift in Surry Hills to amore latte living Longrain (an expensive Asianrestaurant/bar) lifestyle. Our particular building had oncebeen filled with artists, digital wizards, bums and musiciansand progressed into its current function of housing one ofAustralia’s biggest casting agencies, Icon Films, major PRcompanies and a designer furniture warehouse. We weregradually feeling more out of place as we passed the likes ofwell groomed Miranda, Toni and ‘our Nic’ on the stairs,whilst taking out the rubbish in our PJs. At times it felt likeSlacks was the last bastion of an old guard but the battlebecame exhausting, as did running a space that had anotheropening and install every three weeks. And the regular soundand performance nights and video art publications. By thetime the rent was raised it was time to move on.’

‘The final show we had, to celebrate the space, was calledSlacking Off and included many of the artists who had beeninvolved and exhibited over the years. We took out the entirewarehouse floor and had installations in every room. It wasquite an experience. We got a write-up in the paper that stat-ed “tell your grandchildren you were there”. That felt prettyspecial. It was a good send off to a special place that hadbeen such a momentous time in our lives. It’s now been ayear since its close and it’s still not been rented out.’

Dsico), JuJu Space Jazz and video artists Tesseract living and/or workingdown there. At the risk of sounding ridiculously nostalgic and woefully sen-timental, it was an eventful era.

‘After two and a half years of the Herringbone gallery residency, the artistsinvolved and their partners had formed a tight-knit collective and wanted thegallery space to continue. In 2000 we re-launched the space as Imperial Slacks. Wedeveloped a very focussed curatorial program as well as trying to keep democraticand accessible for all artists to apply to use the space. The thirteen or so artistsinvolved in the collective were from very different disciplines – sculpture andinstallation, performance, sound, video, painting – and this made for a pretty var-ied program. We also had Impermanent Audio every month, curated by Caleb K,which provided an interesting live performance and experimental sound element. Iremember when he hosted this amazing guy from Spain who gave this wild performance which consumed the entire space in the sound of fire. It was so loudand intense that even when he was yelling at the top of his voice in his audiocrescendo, we could barely hear it... that was definitely my favourite.

‘Overall the gallery attracted a mostly warm and lovely crowd and we really feltwe were contributing to a significant, exciting visual arts scene. The cross

A beautiful and unique art rock album. A star-studded cast of alternative voices sing songsbased on the haiku poetry of the great GreekNobel Laureate George Seferis over a sprawl-ing, sensual cinematic soundscape.

The result is a stunning, passionate record thatcan be enjoyed on many levels. Musicallyexquisite, it features contributions fromRobert Wyatt, Cat Power, Laetitia Sadier(Stereolab), Alejandro Escovedo, Edith Frost,Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), John Grant (TheCzars),Howe Gelb (Giant Sand), Mark Eitzel

Out now on Rogue Records // distributed by

Inertia distribution // 02 9698 0111 // www.inertia-music.com // info@inertia-music.com

16 songs based on the haiku poetry of George

In the field not onefourleaf clover:

which one of the three’s to blame?

THE KINGPINSIt was during the Slacks period that Técha formed‘death metal meets electro pop’ drag act / perform-ance art group The Kingpins. As a vehicle for socialand gender commentary, Kingpins are as politicallyincisive as they are funny and booty shaking. Techaexplains,’When I was living with the other Kingpinsmembers – Angelica Mesiti, and sisters Emma andKatie Price – we used to attend a club night calledDKSY (Drag King Sydney) at Arq nightclub. We fan-cied ourselves as likely contenders for the majorcompetition and entered our first heat with a booty-licious rendition of LL Cool J’s ‘I’m That Type ofGuy’. A Guns & Roses metal extravaganza followedfor the semi finals – Emma stage dived and spatbeer on the audience! I got to be Axl and do thesnake dance. We then went on to win the finalswith Bodycount (‘Evil Dick’) and remixed with 2Live Crew (‘Get The Fuck Out My House Bitch’) andNWA (‘World’s Biggest Dick’).

‘The name The Kingpins suggests a certainamount of bravado, which sometimes feels odd inthe context of the visual arts. We became interestedin the ideas that drag put forward in relation to artmaking. And the collage of constructed charactersand sound and how that related back to media cul-ture’s influence. So we have continued our littlecollaboration and brought it back to the visual artsby way of video art. We have found drag a powerfulvehicle for exploring ideas of urban landscape andAussie culture.’

Now crossing media platforms of sound and liveperformance, The Kingpins also embrace design andvideo as visual art tools. ‘Presently it is my love formusic and its history that I feed back into the artdirection for the Kingpins collaborative work. Oldrecord covers are the best resource for layout andtypography – Twisted Sister, Midnight Oil, Bay CityRollers, Betty Davis, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac,Aerosmith, Ice T, Norwegian death metal – TheKingpins collect it all. Our costuming, gesture, char-acters, location for shoots are all drawn from musichistory. A lot of our production stills emulate albumcovers. We chuck it all in the blender and come upwith our own re-inventions. This then flows on tothe design and illustration for our DVD, CD Roms,badges and posters. For our recent work I’ve tried to

focus on less literal reference to music history and focus more on illus-trating our own audio narrative. The main graphic elements within theMuseum Of Contemporary Art exhibition Primavera is a vinyl decalthat is the Welcome to the Jingle logo that looms either side of the videoinstallation – shiny black vinyl on a matt black wall. It is a twist on thegreen, white and black Starbucks logo that contains a mermaid on theinside. We flipped it by replacing the mermaid with the head of a deathmetal wrestler – a comical attempt at suggesting the underbelly of anevil corporation. For the accompanying music we treated it like a [postmodern mashup] soundtrack, almost like a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ tech-nique, where it jumps from one genre to another. We chose the electropop sound as it sat well with the ideas relating to Welcome to theJingle. The work talks about homogenization of the city and corporatemarketing and we wanted a catchy jingle-esque experience. DylanMartin from Sydney production duo The Coven then mixed in elementsof Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene. This almost twisted the track into atrancy sound, which was a little scary, but amusing at the same time.’

OTHER WORKThe commercial nature of Técha’s other work as an illustrator differsfrom her art, driven as it is by client’s needs. ‘My own work differsfrom my commercial stuff primarily because it’s not to a brief,’ Téchaexplains, ‘With Mambo for example, I have to consider what’s going tolook good on a garment. Mambo’s culture is based in humour andirony, visual devices and quirks. Working with Sally McDonald, headwomenswear designer, is inspiring; she’s very clever. That’s certainlythe most fun commercial stuff.’

She also contributes to the seminal Geek Girl magazine, providingillustrations for interviews. ‘I had always been a fan of the grrrl webzineand print mag; they were quite revolutionary at the peak of IT theoryand the cyberspace boom. Geek Girl has been operating since the early90s – I got involved whilst I was at Slacks, through Laura Jordan, whohad done lots of collaborations with Geek Girl. Its purpose has evolved,but it is pretty content driven. Rosie X (Geek Girl originator and semi-nal Australian cyberculture thinker and activist) has always been inter-ested in theories of gender and anarchy and used Geek Girl as a vehiclefor subversion and conversation. She published really interesting inter-views with people like Hakim Bey to my illustrations. I still regardRosie X as my fairy godmother. She has done a lot for me and we aregood mates.’

THE CYCLIC COVER‘I’d like to think that my own work is coming from personal influencesand has the freedom of experimentation’ describes Técha, ‘I try to pro-duce images that are more ambiguous and abstract in concept ratherthan executing something in a really literal way; that the illustrationgives a suggestion of a story or situation and might be a bit disturbingor bordering on something disconcerting.’

A case in point is this issue’s cover illustration ‘My major inspira-tion is Osamu Tezuka, the Japanese artists who created Astro Boy,’explains Técha, ‘I am particularly interested in a character he createdcalled Princess Night, essentially a drag King, who is forced to paradeas a prince in order to keep her kingdom. I’ve also tried to give theimpression of a wacked out soft drink ad. Tezuka was a prolific vision-ary with a wild imagination.’ No wonder she’s a fan.

For more on Técha Noble and The Kingpins see cyclicdefrost.com

�

+ THE REAL LOUNGE MUSIC

8

Her childhood has inadvertently influenced afew things in her life. ‘The name Anembo is thestreet where I grew up. In all the years that Ilived there I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’trealise that the streets I grew up around were allAboriginal words. I started looking them up andfound out that Anembo meant ‘a quiet place’which I though was very appropriate for myalbum and the style of music that I do. It wasbizarre that these things that I never thoughtabout as a kid can have relevance to what I’mdoing now.’

What she is already doing now, after therelease of Anembo, is focusing on creating moremusic. ‘I’m starting anew since releasing Anembobecause this is the result of a couple of yearswork. Most of these have already been moved offthe hard drive to make room for new stuff. Thealbum was a long time coming as it was meant tobe released in November last year, but I haveadded three songs since then. I think it’s worth

waiting to release something you’re happy witheven if it takes three years, than to just release itstraight away.’

The hardest task of all when creating an albumappears to be deciding on the artwork and nam-ing the tracks. ‘I often think all of those beautifulastronomy images would be lovely to use on analbum cover, but to me it’s so corny and everyoneat work would cringe. Or if you call song namesafter constellations and stuff they all sound reallynice but it would just make me cringe. Choosingtrack names is actually a hard thing to do. When Ineed to save that’s when I need to find a name forit. If I call it “temp” I’m never going to rememberwhich is which. Most of the track names from thealbum are their original titles. I sit there thinking“what can it be..? I really need to save just in casethe machine crashes”. I like to pick up a bookthat’s nearby and flick though it, take a couple ofwords out of context but sometimes it’s a littleobvious where I got the name from. Satsuma is

one I changed for the release. It was originallycalled a non-word which I made up. It startedwith the letter ‘S’ so I had to call it somethingreally that started with ‘S’ so I went to my the-saurus and started reading. As you can see I gotas far as ‘SA’. Satsuma is just a tangerine but Ithought it was a nice name.’

Melinda set out to discover how to make elec-tronic music after being introduced to it at raves.‘I didn’t actually meet many people who weremaking music at the raves; it was just from theartists that I heard at the raves which inspired meto find out more about their music and the way itwas created. Artists like Aphex Twin, which is acliché but y’know, he’s one of the people whoinspired me to start making electronic music. Ibegan by ordering a Turtle Beach sound card,waited four months for it to come into the store,put it in my computer and started makingmusic... it must’ve been 1997 or maybe earlier.

‘The record label was an idea between the

RobokonekoInterview with Melinda Taylorby Angela Stengel

Before its recent demise Melinda Taylor could often be seen standing at the back of the Hopetoun during Frigid sellingCDs imported by Couchblip!. The label was founded by her, Luke Killen (Disjunction Reunion) and Jim Dodd (Bloq) in2000. She is probably better known as Robokoneko and has recently released her first album, Anembo. All this from agirl who, as a child, spent a lot of time looking up at the stars. ‘I did a PhD in Astronomy,’ says Melinda. ‘I got a jobthere as a research assistant but now I administer the computers which I enjoy more. At high school I decided that Iwanted to do astronomy but I don’t really know why. I didn’t have childhood dreams of being an astronaut because Iknew I couldn’t as I wasn’t American and I wouldn’t want to land in a Russian space ship.’

three of us – Jim, Luke and myself. We just thought that there was nowhere inSydney really releasing the music we were making or interested in, so wethought it’d be a good project to start. At the time there was Clan Analogue andelefant traks in Sydney, Surgery Records in Adelaide, but I didn’t know of themat that time. The distribution work started when someone from overseas asked ifI would be interested in setting up a distribution company in Australia. Ithought about it for probably three months before I agreed to do it. Now I reallyenjoy it because I get exposed to so much new music and you meet so manynice people overseas. The only problem is that there is too much email to write.In fact, the hardest task is getting it out there and convincing record stores thateven though they haven’t heard of this label their customers are going to love it.There is a core group of stores throughout Australia that are very supportive ofthe music we are distributing. A lot of the labels we distribute are small labelsand some are a bit more well known like Hefty (from Chicago), but still there’s a

very small percentage of people who have heard of it. That is changing though .I don’t really listen so much in record stores anymore because I have so muchmusic in my lounge room that I don’t get to listen to enough. We get so manypeople just wanting distribution in Australia. I think a lot of them don’t evenrealise what a small market it is anyway. If it’s a European based label theyshould really be heading to the US and Japan first and leave Australia until last.As far as we’re concerned as a label, we do the majority of sales in the UK andJapan at the moment. I’m sure it’s the same for most other independent electron-ic labels... As a label we get sent a range of music – some from people whohave just done their first demo and sent it off, alongside some really well pro-duced stuff. We’ve got some really interesting demos recently from Russia.There’s a Sydney artist who’s been regularly sending us demos and just fromthose sequential CDs we have heard his music production progress and change,his techniques for producing music are amazing so we think he’s going to bringout something that we’ll want to release soon.’

Playing a major role in a record label and distributor can have some good con-nections for one’s own music as Melinda has discovered. ‘I had a little pre-releaseon a Japanese label called Electric Avenue. The label connection was a guy whoused to work for Rough Trade in Japan. He contacted me about getting our labelstocked for Rough Trade in Japan and ever since then we’ve had a working rela-tionship. Having the label does help to get contacts for my own music.’

Couchblip! are now being distributed in Japan by Plop. ‘They do a pre-ordersystem where they send out samples to all the shops to get pre-orders. I just gotso many pre-orders for my CD that I can only presume it was because I’ve got aJapanese sounding name. That was quite bizarre.’ Robokoneko is Japanese forrobotic kitten and Melinda chose the name based on a project of the same name.‘I don’t think the original Robokoneko project is really in operation anymore. Itwas supposed to be like the Sony dog but a lot smarter, it was meant to growand evolve, its artificial brain was going to have over a billion modules in itsneural network. They never built the hardware version but I think it still existsas a virtual 3D model and I’ve noticed the artificial brain software is still beingused by other research groups.’

A collection of 15 music videos,most available for the first timeon DVD. Visual Niches bringstogether experimental, creativeand otherwise out of the ordinary video clips. It covers a wide range of musical genres,from indie and electronic to hip hop and techno

Extraordinary Music Videos:

Visual Niches 2

Both these DVDs out now // distributed by

Inertia distribution // 02 9698 0111 // www.inertia-music.com // info@inertia-music.com

Also available Visual Niches Volume 1Sixteen videos including: Avalanches ‘Frontier Psychiatrist’ ,

Mouse on Mars ‘Distoria’, Sigur Ros ‘Svefn-g-englar’,

Gonzales ‘Take Me To Broadway’, Royksopp ‘Eple’,

Herbie Hancock ‘Rockit’, Coldcut & Hexstatic ‘Timber’

Includes videos from:DJ Shadow ‘Walkie Talkie’, Roots Manuva ‘Witness (One Hope)’,Anti-Pop Consortium ‘Perpendicular/Vector’, LFO ‘Tied Up’,Modeselektor ‘In Loving Memory’, Amon Tobin ‘4 Ton Mantis’,Laurent Garnier ‘Flashback’, Console ‘14 Zero Zero’,Alter Ego ‘Betty Ford’, T.Raumschmiere ‘Monstertruckdriver’ Basement Jaxx ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ and more.

I...found out that Anembo meant ‘a quiet place’,which I though was very appropriate for myalbum and the style of music that I do.

For more go to www.cyclicdefrost.com. Robokoneko’s album Anembo – Music for a Quiet Place is outnow on Couchblip! They can be found at www.couchblip.com.

�

+ LATE, SET AND MATCH

When I say official debut, this hints at the exis-tence of the LP circulating on Blatant Propagandarecords, a record the duo recorded in Canberraduring the late 90s. Something of a lost gem(though certainly more club friendly and a littleless focussed than the new LP), rumours of itsditching circulate: perhaps the boys weren’thappy with Clan Analogue’s association withFestival Mushroom records? Or maybe theycouldn’t decide on a cover? As Bo tells it, thetruth is somewhat more prosaic. ‘I could tell youthe story about how the master was stolen by anevil record executive who proceeded to lose iten-route to Barbados, but the truth is that wekinda ran out of steam sometime towards the endof the CD production process. Making a CD takesso goddamn long these days (especially for peo-ple who operate at the snail’s pace that we do).So by the time we got through the recording andmastering stages and up to the release stage we’dalready recorded another 5 CDs of material thatwe liked better! Really the best thing for it was toleave it to those Blatant Propaganda types to pickup the pieces several years later.’

Late Set’s birth was also somewhat drawn out,though it goes some way to explaining the

strength of the record, its intimacy and avoid-ance of formula. The CD is a combination of liverecordings and late-night sessions in makeshiftstudios in Sydney and Melbourne (wherever theyhappened to be at the time). The tracks were alldone in a single take, direct to tape, with little orno planning, except to the extent that we wantedto give the album a rough and improvised livesound. Most of the tracks are excerpts of muchlonger pieces recorded in front of audiences inplaces like Klub Kooky in Sydney and Pony inMelbourne. On that sense of intimacy, the soften-ing of their formerly Kraftwerkian feel and whois in control of what, Bo is characteristicallymodest. ‘I think it’s fair to say that the machinesare the ones making the music _ the human ele-ment is really restricted to a technical dimension(moving heavy objects, attaching cables, pressingbuttons, adjusting levels, creating patterns,organising sounds). What sounds like ‘humanity’or ‘warmth’ is really just the imprecision of theanalogue circuitry we use. OK, so I read that in ‘IWas a Robot’, but it certainly does seem to applyto Dark Network too.’

Outside of the tunes, Bo and Tim are active inthe Clan collective (Bo acting as executive pro-

ducer on the latest Clan comp ‘Defocus’), andhave an ‘alleged’ history in event promotion,beginning with the Panopticon forest parties ofthe mid 1990s near Canberra. On the subject ofthese events, their organic beginnings and theenergy they require, Bo says ‘I do think there’salways going to be a place for events that takeplace outside the mainstream and on the fringesof legality. The “legitimate” music business is setup to exclude the interesting end of the culturalspectrum, so the best way to put on an event willalways be to make it strictly non-commercial.That means not charging for entry, not sellinganything to the audience and making use ofwhatever public space presents itself. InCanberra there are lots of public spaces that canbe appropriated and turned into venues for inter-esting events. In Sydney there are still a fewplaces hidden around the suburbs. In Melbournethere are vast areas of public infrastructurewhere low-scale events can take place. Of coursewe can’t confirm or deny whether we know any-thing about any of these events.’ Similarly, on thetopic of major label electro versus its indie heart-land, it’s clear what side the lads are on- ‘I doremember a time when it was looking alarmingly

Dark NetworkInterview with Bo Daleyby Glen Martin

In local electro legend there dwells a collection of stories concerning a minimalist analogue microhouse/kraftwerkiangroove duo called Dark Network, and how they’ve relentlessly avoided their time in the sun. Forming in Canberra dur-ing the city’s golden early-to-mid-nineties period of Clan Analogue-generated underground excitement, stories circulateof the act’s somewhat lax application of their considerable talents to disc, and their aversion to playing by the unwrit-ten rules of performance – indeed, one gig go-er recalls a story of arriving at a headline show and finding Bo Daley out-side the venue, a DAT playing inside on an otherwise empty stage. Though they live in different cities now (TimO’Loughlin, Dark Network’s other half resides in Melbourne, while Bo calls Sydney home) their official debut LP LateSet has finally dropped, and it’s fair to say that though the wait has been long, the record makes up for lost time.

10

like electronic music was going to replace indierock on the Austereo Network, but I’m glad to saythat never happened. At least now they’ve movedback to RnB and 80s rock where they belong, andthe rest of us no longer have to worry about howmany radio-friendly singles we have on the album.(hey, our tracks are so goddamn long that we canonly just barely fit 6 extenuated filler tracks on ouralbums. There’s no room for radio-friendly singles!)’

In terms of independent electro, Clan Analoguefigures large in both the history and the present ofthe Australian contingent, both as a label and per-haps more importantly as a support collective. Aftera dalliance with Festival/Mushroom acting as thedistributors of Clan work, the label is back in thehands of the Creative Vibes distro folk. ‘At themoment the Clan is going through a process of re-thinking where it’s placed in the oz electronicmusic/art world. I mean, there was a time whenClan was the only really organised group standingup to rampant commercialism in electronic musicin this country, and it had a real mission because ofthis. Now I think the Clan has more of a role in pro-viding avenues for diverse and eclectic events,releases and other projects (there are lots of interest-ing projects in the pipeline and hopefully some ofthem will come off!). Festival never really treatedClan Analogue as a commercial proposition, so itwas kinda like being in an indie framework anyway.Different distributors bring different things to the

process, but suffice it to say that our current distropartners have helped us a lot to get even our moreniche-oriented material out to stores and to get thelabel side of Clan organised more like a professionaloutfit. They take a real interest in our material andthat can only be a good thing for the label.’

Clan is now poised nicely after some of the label’sstrongest releases dropping recently: the Habitat andDefocus compilations, plus Pretty Boy Crossover’soutstanding Any Number Can Play EP of last year.The Defocus sub-title of Lo Res Productions articu-lates the project’s modus operandi – tracks pro-duced primarily with analogue equipment, creatinga warm, scratchy and human listening experience.‘Defocus follows on nicely from Habitat and AnyNumber Can Play – it has the diversity and atmos-pherics of Habitat but it also occasionally adds in afew of those beats that the kids get into these days.’

As for the inevitable final word on the future, thetopic of Bo-based side projects come into frame,plus some ambitions on an altogether more visceralscale. ‘Clone is kinda like a cover-all banner for arange of projects with wacky names like type_face,Terry Nation and Sirkus of Sorts, all composed ofmyself and Kate Crawford (she of b(if)tek fame). Themore observant readers will already have noticedthat there’s a Terry Nation track on the Defocuscompilation. And Terry Nation has a full-lengthalbum due out early next year, just after the rush ofMichael Jackson Christmas retrospective box sets

are out of the way. As for Dark Network, we’ve cer-tainly been thinking about sending ourselves backin time a couple of decades and reconstituting theact as a Scientist/Prince Jammy dub tribute band.Maybe (the adult film houses of) Fyshwick are justthe place to do it. More reggae makeout tunesplease.’

HERMITUDout now on elefant traks

HERMITUDE Alleys to Valleys also available

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get it twisted

Album of the Week! – Canberra Times Sept 20th 2003“The duo has a strong and diverse musical pedigree and it shows with tight, swinging percussion and engulfing melodies...each track is so lovable. This album leaves the listener satisfied, reinvigorated and refreshed.”

“One of the best breaks/hip hop CDs I’ve ever heard” Tim Ritchie – Radio National

Critically acclaimed debutalbum from the Blue

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‘Splendid Isolation’, ‘Alleysto Valleys’ & ‘Cave Styles’

elefant traks is proud to announce the release of Get It Twisted, the debut album from NYC based Apsci.

It's a startlingly original piece of work; an album that effortlesslyblurs the line between hiphop and electronics and in the processuncovers a treasure chest of cross continental aural gold. Consistingof production team and vocalists Dana and RA LaMotta with DefJux DJ Big Wiz, apsci is electro hiphop backwards and is like noth-ing you've ever heard.

“...a strange blast into the world of mutant electro and hiphop – kind of therecord Mike Ladd or El-P might wish they’d made – sufficiently futuristic andedgy, but grounded by Dana’s amazing operatic vocals” 3D World Nov 2003

‘By the time we got through therecording and mastering stagesand up to the release stage we’dalready recorded another 5 CDs ofmaterial that we liked better!’

For more on Dark Network go to www.cyclicdefrost.comThe Late Set is out now on Clan Analogue

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+ ZERO TOLERANCE

12

‘Monoke was made entirely in my apartment inJapan with the exception of some guitar on partsof ‘Plastic’ – which were recorded at my parent’shouse on Stradbroke Island while I was backhere last year for a short tour and visit home’.Throughout the 8 tracks on Monoke John blendsand fuses his post rock acoustics with environ-mental sounds and electronics in a way that issubtle, soothing and harmonious, an achieve-ment few people attain when melding suchpotentially disparate sounds. I asked John howhe achieves this sonic dreamscape, ‘There is noset process beyond playing the instrument overwhat I’d already done and recording it – subject-ing it to the same processes as other parts.Monoke has lots of actual “live takes” on it,whether it’s acoustic instruments or it’s from mySH101 or bass – often these live takes are layeredover themselves, edited, stretched and pitch-shifted. All of the melodica in ‘play.play’. isplayed live – there are probably a couple of takesgoing on – and then it’s got an automated EQ anddistortion on it. There are also some bass har-monics on that track that were played – but thenedited into a bunch of slightly different loops.’

John began his musical path with traditionalpiano lessons and later went on to teach himself

the drums. ‘I played for about 8 years before sell-ing my beloved kit. I played in rock bands inhigh school and a little at Uni. I can play a vari-ety of acoustic instruments not very well.’ Whileteaching in the local junior high in Misho Town,John discovered there were a variety of acousticinstruments at his disposal in the music depart-ment such as the acoustic guitar, vibraphone,marimba, Xylophone, and melodica all of whichhe embraced on his latest album.

‘My purchase of a melodica was inspired byseeing 20-odd kids all playing them and marchingtogether – I thought it sounded fantastic so I wentoff to the school supply store and bought one.Mu’m had a bunch of different types when theywere here – I’d loved to seek out some others.’

John has been experimenting in the world ofelectronic music since 1999 when he first startedto create music with computers. He saw themove into electronic music as a practicality andreveled in the newfound ability to control thewhole process – the rhythmic elements as wellas the melodic ‘stuff’. ‘A friend of mine wasmucking around on his computer and we startedto experiment with music together, which ismuch better than being the drummer in the bandand never getting your songs played.’

Since those formative times John has preferredto work alone when composing music, but hasrecently started to experiment with collaborationand the diversifying nature of such an experi-ence. ‘The current music I’m doing I’m bringingin collaborators for certain things. John Parker isplaying drums and percussion. Jason Elliott(from Lawrence English’s blindingly good‘Ubique Trio’) is going to play some guitar on atrack and Beck Newham from Smear has done abit of singing for me. It’s still basically me writ-ing the tracks by myself though.’

Although Chantler claims indifference to theaesthetics of CDs, as he states, ‘I don’t reallycare for CDs. I try and buy everything on vinyl’,as an object Monoke is stunning to look at.Designed by Rinzen, its dark cherry red cover ismatched with an hypnotic pattern formed simplyfrom an arrangement of white dots (I recommendnot staring at it for too long). The design processwas quite collaborative and reflected the consid-ered nature of the music ‘I selected the card pho-tos that were taken by a my photographer friendVerity near where I lived in Japan. I think Steve(at Rinzen) took inspiration for the dot patternfrom those photos to an extent... I had the gener-

John Chantler by Melinda Taylor

Originally from Brisbane, John Chantler has resided in Japan forthe past two years teaching English, creating music and running arecord label. Having visited Japan at the tender age of 14 healways wanted to return and just ‘live it’. To this end Chantler hasspent the last two years creating an album that reflected the paceand temperament’ of his locality – a small rural town of less than10,000 people – and the result is the dreamlike Monoke.

al idea of the colour and Steve took it from there. Ithink he did a great job.’

Though the more cynical critics might protest thatthe release should be about the music, not the art-work, they would be ignoring the potential for col-laboration across media that the release of a CDaffords – especially if the designer is considered anartist in their own right. When I asked John his opin-ion on the matter he mused ‘I think good packagingmakes a difference (in the over-saturated market ofspecialist/non-mainstream music) – both in goodways and bad. In some ways it makes it a moredesirable object. I don’t think I’d be conceited at allby saying that my CD looks fucking fantastic. Thedesign is beautiful and the package feels great aswell. If you’re reviewing a whole stack of discs – it’sgoing to pique your interest isn’t it? There was aglowing review of the Toop/Scanner/IO3 disc onpitchfork that talked a lot about the fetish nature ofthe packaging – but also how the whole package hadbeen very much thought out and considered – whichis very true. I’m sure for that writer the discs stoodout from the massive pile of stuff he had to reviewthat day and he gave it some special consideration.’

‘I’m very much interested in art and design as wellas music – I think a lot of the people who would beinterested in my CD are interested in those thingstoo – and would appreciate packaging/design that isreally well thought out and a little bit “special”.When you buy a CD you buy more than the music –so it’s good to have the whole package you buy beoutstanding. The ::room40:: discs aren’t so radical asto not fit in amongst the rest of your discs like themego sleeves or the spezialmaterial discs and stuff...but they certainly look great sitting together in a lit-tle row on your CD shelves.’

John himself is no amateur in the designer packaginggame, in 1999 he set up the micro label InventingZero Records, which specialises in matching excep-tional music and quality collectable packaging (vinyl

format only). Each 7" was released in hand madeJapanese paper sleeves, individually numbered andstamped with releases ranging from ambient, electro-acoustic, electronica and instrumental.

‘The sleeves were made at a factory called OzuWashii, which is in a tiny town called Ikazaki-Choin Ehime prefecture, Japan. The paper is made byhand in the traditional Japanese way. It’s a custompaper stock – I selected the weight and colour espe-cially. They then cut, paste and fold the sleeves – Iassume by hand... though I guess I can’t be 100%sure. It took roughly 4 weeks for them to make thefirst batch, whereas the Prop sleeves took less timeas they’d already made the paper. All of the stamp-ing and numbering was done by me. I also organ-ised some little versions of the sleeves for a series ofultra-limited 3" CDRs that Lawrence English isdoing for ::room40::’ (Incidentally, there are 5 discsin the series, 40 copies each, 12 reserved for a spe-cial wooden box set collecting them all – Johndesigned the stamp artwork).

‘Inventing Zero is/was an experiment for me,”John replied when asked what it is like to releaseand promote Australian music while being basedin another country, ‘It turned out to be a bit of alearning exercise. I wasn’t strictly trying to releasestuff “in Japan”, more so just trying to put somestuff out all over the place. In some ways itworked and in others it didn’t. I’m really proud ofthe sevens. I think they’re great but they’re reallyhard to get distribution for in any decent quantityunless you’re pushing famous acts or you’re anestablished label. The hardest thing for me wasgetting them in the shops.’

Inventing Zero Records has done two limited edi-tion 7" releases to date. The first release was by BenFrost, recently signed up to Sydney’s QuietlySuburban label for the release of his debut album.‘Ben sent a CD to Lawrence English and Lawrenceforwarded one to me in Japan. I liked it so I got intouch. I chose the tracks and got Ben to do anotherone. Initially it was going to have additional lockedgrooves – but that didn’t happen – though I stillhave the ones Ben made for it’. The second releasewas a 7" which contained John’s favourite tracksfrom Prop’s Small Craft Rough Sea release.

‘At the moment – I’d love to release a record bythe Ubique Trio (John Parker/Jason Elliott/LawrenceEnglish) – hopefully I can make that happen. Andi’m looking to do something with my friend ToriKudo – record a piano composition of his when hecomes to the UK later in the year. He’s great – andsuch an interesting guy. Although Inventing zero isin a kind of nebulous flux at the moment. It mightturn into something else – I’m still very much inter-ested in facilitating the release of other folk’s music– whether that will come under the guise of“Inventing Zero Records” in the next instance I real-ly can’t say at this stage.”

Apart from Monoke, which isreleased on ::room 40::, John hasreleased a mini album, The PlaceBetween Here And, on CDR. Hecurrently resides in Brisbane andwill be relocating to the UK laterthis year to establish the UKheadquarters for ::room 40::

‘I don’t think I’d be conceited at all by saying that my CD looks fucking fantastic. The design is beautiful and the package feels great’

�

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14

‘We’ve only been able to rehearse for about fiveminutes so it’ll probably be a little rough,’ con-fessed a sheepish Cornel Wilczek (aka Qua) whenI arrived a few hours earlier, however I shouldn’thave heeded the warning as the resulting soundswere anything but. This probably has to do withthe shared sensitivity both artists possess, despitetheir differing methods of achieving it. In theirday jobs they both delight in delving headlonginto bright, nice, tender melancholic sounds, andif it’s possible for two separate worlds to evolveindependently of each other, then somehow meetand coexist in perfect harmony (excuse the pun)it would be Qua and Architecture in Helsinki, afact not lost on Wilczek.

‘It’s just a really nice halfway meeting pointwith a lot of the things we are doing,’ he men-tioned to me a week earlier in the back garden ofhis home in inner city Melbourne, a place he alsoshares with a couple of other sound obsessives,including fellow electronic artist Ai Yamamoto.‘It’s just been a lot of fun. He’s one of the few peo-ple I’ve ever worked with that it’s so fluid, it hap-pens so quickly and easily we’ve never had to dis-cuss what we’re doing. We did a track yesterdayin three hours, we’re gonna try to do an EP.’

Even amongst the more lauded overseas sub-genres Qua’s sounds are something special.Unlike many electronic musicians Wilczek actu-ally knows how to play regular instruments,starting guitar at the tender age of six and foolingaround with his older cousin’s four track fromabout ten onwards. It was from these four trackexperiments that he believes that he developedhis arranging skills.

In his teenage years, after having played in a fewbands in Adelaide, Wilczek found work as a ses-sion guitarist, even travelling to the US in an ill-fated attempt to break into the lucrative LA market.

‘I pretty much walked away from all of that andwas pretty disgusted with the whole environmentthere and came back and didn’t touch guitar forliterally five years,’ he relates. ‘I didn’t knowwhat half the sessions were. To be honest all thepeople I met there were dickheads: didn’t likemusic. It was a job. They were more interested inthe coke afterwards and the prostitutes. Seriouslyit was amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. Itwas sex and drugs. I was 17 and I was not inter-ested,’ he thinks for a minute, ‘hang on, I takethat back, I was, but not in that context. I honest-ly went there for the music so it was pretty disruptive to go there and find out it wasn’t aboutthe music at all.’

The key to Qua’s distinctive sound stemmed

Qua Interview with Cornel Wilczekby Bob Baker FishIt’s late into the business end of Saturday nightat Revolver, a cool bar/ venue on the fringes ofMelbourne’s inner city. We can tell it’s coolbecause all night we’ve been served alcohol bysomeone who looks remarkably similar to thelead singer of No Doubt, kind of sporty andtrashy, with an overextended cleavage and thewords ‘sick bitch’ temporary tattooed above it. Inthe back room, there is the excitable chatter ofinebriated punters as a DJ is spinning laidbackjazz-infused house as everyone sprawls haphaz-ardly across couches. In the front room mean-while we’ve been treated to almost the antithesis,

a number of diverse interpretations of the elec-tronic music form. Organised by participants ofthe local Symbiotic Collective, the idea behind‘Word to the Motherboard,’ was to take the per-formers out of their comfort zones, to team themup with other artists and see what happens.Consequently we’ve been treated to the likes ofJason Sweeney (Pretty Boy Crossover) getting all80s new wave with Two4k, Terminal SoundSystem and Digit Span Test aggressively lockingin atmospheric beats and pulses, and RhettWade-Ferrell, Ai Yamamoto and Joel Stern bat-tling feedback and getting abstract tones, wailsand drones using all manner of instruments andtechniques. For many though the highlight of thenight came last, thanks to the intimate anduplifting squiggles of local electronic iconoclastQua melding with the innocent tones ofArchitecture in Helsinki’s Cameron Bird.

THE YES MAN

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initially from the discovery of some old four tracktapes he recorded as a kid that he uncovered whilsthe was packing for his move from his nativeAdelaide to Melbourne about three or four yearsago. At the time he was quite astonished by theirquality and expressiveness.

‘I was just really blown away at how articulatethese songs were, even though they were very sim-ple, very rough.’ He relates. ‘So I moved toMelbourne and really wanted to take on that. Iguess it was a conscious effort to…; he makes lamevoice, ‘…get in touch with my inner child. Actuallyto a degree that’s pretty much what it was, taking ona lot of those melodical structures that I used towork with at this age and having had musical expe-riences doing soundtracks and what-not I thought“what can I do with this?” “How will this translatenow with the knowledge I have now in music theo-ry and technology?” And that’s how it started rein-venting things I did as a kid. So yes, it has thatoverly melodic child-like thing. I love it.’

More than simply taking and completing somethingfrom his past, Wilczek also partially attributes thedevelopment of Qua’s tender and emotive sound as aresponse to the sound art he was exposed to as part ofa media arts course. ‘At one point all that I was hear-ing and seeing in Melbourne that was interesting wason the sound art side of things so I applied those tech-niques and that kind of philosophy to music.’

Clearly Wilczek is very different from your averageelectronic musician. Apart from his forays into ses-sion musicianship and the incorporation of his pastinto his current output, he is also a huge Yes fan.And immensely proud of it thanks to a heavy diet ofprog-rock as youngster. When they toured recentlyhe couldn’t believe his luck.

‘Seeing Yes two weeks ago was one of the high-lights of my life,’ he gushes. ‘It was amazing. I actu-ally went thinking I’m just going to go so I can crossthem off that list because they meant so much to meas a kid. They literally started me playing music.Technically it was all there plus more and that wasvery surprising. I didn’t expect them to go that far,but musically overall it was just really genuine andquite sincere. And it didn’t feel contrived or surgi-cal in any way. It had that earthiness. And I metthem afterwards and they ended up being the nicestguys I’ve ever met.’

He now has a photo with Rick Wakeman that heswears he will put on his website regardless of whatanyone thinks. And this is partially the key toWilczek. Just becomes he makes electronic musicdoesn’t mean that he either listens to it or has for-saken his past.

immediately can be nice. I was reading an interviewwith Martin Scorcese where he said that sometimeshe needs the film distributors to take the film out ofhis hands because he’ll just keep on working on it.And it’s getting to that point now.’

One noticeable departure for this album is the useof live collaborators, as the last album, though it fea-tured guitar, xylophone, drums, bass, keyboards andthumb piano, they were all played by Wilczek. Onthe follow-up his intention was to again use as manylive instruments as possible, perhaps turn it intomore of an orchestra than an electronica album, hehas also enlisted some vocal assistance from PrettyBoy Crossover’s Jason Sweeney on a delightfullychildish track as well as his aforementioned sparringpartner Cameron Bird. Wilczek explains the devel-opment in terms of coming in from the cold.

‘The only reason that Qua hasn’t used other musi-cians in the past is because when I first moved toMelbourne I didn’t know anybody. So it was a wayto kill time and get familiar with an environment bydoing this stuff that made me feel like I was active.Now I know people so now I feel like I can playwith them. At the moment I’m writing a lot of stuffwith other people.’

Having recently completed remixes/ reworkings ofB[if]tek, Machine Translations and Architecture inHelsinki tracks, performing occasionally with house-mate Ai Yamamoto and local weirdo Quokenzockerin an improvisational mini disc field recording/foundsound ensemble, whilst also contributing to Maersk,collaborating with Bird, and playing solo Qua shows,Wilczek is certainly making the most of a thrivingartistic community that surrounds him. He’s like theveritable kid in the candy store, though unlike thekid, he’s a little choosy about which candy he’ll take.

‘After the first album I got to meet a lot more peo-ple doing electronic music,’ he reflects. ‘First it wasinsular. Now that I’ve met more people I’ve slowlyfound out that a lot of people making that musicbecause they never played any instruments, that itopens up a whole world to people who don’t havethe training is fantastic. What concerns me is thatthey didn’t want to make music until a computercame along. Why not? So I guess other people thatmake electronic music that I do relate to and I amworking with and doing collaborations with arethose that played instruments anyway, and thataspect I’m really enjoying. Music never startedbecause a computer came along.’

‘I like keychanges. It’s almost likeit’s bad to do key changes in electronic music these days’

‘I think I’ve worked out what I like to listen toand it’s got nothing to do with the actual soundsources. My main focus and my main passion hasbeen arrangements, I like complex arrangements inmusic; I love it, that’s why I listen to BurtBacharach and things like that. I’m not a fan ofmodel-based music. I find a lot of electronic musicis based around that, and that’s fine. I just can’t con-nect to it. I like keychanges. It’s almost like it’s badto do key changes in electronic music these days.’

Then again it’s almost like it’s bad to make prog-rock these days and this hasn’t stopped him either,playing baritone guitar with members of LittleGeneral, who have evolved beyond their post rockways, added Wilczek to their fold, renamed them-selves Maersk whilst skirting dangerously towardsa prog rock vein yet again. Clearly much toWilczek’s delight.

Wilczek’s debut album as Qua, entitled Forgetabout,was a minor revelation. A truly amazing, engagingand emotional musical document that more thanheld its own with its local and overseas contempo-raries – it was a mixture of electronic sounds, realinstrumentation and yes, actual key changes.Currently at work on the follow up, Wilzek reportsthat it’s an album that has grown out of his live lap-top performances over the last year, where he is reg-ularly forced to make important arrangement deci-sions on the fly. In fact this is why enjoys playing ina live setting, because regardless of the gravity ofthe situation for good or ill he only has a split sec-ond to decide how the music will be structured,whereas in the studio typically these decisionscould be laboured over for weeks. ‘There’s so muchthat I want to do to it now and I don’t really havethe time,’ he laughs. ‘Sometimes finishing things

Qua’s album Forgetabout is out nowon Surgery Records. More of thisinterview is at cyclicdefrost.com

16

What was your main motivation in compilingSonic Allsorts?The home of Alchemy is SBS Radio, which isthe most multi-lingual radio station in theworld – sixty eight languages, compared to theforty-something of our nearest competitor.Basically the multi-lingual agenda is stronglywoven into the roots of Alchemy, in particularour tuesday and friday night shows are very‘language other than English’ focussed. Theother focus of Alchemy, at leasy for me, is astrong support of local music on a national levelwith an emphasis on linking those people invarious parts of Australia. When I looked atthese two elements I realised that most of ourmulti-lingual stuff was from overseas – so wedecided to instigate this project. We had no ideawhat the results would be.

How many entries did you receive?After a bit of hassling of those we knew whowere dabbling, or potetially dabbling, in lan-guage tracks, combined with others who simplyentered, we received a total of thirty four entries,seventeen of which made it to the disc.

How did you make the final cut, was there muchdiscrepancy between the various judges?The six judges were all given a blind copy of allthe tracks (ie with no track listing or artist name)and were asked to order them. They all had quitedifferent musical backgrounds, but there weredefinite acts and tracks that rose to the surface.The Curse of Dialect track actually achieved topscore by quite a margin, plus Ila Familia andTufa were also very popular.

There are quite a few hiphop tracks on thealbum, was that something you expected? Doyou think this has more to do with the increasein vitality in the oz hiphop scene and/or the factthat hiphop is a primarily verbal subculture?Maybe the Australian hiphop wave is a factor,but I see it as more a global thing. And yes, thefact that hiphop is the most active lyrical modernmusic form is definitely a big reason for the‘emphasis’. That said, I think hiphop is also astyle that allows the un-represented to be repre-sented, and that’s especially important for crewswith various language and racial backgrounds.

Recording or performing a song partially (oreven fully) in a language other than English isoften considered a political statement, but is thatall there is to it, do you think? It can be just a pure political statement, but inmost cases it could also be as simple as ‘thisexists – please take notice’. Australia doesn’ttake its cultural diversity seriously enough, Idream of an Australia where most people speakbetween two and five languages and this aspectof our cultural diversity becomes one of ourstrongest assets, both culturally, and even perhaps commercially.

Very few acts that perfom songs in languagesother than English ever receive much airplay.Why do you think this is?The old school Anglo-English dominance ofmedia and the sub-concious pressure onAustralian society to assimilate. Once again anindication that the celebration of our culturalwealth is still to be realised. Don’t forget that

The disc that accompanies this issue of Cyclic Defrost is more than just a random selection ofsounds, it is representative of an often neglected and yet essential (and precious) part of Australiancultural wealth – the fact that nearly all of us come from somewhere else... In contemporaryAustralian society there is a tension between what is represented as ‘typically Australian’ and theactual reality that most of us face – Sonic Allsorts, and the magazine it’s inserted into, are both borneout of a need to represent other less emphasised elements of Australian culture, and to reclaim fromthe rampant parochialism and jingoism the very idea of being ‘Australian’. Resulting from submis-sions to a national competition run in conjunction with the annual noise festival in which youngartists were asked to submit multilingual tracks, Sonic Allsorts was overseen by Brendan Palmer,producer of SBS radio’s nightly Alchemy program.

Alchemy and other stations and programsaround the country actually do give this stuffattention, but yeah, it’s our objective to make itthe norm!

The interpretations of the brief vary consider-ably on the album, were there any tracks thattook you by surprise, and why?The biggest surprises I guess were Morganicsdoing his ‘Multi-lingual MC’ track, Creator fromTassie, Horny Keung once again and Vir Asan thePunjabi drum and bass master... I’m real happywith what’s been evoked, and from my perspec-tive, I’ve found things in myself that I haven’tever made contact with before.

Finally, why did you decide to partner up withCyclic Defrost?It mainly came through the Noise collaboration –but I’ve been a reader of Cyclic Defrost since theold photocopy days. I feel the magazine is proba-bly the most appropriate for this project – itsmotivations are closely aligned to Alchemy’s inthat focus on local talent, and linking it all intoan international context.

The Sonic Allsorts compilationcomes free with this issue ofCyclic Defrost. The noise festival happensannually in October, seenoise.net.auAlchemy is on SBS radio from11pm every night, seesbs.com.au/alchemy

WAGGING TONGUES Sonic Allsorts Compilation Interview with Brendan Palmer

Noodle:From clicks and cuts to crazy cut ups; from IDM tomfoolery to DSP trickery1ST SUNDAY of the monthhosted by Sub Bass Snarl

Motormowf:Musical mowf to mowf resuscitation forheadz drowning in mediocrity; makinghiphop live again... 2ND SUNDAY of the monthhosted by Urthboy & Rok Poshtya

Satta:Bass heavy journeys to the outer limits;first stop Jamaica, next stop the moon... 3RD SUNDAY of the monthHosted by Sir Robbo and Prince V

Friendly FireMusic taken to unexplored

spaces, dropped off, andforced to find its own way home

4TH SUNDAY of the monthhosted by Jazzgroove

SUNDAYSHOPETOUN HOTEL416 Bourke Street, Surry Hills

6pm – 10pm, $5

After 7 years, 4 venues, more than 100international acts, almost 400 localacts and countless punters (not tomention beers) Frigid called it a nighton September 28.

Rather than die a quiet death, thecorpse has instead fertilized a new setof monthly nights, focussing morespecifically on musical genres and thetastes of the organisers, rather thanthe eclectic nature of previous times

Of the four main nights, Noodle is dedicated to electronic music, soundart and the outer edges of dance musicculture; named after the MC’s greatestasset as well as his or her downfall,Motormowf is a hiphop night with theemphasis on collaboration and liveexpression; Satta is all things reggaeand dub, from oldies through to heavyroots, 80s digital to the latest riddims;and Friendly Fire is Jazzgroove’sattempt to recast electronic musicwithin a live idiom, replete with ‘proper’and not so proper instruments. In thosemonths with a fifth sunday we’ll hostThe 5th Sunday, a night of improvisedfilm scores performed live on the big screen.

And it’s still only five dollars

COMING UP:Sunday December 7

COMING UP:Sunday November 23

Mark O & Bongo Caveman

COMING UP:Sunday November 30Triosk & Roam the Hello Clouds

COMING UP:Sunday December 14 Apsci (NYC) (TBC)

Co-presented with

Co-presented with

18

It’s a story familiar to Adam Fischer, not least ofwhich because he is the aforementioned DJ. As 8-Bit, Adam has been an integral part of the localtechno movement over the last ten years, touringartists like German post-techno experimentalistAtom Heart and Jammin’ Unit, as well as runningClub Filter, and later the Phoney club through the1990s. Despite allegations of bling-bling demise,8-Bit lives on with the release of the Hound DogEP on Bug Records. Spanning a couple of years ofoutput, it starts off with harder, rock flavouredglam-techno, slides through heavily deconstruct-ed glitch and emerges on the B-side with areformed pop aesthetic: part West Coast bounceG-funk, part European obsessive compulsive tech-nological neurosis. You might say Mike Ink andRodney Jerkins in equal measure: not the totalmis-match it might at first sound.

When Adam vanished from the Sydney mapand relocated to Melbourne in 1998, the movepiqued a developing ear for different ideas inmusic. ‘I got very bored with the way Technomusic was heading. “DJ tool” techno recordskilled everything that was interesting about themusic for me. It became very uncreative, and atthe same time, I was starting to really get intohiphop and RnB programming, hearing thingslike Timbaland and The Neptunes.’ It’s no secret

that as modern electronic music became codified,the new signatures and rules gradually becamewalls, fencing music into genres with fixed ideas.Interesting things were happening elsewhere.

As a response to the changing landscape, 8-Bitteamed up with Nathan Pokorski (formerly ofglam electro group Down Town Brown) andChris Arkley-Smith (formerly of Frontside) toform a production team known as TheCalculators. The first job was a remix forMelbourne indie rockers Pre-Shrunk, later mov-ing onto artists as divergent as Who Da Funk,Dawn Robinson, Tom Craft and The Faint. Theirremix of ‘Posed to Death’ appears on The Faint’sDanse Macabre remix album. Sitting alongsidetreatments by Paul Oakenfold and Photek, itstands out by the proverbial country mile. TheCalculators have turned the original stormingrock-out into a glitchy analogue groovy tech-funker, stuttering towards a crescendo of synth-wash that would sound at home on a TrevorHorn record.

The genesis of The Calculators is evident onthe 8-Bit EP. But where the emergent grooves on

Hound Dog are still cut rough, listen to TheCalculators and the first thing that strikes you ishow refined it is. The second thing that strikesyou are the amazing vocals, and the astonishingtransgender register and timbre they are sung in.The Calculators vocalist, Ruth Rogers-Wright,landed in Australia about ten years ago – fleeingbad weather and English food. Adam continues:‘When we first began The Calculators, we reallysearched for vocalists and MCs and it actuallystopped us from working on music, until we metRuth.’ Rogers-Wright has a startling voice andbrings a depth of soul to the already melancholylyrics – and this will be the third thing to strikeyou about The Calculators: these guys writeamazing songs. There is a discreet sculpturing oflyrics and melody: sounds being matched towords and melodies and being structured withintraditional pop arrangements. These are songsthat tell stories.

‘The song writing is a group process, we don’treally have demarcated roles. We would usually

Not so long ago, some funky electro and techno was playing on a shop stereo, and ashopper remarked to the shopkeep just how good the music was. They got to talkingabout music; as it turned out, the retailer was a big fan of electro and techno music,but was dismayed that one of their favourite DJs had gone from playing great techno music to DJing at a commercial hiphop and RnB club.

8-Bit/The Calculators Interview with Adam Fischerby Vaughan Healey

RYTHMIC ARITHMETIC

start with a basic groove as an idea and then webuild it up from there, Nathan, Chris and I get abasic instrumental structure and Ruth may take ithome to work on lyrics and vocal melodies, or weall work on a concept at the studio. At other timesNathan may just come up with a song on theacoustic guitar and bring it in. The approach isalways changing.

‘Even though we don’t have particular roles weeach excel in different areas. For instance Chris is amaster of melody; soundscape and bass sounds, heis a fiend for bottom end. He is also great at stringarrangements. Nathan is the most musical and playsseveral instruments and is a killer song writer, he isalso a drummer and a great drum programmer aswell. Ruth comes up with lyrics and vocal melodiesthat nobody else would think of and sings themdivinely. I find myself being the studio engineermost of the time. I love technology and outboardgear and do a lot of drum programming and mixing.’

The technological savvy behind The Calculators isevident. ‘I actually began buying equipment beforerecords, but then spent way too much money buyingrecords. I just decided to stop, as I much prefer mak-ing music than spinning it.’ Back in 1996, Adamused to lug a 303 into 2SER each week for his radioshow, wrapped up safely in an insulated Pizza Hutpizza bag. Eight years later and The Calculators havesome heavy studio gear at their disposal: Pro ToolsHD driving a Neotek Elite 40-channel desk providesthe meat, with outboard and instrumentation fromAltec EQs, an SP1200, MPC, Mini Moog, Jupiter 6,ATC1, SE1, Sonor drums, guitars and bass plus‘some serious monitoring’. ‘We have so much studioequipment it’s crazy. We are getting pretty close to aJerkins style complex in Australian terms, so it’s avery nice set up, world class. We each bring our ownflavour to the equipment list as well as musical

ideas. It’s all in a warehouse with some other studiosas well, so look out Rodney!’

The Calculators sounds like it is created by agroup with a clear vision, and the skills to realise it.The music isn’t weighed down with dense arrange-ments, but instead subtle embellishments andaccents. ‘Another Story’ kicks off with crotchet setof piano chords, ‘Chopsticks’ with a twist. Thevocals begin: “This is just another story / Anotherway to tell it nice / OK / Alright / Like others thatI’ve told at night.‘ Then the rhythm track dropsfrom another planet: a thick, analogue squelchingmass; rich with atmosphere and texture, articulateand intelligent. ‘Those pop structures provide thatcombination for me: experimental programming,great songs, mind blowing production and some-thing you can remember. Pop music has grown anew skin, which involves trying to be edgy andcome up with new ideas. I am not talking about allpop music, but there is a healthy dose of challeng-ing pop music coming out.’

There are some obvious antecedents: like the 8-Bit EP, this is music with one foot in the ideas ofunderground electronic genre-music, and one footin the dazzling mega-studios of commercial hiphopproducers. While this comes across in theCalculators as a cautious nod to production tech-niques and values, the current 8-Bit club night,OREO, is an unabashed celebration of all thingsplayadilistic. On the second Sunday of everymonth, Melbourne’s Alia bar is turned into aGangsta’s Paradise; a shizzle palace for pimp juicin’and shizzlin’. It’s a million miles away from thescruffy techno rebel grunge of Club Filter. How doessomeone reconcile these dramatically different aes-thetics? ‘I am doing what I love, a combination ofall the things I like about music. Music isn’t aboutpurism, it’s about love.’

‘You have to follow your heart with music and itleads you in a direction if that direction is puristNew Orleans swing, or maybe it’s glitchy experi-mental techno then that’s cool. All I am doing iscombining the things I love about music… I meanyou spend you life making music because you loveit.’ While 21st Century hiphop tech-funk appeals toboth ironic hipsters and suburban secretaries inequal measure, there is a darker side. For a genera-tion raised on music underpinned by a new, pro-gressive and idealist politic, money worship andbling-blingism is something a little hard to digest. ‘Iget very bored with all the bling-bling in the music.That said, we’re not making tracks about how manyLexuses and gold-plated mixing consoles we have,and we’re also not saying we’re better than anyoneelse. The hiphop and RnB producers that I love: JayDee, Timbaland, Neptunes, Just Blaze and artistslike Busta Rhymes, Slum Village, that sort of bling-bling isn’t so much in what they are saying. Withthose guys, it’s more about the music, the rhythms,structure and melodies. But it’s all cool: most of thetime it’s an 8 or 9 out of 10. But when you hit arocking track with some humility then you got 10out of 10.’

Bling-Bling or not, interesting music opens up inthe most unlikely places. Reconciling wildly sepa-rate motifs and themes is just part of the adventure.

The Hound Dog EP is released onBug Records in February. TheCalculators will have a recordout soon. Check OREO on the2nd Sunday of every month atAlia, cnr Smith and Gertrude Stsin Fitzroy.

‘Pop music has grown a new skin, which involves trying to be edgy andcome up with new ideas. I am not talking about all pop music, but thereis a healthy dose of challenging pop music coming out’

Hilltop HoodsThe Calling(Obese)Coming from the fertile glades of Adelaide, theHilltop Hoods are perhaps the most universallyrespected of all the oz hiphop crews, managing toavoid much of the in-fighting and bitching thatcomes with scrounging for too few crumbs of themusic industry pie for far too long. As an album,The Calling is a reflective and almost melancholyadventure exploring the notion of hiphop as a set ofideals. Although the phrase 'keeping it real' hasbeen relegated to cliché, the Hilltop Hoods seehiphop not as a genre, a set of elements or a market-ing tool, but as a framework for living – and thisspeaks volumes about their dedication to their art/s.A statement of intent, the opening track‘Testimonial Year’ is part roll call, part CV and partthank you. The beats on the album, particularlythose produced by Suffa, are sumptous jazz/groovebeds over which Suffa and fellow MC Pressurealternately sow their elegantly realised flows. Withrepeated listens the arrangements reveal their hid-den complexity – and a song writing talent that isoften missing in hiphop, overtaken by three-verses-and-a-scratch-solo mentality. It is this that makesThe Calling so strong – almost inadvertantly theyhave created music that is both lyrically and com-positionally appealling to both sides of the hiphopcontinuum, and is potentially able to be understoodby novice listeners – especially if the odd momentof boysey crassness is forgiven, DH

HydatidAwash With Even (self-released)Brisbane’s Hydatid has been quietly experimentingwith Max/MSP for the last few years, occasionallyventuring south of the border to play live – notablyat Electrofringe. Working professionally as an audioengineer for broadcast television, this is his firstnon-CDR release. Largely a collection of ambientworks with soft synths that bring to mind early 90sambient techno, it is augmented by processed fieldrecordings. Awash With Even’s best moments arewhen it breaks out of being too backgrounded – thedistorting static on ‘Hellas Plantila’, and the crack-ling beats of ‘Negative Space’. Unfortunately, thedrum sounds are the record’s weakest link and havelittle variation in timbre or pattern throughout theentire album. Previous CDR material and live setshave offered more variety and demonstrated abroader palette of sounds, so it’s disappointing tosee this not carried through to Awash With Even.The album is self-released and available throughvarious Brisbane shops and online (www.halftheo-ry.com/hydatid). Sebastian Chan

BradburyRuffini Corpuscle (Dual Plover)Since 1979 Sydney based Gary Bradbury has beenproducing strange and abstract electronic-basedmusic. Along with Tom Ellard he was part of theduo Severed Heads, and in recent times he has con-centrated on producing theatre soundtracks (2001King Lear) and his solo material. Ruffini Corpuscle,adorned with his unique collage-style artwork is anexample of the strange, diverse and intriguing roadshe has travelled over the last few years. Whilst ini-tially quite challenging, the compositional caretaken to structure the works remains a unifyingtheme. Utilising gentle melancholic drones (‘DistantElk’), glitched-up digital scraps of static (‘FilmoreHoney’), strange childlike melodies and repetitivevocal samples (‘Big Man on Campus’), RuffiniCorpuscle is a personal journey that regularly shiftsfocus and repeatedly tests out new sonic theories.Despite Ruffini Corpuscle’s meticulous nature,Bradbury has produce fourteen atmospheric worldswhere the laws of nature no longer exist – andwhere chaos is kept at bay by Bradbury’s odd andinnovative logic. Bob Baker Fish

DsicoPunk As Pussy EP (12 Apostles)Throwaway pop becomes throwaway pop electrowith this latest five track EP from Dsico. In a bit of adiversion from his usual bootlegs and DSPmashups, he has taken five well known tracks, thebest mutation of which is Nirvana’s ‘Smells LikeTeen Spirit’, and given them the vocoder electropop treatment. Although ‘Smells Like Electro’ wasfirst released for download on Dsico’s website aboutnine months ago, the newer version is considerablystronger and punchier and deservedly rocks. Otherson the EP are not so good and feel a bit unfinished(a little like the first download version of SmellsLike) – especially the Moroder-isation of Beyonce’s‘Crazy In Love’ which just ends up being horrible,capturing the spirit of neither Moroder nor Beyonce.Properly positioned as a vinyl only release, this 12"would do wonders for the careers of aspiringMobydisc DJs spinning the best of the 80s and 90sat weddings and bar mitzvahs (if they still usedvinyl, that is), but in the interim we’ll just have toleave it to the ‘irony’ set. Sebastian Chan

Scott Horscroft8 Guitars(Quecksilber/Inertia) For many, Scott Horscroft is a name associated withthe studio space Big Jesus Burger in Sydney. As apart-owner in the studio, Horscroft has engineeredand produced countless records over the past fewyears. In tandem with this work, Horscroft has alsobeen composing a range of works for guitar (andother instruments) and it’s one of these pieces that’scaptured here on the accurately titled 8 Guitars.Beginning with a gentle flow of processed guitar,Horscroft’s primary concern appears to be repetitionand layering. The early sections of the piece are cre-ated with the most meagre of arrangements – hebuilds up and strips back the composition with asubtlety that’s almost subliminal. As one guitarbegins to shine though in the mix, your attention isushered to another overtone or sound element andit’s this process of concentration and release whichmakes 8 Guitars engage its listener so fully. Parallelin some senses to parts of Glenn Branca’s catalogueand likewise the minimalist composers of the 60s,Horscroft never opts out for the simplistic tricks ofextremes in volume or density. Rather he gentlysculpts out a rich texture of sound that moves witha pace, almost like driving down the Nullarbor – therichness exists in detail rather than absolute form. Lawrence English

20

REVIE

WS A few changes this issue –

most notably a Top 10 sec-tion called, strangely enough,Grandma’s Picks. We figuredevery music mag needs a top10 list, and Grandmas arepretty special – so why notcombine the two? Thismonth also sees the wel-come return of the Demossection, and of course, AlexCrowfoot’s regular explo-ration of sleeve art.

CONTENTS20 LOCAL RELEASES

22 DEMOS

24 OS RELEASES

28 DVDs

29 SLEEVE REVIEWS

LOCAL RELEASES 20

MeemThe Big Hoo-hah(Non/Inertia)By a strange twist of fate Meem happened to be bornin the wrong place at the wrong time. Though I bearno ill will to his parents, somehow they managed topop him out 30 years too late and a couple of conti-nents away from his true calling as an NY house pio-neer, a dreadlocked Larry, or a smiling Francois...Instead he continues on in relative obscurity makingmusic that retains its air of freshness – perhapsbecuase the packet has yet to be opened. Possessed ofan uncanny ability to make the dull thud of a housebeat sizzle with swing, his rhythmic inventiveness issecond only to the intricacies of his arrangements.Though the tracks on The Big Hoo-Ha resembledancefloor fodder, they are in fact layered like finebaclava, your ears peel away the fine pastry to revealthe sticky sweet sonic syrup. Meem is also somehowable to avoid using dancefloor cliché while retainingan inherent funkiness. It’s just a shame that the greatmajority of people whose socks would be rocked offat hearing this probably never will. I suppose it couldhave been worse – he could have been born in NYCwith a calling for penning oz rock classics. DH

ObjectPandemic(Quartermass)Object is Lawrence English in ‘hiphop’ mode –although the ::room40:: honcho is more post rockthan Pete Rock. His sparse off-centre beats are offsetby hiss, howls and squalls and are notable for theirabsence of movement in the lower end. The ambigui-ty of the artist name suits the content, as a change inemphasis in pronunciation enigmatically places theproject between artifact/art (an object) and expressionof negativity (to object). Whether this is deliberateisn't clear, but certainly many of the tracks onPandemic exist in an uneasy compromise betweenexploring boundaries of hiphop/downtempo, whileat the same time refuse to resort to ‘funk’ or groove.This is most evident when veteran MC Quro guestson four tracks, fallling foul of the ambiguous anduncentered nature of the accompaniment – despitehis prodigious lyrical ability and propensity to pushboundaries, Quro seems ill at ease on ‘Subtext(Courage/Hope)’ and ‘Fluid Note’. ‘Fallout’, thealbum’s closer, shows that given the right circum-stances this clash of ideals can create gems – a sparsepiano line captures the aching melancholy of Quro’salmost whispered lyric perfectly, DH

PropCook Cut Damage Destroy (Silent/MGM)One of the more interesting live acts around Sydneyfor the last seven or so years, Prop are very slow atmaking records, no doubt due in part to a large lineupand constant side-projects. Cook Cut Damage Destroyis a series of remixes of their 2001 debut album, SmallCraft Rough Sea. The define the term ‘remix’ prettyloosely, and in most cases there has been either seri-ous re-playing, rewriting or both by those at the con-trols. ‘Mount Zero’ is turned into a thin pop theme fora 60s beach movie by Stereolab; Telemetry Orchestraalso add vocals to their mix of ‘Portal’; BurntFriedman turns the original ‘Landing’ into a waterydub; whilst Oren Ambarchi puts ‘Low’ on a stonedturntable and records the varispeed results; DecoderRing pull out all the 80s stadium synth rock stops ontheir mix of ‘Camp David’ and so on. The weakestmixes are those that move too far from the art-rockand downtempo palette – with Mako, Presets, PaulMac & Dirty Cub, and Pnau all trying to push for thedancefloor. Like most remixes the strongest tracks endup sounding close to what the remixers themselvesproduce...which all confirms my ambivalence aboutmost remix records. Still, there are some excellenttracks here, and the best of them add substantially tothe originals. Sebastian Chan

RobokonekoAnembo(Couchblip!)At first listen Robokoneko's debut is a dead ringer fora lost Warp classic, paced and placed somewherebetween the melodic sensibilities of Garbage eraAutechre and the subtle rhythms of Seefeel. Far frombeing crib-note electronica however, it is an assuredand measured journey that takes in many stop. Theseare as varied as the elegant creep of ‘Eerie Ash’, theglass droplets and minor melody of ‘Miyu Saga’, thehalf-remembered soundtrack to a non-existent 80steen flick (‘Alef One’), and the stately and regal pompof the album’s finisher, ‘Interlude’, which is anythingbut. With repeated listens it reveals itself as a collec-tion of delicately woven tapestries that manage tounite the scratchy fibres of software processing witha woolly analogue warmth, resulting in an album thatgoes from sleepy embrace to dreamy indifference inthe nod of a heavy eyelid. DH

SpazzmodicsVermin Perm (Dual Plover)This is a case of judging a book by its cover andactually getting to be right. With a cheap dementeddigitally manipulated cut-up of a cover you’d proba-bly expect a cheap demented digitally manipulated

GRANDMA’S PICKSDAVE MILLER (Background Records)

CauralBlurred July(Chocolate Industries)Lovely organic sample based hiphop, melodiesthat make you float away to somewhere better.

TrioskUnreleased Album(Demo)Fantastic album from the Sydney trio, hopefullyreleased on somewhere, the sooner the better.

TwerkLiving Vicariously Through Burnt Bread(Mille Plateaux) Twerk loses his square kick and cold minimaltechno and creates some warmth.

DJ Collapse Jawfunk(Soundslike)Crazy collaboration between Herbert and Mouseon Mars. Completely nuts.

Rhythm & Sound w/ Jah BattaMusic Will Hit You(Burial Mix) Maurizio does it again with a more reggae influ-enced track than previous Burial Mix 10"s, killer.

The Tied & Tickled TrioObserving Systems(Morr)Electric Miles jamming with Duke Ellingtonwith hints of electronica and dub for flavour.

BusKeep Life Right(~scape )Definetely the most ‘party’ I have heard from thenew school of ‘dub-hop’. Lots of fun.

Four TetAs Serious As Your Life (Domino) More awesome gear from the recent album –with an epic 23-minute version of the title track.

Paul St Hilliare & Rene Lowe Faith (False Tuned) Heavy dub basslines move underneath washyhissy chords. Beautiful stuff.

Jorge Lopez RuizDe Prepo (What Music)Free-jazz reissue with some South Americanflavour. Fantastic stuff.

LOCAL RELEASES

cut-up of sounds. Which is exactly what you get. Atwo-piece operating out of Sydney, Vermin Perm istheir debut album where they torment and distort; fea-turing strange bursts of lofi shards of sound, off kilterdrum machines and weird samples. Much of it doesn’tmake sense, much of it is uncomfortable and wrong,much of it is gruelling and makes you want to washafterwards. But then again the sense of humour andoutright ‘wrongness’ compels you to give them a go.There are actually song structures here mashed togetherin ADD infused flurries of activity. It’s all proudly lofi,a crazed broken carnival ride melding Venetian Snareswith Faxed Head, then giggling hysterically at the con-fused torment it dishes out. It hurts you but you love itbut it hurts you but you love it but it hurts you… Bob Baker Fish

StalkerEmpire(Geometrik)The third proper album from Canberra’s Darren Zeisingand the second this year, Empire (recorded as Stalker) isalmost a homage to Berlin producer Maurizio (BasicChannel, Rhythm & Sound). Empire’s bass heavy organicatmospheres overlaid with warm analogue synth chordswould, if they were unlabelled, be very hard to discernfrom Maurizio outtakes. Certainly if imitation is the sin-cerest form of flattery then Empire is a heart-feltcompli-ments to Maurizio. However, imitations have their limi-tations. Maurizio’s work has been heavily informed bydub and reggae, evidenced by his Wackies reissues andregular collaboration with Jamaican singers, and this haslent an emotional depth and soul in his work that medi-ates the machine-made sound of his work. Often in imi-tators such as Detroit-Maurizio fans Deepchord, or nowdefunct British label Blue Train, this is lost. Althoughthere are some lovely warm sounds with which to curlyour ears around on Empire, something is still missing.Nevertheless, Empire is a solid record and DarrenZeising is emerging as an important Australian producer– I just wish this was as individual as his last record(recorded as Liife). Sebastian Chan

Stern/GuerraStich(Impermanent)In recent years Sydney’s Impermanent Recordings havereleased some amazing artists who have created strangeand beautiful experimental and electronic sounds for lis-tening environments. In Stich Joel Stern and AnthonyGuerra have managed to provide Impermanent Audiowith its most accessible release to date. This seemssurpising given that the album is devoid of a discernabletrack listing, not to mention any melodic or percussivebase, but it may be due to the warm tones and dronesthey attach to some of their scratchier and abstractsounds, or just simply the familiar presence of the guitaralongside the electronics and field recordings. Some ofthe cuts have gorgeous atmospheric moments of gentle

DEMOswith the Peanut Spell, 2SER 107.3 from 12 until 2pm Mondays

Lake LustreUntitledYou’d expect a British-born Maltese Australianliving in Switzerland to be an interesting one-man melting pot, and he is. Ex-SydneysiderJoe Scerri’s accomplished 7-track EP exploresterritory bordered by funk, classical music,shoegazing, dub, spanish guitars, and the lastdecade of dance music, occasionally bumpinginto a ghostly Johnny Marr. It opens with theinsistent layered darkness of ‘Skyscraping’,mixing 8-bit grit with dub before self-destruct-ing into layered atmospherics. This sharp leftturn continues with ‘Dragonfly Museum’, anambient soundscape that points a finger veryfirmly towards a career in film soundtracksbefore, 4 minutes later, single-handedly invent-ing ambient funk on ‘Cul de Sac’, The stutter-ing ‘Dusky’ brings in a melancholic Spanishguitar and muted trumpet before a DnB influ-enced excursion and then the moody cut-uppiano and sub-bass laden 6/8 rhythms of ‘AForeign Scene’ round out the CD. Smart andalways rhythmically unconventional, thetracks are well structured with a sound suitedto home listening rather than the dancefloor. Amastering session would make the subtle rich-ness truly shine. Ollo

B-ListBalance EPAlthough the reverbs on these tracks makethem sound like were recorded live at a ware-house party, the mix and EQ fixes them firmlyin the home listening bracket. Appropriate ascomedown music, its warm pads and delicacysteer clear of being overly sweet through theuse of bubbling acid lines, minimal melodyand dissonance. The continual phasing on allthree tracks adds to the distinctive sound ofB-List. Sitting at between seven and elevenminutes the tracks could stand some editing.Rerun Radio, however, stops at the 7 minutemark before a 3 minute reprise, 15 secondslater. Tricky. Overall the tracks have a kind ofupdated underground 1991 feel to them remi-niscent of Northern Bleep. Ollo

ChasmUntitled‘Point a Pen (Like a Torch at the Night Ahead)’feat. Ozi Batla starts proceedings off with warmand moody strings and down-tempo drums. WithTubby-like dub production – readily embracingdelays and a welcomingly thick bassline, thistune ain’t a party starter. But then again fuckthem party heads, we can jump-start this trainand still nod our heads in time. Ozi’s flows andsubject matter sail comfortably over the top withsome introspective and engaging commentary.Delving into a theme of solitude and self-reliance(“people watching cos they don’t have my life/solitude now choose to be my wife/ echo out tosea/ will you marry me?/ feeling like these fish, Ishould let them be/ why throw a line if you wantthem free?), these lyrics feel miles away from theanger of songs like 77%. A very impressive tune.‘Compurhythm’ is an instrumental piece that alsosinks deeply into a reflective and measured place.With hints of distant machine-like percussionlurking quietly behind dark synth pads and softpiano stabs we’re introduced to Chasm in hishiphop realm. Moving like the pulse of a polarbear, Chasm will be a necessary artist to check forupon album release next year. Tim Levinson

SoneSisyphusLike sleepily shunting machines at sunrise,Sone’s music is a soundtrack to lay back andthink to. Using delicate vocal and horn stabs anddelays to good effect, Sone creates downtempobeat constructions that are sometimes reminiscentof associate Betaville Orchestra. There are a fewexcursions on this project including the glitchy‘Snooj’, the cut-up electronic ‘Where is here’(where we see what happens when flatmatesshare samples) and completely departs to beat-less ambience and drones in ‘Disconnect’ and ‘ABeginning Implies an End’. Sometimes the drumssound a tad thin and seem to go against the subtleand accomplished arrangements of synth sounds,horns and bleeps, but this is offset by the nicelayering of atmospheric crackles filling out themix. My favourite here is the shuffling ‘SweetBreath’, where the drums contrast Sone’s moreplacid pad sounds but co-operate in creatingmovement and swing. Thinking music, relaxingmusic, brain-fried music – it’s all here and wellworth checking out. Tim Levinson

Send Demos to:The Peanut SpellPO Box 470Surry Hills NSW 2010

Various ArtistsAh-tchoo(Ear Pimp)Ear Pimp is a label project run by Lanny K, veteranDJ of the Sydney queer underground, and hisfriends. With many years of parties and residenciesunder his belt, the Ear Pimp label seems to havebeen set up to release music by the rich vein ofmusicians and performers, and musician performersin and around the scene. With the ever-encroachinggentrification of the areas around Surry Hills andOxford St, not to mention the endless commodifica-tion/incorporation of gay culture, the recording ofsome of the more colourful characters is even moreimportant. A snatch of classic 1992 Dance 2 Trancelaunches SodomSonic’s ‘Lesbian Lavaline’ and luresthis listener down, down to the (mainly) queerSydney underground playland. There is electro inmany guises – Cherry2000’s glam electro, activistelectro from free party scene veterans Non BossyPosse and Andy Rantzen (ex-Itch-E & Scratch-E) &Spinoglio’s old school take. And from MarkMurphy’s throbbing ‘Maggot’ to Raycie Puttycat’sbowl of Peaches and Christa Hughes & The MaestroSurgeons’ lounge/rock vaudeville, it’s one exuberantturn after another. Ollo

Via TaniaUnder a Different Sky(Trifekta/Festival) Tania Bowers used to play bass and sing for Sydneyindie rock quartet SPDFGH. After relocating toChicago in 1999, she continued to release music,with a string of singles and EPs working up to thisrelease. While Via Tania is primarily a solo projectin partnership with engineer Casey Rice, Under aDifferent Sky collects collaborations from artistssuch as Doug McCombs and John Herndon from(Tortoise), Wayne Montana (Trenchmouth), HoweGelb (Giant Sand), and Prefuse 73’s Scott Herren.However, Under a Different Sky is not specifically‘electronic’; it’s a careful balance between thespaces opened up by electronic experimentalismand blues-painted minimal alt-rock, and is tiedtogether by Tania Bowers’ idiosyncratic vocals andlyrics. None of the forms offered overpower eachother: ‘Lightning & Thunder’ is a lovely sculpturedsong with a colonialist twist in the reserved harmo-nium lurking behind the chorus, whereas ‘TheRising’ sounds like SPDFGH revisited, with rockoutguitars lifted straight from the golden era of Sydneyindie-rock (1992 –1996). Tania Bowers provides anautobiographical focus absent from other obviouscomparisons (eg Tortoise), and her idiosyncraticvoice is welcome back anytime. Vaughan Healey

ambience, where meditative strumming is graduallyoverworked by subtle industrial electrics. It’s still veryexperimental listening, though there is somethingundeniably patient and meditative about theirapproach. Elsewhere there are warbling masses ofprocessed material, warm atmospheric drones and theexpected staticy flecks of digital refuse, however Sternand Guerra manage to integrate these ingredients intotheir compositions in such a gentle, minimal and con-templative manner that Stich leaves you with a float-ing feeling of impenetrable tranquillity. Bob Baker Fish

Telemetry OrchestraChildren Stay Free (Silent/MGM)In a parallel universe there is a place where musiclike this is offered the opportunity to return into thecollective unconscious. Think about how wonderfulit would be if in all those public places you inadver-tently hear music: on buses, in the shops, comingout of cars, on commercial radio; instead of shoutycommercial propaganda it was the glorious andplayful music on this album blaring away. I wouldwager that we wouldn’t be going off to obtuse warsfor a start. Children Stay Free is an album that castsits mental driftnet into our cultural id, fishing formoments and sounds that were stamped onto ourDNA years ago. Charming modern psychedelia andanalogue familiarity render perfectly formed themesinto charismatic songs with a vaguely anonymousand mysterious sensibility. This is a record that iselementally balanced and even: there are no compo-nents or textures that dominate, even the vocals aregenerally covered in ambiguous and impressionistictreatments. A perfect album for glorious spring daysturning summer. Vaughan Healey

Various ArtistsMinistry of Shit, The 2003 Anus (Spasticated)Spasticated records is a project out of the NSWMinistry of Health ‘Reclaim the Mind’ public aware-ness campaign. There is some serious public moneybehind the Ministry of Shit project, with Spasticatedpulling in some heavy duty cameos from talentssuch as Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé and DestinysChild, Eminem and Madonna (among others) youjust know this is going to be big. The real stars,though, are the 15 producers represented who haveall passed through various institutions from acrossthe state. These real Australians have overcomeadversity and Ritilan addiction to produce some ofthe freshest tunes out there. With artistic directionfrom Marc Quinn’s Warholesque Factory project,you just know this is bound for the charts. Look outfor the limited edition complete with ‘Tin ofGenuine Artists’ Faeces’. Vaughan Healey

LOCAL RELEASESGRANDMA’S PICKS

SnawklorIt Would Have Lived Here (Synaesthesia )Field recordings, reprocessing, head wobble jigsof scatter.

Buck 65 Talking Honky Blues(Warner)Buck is the saviour. Kerouac with a mic insteadof the Benzidrene and alcohol addiction.

Animal CollectiveHere Comes The Indian(Paw Tracks)If rock has a future, these guys will hopefullykill it, stuff it and put it up on their wall.

Fennesz Live In Japan(Headz/ Synaesthesia)Sand castles built inside laptops, creating ayearning for summer days and static radios.

MatmosCivil War(Matador/ Remote Control) All you need is a rabbit pelt, a boring theoreti-cal concept and a bunch of weird friends.

WhitehouseBirdseed(Susan Lawley/ Synaesthesia)Most violent ugly dirty unredeemingly bleakpiece of music this year.

Yoshimi & YukaA Flower With No Color(Ipecac/ Shock)Birds chirping, childrens toys, hypnotic sweetchildlike. I think I grew my soul back.

NightswimmerAnd A Crescent Half Lit The Sky (Shahnameh)Lush, classy, beautifully constructed atmospher-ic electronics.

Stern/ GuerraStich(Impermanent Recordings)Gentle minimal, tranquil electronics melds intoguitar and breaks our tender hearts.

Mathew Herbert Big Band Goodbye Swingtime (Accidental/ Inertia)Electronics needed swing. Needed Arto Lindsaycrooning. Needed a political philosophy.

BOB BAKER FISH BAKER’S DOZEN -3

Assembler2 (Thrill Jockey/Inertia)Initially Assembler feels like a conscious move byrenowned Japanese electronic artist NobukazuTakemura away from the whimsical, melodic andplayful textures of his earlier Scope, Audio Sportsor Child’s View releases and into a darker more tra-ditionally chin-scratching world. But those familiarwith these earlier works would be aware thatTakemura’s mischievous and inventive nature ren-der it virtually impossible for him to remain in thisguise for long. Utilising field recordings and synthe-sized sounds, which are then filtered throughabstracting digital processing, much of Assembler ispopulated with erratic, often violent bursts of digi-tal sound. In fact, cuts like ‘Kino-ear’ sounds like adisorganised cut up of sounds arranged in short,almost illogical spasms. Sharp, violent, clinical digi-tal feedback, clipped and wrenched from the bowelsof a laptop – it’s here that Takemura is at his mostinventive, arranging these ingredients into repetitiveriffs, like the almost percussive/melodic abstractionon ‘Molla’. ‘Sous terret’, meanwhile, is an opportu-nity to sharpen the noise knives, allowing thesqualls to exist intact, pitching them up and down,and creating a somehow piercing yet lumberinginfernal roaring choir of electronic doom, which isboth mesmerising and painful. Merzbow would beproud. Bob Baker Fish

Virginia AstleyFrom Gardens Where We Feel Secure (Rough Trade/Inertia) Virginia Astley is a slightly odd singer/songwriterwho is still making music and has, over the years,collaborated with everyone from Siouxsie & TheBanshees and Bill Drummond, to, more recently,Japan’s Silent Poets, as well as David Sylvian andRyuchi Sakamoto. Strangely enough From GardensWhere We Feel Secure features only a small selec-tion of her singing and is otherwise almost entirelyambient. Originally released in 1983, it precededThe KLF’s wonderful Chill Out by seven years, withits aural equivalent of a spring picnic in a veryEnglish countryside. Instead of Elvis, steel guitarand rambling ambient Americana, church bells ring,birds tweet, flutes and piano all come together tomake a serene ambient listen, made all the strangerby the way it teeters on the edge of twee – not leastof which os the cover, which sports a shock of pur-ple lavender blooming in a very English forest. It allmakes perfect sense. Sebastian Chan

ColleenEverybody Alive Wants Answers (Leaf/Inertia)This 26 year old Parisian has crafted simple, repeti-tive, yet utterly sublime sounds on her debut albumEverybody Alive Wants Answers. Whilst the openingtitle track bears an uncanny resemblance to DirtyThree guitarist Mick Turner’s amazing guitarscapes,Colleen quickly changes tack on ‘Ritournelle’, con-structing a beautifully intimate repetitive jig, slight-ly reminiscent of a music box being opened andwatching the ballerina twirl in a circle. It’s a strangeimage that only begins to make sense when it’srevealed that Colleen herself uses a broken musicbox alongside other tools such as guitar and glock-enspiel. The simplicity; the intimacy of her sounds;the gentle, almost tender pacing and childlikenaivety of her approach really are unique. Like labelmate Susumu Yokota, Colleen manages to experi-ment with sound whilst retaining a fragile and dis-tinctively human feel. In our cold, often mechanicalworld that’s something well worth holding on to. Bob Baker Fish

Andrew DukeTake Nothing For Granted (Acid Fake) Andrew Duke has been involved in the Canadianmusic scene as a composer, musician and author foryears. Whilst he has released albums on Staalplaat,the impressive French label Bip-Hop, and now hisown Acid Fake Recordings, his musical has outputhas been quite diverse, rarely settling on one stylefor an extended period of time. This restlessness hasbeen reflected on Take Nothing For Granted, whereat times he often seems to be inventing new genresor at least existing between the cracks. ‘Shuffle’ isexcruciatingly slowed down dub, stripped of its rol-licking funkiness, just plodding wearily along, andif you thought that was slow, ‘Mortal’ is virtuallycomatose. Other cuts take a markedly differentapproach, though quite difficult to define, like theskittering flecks of ‘Suture’, the strange sonic wave-forms of ‘Cement’, or the abstract atmospheric nois-es and warm tones of ‘Progress’. Ultimately chal-lenging, it may be a little too uncompromising anddistinctive for its own good. Though there are vaguethough undoubtedly unbalanced hints of dub, theyare tempered by elements of electronica, sounddesign and dark strange film soundtrack material.Take Nothing For Granted is a challenging andabstract album that is inventive as it is diverse. BobBaker Fish

Riow AraiMind Edit (Leaf/Inertia)Tokyo beat producer Riow Arai gets a bit of a backcatalogue reissue courtesy of Leaf, who have licenseda series of his works dating as far back as 1997.Originally released on Soup Disk and almost impossi-ble to get outside of Japan, Riow Arai’s work vergeson industrial hiphop, sliced and diced, but at thesame time stripped of organic funk and injectedinstead with a heavily quantised robotic sound. At thebest of time Arai’s work is like an uptempo Prefuse73, but too often his instrumentals are so sparse or off-kilter that they would desperately benefit from theaddition of an MC. Dating initially from 1999, thereare more than a few moments on this Leaf reissue thatare reminiscent of Chris De Luca’s 2002 releaseDeadly Wiz Da Disko – but even so, being three yearsahead of the game only counts when it’s still 1999.Arai has a follow up due out this month titled DevicePeople which will hopefully extend into new territo-ry. Otherwise much of his work will remain filedstrictly under DJ tools. Sebastian Chan

Buck65Talkin’ Honky Blues (Warners)Deep down Buck 65 is pretty conservative when itcomes to hiphop. A vinyl purist, he riles againstreissues and on this, his seventh album, he bemoansmodern hiphop in a track that takes the art of shoe-shining as its metaphor. paradoxically, Buck65 hasstrayed further from ‘real hip hop’ with each release,with Talkin’ Honky Blues what is left is much closerto the late Johnny Cash (who gets name checked onthe first single), a Carny-era Nick Cave (1985-7), orfolk/country storytelling, than any hiphop referencepoints. This is a good thing, it is almost as if Buck65is rhyming about a parallel universe set somewherein a mythical road movie midwest. The album’sthrough thread – seven vignettes of riverside lifetitled ‘Riverbed’ – provides a strong narrative againstwhich several minor themes play. Continuing fromthe death of his mother in his Man Overboard albumon Anticon, there is ‘Roses & Bluejays’ that dealswith his relationship with his father after this lifechanging event; and ‘Tired Out’ about a breakup.The first single ‘Wicked & Weird’ /’Protest’ are prob-ably the two weakest tracks on the record, the firstdrawing undeserved comparisons with Beck and thelatter featuring an annoying chipmunk vocal sample.Despite these flaws, Talkin’ Honky Blues is an excel-lent album that has benefited from the extra timethat Buck65’s major label deal seems to haveallowed, as well as better, if a little unadventurous,production. Buck65 tours in early December and heshouldn’t be missed live. Sebastian Chan

INTERNATIONAL RELEASES 24

FenneszLive In Japan (Headz/Synaesthesia) A live album from a laptop artist is a pretty boldconcept, though if anyone could pull it off it wouldhave to be Christian Fennesz. The Austrian laptop/guitar composer has established a formidable repu-tation over the past few years as one of the mostdistinctive and original manipulators of electronicspresently in practice. In short, Live in Japan is anaccount of the Fennesz live show. At least partiallyimprovised, his 43 minute set (one single track)begins in a gentle swarm of static, with strangefloating off kilter melodies before evaporating into adrone and dipping into some wispy disjointedacoustic guitar work and reprocessed elements of‘Codeine’ from his Field Recordings release lastyear. Over the course of the set he also repeatedlytouches upon elements of Endless Summer, withwarm hues of static lapping the guitar gently likewaves as he effortlessly steers from one idea toanother, evocative atmospheres one moment, harshflecks and buzzes of static the next. Like every goodlive (rock?) show, the highlight is in the encore, abeautiful and intimate version of ‘Caecilia’, one ofthe most emotive tunes from his Endless Summerset. Perhaps visually this may have been as boringas watching paint dry, but with sounds this good, ittranscends the visual and simply no longer matters.Fennesz has drawn a line in the sand. This is goingto be a benchmark. Bob Baker Fish

Hymie’s BasementSelf-Titled (Lex/Creative Vibes) Recorded in the basement of Andrew Broder’sfavourite Minneapolis record store, this is Andrew(The Fog) collaborating with Anticon’s Why?. Asyou would expect with these two souls involved it’sa quite odd and sad record. Typically it’s a charm-ing album of piano, lo-fi folk, low volume guitardetuning, and rhymes that flit between hiphop, thatAnticon spoken word harmonising, and alt-country.Probably the closest reference point is Clouddeadbut instead of dense collage of loops and oddness,this record is full of space and a lightness that, cou-pled with the nasal vocals, recalls They Might BeGiants (except without their annoying fanbase).Opening with a declamation of the militarism of themoment, it traverses increasingly intimate territorywhere the lo-fi grit of a 4 track recorder brings thelistener closer with each track. A few tracks missthe mark but overall, Hymie’s Basement is a surpris-ing and lovely record.Sebastian Chan

Anna KaufenWho Carez (A Touch Of Class)A new 12" from Akufen is always worth lending anear to. But this is special, not just for the ‘hidden’pseudonym, but for its two remixes from Perth pro-ducer Dave Miller. Miller has been busy releasing12"s for Background Records and most recently putout a collaborative EP with Melbourne’s Fiam. Witheach release Miller moves further and further fromhis initial experiments in microhouse and into bro-ken beat and jazz. Here Akufen’s original is a sur-prisingly dull discohouse cut up that pulses alongnicely enough for a swish bar, but it’s Miller’sCareful mix that is the killer. Forgoing the original’sdisco pulse, Miller slows down the original andchops out a downtempo hip hop beat whilst keep-ing the original’s bassline. As the remix progressesthe beat breaks up even more and the end result is agreat piece of messed up hiphop. Miller’s secondremix is more standard, starting promisingly with adisjointed swing that keeps returning throughoutthe track interspersed by a reasonably standarddancefloor friendly 4/4 tech track. Sebastian Chan

Maps + Diagrams Polytuft-Tech(Expanding)Ever since the Boards of Canada unleashed theiramazingly intimate and beautiful Music Has TheRight To Children many moons ago, there has beena flurry of activity in what has been vaguely termed‘warm electronica’. Evidenced by gentle, oftenmelancholic tones and light dreamy atmospheresattached to lazy beats, artists of the likes of Arovanehave utilised this approach as a stepping stone togive voice to their own unique perspectives andobsessions. Joining them is Tim Martin (aka Maps +Diagrams) who delivers his sumptuously producedsecond album Polytuft-Tech. Eraserhead heaterdrones permeate hesitant keys, whilst the flangedup percussion starts to go haywire on ‘Through Me’,and elsewhere there are strange clips of static,squelchy beats and odd fluttery drones. Thoughstrictly composed, Martin utilises many of the tech-niques of experimental electronic artists in Polytuft-Tech. Constructed with patience and a clear intent,Martin has produced a gentle yet touching albumthat challenges whilst it soothes. Bob Baker Fish

MF Doom Is Viktor VaughnVaudeville Villain (Sound Ink)The comic book mastermind of Daniel Dumile AKAZev Love X AKA MF Doom AKA King GeedorahAKA Viktor Vaughn gets another chapter withVaudeville Villain. After splitting with Elektra in

GRANDMA’S PICKSLAWRENCE ENGLISH

Akio SuzukiOdds And Ends (Horen) the old man of Japanese sound art - a true mas-ter of found objects

Rhythm + SoundThe Versions (Burial) Perfect for those hot summer afternoons on theveranda mate!

DJ OliveBodega (theAgriculture) Well we don’t have rooftops here, so let’s dubthis record yard music!

T.RamschmiereMonster Truck Driver (novamute) The dance floor rocker of the year, macho andballsy, with a hint of silliness

Janek SchaeferWeather Report (audiOh) A fine listen, almost like an audio diary

Scott Horscroft8 Guitars (Quecksilber) Need to meditate? well here’s this year’s credi-ble release to do it to!

John ChantlerThe Circle The Sun Spins (unreleased) A super rough demo of his 2004 slated album -magical!

Glenn BrancaThe Ascension (Acute) Ascend with Branca into a realm of no waveintention and guitar majesty...

XFMXFM 3 Track Sampler (unreleased) Why can’t I find more from these guys??

VariousMeeting At Offsite Volume 2 (IMFJ) If you can’t be in Tokyo this winter then this cdwill offer some consolation.

INTERNATIONAL RELEASES

1998, the metalface villain has clocked up countlessreleases on US indie hiphop labels Subverse andFondle ‘Em as well as dropping the Take Me ToYour Leader album on Big Dada only a few monthsago. Despite the quantity, the twisted cartoon uni-verse is as potent as ever: the tracks are solid with adegree of clarity absent from previous excursions.The production is strong but transparent – minimalanalogue dressing over refined percussion and pro-gramming. It’s a perfect stage for the lyrics and madscientist persona, conducting strange, forbiddenexperiments. MF Doom’s rhyme schemes are as con-voluted as ever, with a heavy dose of deadpan slackon lines like: ‘I’m jokin on the fact that hiphop hasgone freak show/don’t let the drama get ya/in theonly genre of music where the fans shoot the mes-senger’ and ‘do a street lyric like that’s a neat trick/off on a tangent ain’t got a cent ... sparkey/I’ ve hadenough of your malarky/for one, don’t mark me/and who you calling darky?’. Vaudeville Villain is afine album, reminding me in parts of some of thebetter moments of Kool Keith, even stretching backto the native tongues Tribe and De La. It has anappeal for both backpack torch carriers and peopleoutside the abstract hiphop fraternity. ‘I’d rathermasturbate than fuck with Vic Vaughn’. Don’tbelieve it. Vaughan Healey

Midwest ProductWorld Series Of Love (Ghostly/Couchblip)New Order’s 1983 album Power Corruption & Lies isone of the classic rough diamond albums of the 80s– a fact that Ann Arbor 3-piece Midwest Productknow well. Their debut album Specifics came outeighteen months ago and opened with a track thatcould almost have been a B-side of those originalNew Order sessions. World Series of Love continuesdown this early 80s path but now shares more withthe New York DFA sound – tight Krautrock drums,driving synth and bass. The opener and secondtrack are nothing special but things pick up with‘Swamp’, its languid plod and sharp synth blips.And then there’s the lovely moment when asparkling guitar bursts out and glistens as a coda atthe end of ‘Motivator’. Still it feels a little like thereis unsettled discomfort between the twin attractionsof electronics and indie rock. World Series of Loveis also notable for its new style of cardboard EPpackaging – a flip out sleeve that reveals the CDdisc – an ingenious design that both protects thedisc and gives new design spaces on the sleeve,something I haven’t seen used before except on aCreative Review DVD. Sebastian Chan

The NeptunesPresents Clones (Startrak)The amazing breadth of sound on Clones couldmake it seem like a Top 40 compilation, but all thetracks present a coherent Neptunes aesthetic.Whereas some of the earlier Neptunes productionslike those on Kelis and Clipse albums tendedtowards the monochromatic, every track on Clonesis rendered with a fresh palette. It effortlessly flipsfrom the major scale up-tempo RnB of Nelly intodark skeletal hiphop on Rosco P. Coldchain’s ‘Hot’.The rockin N.E.R.D track ‘Loser’ comes across like acontemporary ‘We Are The Champions’ fixed to aswung out waltz beat and rave stabs. Most of thetypical Neptunes trademarks are there: the basic up/ down melodies and guitar licks on ‘Frontin’’, thepiano riffs and Korg instrumentation on ‘Good Girl’,with the latter sounding like a small tribute to clas-sic Jam & Lewis moments. These guys are at theforefront of an amazing remapping of modern musicand if it continues as good as this, even pointyeared Vulcans will be waving the Neptunes salute.Vaughan Healey

Novel 23Architectural Effects (Bip Hop) Novel 23 is one of the best Russian exports to date.A master of melodies, he has appeared on just aboutevery solid IDM compilation in the past 4 years,although Architectural Effects is his first full lengthCD release (his three previous full lengths onlybeing available on Casette, Vinyl and CD-R). Each ofthe ten tracks is a concept piece that reflects an ele-ment of architecture, construction or styles. Thefirst track hits you with a dark, menacing overdriv-en bassline and percussive lofi harshness – not atall what I would usually expect from Novel 23, butseconds later his trademark melody fades up,reversing the mood of the piece. Composed withvintage Russian synthesizers, there is an undeniableanalogue warmth to his music, and coupled withhis penchant for natural uncomplicated synth-popbeats puts this release squarely in the melodic retroelectronica bin – don’t expect any complicated beatprogramming or DSP manipulation. It’s all about themix and production, not about being technical andmodern – just blissful and inspiring listening musicbeautiful electro rhythms and enchanting refrains. Melinda Taylor

26INTERNATIONAL RELEASES GRANDMA’S PICKS

STINKY JIM BENT REGGAE BEST BITS

SIR ROBBO BIG BOTTOM SELECTION

Turntable RockerRings (Riton Ska Boogies Rmx)(Four) Takes a tragic herman german original and trans-forms it into a spectacu-ska-ly wobbly monster.

Dave ‘Stranger’ Kelly Fiesta Rhythm(Madhouse) Acoustic guitar shuffler = dancefloor dandemite.

FletchHeavy Stepper (Jon Kennedy Mx)(Seven Hills)From Vibra’s Sheffield label that specialises insupremely saucy sevens, a funky-reggae mini-platter of unfeasible obesity.

I Benjahman & Earthman tune in Brain Smashing Dub (Lion Kingdom 12”)

Shinehead Billy Jean (African Love Music LP )

Yush 2K Light Up (Soul Jazz 12")

RevolvoToo Cool For School ( Treva Whateva remix ) (Tummy Touch 12")

Junior Kelly Go Down Satan(Front Page 7")

Dean Frazer Nice Dub(Beverley Records 7”)

Robert Palmer / Lee Perry Love Can Run Faster(Island Records 7” )

Tino’s Breaks 6 Magic Dub(Tino Corp. LP)

Tied & Tickled Trio Revolution(Morr music LP )

Keith Hudson Playing It Cool / Playing It Right dub(Joint International LP)

Aki OndaAncient And Modern (Phonomena) Aki Onda is a serious sonic shape-shifter. He’s oneof these musicians and producers that diligentlymanages to link into a variety of music sets, fromthe Improvised Music In Japan community to theacademic scene of Northern New York (where heteaches alongside Jon Appleton) to his role as a popproducer, working with the likes of Tujiko Noriko(for whom he produced the Tomlab issue FromTokyo To Naiagara). On Ancient And Modern, Ondaundertakes a series of flowing tape compositionsthat are both compelling and understated. Pieceslike ‘Flickering Lights’ mimic their title to a tee –his backward rhythmic loops shimmering on thehorizon like a city in the distance. Likewise thesomewhat more brutal ‘Dream’ tosses and turns, itsrevolving dull percussion loops flutter away,becoming increasingly hypnotic until new scratch-ing elements are added via fast forwarded tapes.The nature of tape compositions generally lead to a‘defined’ series of results, but Onda’s attention todetail here and his understanding of space and rep-etition makes for a powerful sonic collage of denselayered audio atmospheres rich in colour, personali-ty and timbre. Lawrence English

Phelps & MunroSlowpoke(Round Trip Mars)From Stinky Jim’s Auckland label, responsible forthe excellent album from SJD two years ago, comesPhelps & Munro’s debut. Opening with a powerchord and then a mutant drum & bass bombast,appropriately title To The Spazzmobile, it would beeasy to skip past this little gem of an album. Whatfollows is much more engaging melange of postrock, chunky hiphop beats, and tight digital editsmade with an MPC and guitars. It’s an odd combi-nation of sounds and styles that has plenty oftongue in cheek moments – moody tracks that stopbriefly for a cough or tiny dialogue sample, or theChoose Your Own Cover™, or the witty track titlesthat seem to be common to every Round Trip Marsrelease. The almost cheesy morse code stabs on‘Artificial Duck Flavour’ gives way to a blissful rideinto swirling guitar drawl into ‘Glib’s synth drones,guitar lick, and bass pulses. Later standouts include‘Ditto’, ‘Horse Winning Without Rider’ and the titletrack ‘Slowpoke’. Despite the improbability of thevarious elements that make up ‘Slowpoke’ workingtogether, this is one of my favourite releases thisyear – quirky, atmospheric, and uncomplicated.Sebastian Chan

RemarcSound Murderer (Planet µ)The first jungilist record I ever bought was Remarc’s‘Sound Murderer’ on Whitehouse Records, so I waspretty excited when Planet µ announced they weregoing to reissue his back catalogue. Back then, it wasmusic with no equivalent, cacophonous anti-music thatbore no resemblance to anything that had come beforeit. Crucially though, the tracks were borne of a dance-floor genesis: nothing was sacrificed to the funk –somehow finding its way out of the myriad warpedbreaks and bass. Through the 1990s, Remarc becameinfamous for the most twisted and extreme junglistmusic around, his releases were scarce and obscurewith tracks coming out only sporadically on differentlabels. In fact he never seemed to be part of a largerjungilist scene. Listening to this today, it sounds as radical and uncon-ventional and futurist and funky as ever. With its urbansavant quality, these days Remarc’s music is more like-ly to appeal to obsessive IDM fanatics than suave con-temporary jungilists – so it’s a fitting Planet µ release.Even more exciting are the whispers of a forthcomingalbum of unreleased tracks. Sit tight and watch theride. Vaughan Healey

DJ RubbishProper PropagandaProject BrothersWe’re Number One (Barry’s Bootlegs) Before you get confused, Rubbish isn’t a DJ – just somefool with a mic. On Proper Propaganda he delivers analbum of British Boy MC work, targeting Osama BinLaden, Tony Blair (and all those other terrorists). With avoice placed too high in the mix, Rubbish moans andgroans over a selection of beats that sway from disco tobreaks, through to shoddy drum machines. It’s killer.Unlike anything you’ve ever heard, this album is morelike a badly recorded live set, a sixteen track mix,where the nine Rubbish originals are interspersed byProject Brother interludes. Now I don’t know muchabout the Brothers, but judging from their album cover(a she-man, with no pants on, confused genitals and ablurred out face), these guys are as sick as label headhoncho Barry. On their solo album We’re Number Onethey display a similar political slant to Rubbish, withtheir slapped together odds and sodds collection of pre-dominantly vocal samples that attack capitalism,denounce Paul McCartney as a cunt and stick togethera rather jiggy collage of bling and dub infused phrases.Cassette Boy may still reign as the King of Barry’s king-dom, but these two albums, as disparate and dishev-elled as Barry’s prison cell, are worth the purchase.Think Dsico meets Ozi Batla after a day on the piss.Chloé Sasson

INTERNATIONAL RELEASESSizzla/BonecrusherSolid As A Rock ( Rmx)(Dj Obsession White) Bonecrusher’s bulbous dirrtysouth slammer gets blendedwith a previously lacklustreSizzla lyric NYC style.

Scatta And The MulawiIndiansCoolie Dance Rhythm(High Society)African/junkanoo inspired JAdancehall rhythm that is run-ning things here, there andeverywhere

Jae Millz No No No(CDR) Chops Dawn Penn into littlebits and Jae Millz lets off onthe mic

Fat Freddys DropThis Room(Drop/Best Seven)Business from the Wellingtonpremier leaguers who arepulling props all over the shop.

Digidub Ft Rico Rodriguez Day One (David Trombone) Tremors from the right hon-ourable Rico sit atop a sloven-ly but delightful rhythm

Kensuke Shiina & ToshioNakanishiBomb-Da-Bag-Dad (Car ParkMiddle East)(Postage) A spot of anti-oil-war dubwise deviation – searchthis album down and broad-cast it frequently

PabloCissy Strut (Pt 3)(Red Hook)Dubbed-up Meters makeoverin an old/new style 7" fromthe infrequent Glasgow label -also look out for their recentButch Cassidy Soundsystemseven – it’s a jockers hifi gem.

STINKY JIM continued

Scanner & Stephen Vitellos/t (Audiosphere/Creative Vibes)When he visited Australia a few years back doing astand up comedy routine he cheekily referred to asan artist talk, Scanner seduced us all with tales of alife spent enraptured by sound. No stranger to collab-oration, this time his partner is electronic musicianand media artist Stephen Vitiello. Split into twopieces, the first was recorded live in June 2002 fromAtlantic Avenue rooftops in New York. Clocking inat a modest 35 minutes, it provides the duo plenty ofscope to move between ambient drones, gorgeouslywarm synthesized washes of sound, minimal beatsand deep space bass tones. The second piece,recorded at the Knitting Factory in New York in1999, is equally adept at setting the mood early withgorgeous washes of sound flowing under a sprayingradio static and voicemail messages. As the twenty-minute piece continues, the duo continue to surprise,easing into mesmerising blips of backward masking,glitches, fractured material, and of all things ghostlychorals. It’s a strange and beautiful sonic adventurethat is always engaging. Bob Baker Fish

SoraRe:Sort(Plop/Couchblip!)From a Japanese label with a name that doesn’tquite translate, comes this subtle and calm releasefrom Kyoto-based musician Takeshi Kurosawa. Aproducer since the early 90s, Kurosawa had a fewreleases out on GPR (home to Beaumont Hannant,Germ and others) before they folded. This latestrelease under the pseudonym Sora steers into terri-tory recently traversed by Four Tet and Manitoba, akind of organic digital psychedelia – althoughminus the beats. Music box melodies, xylophones,tinkling pianos, chopped up samples from cocktailjazz records – there are also similarities to JanJelinek’s Loop Finding Jazz Records – although thisis brighter in mood. On the third track, ‘Revans’,Kurosawa makes much of a cocktail piano loopingunder a sea of random brightly coloured chitteringglitch creatures: a little like an audio world akin toTakashi Murakami’s Adventures In Wonderland.‘Etude Diagonal’ carries a swing influence with thesample edits adding syncopation and ‘Rayuela’brings 1950s b&w movie strings in over brusheddrums. Worth tracking down. Sebastian Chan

TwineSelf-titled(Ghostly/Couchblip) Following several tracks and an album for Frenchexperimental label Bip Hop, Twine release their sec-ond album for Ghostly. An ambient record that

Luke VibertYosepH(Warp/Creative Vibes) The 303 is a much maligned instrument. The resultof its overuse in the hard trance scenes of the mid90s was that much of the funk that made acid housework in the late 80s was lost. Then came the soft-ware version – Rebirth, which only exacerbated theproblem. Bar a few moments of pop brilliance a la‘Everybody Loves a 303’ and ‘Higher State OfConsciousness’ it’s been quite a while since the303’s burbling analogue sound has been of interest.That’s why YosepH, Luke Vibert’s tribute to the 303,is such a pleasant surprise. The lead single, ‘I LoveAcid’ sets the tone with a cheery gurgling ode toacid carried by a typically slappy Vibert rhythm –ever notice how each breakbeat he has made carriesa certain slap/swing in the tail? The same sharpnessis brought to work on ‘Acidisco’, which is every-thing DJ Icey should have been (but never was).Referencing Chicago house, British acid, and theCalifornia mid-90s acid breakbeat revival sound, thealbum moves playfully through a series of warmand inviting, slightly twisted analogue burbles,never reaching high tempos nor relentless shrillsquealing acid heights. Instead it’s a simultaneousstep forward and back – a familiar blanket given afresh wash. Sebastian Chan

DVDsVarious ArtistsVisual Niches 2 (E:Motion/Inertia)The first Visual Niches brought together a series ofseventeen music videos from Sigur Ros to LittleComputer People and was a good collection of materi-al that rarely, if ever, saw screens in Australia. OnNiches 2 there are fifteen clips ranging from the wellknown – Roots Manuva’s ‘Witness’; DJ Shadow’s‘Walkie Talkie’ – directed by Ben Stokes whose workyou may have seen in the video mix for Shadow’s liveshows; Basement Jaxx’s award-winning ‘Where’s YourHead At?’; and LFO’s ‘Tied Up’; to the more obscurelike Amon Tobin’s ‘Four Ton Mantis’ andT.Raumschmiere’s animated ‘Monster Truck Driver’.What separates the original Niches from this latestedition is that in the first volume the more obscureclips were amongst the standouts, whereas here theyfeel more like filler. Even when the music is edgy andexciting – Anti Pop Consortium’s ‘Perpendicular/Vector’; Casten Jost’s ‘Make Pigs Pay’, the videoaccompaniment is conceptually interesting but visual-ly dry compared to the high budget clips. Perhaps it isthis problem of context/contrast that makes Niches 2less engaging that the first? Sebastian Chan

recalls the prime of ambient electronics in the early90s, before chill out compilations became fashionaccessories for people with fashion accessory lives,‘minimalist’ furniture, and corporate stress - it alsorecalls the days before digital processing andabstract effects superseded, in some cases, ideas. Onthis album the focus is on atmosphere, and Twinesteer towards evolving sound collages of loopingdialogue, found sound voices, sampled guitar,minor key synths, and an aesthetic that draws onDead Can Dance and Eno. The central 12 minuteepic, ‘Kelea Morning’, is carried by a voice that isreminiscent of the female call in Blade Runner, andis accompanied by a rapidly panning staccato pulse,circa Autechre 1995. Its reprise, ‘Counting OffAgain’, begins with flittering chopped up voicesbefore a subtle piano progression emerges.Steadfastly refusing to be abrasive, this is a veryapproachable release that has an appealing subtletyand depth. Sebastian Chan

Various Artists2nd Coco Waffle Flake (Skipp/Synaesthesia)In this weird fractured frantic world filled with illfitting strangely spiced digital shards, there seemsto some kind of perverse pride associated with theartist’s ability to utilise all manner of difficult pitch-es and tones, clip them, and reassemble them withsome semblance of structure and rhythm. Manywould be familiar with DAT Politics zany frenziedspin on laptop punk, though with this collectionfeaturing 10 other artists, they reveal many othersequally adept at utilising the spit and glitch tech-nology for mischievousness purposes. In fact there’ssomething positively juvenile about many of thetunes presented here from the likes of Goodiepal,Nathan Michel and banjo laptop goddess KevinBlechdom. The music lurches forward in noisyclipped spasms, tormenting one moment, embar-rassing the next with repetitive cheesiness, seeming-ly sending the message that though the fiery pits ofhell await there’s plenty of corn to keep us going inthe meantime. Aside from the big guns (KevinBlechdom is typically hilarious), it’s some of thelesser knowns that send speedballs through the cir-cuit board. Melbourne based The Park Royal Trioclick, shudder, bleep and overload in a joyfully clin-ical and vaguely percussive stomp, Aelters some-how marries abrasive noise, hiphop, abstract techand low rent electroclash, and the wonderfullynamed Secret Mommy construct an intimate child-ish carnival of cuteness, energetically populated bystrange whirrs, wails and spasms. Bob Baker Fish

28INTERNATIONAL RELEASES

Sleeve Design by Alex CrowfootSLEEVE REVIEWS:

Fuckface Records Volumes 1-5 (Fuckface Records 2002-2003)Format: Credit card CDDesigner: Uncredited

All these Western Australian releases come asunprinted white credit card CDs in a plastic wal-let, with a paper insert. This is slipped into astitched fabric pocket. I was impressed by all thecare and love that has gone into producing a seriesof unique looking releases that are unlike anythingelse I’ve seen.

Volume 1: Bib GnawA black pocket, with a paper ‘cover’ consisting ofstreaked black with the characters C N C / H insmall (intentionally?) bitmapped type. This isjoined by a track listing and credits in black on awhite piece of paper, in the same bitmapped type-face, sometimes reversed out ‘Dymo’ style. Theminimal style is completed by a series of blacklines. It’s either a colour-copied inkjet print or isprinted on a colour laser with limitations, as tinydots create a smudging effect. Intentional or no, it’sa nicely subtle effect.

Volume 2: T. PakioufakisBlack and cream striped fabric with black stitchingwraps the CD this time. The paper insert is all blacksave for a white box on one side which holds typein small black Helvetica caps. Minimal, simple andeffective.

Volume 3?: AIDS Fuckface EPAesthetic diversion here in the form of an ink-stamped eyes, nose and mouth on a red fabric pock-et. The type also diverts into a lo-fi dot matrix styleon one insert, and black and white band photo onthe other. There’s a sticker too, in red and black, toadvertise the EP, complete with its touchy-feely titlein red. The eyes nose and mouth return, completewith face and hair this time.

Volume 4: Aut tinkleWith this volume the charm comes back in spades. Asimplistic brown felt tree with beige, rust and creamleaves is stuck to a brown fabric pocket. (it could alsobe a bird’s foot after it has walked through some glueand then some scraps of paper. Just kidding). Thepaper insert is dynamically angled minimal sans seriftype in beige-green on white.

Volume 5: Nisa BriggsWell you don’t see a gatefold fabric pocket double CDrelease every day. Red waffle textured fabric, back tothe small Helvetica caps here, this time in red.

Because of the variations in this series they don’tquite work as a set for me – either more or less con-trast between them would have done that – butindividually these are interesting pieces well exe-cuted, with volumes 1 and 4 being the best.

A mixed bag in this issue and, to quote Tooth, ‘disappointments… here and there’.Alongside handmade packaging from Western Australian series of credit card CDs We alsohave further examples of the CD release as craft object, with sewing machines making a sur-prise entry into the design vernacular, a design sequel/remix for Red Snapper, and more.

Left: The unprinted white creditcard CDAbove: AIDS Fuckface EP cloth pocketBelow: Aut Tinkle cover slip and cloth bag

Red SnapperRedone(Lo recordings 2003)Format: CD Designer: Non-formatFor this CD of Red Snapper remixes we have aremixed sleeve design. The previous Red Snapperalbum featured a white Digipak with stitched labeland ‘warehouse’ sticker. This time in a clear jewelcase, the cover reprises the industrial warehousesticker, with a list of the remixers. The disc is a soliddark red, as opposed to the full-on bull-baiting red ofthe last release. Around the edge you’ll find finetrack credits in the same typeface as the cover stick-er. The inlay tray is the special part, and is anotherexample of the unexpected rise of the sewingmachine in CD sleeve design. The stitched-onembroidered label of the last album has been rebornas the whole inlay tray. From the front, through thetray, the words ‘Red Snapper’ and ‘Redone’ appearin the same blocky typeface (stitchface?) as before, inred on white, except they are mirrored. The tracklisting reads normally, also in red. The back is aspectacular stream of cotton, the artist and title read-ing correctly through a maelstrom of cotton, and thenow mirrored track listing rendered illegible. Atough of added depth comes in the form on the CDtitle which can also be read as ‘red one’. The overallimpression is pretty slick, in a positive sense.

MugisonLonely Mountain(Lifelike 2003)Format: CDDesigner: Sasi, Kjartan, mugi and RunaThis is a highly personal and idiosyncratic designthat perfectly matches Mugison’s music and fitsalongside the increasingly more exotic design workon Herbert’s Lifelike label. Recycled board isstitched together to from a pocket with a flap, witha booklet on recycled paper stitched to it inside.The cover: a blurry digital mountain shape withtitle in black, artist in muted red, both in lower caseHelvetica. A scribbled arrow points from the title tothe blurred, digital and slightly 3D from of a moun-tain. Mugison is subtitled ‘one man band’ in awk-ward handwriting. Jagged clouds and a portion ofsmiling sun are also hand drawn. The mountainflows onto the back cover and is joined by runningstick figures, scribbled arrows, with track listing (inred) and credits (in black) in a mix of typefaces andhandwriting. Tear apart the Velcro tab and it’s scrib-ble heaven. Handwriting (some child-like, someadult, a mix of comments, lyrics and credits), doo-dles, photo booth stupidity, smears, repeatedchopped up shapes, lower case Times typesetting,and blurred digital forms collapse across the pages.A nice touch – the booklet centrefold also appearsacross the spread of the inside cover. The CD is ared circle that repeats the mountain shape in awhite line, and mirrors the typography of the cover.A suitable sleeve for the mix of melody, insanity,softness, DSP, electronics, vocals, drums, guitar andwhatever else on this extraordinary record.

Alex CortexInward CTRL(Ann Aimee)Format: Digipak CDDesigner: Uncredited – I thinkThis design is notable for its translation of digital style into the physicalworld. It features the angled, highly structured pseudo-architecturalforms normally seen in computer artwork. It then subverts them throughbeing hand drawn on cut out, dirty black and white photocopied pieces,assembled on a green background with yellow grid lines that designersshould recognise as a cutting mat. The piece folds out into a T-shape.Inside all is white save a few inky black edges and blotches. The CDechoes the lo-fi feel with more dirty, angled forms in black and white.The type is all in Courier, sometimes reversed out of black, the informa-tion minimal. The music completely replaces the earthy grit of thesleeve with digital textures circuiting its warm chopped electronics.

30

BradburyRuffini Corpuscle(dual pLOVER)Format: CDDesigner: UncreditedA die-cut card sleeve with Velcro closure is embla-zoned with a photo-collage inside and out which fea-tures, among others; hands, coin, camera lens withpeach inside (?), furry bits, teeth, horn, oil drumthing, carrot-slice-on-fork, megaphone, pidginEnglish sign, seeds, map, sky, smokestacks (like thesugar factory you pass as you head up to the NorthCoast of NSW), frog, fungus, sphere thing, pig snout,cowboy head on dominatrix shoulders, medals,sealion, aerial view of farm, foot, electron microscopeshot of something, water. Inside we have a green feltpanel in the CD pocket and black type on an OHPfilm insert with the credits. Thedisc has an old illustration of ababy talking on the phone wear-ing pearls and stepping into a lit-tle spaceship containing a teddy.So aesthetically that would be acollage with green felt and OHPmashup type thing. I don’t knowwhat to say, it just is. I like therecord.

Telemetry OrchestraChildren Stay Free(Silent Recordings 2003)Format: CDDesigner: Steven ScottAppealing organic vector graphic illustra-tions flood the cover with colour and aknowing innocence. A Yellow Submarine-esque cartoon other-world is revealed intwo tableaux, the sunset cover folding outto reveal a forest in pinks and reds with anice hint of menace in the hidden crea-tures, only their eyes visible. Inside thebooklet, a curling tree clambers up the sun-set as it spews forth balloons of pastelcolour. Somehow the style of the astronautdoesn’t fit into this world, but then he is avisitor. His breathing machine (?) makes areappearance on the back cover. The illus-tration of the group themselves is cute in anot-too-cute way. Nice continuation ontothe CD, in yellow white and brown, thetray being the only slight let down in anotherwise beautifully executed sleeve. Thebar code integration on the back covercould perhaps have had a tweak too.

featuring Sub Bass Snarl

Sir Robbo, Prince V and

MC Ozi Batla (The Herd)

THURSDAY

JANUARY 22

7pm-12am

seagull room

bondi pavillionFrigid Sound SystemTipper[fuel, UK]

Vacuous NinniesVacuous Ninnies(Quatermass/Creative Vibes)Format: CDDesigner: UncreditedThis sleeve is interesting mainly for the type. The cover is a pale grey and featuresan odd shape, on closer inspection it’s a hog with its face buried in a big red foodbowl. The cover has the name Vacuous Ninnies in angled type, which is hard toread but it’s a really nicely executed “show-the-process” form of 3D digital type.All letters feature anchor points, some showing the structure of the vignettes, oth-ers having the rendered vignette. The back features the same technique but a dif-ferent type face. I especially like the way the centre of some letters is extrudedand filled – definitely an alternative take on deconstruction of type. Inside the 4page booklet we get the track listing repeated in the same typeface as the coverover a white paint splat. This splat is the only non-typographic element on the CD.

Check cyclicdefrost.com for more sleeve reviews and colour sleeve images

32

HERMITUDESELECTS by Sebastian ChanEVERYONE HAS THOSE SPECIAL RECORDS THAT CHANGED THEIR LIVES, AND THEY’RE NOT ALWAYSJUST TEENAGE SONGS. THE MOST MEMORABLE MUSIC MAKES AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION, MORETHAN JUST A ‘DOPE BEAT’ OR A ‘HOT DSP EFFECT’. THIS ISSUE’S SELECTS COMES FROM THE BLUEMOUNTAINS, WEST OF SYDNEY.

Luke Dubs and Elgusto are the two young players(rumoured to be 23 and 20 respectively) behindHermitude, responsible for Alleys to Valleys, one ofthe best downtempo albums of recent times. Full ofwarm keyboards, rounded and surprisingly complexbeats, it has been deservingly getting glowingreviews both here and overseas. Both formerlymembers of Blue Mountains hiphop crewExplanetary (which also featured Urthboy from theHerd) their musical partnership rotates aroundStuart Sound Heaven in Wentworth Falls, the studiorun by elgusto’s father, himself a musician of somenote. Apart from Hermitude, elgusto has spent thelast couple of years playing and touring with PaulMac as percussionist and DJ, whilst Luke Dubs haslent his keyboard skills to many local Sydney out-fits, including the inimitable Gauche.

EL GUSTO SELECTS :Herbie HancockHeadhunters(Columbia, 1973)This record was a huge influence to the direction Itook in music. The first time I heard ‘Chameleon’was when I was about 12 or 13. I walked into mydad’s work room (he’s a composer and guitarist) andhe called me in – I thought I was in trouble –‘Angus, come here, I need to show you something’.He put the record on and played me ‘Chameleon’. Icompletely freaked out. The bass sound that beginsthe song is something in itself, and then the beat.Being a drummer it was the funkiest thing I hadever heard. From then on, I tried to be that type ofdrummer, the ultimate in refined groove.

PrimusSuck On This (Caroline, 1990)Les Claypool, where the hell was this guy comingfrom? His bass playing astonished me. It was com-pletely different, all the tapping he was doing... andHerb the ginseng drummer. Herb was so tight – notjust his playing but the sound of his drums weretight – which is why I think I liked it so much. I ful-filled my metal stage with those guys.

James BrownVarious releases(Various labels)After hearing funk music such as Herbie, the nextstep had to be James Brown. What would hiphop bewithout the funky drummer? The funny thing isthat at that time, when I was listening to JamesBrown and the JBs I was in Year 7 at high schooland I was a complete purist and hated electronicmusic – ‘why are they even bothering, they just ripeverybody off, they can’t even play an instrument’.But back then the only electronic music I was hear-ing was happy hardcore... James Brown and the JBs– it was all about that locking groove, everybodyplaying together so tight and so simple. They allhad their place and if they stepped out of line –James would fire them!

DJ FoodRefried Food (Ninja Tune, 1996)This is where it all went backwards. I’d heard somehiphop by now and I was starting to accept that noteverything had to be played by some amazinglyfunky black guy with a deep voice. I bought DJ Foodwhen I was on holiday, one of my friends had men-tioned it and I thought I’d give it a go. I immediate-ly thought ‘Holy Shit! What is this?’. I’d never heardanything like it, it was hiphop without the rapping– and the music, the sounds, weren’t just loops ofthe JBs – it was really something different. I thoughtto myself, these guys must actually be very musical-ly talented. After hearing some more Ninja Tunestuff like the Herbaliser, I got completely obsessedwith that sound. I wanted to try to make it so I con-vinced my dad to go halves with me and a friend inpurchasing a sampler. In just 3 years I went from ahater to a lover of sample-based music... and thenstarted making it.

DJ ShadowEntroducing (MoWax, 1996)I bought Endtroducing when I was 16 and it sat onmy shelf for two months. I wasn’t sure if I liked it ornot. But after a while it slowly took over my CDplayer and it didn’t leave it for a long time. Unlikeother hiphop related music the tracks didn’t sound‘cut up’, they almost sound as if musicians hadplayed on the album. This record pushed my pro-duction techniques further towards concern withseparation of sounds, the quality of the sounds, andintricate beat variations.

LUKE DUBS SELECTS :Michael JacksonThriller(Epic, 1982)This was the first cassette I ever owned and it bringsback memories of roadtrips with my folks. My par-ents were heavily into Quincy Jones, so they boughtme a copy of the album. And it blew my mind!‘Billie Jean’ was the obvious standout at first but thenI got into the other tracks like ‘Baby Be Mine’ and‘Human Nature’ and I realised what amazing song-writers and producers Quincy and Michael were.

The ProdigyMusic For The Jilted Generation (XL, 1994)Through the last years of high school (93-95) I wasinto electronic music. Everything from RotterdamRecords and Bloodyfist to The Prodigy. I was hang-ing out with Edy Sledgehammer (our designer),going over to his house every other day to smokeweed, The Experience and Jilted Generation werealways high rotation. It was about this time, at theend of 1993, that I obtained an Atari ST withCubase and a Yamaha SY22 synth and started mak-ing beats. Jilted Generation was a huge influence onmy writing. I just loved their sound and their crazyhigh pitched sped up melodic lines which remind-ed me of evil video game music.

The RootsIlladelph Halflife (Geffen, 1996)I first heard The Roots at fellow producer Realistix’shouse when he put on Do You Want Some More?(Geffen, 1994). It’s a wicked album, with the bandpulling some amazing sounds from their instrumentswith very little production. Then came Illadelph,their first trip into programming and sampling, and itdidn’t leave my CD player for months. I was studyingat the time and I remember going down to UnsoundRecords at Wynyard and snapping it up straight away.Back to uni, I went to the library, put on some head-phones and listened to it cover to cover. They pulledsome killer drum sounds on that record and havecontinued to push their sound.

The HerbaliserRemedies(Ninja Tune, 1995)I was in my first year at university and cruisingdown Pitt St Mall and I went downstairs in to whatwas then Blockbuster Music. I was browsingthrough the ‘recommended listening’ section andthe cover caught my eye. I had never heard hiphopwithout rappers – it was a dream come true. Thatwas the discovery of Ninja Tune for me and afterthrashing that album I hunted down DJ Food andVadim and any other Ninja Tune I could find.

Ernest RanglinBelow The Bassline (Island Jamaica, 1996)Elgusto played this to me about a year ago. It’s akiller mix of tasty reggae grooves and jazz. IdrisMuhummad has the killer feel on the drums andMonty Alexander is an absolute shredder on thepiano and reminiscent of the Oscar Peterson style ofplaying. He unleashes these fuck off chops overthese laid back reggae grooves. Ernest is right therewith him, playing these amazing solos over a killerrhythm section. The perfect summertime album.

SUSUMU YOKOTA ~ laputa

OUT NOW // distributed by

Inertia distribution // 02 9698 0111 // www.inertia-music.com // info@inertia-music.comwww.susumuyokota.org

‘★★★★★ more ingenious electronic allure from the prolific Japanese Eno’ Mojo

‘Mostly quiet, sometimes scary, often beautifully mad’ Wire

‘Yokota exists on a different spiritual plane to most of his contemporaries’ NME

‘God-like genius’ Sleazenation

‘Blissfully enchanting music – fantastic sounds to immerse yourself in’ DJ

Continuing the series of acclaimed albums; Sakura, Grinning Cat‚and The Boy and the Tree, comes Yokota’s latest album Laputa‚ onhis own label – Skintone

Working with his distinctive, sonic ambient layers, combining them with

beautiful, fragmented rhythm patterns, Yokota delivers an otherworldly musical

experience that moves between live instrumentation, found sound and electronic

music with a grace few other producers can match.

‘I had never heard hiphop without rappers – it was a dream come true’

Hermitude’s Alleys to Valleys is available now on elefant traksthrough Inertia see elefanttraks.com and hermitude.com for more

Dear Degrassi,What are your views on family planning?Seamus Murphy

Three words for you my fertile friend: Eight IsEnough! My parents did a pretty good job of grind-ing adamantly Catholic families to a near halt, how-ever it is my complete lack of maternal instinctscoupled with my paralysing fear of spontaneous lac-tation that has banished the Degrassi name into agenetic cul-de-sac. Eight is Enough could very wellhave played a part in this. It was a show about theBradfords, a family who were to the Bradys whatHolly Valance is to Delta Goodrem. And they werethe greatest exponent of the ‘dramedy’ genre…something which some of the actors carried intoreal life as well. Some might even say that the showwas as cursed as Diff’rent Strokes.

The Bradfords were headed by Tom (Dick vanPatten – best known recently for appearing inWeird Al Yankovic’s Smells Like Nirvana clip), acolumnist that must have somehow commanded asalary capable of supporting eight children varyingin age from 8 to 23. In the first four episodes he wasjoined by wife Joan (Diana Hyland), however theactress was diagnosed with cancer and was writtenout of the show shortly after passing away in reallife. This seemed to put the ‘dra’ in ‘dramedy’ andpaved the way for the much loved Abbey (BettyBuckley) to woo her way into Tom Bradford’s, andthe American public’s, heart. But hey, with all thosekids to support, her whopping salary earned as acounsellor no doubt helped out. Funnily enough,she also played a counsellor in the film Carrie twoyears earlier. Typecast? Nah!

When it came to remembering all the kids inchronological order, some die-hard fans used the fol-lowing mnemonic for help: Dumb Martians Just SitNearby Eating Tender Noodles. Dumb is for David,

the eldest son who managed to escape living withthe rest of them. Mark Hamill played the role in thepilot, but he got sidetracked by some low-budget sci-fi flick freeing up the role for Grant Goodeve. Just aswell, because there’s nothing better than a secondrate actor showcasing their third rate singing talentson TV, Stan Grant stylee. After scaling a fence andface planting in 1980 (curse #2) he found god afterwatching a televangelist, although he shuns awayfrom becoming a ‘celebrity Christian’.

The gravelly voiced doctor-in-training, MaryBradford, was played by Lani O’Grady, who tragi-cally gives us the third curse. After sufferingsevere panic attacks during the filming of theshow, necessitating two bottles of wine and hand-fuls of sedatives daily, she was found dead in hermobile home by her neighbour in 2001, a passingthat was mysteriously similar to that of Dana Plato.By contrast, Laurie Walters (who played Joannie)has led a life as spectacularly uneventful as that ofher character in the show. Susan Richardson,unimaginatively named Susan in the show, wassports mad – so much so that she married a base-ball player in one of those tacky, far-fetched dou-ble weddings with her brother David. Of coursemarriages provide the opportunity for legitimatechildbirth and thus Susan procreated in both theshow and real life. This led to her gaining an extra40kgs and since post-natal personal training wasn’tthe boom industry it is now, she went on theColumbian diet which proved very successful fordramatic weight loss. That would be curse #4. Andjust to take the tally to five, she became a rocksinger and fell off stage shattering her tailbone,leading and developed a taste for morphine.

Nancy, played by Dianne Kaye, although foxy,offered nothing in the way of scandal, except per-haps for an allusion to living in the fast lane duringher modelling career which occurred between the

DEAR DEGRASSIA REGULAR DOSE OF IRREGULAR POP CULTURE

end of the television show and the Eight Is EnoughFamily Re-union telemovie. Connie NewtonNeedham, who played the youngest daughterElizabeth, also lacked any curse.

That leaves room for the two baby boys… andwhat doozies they are! Tommy was played by WillieAames, who wanted to be a marine biologist morethan he wanted to act. However, being a child staroffered an escape from his unhappy childhood. Sotoo did cocaine. That’s six now. Fortunately for himand his similarly drug addicted love interest,Maylo, they both heard a pastor preaching on theradio and within three months were clean-living,baptized and married. Whew! It’s all or nothing inHollywood. Willie’s new found faith caused himsome career problems as he felt that his role asBuddy Lembeck (Scott Baio’s sidekick) in Charles InCharge compromised the integrity of his faith. Thiswas not a problem for him when he took on the roleof Bibleman in videos and later, plays. The premise?Well, quite simply Bibleman (alter ego MilesPeterson) is a superhero with all the usual contrap-tions… and his special power? The word of god…His protection? The armour of god. Great stuff.

Last, but possibly juiciest in terms of ‘dramedy’,is Adam Rich, who played the pudding-bowledNicholas. We all heard about his addiction to justabout anything, becoming so acute that he dislocat-ed his own shoulder in order to be prescribedpainkillers (curse #7). Then his crimes against hairwere renewed with the mullet he sported in theFamily Reunion telemovie that truly resembled aBon Jovi parody wig (curse #8). In dire need ofsome publicity… any publicity, the 1996 AdamRich death hoax made it to the cover of Might maga-zine with the headline ‘To Live and Die In LA’. Theplausible story told he was shot by an unemployeddinner theatre stagehand. The Karate Kid himself,Ralph Macchio (who played Abby’s nephewtowards the end of the series) was even quoted inthe article, with the lasting tribute ‘I’m glad he’sdead.’ Watch your leg there, Daniel-san! But theelaborate hoax was conducted to parody the mediaand of course, since all Americans have had anirony by-pass, it worked! Only last year Adam nar-rowly missed hitting a police car in a closed high-way lane and was arrested when found to be underthe influence of booze and pot, despite proclaimingthat he had been sober for the past decade. I’m surethat brings the tally to somewhere around 10!

My advice one child is by far enough, otherwisethey all run riot!