A New Zealand-based answer to Winston Surfshirt or Rex Orange County, Balu Brigada make music that’s so warm and smooth you’ll want to take a bath in it.
. – Happy Mag, 2020
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
To celebrate the release of MorningMaxwell’s new single ‘Complications’, MorningMaxwell will be conducting a 2-week campaign with the Partae celebrating the topline over alternative beats (One new beat a day) from samples the legend has recorded around his house.
Where are you currently based?
Sydney. Marrickville. Coogee. Ashfield. All bases are loaded.
What’s been happening recently?
Our debut single If I Knew has landed and we’re very glad that we get to share something new and exciting. On the back of that we’ve been finishing clips, building websites, and all the associated behind the scenes stuff that you need to do to be a band.
Your new single ‘If I Knew’ is out now, what influenced the sound and songwriting for this track?
We’d gone into the studio on a Saturday morning, and by Sunday afternoon we had the beds down for 10 songs. If I Knew was almost an afterthought, and made it 11. After waiting so long to record an album, the sound of If I Knew is the sound of us making a jubilant, celebratory, messy noise and loving every minute of it. We kept getting to the same point in the song and grinding to a halt, but each time we honed the emerging vision and got closer and closer to nailing that down. The ‘train track riding’ rhythm of the guitar only came out as we were doing the early takes, so each time we stopped it was a chance to really capture that seat of your pants chaos and energy of a song still forming. We’d played the Sebadoh song Magnet’s Coil in the studio, just as a reference for the energy we wanted to capture, and we feel like we got that, and possibly more. The recording is the sound of three friends celebrating the sheer joy of playing together, trusting each other, and having a tonne of fun on the way.
Once the beds were down we did some guitar doubling, and then for the outro, added the duelling guitar lines and counter vocal melody. Josh sang lead and Eliot sang killer harmonies that really kick the song into another realm. Nick joked that what had started sounding like the Verlaines had ended up sounding like the 3Ds.
How did you go about writing If I Knew?
The song had been kicking around for a while – in its previous incarnation it had a feel like Iggy Pop’s the Passenger – so much so that we’d do the La La La bits at the end. It had almost been dead and buried but some songs dig in their hooks and don’t let go. The week before we were due to go in and record we started messing around with an alternate time signature and an alternate feel, but it really wasn’t until we got into the studio that the song found its way. Watching Wilco tear apart songs in the doco I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, and the love of jamming through different incarnations of an idea gave us the freedom to just try different things, which is a real theme across the whole album. If an idea worked it stayed. If it didn’t, it left.
Lyrically, the song was also a rebuild, with the final lyrics only being completed on the morning the vocals were recorded. It had been another song about escape – but nothing that had been particularly coherent. Whilst that would have been something we’d settled on in the past, the opportunity to record doesn’t happen often enough for us to just waste the chance, so we set about tweaking, tuning and weaving a narrative in the verses, and leaving the chorus untouched. It’s now a song marking how lucky we are to have people in our lives who encourage us to play music, and to be there through all the twists and turns of a long partnership. So in a small way, it’s still a song about escape – that we get to play in a band and live in an alternate universe that’s not plagued by the logistics of jobs, and kids and dishes. It was also a chance to sing in honour of a Fugazi first date.
Where and when did you record/produce/master and who with?
If I Knew is the first single from our debut album You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost. We recorded the whole album with Tim Kevin, whom Nick had played alongside in Knievel, and we’d all known to varying degrees through mutual friends. Tim has recorded Youth Group, Holly Throsby, Peabody, Toby Martin, Buddy Glass and stacks of other great records that we really loved. His Tempe River Studios is not in Tempe, but it’s close to the Cooks River and is located in a building adjacent to an old Holden Factory. It has great lino floors, and a hallway that people occasionally walk through as you’re tracking. We can and will always recommend people work with Tim – he’s talented, patient, kind and diplomatic – all qualities a great producer/engineer needs. We started recording in late 2018, and we mixed in 2019. The album was then mastered by JJ Golden in California. JJ’s a second generation mastering engineer, who has mastered albums by Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings, Soundgarden, Neko Case, Calexico and loads of others.
What programs/instruments did you use?
The sessions were recorded using Pro Tools, with a stack of analog gear to warm things up at all stages. Tim has some beautiful ribbon mics, a collection of fine sonic toys, and some great tricks up his sleeve. Josh played a 1960s Fender Jaguar throughout the whole record, and it ran split through an old cream piggy back Bandmaster and a Vibrolux. He used the amp in Tim’s Ferrograph Tape Machine for the breaking up slide sound, and his Princeton amp to run a Hotcake through for the other outdo line. Nick played a very fetching green DW kit with Meinl cymbals, and had a second floor tom that feels like a truck veering off a highway when hit. Eliot played a Fender Jazz Bass running straight into a DI and then re-amped through a Hi Watt Head and speaker box with a touch of fuzz.
How did you approach the recording process and did the single turn out as you first imagined?
Across the album we had an almost even split between songs we knew really well, and songs we didn’t. Consequently, there was a real sense of tension and of exploration. By the time we hit Sunday night, and If I Knew, we were really firing on the enthusiasm and confidence we’d built up over a weekend of tightrope walking. Everything we knew was going to work had, and the stuff we hadn’t know would work had locked into place too. It was one massive exercise in trusting ourselves, and each-other. We were also safe in the knowledge that if it something didn’t work, it really didn’t matter. This was all about having fun, recording some tunes and making good on a promise we’d made to each other a long time ago.
In terms of If I Knew, it turned out WAY better than we had imagined. Just before we mastered it, Eliot made the call to kick the song off with the snare roll it now starts with, and that was that.
What do you like to do away from music?
Hang out with our partners, our kids, our friends, our pets. Laugh, and love. Watch films. Eat cheese. Try not to despair when reading the news. Go swimming. Go walking. Talk politics. Talk music. Read books. Rediscover hope.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
Big Thief. The Beths. Field Music. King Gizzard. Talking Heads. Aldous Harding. Tropical Fuck Storm.
What’s planned for 2020?
Ha! Who could have planned for 2020? Our plan is to (hopefully) release three more singles, and then our debut album You Don’t Have Time To Stay Lost in August.
Favourite food and place to hangout?
Vietnamese. Mexican. Thai. Home. In a rehearsal room. In a cinema.
https://linktr.ee/theelectorate
https://www.theelectorate.com.au/
https://www.facebook.com/theelectorateband/
https://www.instagram.com/theelectorate/
A PORTRAIT OF AN UGLY MAN
OUT JUNE 26 ON EPITAPH RECORDS
Remo Drive have unleashed their new video and second single, “Ode to Joy 2”. Written over the span of a few years, vocalist Erik Paulson explains, “the lyrics were inspired by the excess I perceived around me as I transitioned from being a college student into touring full time. Most people who’ve done either can confirm that many social interactions are built around having a drink or smoking weed. Once the honeymoon period of exploration was over for me, I became frustrated with the omnipresence of drugs and alcohol and wanted to write about it… Oh what fun it is laughing at nothing, by this age we all have it down.. When I wrote the final version of the lyrics, I tried to connect with how I think when I’m drunk. I always feel as though I’m loving and hating every second of it. This song captures that same ambivalence.”
With its acrobatic guitar work, deeply self-referential lyrics and off-the-walls energy, Remo Drive’s upcoming album A Portrait of an Ugly Man calls back to the dextrous, eccentric sound that helped the band – brothers Erik (vocals, guitar) and Stephen (bass) Paulson – explode onto the scene back in 2017.
Self-produced and mixed, A Portrait of an Ugly Man feels all at once familiar and fresh. Taking shape in their parent’s basement in Minnesota, the space breathed a looseness into the songs, while the freedom of the sessions left the band able to explore the next evolution of their sound.
A slice of tremolo-heavy classic rock filtered through the lens of the gunslinging American West, A Portrait of an Ugly Man finds them truly in their element – both physically and sonically. Whereas the Paulsons filtered their buoyant songwriting through the concise lens of storytellers like Bruce Springsteen and The Killers on Natural, Everyday Degradation, A Portrait of an Ugly Man is more spontaneous, bolstered by the same charm and levity that made their debut, Greatest Hits, such an underground favorite.
The loathsomeness Paulson explores on the album certainly reflect less glamorous aspects of both his psyche and that of others, but when they’re cut with his quick wit and self-deprecation, they seem less like an actual indictment and more of an embrace of all of life’s imperfection and absurdity. In turning the mirror back at themselves in this way, Remo Drive have learned a lot about who they really are: A Portrait of an Ugly Man is an album that doesn’t seek to minimize important subjects like mental health or self-worth, but rather welcome them in and accept them as part of what it means to be human.
|
|
Where are you currently based?
Kalindy and I both live in Preston in Melbourne! Right in between the markets and Northland.
What’s been happening recently?
You’ve recently released a remix of your single ‘You Don’t Know What You Have Until You’ve Had Enough’ what influenced the sound and songwriting for this track?
Kalindy woke up singing the chorus in the middle of the night one night, and had to make it a song. We released it on a split 7″ with Zig Zag and I reckon just even that arrangement influenced how it sounds. The song had started off completely differently, then when we knew it would be being released alongside theirs we changed it and it was for the better! The theme of the song kind of stayed the same, though – it’s about how shitty people can be, just in general public interactions like shopping centres. It was written before the COVID-19 crisis, too, so that stuff is next level now.
Where and when did you record/produce/master and who did you work with?
We’re lucky that we can record at home – not having a drum kit helps with that. I engineer all of Hearts and Rockets’ recordings, but we always get someone else to mix and master them. For this single, Matt Chow mixed and mastered it, as he was doing Zig Zag’s single and knows our band really well. He’s done live sound for us countless times, including our first show ever! We’re really happy with the end result, and he even went ahead and recorded some live drums for the mix which sound amazing. Matt plays in Shepparton Airplane and Tankerville, two great Melbourne bands.
Please tell is about how the track came to be remixed and the process that took place:
It actually just came from a throwaway comment on a Facebook thread – I suggested that people could get the stems from us and make a remix if they wanted to, and a bunch of people said they were keen to do so. We ended up with 4 being finished and sent to us so we thought it was a good opportunity to do an EP. Each artist did their own remix and aded their own sound, and Mino Peric mastered the EP for us.Is the result what you originally expected?
The launch at BMF was cancelled but you launched online, how was this experience?
Who are you listening to at the moment?
I can’t get enough of Primo!’s track Comedy Show, and Mystery Guest’s album Octagon City rules. Kalindy’s still stuck into her faves Siouxsie and the Banshees and disco! She’s big into Betty Davis Eyes at the moment.
I run the label that we release music on, Psychic Hysteria, am a freelance publicist, booker and photographer, and work part time and broadcast at a community radio station so that’s most of my time done. Kalindy is a freelance illustrator, designer and photographer. Aside from that, we both like riding bikes, gardening and cooking.
What’s planned for 2020, any new music on the way?
We do have new music coming! We’re about to announce the launch for our next single, which will be happening June 20 as part of an online music festival that’s yet to be announced… The song is called Milk Bar and will also have a video clip.
Favourite food and place to hangout?
To celebrate the release of MorningMaxwell’s new single ‘Complications’, MorningMaxwell will be conducting a 2-week campaign with the Partae celebrating the topline over alternative beats (One new beat a day) from samples the legend has recorded around his house.
New Song Debuts on Eurovision: Europe Shine a Light, Out On DSPs Listen HERE
“I’m like a bird in a cage and I’m going cuckoo…”
Global quirk-pop master and Eurovision champ (2018 with “Toy”) Netta is back with her new song “Cuckoo”, a devastating heartbreaker of a ballad that feels eerily poignant given the state of the world currently. The song debuted as a part of Eurovision: Europe Shine A Light which aired in Australia and a further 45 countries on Saturday and included a touching video of Netta performing the track with a custom-made music box. Also released now on DSPs is the official studio recording “Cuckoo”, which will also appear on the forthcoming EP, out this summer via S-Curve Records/BMG.
A noticeable shift for the Israeli artist/composer/songwriter who has made a name for herself (and notched over 1 billion streams globally!) for her bombastic, colorful and high-adrenaline pop, “Cuckoo” is a soulful ballad about feeling self-awarely stuck in a stalled relationship.
Whether over heartbreak or feeling emotionally disconnected during this current pandemic, the choral refrain is melancholic brilliance: “I’m like a bird in a cage and I’m going cuckoo”.
“This song was written about the feeling of being stuck in a loop, that you don’t know if you created yourself or someone else built for you. We decided to recreate this feeling with a music box. We worked over three months to build a custom-made music box, which was very tricky, because it’s an instrument that was manufactured by hand back in the 16th century. I’ve had this image stuck in my mind for a long time – a ballerina stuck inside a jewelry box, spinning around forever in a loop. Just like I’m afraid I might be,” said Netta. “Cuckoo is my confession. It reveals a vulnerable side of me, which I’ve never let anyone see before. I am in a place where everything happened to me really fast, and I can’t help but doubt.”
Listen to Netta on Switched On Pop earlier this week HERE discussing her personal journey as an artist and what it takes to make the perfect Eurovision song. She also recently was spotlighted by BUST who called her the “soulful singer creating escapist videos you didn’t know you needed” and Hey Alma who praised her as a “role model”. She will also be Facebook’s “Artist Of The Day” on May 18th.
Check out Netta’s on-the-spot ingenuity in this recent video for iHeartRadio where she covers hits by Eiffel 65, Flo Rida, and Soulja Boy’Tell Em.
NETTA ONLINE
Homebrew is a long-running PBS program representing independent artists from Australia and New Zealand. Maddy and Kurt genre hop through stacks of new releases and old favourites every Monday afternoon at 3pm.Maddy Mac and Kurt are both really committed to local and Australian music and finding themselves at as many live gigs as possible.
“With fewer gigs and sponsors contributing to the station and the arts sector taking a huge hit, making sure that bands can still be heard and supported means a lot to us, and we feel so lucky to be able to do so on Homebrew! You can help us keep going by signing up as a member now.”
MADDY
- Simona Castricum – Supertough feat. M8triachy
Solid, euphoric dance beats that bring the juicy joy, and a most sexy video clip
- Nardean – aux chord
Hot hip-hop from Sydney’s West sung loud and proud, ‘I feel like an aux chord, how I’m fittin all these stereotypes’
- Frank Yamma – Beginning of the Day (Haus Bilal remix)
Frank’s voice is always stunning, and I love the layers in this piece – adding electronic elements, percussion patches, harmonies, field recordings. That might sound busy, but it combines so well.
- Chitra – Leaving
I find myself humming the chorus quite.a.lot. Guitar lines that will waft you off into the sunset.
- Junior Fiction – Same Dream
A great fun slice of power pop – off-kilter guitars, an element of mania, great deep voice.
KURT
1. Mystery Guest – Alibi
There’s just something completely mesmerising about Melbourne via Adelaide duo Mystery Guest, and their song Alibi has been swimming around my head since I first heard it in 2019. I caught a live set early on in their live game and was instantly a fan, though I had seen both members play live previously in other killer bands, including Peak Twins and Prefect (formerly Bitch Prefect). Mystery Guest is a unique mix of catchy hooks, hypnotising vocals, danceability and clever production, without any pretension and without things getting too complicated. Their debut album, Octagon City, is flawless. I highly recommend checking out a live set, when that’s a thing again.
- The Native Cats – Run With The Roses
The Native Cats is another duo, and another one that needs to be seen live to completely understand why they’re so incredibly special. I’ve always been a fan of (The Native Cats’ singer and programmer) Chloe Alison Escott’s music, and while my focus is rarely on lyrics when I’m listening to music, she’s one of my all-time favourite lyricists. Again, it’s the simplicity of these songs that is key – it’s not basic, but these two pick a theme and run with it, and I like that a lot. Run With The Roses is off The Native Cats’ latest 7”, Two Creation Myths, which also features the great b-side, Sanremo.
- SuperEgo – Outer Body Stranger feat. Sampa the Great
SuperEgo is a collective of producers, rappers, singers and multi-instrumentalists based in Fremantle, originally making a name for themselves as POW! Negro. They changed their name in 2018 coinciding with a more collaborative approach to themes that the group were expressing through their lyrics and music. Their 7-track EP, Nautilus, is an exceptional debut, but the standout track is Outer Body Stranger, in no small way thanks to the contribution from Sampa the Great. Everything she touches turns to gold.
- NGAIIRE – Boom
NGAIIRE’s singles have always been strong, but for me Boom is timeless. It’s a perfect R n’ B track on par with or better than anything else like it happening around the world right now, and I could easily have this track on a loop for life. Boom makes me really excited to see what she does next. While Boom will be hard to top, I reckon NGAIIRE is only just getting started.
- CB Radio – Time Goes Slow feat. Kahlia Parker
CB Radio, the solo project of Carsten Bruhn, is dropping album-length, home-recorded demos relentlessly via Bandcamp, and it’s a wild ride following the trajectory. His songwriting is succinct and smart, but I can’t go past the contagious belter, Time Goes Slow. Time Goes Slow features Carsten’s partner (and his partner in running Roolette Records) Kahlia Parker, who was on guitar and vocals in much-missed Melbourne 3-piece Girl Germs. I’d love to see this power pop hit machine be the new direction for CB Radio, but I know that he’ll continue to surprise us with future releases, and I’m OK with that.
May 18 – May 31 2020
If you are having trouble renewing online, you can email info@pbsfm.org.au or try calling (03) 8415 1067 between 10am-6pm Monday to Friday and PBS will do their best to answer your call
Melbourne brat-wave band Hearts and Rockets recently released their single, You Don’t Know What You Have Until You’ve Had Enough, on one side of a split 7″ with Zig Zag in March via Roolette Records and Psychic Hysteria. They followed it up with a killer video clip which has since been seen on Rage. Now, four of the band’s contemporaries have re-imagined the track for this special digital only remix EP – Had Enough Remixed.
Available for download now at heartsandrockets.bandcamp.com
https://heartsandrockets.bandcamp.com
http://www.facebook.com/heartsandrocketsband
http://instagram.com/heartsandrocketsband
During school holidays, my family would go and work on my Grandfather’s farm in Nothern NSW. Having just bought a new laptop and not having any internet access in the area, GarageBand never stood a chance. I would catch my family while they were sitting around the TV and play them my demos and because they are incredibly polite, they said they were good!
I have just purchased some very sexy studio monitors and am setting up a small home studio to begin writing an EP for release in early 2021. I have also been really excited to find some other Australian artists to work with, either as a feature or to co-produce.
I was really loving the amazing music coming out from Golden Vessel and wanted to create a similar sort of electronic pop track with some toplines that you could sing/rap along to at home! For the chorus, I wanted an off-kilter sort of Flume’esque synth sound and reworked the original synth line to create the organic sounding lead synth in the final version. The song is about two friends who become more than friends, leading to love, happiness but eventually ends in trouble.
The track was recorded over a few months at the end of 2019 and early 2020. Although Lucie lives in Brisbane, she was actually on a student exchange studying music in Los Angeles at the time and had to record her vocals in her bedroom. While we would normally record at my University’s recording studio, COVID-19 meant we needed to find an alternative. For Declan’s (Zeplyn) verse, we recorded in a closet at my house on a disgustingly hot day and although the conditions were dreadful, it resulted in a great performance!
I would be absolutely thrilled to work with Emerson Lief, Upsidedownhead, Luboku and Jadu Heart – all have amazing styles and I think working with them would result in some really unique and fun music!
I am hoping to keep experimenting with sounds and styles this year, releasing a few more singles in preparation for an EP in early 2021. I am also trying to collaborate with more local artists and keep working my way into the wider Australian music scene!
Stream Link: https://gyro.lnk.to/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
To celebrate the release of MorningMaxwell’s new single ‘Complications’, MorningMaxwell will be conducting a 2-week campaign with the Partae celebrating the topline over alternative beats (One new beat a day) from samples the legend has recorded around his house.
The Electorateoriginally formed as school kids with a love of melody, contortion and the energy of skewed pop. They played as The Templebears, kicking around the traps and releasing EPs but as they prepared to record their debut, they splintered. The individual members went off to play in bands like Big Heavy Stuff, The Apartments, Knievel, Atticus, Reality Instructors, Imperial Broads. They re-assembled for a one off gig and got sucked back into the universe their songs had created, and set about recording the album they were always meant to make.
To celebrate the release of MorningMaxwell’s new single ‘Complications’, MorningMaxwell will be conducting a 2-week campaign with the Partae celebrating the topline over alternative beats (One new beat a day) from samples the legend has recorded around his house.
Today, Lil Lotus drops All My Little Scars Vol. 1 which features two new tracks “Rigor Mortis,” “Last One” and the previously released “I Don’t Even Like You,” and “Never Felt Better.” All My Little Scars Vol. 1 is the first of a three-part series and Lotus’s first EP since 2017’s influential Body Bag EP (featuring GothBoiClique’s Cold Hart and Nedarb).
LISTEN TO ALL MY LITTLE SCARS VOL. 1 NOW
A pioneer of the alternative rap scene, Lotus is known for blending confessional lyrics, pop-punk melodies and rap beats. Like his namesake the lotus flower that blooms in muddy waters, Lotus’s music grows from the pain of real-life experiences.
|
|||||||||||||||||
|