In-Frequencies #3: Kirin J Callinan, Bare Grillz, Hammocks And Honey

As part of an ongoing series, SHAUN PRESCOTT rounds up the latest cassette, CD-R and vinyl releases.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Angel Eyes
Dire Dish
(Cassette, Not Not Fun, 2010)

Forgive the hyperbole, but listening to this Angel Eyes debut for the first time – the solo project of Melbourne's Andrew Cowie – was akin to hearing Vincent over the Sink's classic 22 Coloured Bull Terriers, or Fabulous Diamonds' debut single for the first time. Because this album is so singular, so cruelly beautiful, that you'll want to maim whoever decided to put this on a tape in a limited quantity run.

Angel Eyes' operation is a simple one: trigger a low-tempo canned drum line, play some desolated sobbing guitar that echoes into eternity, and lather it with the prettiest orange-firmament synth melodies this side of Jupiter, mixed prominently so every note seems to pierce through your speakers like fluorescent icicles. Add to that some inscrutable but strangely lyrical murmurings and you've got the most expansive two sides of spacey, melancholic music this country has spawned for a very long time. If this doesn't get reissued on LP in a limited run of a billion one of these days, the kitten dies. Sorry Skittles.

Bare Grillz
Bare Grillz
(Cassette, Past Futures Presents, 2011)

Three-piece buzzband from Newcastle, determinedly angular (yes, really) and abrupt, with moustaches and haircuts. Actually marginally better on tape than they sound on paper, Bare Grillz are full throttle whimsy, all about the riffs and the power with vocals that probably aren't supposed to communicate anything of any import. Some will love, some will shrug, others will laugh, others will die. Not a noteworthy racket, but an occasionally cathartic one. 'Robert Pattinson Foot Tattoo' is a pretty cool name for a song. And that's my word count accounted for.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Bitch Prefect
Marilyn Munroe/Holiday in America
(7”, RIP Society, 2011)

Best band in Adelaide/worst band in Adelaide? Not sure, actually. Probably best though. It's odd how there's so many bland, hookless, charisma-proof rock songs out there when bands like Bitch Prefect can make a song about wanting to holiday in California make you want to cry. Bitch Prefect is trad-jangle in extremis but there's the feeling this band was formed to accommodate the songs, rather than vice versa. Spontaneous and sentimental indie pop to win lovers with, and not heavy in the slightest.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Brassskulls
Last Skulls
(CD-R, Altered States Tapes, 2011)

Old Newcastle noise fanatics, now split up, release their last hurrah two years after the fact. I suppose they were hot shit while they lasted (their Old Man, Off Our Lawn tape is scary), but they're all doing better stuff now, whether it be with Polyfox and the Union of the Most Ghosts, Cock Safari, or Mitchell Brennan's solo material (see below). Ten minutes of echoed static and combustion just doesn't cut it from Brassskulls, especially when they were always better at driiiiift and dread. This just sounds like the BFG farting into an echoed ribbon mic.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Hammocks and Honey
Spellbinder
(12”, Special Award Records, 2010)

Stupidly belated shout-out to a very special, unfairly under-the-radar 12” from this new (and very) Melbourne duo, starring one part ii and another part “actual-trained-cellist”. If you can imagine Saint Etienne writing songs for Broadcast you're not very close at all, but those references should put you in vaguely the right place and get the right people excited. 'Undone' is a very poised, ostensibly respectable Spring song wherein Prudence Rees-Lee flips the bird to someone in a not-very-respectable way (she wants to “fuck” their “shit up”, or maybe I'm mishearing?). The rest of the record is great, but it's worth dwelling on this very unusual track: a very suave tempo with some precision-engineered beats and bass lines that serve to undermine the prettiness of its isolated components, something that'll make you feel starry eyed, empowered, wistful and unaccountably hyperactive – all at the same time. If there's an LP on the way it's going “On Rotation”, gods of M+N, or the kitten dies.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Spellbinder by Hammocks and Honey

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Kirin J Callinan
She
(7”, Siberia Records, 2010)

Former Mercy Arms guitarist whose solo material wipes the floor with his previous outfit, and who you should never ask to play in your band because he will make it his own (looking at you Jack Ladder). 'She' is a slow burning desert love song, all tumble weed and condemned, rusted petrol stations, showcasing the whammy bar-happy electric stylings that have come to define him. He's among the least reserved and most theatrical vocalists in Australia at the moment, but he's a natural performer and he delivers with sincerity and conviction. This 7” is also available as a cassette, with a Go-Betweens cover on the flip-side of both formats, and if Robert Forster wasn't so busy producing boring triple j indie rock bands he'd probably write an essay about this. Which I would too, if space and time permitted.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] She (radio edit) by teganjean

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Kitchen's Floor
Too Dead To Notice
(Cassette, Negative Guest List, 2011)

Wherein Matt Kennedy casts away a lot of the slop and gristle of ye olde Kitchen's Floor and sounds a lot more like ... Nirvana. It's a lot of fun hearing these songs played with a different tenor (Glen Schenau isn't present), but if you're inclined to shy away from your reprobate punk rock becoming too polished (because it is here, despite the “live” recording quality) than you might be better off waiting to see what Kennedy's new songs - presumably written with his new ensemble in mind – have to offer. Definitely a worthy curioso for Floor fanatics, of which there seems to be a vindicating few.

Mere Women
Sun Rising/Waves
(12”, independent, 2011)

Very, very, very serious new Sydney three-piece featuring former members of The Thaw and Ohana, doing the whole four-minute song to a 12” side thing (there's an actual reason dance producers do this, you know guys?). Strangely absent from this debut is their 'Indians' mp3, but the two tracks here are even better. Fronted by a permanently tormented and plainly pissed off Amy Wilson, Mere Women stand out because Wilson actually sings occasionally, quite beautifully in fact, in a very fraught, maudlin and moody soprano, used to best effect at the beginning of 'Waves'. Instrumentally speaking, the music tends closer to the darker, sparser, post-punk end of the spectrum, shirking the type of post-hardcore stylings you might expect from a group with this pedigree, even though Flynn McKinnirey's guitar tone is distinctive enough to recall Ohana at times. If the stranger and moodier inclinations exhibited here are an indication of Mere Women's future than we might even have something kinda new on our hands. Are we ready? You probably aren't.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Per Purpose
Heil Progress
(7”, Bedroom Suck, 2011)

Boys with guitars. Not too dissimilar to Glen Schenau's previous band Marl Carx, but this three-piece are – would you believe it – even more hyperactive and given to gleefully stoopid tempo deviations. But then, at other times, they're surprisingly restrained and able to lock into the type of anti-groove The Fall supposedly invented, especially on 'Fullerton Viewing'. In terms of where it fits circa. 2011, it's the type of rawk you might drink a longie to among 30 other guys (mostly band members) in a Marrickville warehouse on a Sunday afternoon, except this bunch is from Brisbane and I can attest to at least one of the members having a not-too unpleasant odour. Overall a lot of fun, not as taxingly earnest as Marl Carx and probably a real blast live. You've definitely heard it all before though. Now where's the nearest bottle-o...

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Reunion Sacred Ibis/Mitchell Brennan
Split cassette
(Cassette, Magik Crowbar, 2011)

Noise is hilarious. But that's beside the point today. The reason why Terminator 3 and 4 sucked so severely can largely be blamed on their respective soundtracks. In 2031, providing sentients are still in charge, those should've-been amazing sequels ought to be remade and soundtracked by Reunion Sacred Ibis. Sure, the Nintendo DS will be obsolete by then (RSI's instrument, nay, weapon of choice), but the horribly ugly, malignant and uncompromising sound of 1s and 0s scraping against other 1s and 0s exudes a sense of worst-case-scenario dystopia that not even Guns 'N Roses can rival. Even in the future. Reunion Sacred Ibis is usually a smidgeon more melodious than he is here, but if all you want to do is dim the lights, draw the curtains, and pretend that all your loved-ones are being systematically maimed than this is a definite go-to. So five stars (conditionally).

Mitchell Brennan is a bit more pleasant. There are screams and such: high pitched feedback that could shatter all the panes in a Le Corbusier in 0.4 seconds flat at the right volume, but it's very much just noise. With no beginning or end. Start in hell, end in hell. Sometimes loud, sometimes louder. Not pleasant at all, so five stars all round.

(Note: I listened to this tape on my serviceable home stereo, once again at the state of the art 2ser studios in Sydney, and then again on iPod headphones at low volume. I found that having this sound approach you from a vast distance oddly allows the nuances to shine through. Noise doesn't need to be loud. Play it softly. No one will laugh.)

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
They Live
Pure Palms/Don't Know What To Say
(12” single, Autonomic, 2011)

Named after John Carpenter's second best film, this debut single from Melbourne duo They Live is released by the esteemed Autonomic label, who have vendored rubber for the likes of Instru:mental and Distance. Unlike those artists, They Live don’t sound particularly current and nor – on the evidence of this release – are their tracks calibrated especially for the dancefloor. All the stock standard sci-fi connotations are intact here, but this single has a very meditative aura: the light-to-the-touch synth pads that colour 'Pure Palms' are oddly reminiscent of Muslimgauze's Dome of the Rock, and the way the multi-bar melodies take their lumbering time casts a funereal glow over this otherwise functional music. Very strange and very lovely. There’s a debut LP on Exit Records next month.

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] NOMIC 005 - A-They Live-Pure Palms by club-autonomic.com

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
Vincent Over The Sink
Dust Studies
(7”, Kye, 2011)

Dedicated to the late Christopher Schueler, who made up half of this Sydney duo until his passing in early 2010, Dust Studies consists of four short sketches for guitar and dramatically manipulated vocals. The dust theme suggests an existential reading, which the music itself supports: there's a spaciousness and pervading sense of uninhabited space here, but one that shouldn't be confused with desolation.

When you think Vincent over the Sink are reclining into a comfortably identifiable pathos they abruptly throw in something genuinely confounding: such as the bulging tape warble during the otherwise austere 'Dust Sale', or the demonic vocals and mid-song termination of 'Book Dust'. These aren't forcedly wacky interventions on otherwise conventional musicianship however, because Dust Studies feels like a discomforting close range dissection of fleeting moments, of dust specks within their constellations, of the unforeseen impurities visible only with a microscope. Everything studied at close range necessarily obscures its context, and these four pieces, all except one sharing a common melodic refrain, are starkly beautiful in their calm shirking of resolution, of their tribute to something incomplete or not entirely understood. A stunning last release from one of the most imaginative bands you've probably never heard but goddamn-well should.

+

IN-FREQUENCIES #1: Absolute Boys, Pageants, Southern Comfort, Taco Leg.

IN-FREQUENCIES #2: Tough Troubles, Lakes, Brainwaves.