Aus Classics That’ll Never Be On A Triple J List

While the rest of Australia are voting on the Hottest Australian Albums of All Time, SHAUN PRESCOTT, JON TJHIA and RENÉ SCHAEFER are too busy spinning “classics” by bands that will never be included on any popular list – probably even theirs.

National youth broadcaster triple j’s recent “industry” list of the best Australian albums of all time is a worrying diagnosis of our country’s dire intellectual state; our inexplicable fondness for music with melodies, verses, choruses and relatable lyrics, released on labels that are stocked in actual record stores. In an effort to right this wrong, what follows are the 10 most legendary Australian records you’ve never heard, but should. As something of a compromise, we have deigned to see eye-to-eye with “the industry” in one area: there are no Australian hip-hop records on this list.

Shaun Prescott

A Kombi
Music to Drive-By (1996)

Just over 35 minutes of Kombi Van generated noise music. If you don’t understand the appeal already why don’t you stick to your Art Vs Science records and leave me alone? Chump.

Always
F.I.S.T. (2007)

Thirty-odd minutes of looped vocalizations. Snorts, burps, “ooohs” and “aaaahs” that culminate in what some critics have loosely agreed is music, enough to have actually covered this record for music publications. What’s good for the guys in Matmos should be good for Australia’s national youth broadcaster.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Mu-Mesons / Phlegm
Split single (unknown)

We’re talking about the Mu-Mesons here: Phlegm are alright, but I wouldn’t expect anyone to actually listen to them. This 7” is so legendary and highly sought after that the internet doesn’t even know when it was released, and needless to say it’s impossible to buy. Before Jaimie Leonarder co-hosted SBS’s aborted Movie Show, and before he became known as Jay Katz – Sydney’s premier archivist of batshit crazy films – he worked as a psychiatric nurse (see also: SPK), and alongside bassist Jeffrey Urquhart founded the Mu-Mesons. Probably the only Australian group who can lay claim to the “outsider” tag (aside from Striborg), the Mu-Mesons were an improvisational troupe consisting Leonarder, Urquhart and a revolving line-up of patients. The only proper evidence of their existing is on YouTube, and even the grainy erratic footage is worth spending a couple of hours pouring over. This is strange, spontaneous music by people living emphatically outside the square. Our national youth broadcaster disgusts me.

SPK
See Saw/Chamermusik (1981)

This Sydney group, helmed by latter-day film score composer Graeme Revell (see The Insider, From Dusk Til Dawn, The Crow and, erm, Street Fighter) was formed when Revell and fellow-founder Neil Hill were working at a psychiatric hospital. Inspired by the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, a radical “Socialist Patients’ Collective” who believed that mental illness is a byproduct of capitalism, there’s a tonne of talk and hearsay in regards to SPK, more than you could ever hope to have confirmed or denied. The group were actually called SoliPsiK when they released this single on M Squared in 1981, but it’s easily the weirdest, creepiest and best Australian 7” single of all time that neither you or I own, or will ever have the money to buy. You can get it on the M Squared box set though, and if there were ever a criminally underrated Australian record label, M Squared would be it. For fans of Tame Impala.

Striborg
Solitude (2007)

My favourite Striborg album by a long shot, Solitude sees this Tasmanian convict metal icon at the very height of his powers as a miserable black metal minimalist, making Varg Vikernes’ records sound as lushly orchestrated and produced as a Karnivool album. Most will struggle to take a reclusive make-up wearing one-man metal artist seriously, but Striborg’s records are so singularly depressive, so uncompromisingly single minded and bludgeoning, that it’s impossible to find parallel. By the mid-’90s it was difficult to imagine black metal getting any more primitivist, any more anti-, but the way Striborg strips misery down to its basest, most rugged components is admirable and thoroughly bloody miserable. Hide the cyanide before you delve into this guy’s catalogue. Sadder than Angus and Julia Stone.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Severed Heads
Rotund For Success (1989)

This record is hardly “obscure”, but Australians tend to forget that it exists because it has no guitars on it. That’s OK: guitars are pretty awesome and rock music is a-okay. Please start respecting Severed Heads though, Australians. Severed Heads are true electronic pioneers and make better pop music than New Order. Tom Ellard’s live experiments with video synths, and early adoption of “multimedia” put this band on the map back in the late ’80s, long before the radio edit of ‘Dead Eyes Open’ belatedly hit triple j’s high rotation back in 1993. For as long as Australians continue to ignore this, I will continue to look upon them with a glare of superiority and condescension that could gash Bernard Fanning’s smug, bearded face from several kilometers away.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Jon Rose & Hollis Taylor
Great Fences (2002)

What could be more Australian than a record composed for and performed entirely on barbed wire? Absolutely nothing, obviously. On this record violinists Jon Rose and Hollis Taylor explore the Australian countryside armed with bows, transducers and mini-microphones. The resulting music is beautiful and strange, oddly resonant and melodious, unhampered by post-production so that the sparseness of a land-traversing stringed-instrument is captured in all its imperfect splendour. Rose has a long history of playing fences: he’s played them on the Mexico-US border, he’s played them in Israel, Finland, and he’s played them alongside the Kronos String Quartet. Wake up Australia: you’re home to the world’s pioneering fence player. Have some respect.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Nasenbluten
100% No Soul Guaranteed (1995)

Founded in Newcastle in 1994, Bloody Fist Records was a label dedicated to horrifically high-tempo electronic music that quickly became a thing of international legend. Specialising in breakcore, gabba and referential sample alchemy/exploitation, Nasenbluten were helmed by Mark Newlands (also founder of Bloody Fist) and became notorious for, among other things, releasing a limited run single called ‘Anna Wood’ on a label called Dead Girl. Their nasty marriage of power electronics shock tactics with vaguely danceable and purely psychotic electronic beats is one of the few genuinely sickening music experiences you’re likely to have in your life, and with song titles such as ‘Really Nasty Violent Sex’ and ‘Cheapcore’, the group really wore their inclinations on their record sleeves. This double LP set is nigh impossible to obtain nowadays and will fetch a hefty sum if you’re selling, triggering as it did a marginalized yet enduring sub-genre of dance for psychopaths and people on lots of dirty drugs. Like cockroaches, hardcore and certain strains of heavy metal, breakcore is here for good, for better or worse.

The Moles
Untune the Sky (1991)

It’s not all noise, metal and breakcore in the world of neglected Australian classics. This Sydney group’s debut LP is still out of print, with its last stupidly limited re-issue dating all the way back to 1999. Counting Wayne Coyne as a fan, the Moles had a small amount of success in the UK and may have built on the momentum had they not disbanded in 1993 (songwriter Richard Davies released a solo record under the name The Moles in 1994). Untune the Sky is a surprisingly sophisticated psych-pop record – grainy in a slightly damaged Velvets way, but replete with the sentiment and yearning that all good indie pop records should consider a pre-requisite. Considering the direction of underground Australian indie during the last five years, it’s astonishing that this group isn’t revered universally. No fashion. No fun. Just broken hearts.

Sadistik Exekution
We are Death – Fukk You (1994)

What’s good for murdered Scandinavian Satanists is good for the broader Australian public. Actually, scratch that: this band is so comprehensively screwed up that it’s safer if the Bryce Courtenay reading, Masterchef watching, Fairfax life-styled, Birds of Tokyo- listening Australian public don’t ever know about them. But it’s too late, because Sadistik Exekution did have their own brush with the mainstream: bassist Dave Slave smashed his guitar on national television as part of Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s Red Faces spot back in the early ’90s, and later appeared as “the alien” in a Real McCoy snack foods ad (he later announced he’d be pursuing a serious acting career).

Sadistik Exekution’s career was rife with disastrous shows and snotty antagonism, but their records – especially this one – are terrifying. The production on We Are Death… goes a long way to explain why the Scandinavian black metal bands loved them so much: the reverberated vocals screech from molten tundras of treble, the blast beats are blurred into one glutenous texture and the keyboards sustain eerie, wavering notes that sound like the lullabies of a Macquarie Fields death cult. SE is a spit in the face of all the smart, studiedly “bogan” punk groups out there. These guys were true bogan metal pioneers. And they scare the living shit out of me.

(Postscript: I had occasion to unwittingly “meet” and drink several beers with guitarist Kriss Hades at a Wolf Eyes concert in 2006. His girlfriend at the time advised me that he lives in a dungeon.)

Jon Tjhia

Minimum Chips
Kitchen Tea Thank You (2005)

A quick question: have any actual criminals been ever been judged “criminally underrated”? Kitchen Tea Thank You showcases their trademark, a genius interplay of smooth'n'spiky. For a band that a) have been around forever and b) are masters of oblique and direct pop alike, the only appropriate comparison would be if James D'Silva turned out to actually be Ned Kelly, who preserved himself under a polar ice cap for 130 years waking only to slay a few prostitutes in 1888. Or if the “music industry” of Australia still actually believed that The Whitlams' Eternal Nightcap was more than an accidental confluence of poor taste and the word “aphrodisiac”.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Oren Ambarchi
Insulation (1999)

Before fame befell the talented experimental guitarist, forcing him to cave to rock critics and focus on vanity doom projects and Red Hot Chili Pepper collaborations, he released this brilliant document of the breadth of sounds that can be squeezed and teased from the humble six-string. It's rumored within the industry that Augie March stole this album's original title, Moo, You Bloody Choir. Ambarchi has been tellingly silent on the issue.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Pompey
Fifty Gallon Drum (2007)

Putting aside the fact that its 13 inventive, ramshackle, compelling pieces of exploded electronics are freely downloadable, Rowan McNaught's hollowed out melodies and intuitive structures are highly evolved, and not in a Vines way.

Fabulous Diamonds
Fabulous Diamonds (2008)

It's actually a miracle Fabulous Diamonds' first LP didn't make triple j's list, which so prominently (10%!) features the work of revered butthole Nick Cave, a figure not surprising given that ARIA dude Ed St John has apparently labeled the guy “beyond comparison, beyond genre, beyond dispute” and Australians hate to argue with their masters about The Arts. However, on this record, Fabulous Diamonds do sound like they're playing in a Cave, and are similarly deadpan. Can't really hear the words, but they're probably about sex addicted call centre staff or something. Perhaps they were overlooked because his website gets more pageviews than theirs, which is significant in terms of “digital”.

The Motifs
Away (2007)

At 38 minutes, Away is to Melburnian truncated pop outfit The Motifs what a five-disc box set would be to most bands, except most Australian artists can't claim a majority of cardigan'd and bespectacled devotees under the age of 45. Over the past decade they've consistently made music so sweet and brief and melodic that it makes Cog seem like … oh, I don't know: some awful, awful pseudo-mind-expanding prog rock band with goatees and bad fonts and drum clinics and an iPhone app and chewed vowel sounds and three legs.

Mark Barrage
Delays (2008)

Around the time The Drones began cultivating messy hairstyles and The Presets were honing their sleaze beams, Mark Barrage — Mark Gomes, and until this point, just Barrage — was arranging his sharp, shuffling, drum hits and beeps on a ProTools timeline without the help of a sequencer. This contributed heavily to Delays' strange, lurching character and clumsy menace; also creditable are a menagerie of low-bitrate guitar samples, pokey synth lines and the devil-may-care attitude that would see Gomes swinging his microphone on stage before unleashing a howl of tape noise. Apparently Dave Graney likes it. Why didn't he get to vote?

Pimmon
P-Waves (2002)

A compilation of 10 tracks originally released overseas (including on highly regarded labels like Fat Cat and Static Caravan), P-Waves was released in an edition of 50 copies for the laptop artist's 2002 shows in Brisbane and Perth. As one of the finest examples of Australian computer music in the y2k era (backup your files, man!), shy Paul Gough's music was well received overseas, where nobody has heard of Paul Kelly, Regurgitator, Jebediah, Augie March, Hoodoo Gurus, Powderfinger, Gerling, The Cruel Sea, The Living End, Hilltop Hoods, Def Wish Cast or John Farnham. (Once, someone came close, but mum interrupted to insist they have some more salad. After that, the moment had passed.)

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

Castings
live at sound&fury (2005)

A million times better than O/S losers like Black Dice, this collective administered the iconic Surry Hills warehouse venue Yvonne Ruve and are now partially responsible for the Vox Cyclops record store in Newcastle. Always visceral, unpretentious to the point of pretense and in every way unplanned, live at sound&fury — recorded in-store and the debut release of its eponymous label — finds a group who could be entirely loose with their sonics, yet more rock than the rockiest rockists of the best 100 rock-a-doodle-do rocks of all rocking time.

René Schaefer

The Bedridden
It’s All Fun And Games Until Someone Loses An Eye (1989)

A bunch of feral Adelaide via Canberra squatter types, obsessed with children’s television and the domestic dramas of their friends, unleashed an album of hyper-active acoustic folk-punk ditties. They built a fanbase of equally disenfranchised outsiders, who appreciated their unhinged sense of humour and ridiculous musical talent, but somehow this classic album has languished in obscurity. Maybe the world just wasn’t ready for songs about Glühwein, sheepdogs and bicycles. Sure, The Bedridden introduced the songwriting talents and off-beat guitar thrash of Kirsty Stegwazi, but the fate of this band was aptly summed up in their subsequent album title I Told You It Wouldn’t Work. Pity.

Thug
Mechanical Ape/Proud Idiots On Parade (1987)

Before Tex Perkins became everybody’s favourite cuddly Chewbacca impersonator, he was the bug-eyed frontman of experimental duo Thug. Peter Read created most of the music, which sounded like The Residents on PCP, let loose in a junk shop. Thug were best known for their stupendous single ‘Fuck Your Dad’, but this double album, choc-a-block with short bursts of insanity, was designed to wear out the patience of even the most seasoned obscurantist. It didn’t help that their live shows often consisted of the band pelting the audience with rubbish and food scraps, while their electronic din was fed through an old 1960s console stereo. Baffling, unpalatable and absolutely genius.

Slub
Live Peace Blood Music (1986)

A live album, released on cassette, was never going to set the world on fire, but Melbourne’s Slub created some of the most intensely dense, messy and downright unsettling music ever. Their screaming, repetitive dirges were the stuff of nightmares. John Murphy (ex-Whirlywirld) and Sonke Rickertsen, who had played in a very early version of My Bloody Valentine, created a fetid brew of sonic sludge, while Vikki Riley wailed her guts out. The noises captured on this particular recording made Flipper sound like Australian Crawl. It still stands as one of the most exciting documents of a live performance ever. When the band tried to capture the same magic on their studio album Roottmann a couple of years later, they sounded positively anemic by comparison.

Open Wound
Blastasfuck (2004)

Back in the late 1990s, Open Wound were the most brutal grindcore band known to humanity. They never ventured far from their spiritual home at North Melbourne’s sadly defunct Arthouse, but their live shows remain the stuff of legend. Singer Jay would give a long-winded semi-pisstake introduction to each song, before the band launched into a 30-second whirlwind of machinegun beats, shredding guitars and barked vocals. This album was recorded back in 1999, but only surfaced five years later in a limited edition of 400 copies on the Polish label Antiself Production. That’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face, as this recording remains one of the peaks of its genre. The most epic song on this album is 1.40 minutes long, while the shortest clocks in at seven seconds! Members of Open Wound went on to play in The Kill, another great Melbourne punk band. Broodle!

Chris Smith
Cabin Fever (1998)

The title of this album says it all, really. Cabin Fever is the sound of one guy locked away in a room, birthing a masterpiece from the mess in his head. Australia didn’t really produce any analogues to the plethora of great New Zealand underground artists of the 1980s and ’90s, such as Alastair Galbraith, Peter Jefferies or Roy Montgomery, except for Chris Smith. Each song on this album is a perfect miniature of domestic musical creation. It’s lyrical, downbeat, intimate, but never too sweet or twee. There is a palpable edge and nervousness to each track, that speaks of late nights and bad chemicals. Released to little fanfare, Cabin Fever soon disappeared off people’s radar. It didn’t help that Smith refused to play these songs live, preferring to create amorphous guitar drone-scapes instead. These days he is treading more conventional musical paths, but Cabin Fever still stands as a work of startling originality.

ON
ON (2006)

ON were the band that preceded ZOND. Beyond the phonetic similarity, they consisted of the same core members, with the addition of the twin bass attack of New Zealanders Elise Bishop and Toni Kendall. Listening to their self-titled album one can hear the origins of the ZOND sound, but there is something way more punk happening here as well. The single ‘We’ve Got TV’ is a potent blast of fury, while some of the other tracks plod along with the acid-fried Sabbath heaviness of primo Butthole Surfers. Two bass guitars ensure that proceedings never stray too far from the central riffage. There is a structure and intelligence to these tunes that lifts them above the average noise rock throw-shit-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks philosophy. It hurts, but it hurts so good.

No
Glory For The Shit For Brains (1987)

Ollie Olsen is a bit of a forgotten hero of the Australian music world. Before he crossed over into techno and dance music, thereby destroying a lot of the kudos he had with the punk and experimental crowd, he had fronted The Young Charlatans in the late-’70s and Whirlywirld in the early days of the next decade. With his band No, he mined territory not too far removed from New York’s Suicide. The crucial difference was the addition of Michael Sheridan on guitar and Marie Hoy on keyboards. As a fully-fledged band they created an intensity far beyond synth-based dance rock. Olsen’s manner was confrontational and challenging, and his lyrics tackled reality head-on. Glory remains a relentlessly physical album, propulsive in its mechanical beats, but equally emotional in its delivery. The title track alone is worth its weight in gold.

Flying Phallas Part 2
Flying Phallas Part 2 (1997)

Somewhere in between winding up Hobart punk band Mouth and getting serious about his subsequent band Sea Scouts, guitarist Tim Evans created this solo album of semi-improvised guitar-scapes. It all sounds tossed off without much thought, mostly straight to tape, but there is such a range of sounds here, from pastoral beauty to harrowing frenzy, that it still resonates today. In fact, it exists outside of time or context, instead creating a universe all of its own. Clattering string scrapes, warm feedback tones, lulling drones and eviscerating attacks all proceed from each other, yet they never compete for the listener’s attention or become clichéd. If ever there was an album of abstract sound that invites the listener in it is this one. Beauty and decay, dissipation and hope – it’s all here.