Features
New Noise: Alex Cameron, Wheat Fields, Tangled Star, North Arm
By Mess+Noise
Drift between Sydney, Perth and the Blue Mountains in this week’s roundup of Soundcloud offerings.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
– As previously reported, Seekae’s Alex Cameron is now cultivating a solo career for himself. The first fruit was ‘Gone South’, with a video steeped in glacial unease from photographer Mclean Stephenson. Now there’s ‘She’s Mine’, a song in which the dapper-looking Cameron implores his subject to taste something he promises is “just water.” So yeah, another sinister undercurrent in there, while the song as a whole combines his suave baritone with some pulsing electronics and fluttering synth melodies that wouldn’t be amiss in Seekae. Cameron’s first radio single, ‘She’s Mine’ was recorded in his own Surry Hills studio with Serbian guitarist/producer Fanny V. It comes out digitally next Friday (May 17).
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]She's Mine by ALKCM
– Beatles fans all the way from their psychedelic meanderings to their living-room studio Shabby Road, teenaged Blue Mountains ensemble Wheat Fields stretch out and jam under the undisguised influence of their heroes on ‘Let’s Play’. It opens their name-your-price EP Saturnalia, out now through Octopus Pi. Incorporating “old tape decks, mysteriously customised effect pedals, and mixing techniques that the band virtually made up,” among other DIY touches, the EP launches Saturday, May 25 at The Gaelic Club in Surry Hills with guests God K, Burn Antares, Bad Valley and Spoonty. It’s $10, from 8pm.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Wheat Fields - Let's Play by Mess+Noise
– Dubbed “slow-burn power pop”, ‘Head in the Sand’ is the new single from WA outfit Tangled Star. Led by longtime Perth mainstay Craig Hallsworth (The Bamboos, The Healers, Outstation, The Slow Beings), it’s a taste of Let’s Adjourn to the Garden, out 18 June through Hidden Shoal. Shuffling from lived-in guitar hooks to an unexpected piano coda, it’s a free download right here. The new album follows a pair of mini-albums from 2006 and 2008, also released on Hidden Shoal.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Tangled Star - 'Head In The Sand' by Hidden Shoal Recordings
– North Arm is the new outlet for Firekites co-founder Roderick Smith, who named it for the once-proposed capital of Australia where his family built a holiday house in 1981. The name pays tribute to Smith’s childhood summers, the fondly remembered radiance of which you can hear in ‘Quietly Lightly’. It’s the hushed opener of North Arm’s four-song debut EP Thought Lines, out now through Spunk. Recorded in collaboration with J. Walker (Machine Translations) at Walker’s home studio, the EP also had none other than Jack Ladder’s Tim Rogers overseeing its design. As for the origin of these songs, again they go back in time a ways. According to the presser: “Sifting through old hard-drives of sound penciled from 2008-2010, Rod found the energy and urgency of those early sketches impossible to ignore and steadily began reinventing them in a process that took on its own momentum.”
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]North Arm "Quitely Lightly" by SpunkRecords
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