Features
New Noise: Lindsay Phillips, Pencil, Tim Coster, Halt Ever
By Mess+Noise
It’s an all-Melbourne roundup of Soundcloud offerings this week – at least, if you count an expat living in Sweden and a transplanted Kiwi native.
[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]
– The last we heard from Lindsay Phillips, the unique-voiced Melbourne songwriter was headed to Sweden after the release of second album Taedium Vitae. He’s still there, and prepping a third album, Solguden, for release. Marked by the man’s chirruping vocal delivery and stark approach to lyrics and arrangements both, the free-download single ‘The Crossing’ is the remarkable first taste. It was written and recorded in a Swedish forest using a “glorified Dictaphone,” then mastered by Melbourne legend Simon Grounds. According to Phillips’ website, Solguden is due in August.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Lindsay Phillips - The Crossing by Mess and Noise
– Ocean Party bassist Liam “Snowy” Halliwell continues to develop his other band Pencil, last encountered on a super-limited 7” and jumping up and down in a forest. The new single ‘Good Excuse’ heads up a three-song CD-R with handcrafted cover and limited to just 10. It’s sung with perfectly coy charm by Ashley Bundang (also of Zone Out and Hot Palms) and is backed with the Halliwell-sung ‘Second Tier Business School’ and the André home demo ‘Favours’. (André plays in Pencil too, along with The Ocean Party’s Jordan Thompson and Bundang’s ZO/HP bandmate Zahra Khamissa.) The band’s next gig is Friday, August 16 at The Rochester in Melbourne with Great Outdoors and fellow Ocean Party offshoot Shark Alarm, who are launching their debut tape.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Pencil - Good Excuse by Mess and Noise
– Auckland native Tim Coster is now based in Melbourne, where he recorded his new work A Moment’s Ornament at home. A free download from Room40, it’s a collection of brief modular-synthesis vignettes described by the label as “music experienced in miniature.” Says the presser further: “Informed by a rich tonal base, Coster creates spacious sonic motions that flutter and arc with what can only be described as ‘casual intent’.” The record takes it name from an alternate title for Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth that quotes Wordsworth’s poem ‘She was a Phantom of Delight’. Absorb the persistent buzz and feedback wobble of the 75-second ‘Change’.
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]change by ROOM40
– Lodged between prickly punk and noisy shoegaze, Melbourne’s Halt Ever rip right through their new single ‘Thrown’ without obscuring a very bubbly melodic core. (It’s worth noting that their cited influences include The Wipers, The Jam, Wire, Swans, Suicide, Spacemen 3 and Christian Death.) The song is lifted from their upcoming EP Youth Index, out early next month on tape and CD-R. Their previous tape, the three-song debut Therapy, is still available from Unwound. Having already launched the single at Gasometer, the band are doing a string of gigs locally and beyond in the coming weeks.
Fri, July 18 – The Reverence, Footscray, VIC [8pm, $5]
Fri, Aug 9 – Bar Open, Fitzroy, VIC
Sat, Aug 10 – Animal House, Adelaide, SA [all ages, 8pm, $8]
[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.]Thrown - Halt Ever by haltever
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