New Noise: Fonz Whaler, The Cathys, Rituals, Shoeb Ahmad

This week’s roundup of new music makes stops in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

– Brisbane’s Tom Kakanis makes low-key music with squishy depth as Fonz Whaler, an outlet for his mostly instrumental dream-pop musings. The six songs on his self-titled debut EP have the heavy-lidded prettiness of Galaxie 500, although his crystalline guitar playing gets friskier on the seven-minute ‘Milestones’, which starts off like the score of a quirky short film but soon settles into more patient, John Fahey-esque passages. Kakanis puts in a rare (and yet quite nice) bit of lead vocals on the closing ‘Hylo’, but the real star is that guitar, winking and twinkling its way into the distance.

– A Sydney quartet linking members of King Tears Mortuary, Julia Why?, Hell Setzer and Plum, The Cathys have finally followed up their free three-song demo from last year. Their new material may be limited to just two minutes, but ‘Rebble’ is an anxious, loping slice of guitar-pop that seems to lovingly mock Billy Idol’s ‘Rebel Yell’. Fleeting but fun, it’s the first taste of their upcoming debut EP, Hysterical Monument.

– Melbourne producer Rituals has been fairly quiet since September’s Ceramic Spaces EP, which we praised for its “layered, ambient shapeshifting”, but there’s a brief new slice of high-grade wooziness in ‘Clima.i’. The shivering track, paired with the above image by Rachael Archibald, dovetails neatly with Rituals’ gig tomorrow (Feb 5) at The Liberty Social in Melbourne, supporting Cambodian/French electronic tinkerer Lafidki along with Tlaotlon and ∏Ø. It’s just $5 at the door, with more info here.

– Shoeb Ahmad plays in Spartak and the new band Agency, as well as having a hand in Canberra experimental label hellosQuare. He also finds time for solo work, and his track ‘Horses (A Coda’) was included in last year’s weekly singles club from London label Mystery Plays. Now it’s on the label’s new digital collection of those singles, although you can also buy it individually. Recorded back in 2008, the song was written for M+N contributor Adam D Mills, who died in 2010; Ahmad has decided to release it in his memory. It’s a warped and quietly pretty track, blurring the lines between different cryptic textures and Ahmad’s faint, half-whispered vocals. It seems to linger for much longer than its lovely three-and-a-half minutes.

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To nominate new music for this column, email us at news@messandnoise.com.