First Five on Shuffle - Pt. 2

Alright suckers, time for another instalment of everyone’s favourite, most irregular music column. This is the one where I set the Digital Audio Player to “Shuffle,” we see what comes out and I offer you a few words and ideas.

No. 1: This Heat – ‘Test Card II’

‘Test Card II’ nicely bookends the first This HeatHHeat album.  The opener, ‘Test Card I,’ is basically forty-seven seconds of silence that fuck with the uninitiated listener. They crank the volume, lean into the speaker before ‘Horizontal Hold’ blasts them back. This one, the closer, drifts off into the ether: a final call; a signal fading forever.

I used to get really bugged by the ambient tape-work This Heat would put together for their albums. I’ve been guilty of skipping past them to get to ‘A New Kind of Water’ or ‘Twilight Furniture.’ I wanted to get to hard stuff; where I thought the real power was.  The “Deceit” tracks at least had some weight behind them: ‘Radio Prague’ is pretty much the sound of trying to pick up Eastern Europe through a Cold War blizzard; ‘Hi Baku Shyo’ is a prayer for victims of modern Asian wars. ‘Water’, from this album, is industrial Gamelan, from the depths of Cold Storage.

But thinking about it now, the albums wouldn’t be able to work without them. If it wasn’t for these breaks, the extra bit of space to let the listener drift and contemplate, she might not be as open to the songs that follow. Considering a lot of the louder songs are as frightening and claustrophobic as anything you’re likely to hear, it’s nice to know they were thinking of the listener. It is the mark of proper craftsmen. That these guys can piece together a record - a document of all their experiments - and shape it into a cohesive whole is a testament to their incredible minds.

No. 2: Fax – ‘Bosque’

I put together a review of this album about three years back, around the time it came out.  It was one of those rare titles that made it out of the review pile and into regular rotation. It had the right vibe, the right slowness, for late-night novel reading. Fax is from Mexico; Bosque is the name given to the evergreen gallery forests along the Rio Grande in New Mexico, from the Spanish word for woodland. I don’t know if this track feels organic enough to remind me of a forest: too many processors, compression, electro-blab. But it’s very slow moving, entirely beatless.  And whereas the other tracks kick that kind of deep bass, this one meanders and piles on more and more instruments and effects all slipping in slipping out with nothing to hold onto, floating just outside your line of sight.

No. 3: Mozart – ‘Aprite un po’ quegl’occhi’  (from Marriage of Figaro)

So Figaro’s pretty cut up about finding out his girl, Susanna, gave a pin as a present to the Count. He figures they’re fucking behind his back. He goes and tells his Mum that he’s gonna go on some, like, crusade against these guys and against unfaithful chicks in general.  And now he’s hanging out in the garden with Basilio who’s just told him some shit about how foolish he was to believe in this chick Susanna and that he, Basilio, was once young and a bit of a fuckwit to boot. So Figaro’s thinking, fuck, what is it with these chicks? They tell you one thing then change their minds and have it off with someone else. Open your fucken eyes, guys. These chicks who you reckon are all that, who charm you and woo you and tell you the sweetest secrets and make you feel incredible when you’ve got them between the sheets and . . . and . . . Il resto nol dico, gia ognun lo sa!

No. 4: Beastie Boys – So What’cha Want

Play it fucken loud.

No. 5: David Bowie – ‘Red Money’

Another excellent bookend to finish us off. This one not just an album closer but the final word from one of the Bowie’s most intriguing and fruitful periods. Bowie marked the beginning of his ‘Berlin’ days by working on Iggy Pop’s first solo album, The Idiot. The first track off that was ‘Sister Midnight,’ a loose kraut-funk nightmare. Bowie ended this period with the Lodger album. The last cut from that album is this, ‘Red Money,’ which is a reworking of the aforementioned Iggy track, the drums and bass and one line of the lyric keep in. ‘Sister Midnight’ was originally put together by Bowie and Carlos Alomar and performed on the ‘Station to Station’ tour before they offered it to Iggy.  And Dave and Iggy got to perform it together on the TV in 1977.

‘Red Money’ itself is has Dave counting the cost of duty and obligation. As the man himself said around the time of the album’s release, “Red boxes keep cropping up in my paintings, and they represent responsibility.” The lyrics, taken as they are, keep along the abstract word association path Bowie trod all through the late 70’s. But the guy, from here, seems set for mediocrity. No more thinking you’re an alien. No more diet of milk, cocaine and capsicum. And no more picking up German transsexuals in cabaret bars. It’s time to take a break, watch your kids grow up, marry a supermodel and watch you influence grow.

Naked, Mess O' Reds, Treehouse - Friday 24/2/2012, Brisbane Hotel

The nature of Hobart’s underground guitar music – only a couple of bars sympathetic to the sounds, the sometimes-months-long gaps between gigs  – means that not every band gets to establish themselves, to build solid performances or solid audiences. This can also mean that bands are constantly in flux, constantly re-making themselves, and that every time they get up on stage they are offering their songs in ways that may never again be seen.

The first of last Friday’s bands, Treehouse, would have been lucky to get past security – they looked only a couple of weeks past 16. They opened with a loud evocation of alcoholic mess then slipped easily into a kind of wordless art-rock groove. The feel was loose as fuck and a lot of the songs the three guys (the simplest make-up of guitar, bass and drums) blitzed through in the best possible way. They had a lot of ideas that lesser groups might like to sit and jam on, explore the sound for a time. But Treehouse were keen to throw a song out there, let it do its thing and not let it outstay its welcome. The singer stood straight, awkward, and screamed through his songs, largely directing the rest of the band. The last couple of numbers unfortunately had the guys on different pages - often an intriguing sign though of a band finding their footing.

Mess O’ Reds looked like, to borrow a friend’s phrase, Treehouse a couple of years down the line. Same three piece make-up, same positions on stage, even down to the bass player affecting his mate’s lost-and-bored look. A couple of songs in and the area in front of the stage beginning to fill, kids were streaming in, starting to buck and sway. The singer came on all shouty, trying to push his guitar off his body as his screamo instincts kicked in. The last fifteen minutes of the set were marred by a mixer who was either deaf or uninterested in his job and decided to do nothing about the too- loud bass. The guy holding the instrument onstage seemed clueless – it probably sounded fine to him up there – but down the front the more interesting parts of the songs, here played by the guitar, were completely lost.

The nervousness and anticipation from the now solid audience while Naked were setting up filled the room with a most delicious tension, the band being heckled before they had a chance to slam into the first song. The Justin Timberlake smoothed things into a sexy groove (maybe another mistake by the man on the sound board, but this time a welcome one).

Naked is the project headed by one Kieran Sullivan and originally conceived and recorded solo in some dank Sandy Bay bedsit. Said recordings were mostly put together on acoustic instruments plugged into computers that push everything to its limit, leaving it quivering with electricity (and not too far from early, acoustic Kitchen’s Floor). To flesh out and ratchet up the live sound Kieran has pulled together three friends: Robert on guitar, Jordan on bass and Mysterious Drummer Guy on tubs. Onstage the need to just be loud and obnoxious and fun makes for proper audience enjoyment. The songs themselves are manic. Some are structured; some are simply moans and feedback and knockabout beats. Kieran stomped about the stage gripping the mic at its base, hollering his dejection in a voice that was toneless, faux-dumb and properly fierce. He had shirts flung onto his face from a couple of male admirers who started a four-man mosh and danced while the band drive full-bore through their set.

Not every amateur gets a chance to make a musical mark. But if you’re in the right place at the right time and manage to pay witness to some clever heads putting together this kind of raw, debased guitar music it  won't just transform you. It’ll make you a better human.