Grey Daturas - Return to Disruption (Neurot) 2008

You know I only walked into my local record store to buy sunroof! but walked out with this as well.  The Grey Daturas are a trio from Melbourne who have been churning out their particular brand of antipodean  noise for a couple of years now. Some don’t regard what they do as noise, and I get the hesitation. For the most part the Grey Daturas churn out a wonderfully satisfying brand of heavy psychedelic guitar workout but they also allow a more experimental, and dare I say noisy, side to come to the fore. This is a very good record. It’s actually the first full length I’ve heard from them and it threw me in many ways. There are only seven tracks on Return to Disruption but they seem to cover a bundle of different noise style over the length of the album.

When I was listening to the first track I thought: Lightning Bolt but less arty farty and less annoying.   But if that’s the only thing I’d heard I would have developed a very wrong impression of this very impressive band. The second album titled track owes more to the kitchen-sink sound and drone experiments of Sandoz Lab Technicians. The third track starts off sounding like Lightning Bolt before taking an abrupt left turn into Birchville territory. A pure drone track was certainly not expected but considering that I’m a bit partial to droneI was pretty happy with its inclusion. I suppose the one major impression I get from listening to Return to Disruption is the heavy influence of The Dead C. Just like the Dead C, the Grey Daturas are not afraid to mix up their styles.

By the time we get half way through we’re firmly in the land of doom before descending into a psych-metal freakout. There is still time for another avant-garde Dead C-esque noise experiment before the whole thing is closed out by two psych metal melt downs (think Boris ). It’s a great album and well worth picking up if you’re interested at all in noise, drone, sludge psych and doom.

This was recorded in 2006 mixed last year and released a couple of weeks ago. Somehow I don’t think this band are going to be churning out a shit load of product any time soon.  Return To Disruption almost plays like a well thought out noise sampler and certainly puts Australian noise on the map even if it does remind me of a stack of bands from across the Tasman Sea.

Live in Oakland 2007

Thug - Everything is Beautiful in It’s Own Way (Universal) 2001

Lucas Abela (Justioce Yeldham) criticised me for not covering more Australian noise music so here’s one from the vaults.

Thug were a shotlived band from Sydney who released a cople of records in the late 1980’s on the avant rock label Black Eye. Besides also being the home of Kim Salmon and the Surrealists, Lubricated Goart and the Butcher Shop, the actual output of Black Eye was pretty limited. The mover and shaker behind Thug was the awesome TexPerkins who also fronted The Butcher Shop, Salamander Jim, The Beasts of Bourbon and later Cruel Sea. In Australia he is best know for his work with the Cruel Sea, a twangy pub rockband that actually won Best Band at Australia’s equivalent to the Grammys (an ARIA) ten years or so ago. When you consider his output in Thug (scroll down for a video snippet) you’ll understand that to those who remembered Tex from his early days his later success was a bit of a shock. For those overseas it’s the equivalent Aaron Dilloway from Wolf Eyes fronting up for an MTV award after forming a supergroup with Wilco.

Unfortunately the only thing I could of Thug’s short lived output is this hobbled together compilation released 13 years after the band folded. The fact that it this was released on Universal is an ongoing mystery to me. I mean, what the fuck were they thinking? It’s difficult to reconcile this with the full length albums they released but over its 28 tracks Everything … seems to cover the majority of their output.

The incredibly frustrating thing about this record is the complete lack of liner notes. Thug have an interesting history and their story deserves to be told. The tracks themselves span the gamit of experimental music. Some of their outputsounds like the intense noise fuck of Whitehouse, the frenetic cut and paste technique of John Wiese, the bonged out psychedelia of Butthole Surfers, the fart joke ambience of the early Boredoms records and a hunderd other strange and wacky bands through the ages. Although the compilation itself is disappointing due to the lack of info or context, Thug deserve to be heard by more people.

The excellent Dave from Lexicon Devil has a very good write up.

manwithoutshame.blogspot.com/2004/09/thug-mechanical-apeproud-idiots-parade.html

I’ve posted the first thing of Thug’s that I’d ever heard. This is from the excellent Carry on Disarming video released by the NME in 1988.

Crime and the City Solution - The Bride Ship (Mute) 1989

It’s nostalgia time again. I’ve previously posted on the very stupid decision I made many years ago to dispense with my collection of vinyl. One of my favourite records that was lost in the purge was The Bride Ship. I decided I couldn’t take a risk of this one being deleted and bought myself the CD version last week.

The Bride Ship is just as good as I remembered and invokes all of the same antipodean longing that The Triffids, Go Betweens and Nick Cave did so well as displaced locals abroad. Crime and the City Solution were never as lauded as their contemporaries which I’ve never fully understood. I suppose the band name itself is a bit stupid  and I admit that  until I had heard this record when I was still in high school, I had always assumed they were some early 1980’s  English rap band like Brother D and the Collective Effort.

Crime and the City Solution were fronted by Simon Bonney and hosted the awesome Mick Harvey from the Bad Seeds and Birthday Party, Rowland S Howard from the Birthday Party and various blow-ins from Einstruzende Neubeten. By the time The Bride Ship came out Howard had left and some consider this record to be the start of the downward slide. Don’t believe them. They were as smart as the Triffids and this record in particular needs to be heard by more people.

For your listening pleasure the first track, The Shadow of No Man

Lubricated Goat - Paddock of Love (Black Eye) 1988

The late 1980’s were halcyon days for Australian rock. There were a plethora of great Australia labels like Au Go Go , Red Eye and Citadel releasing music that I don’t think was ever bettered. One of my favourite bands from that era is Lubricated Goat, the sleazy, lurching rock pigs of Sydney. Fronted by the dignity-free Stu Spasm, they released the all mighty Paddock of Love in 1988 on Red Eye’s avant sister label Black Eye (also the home to the fury of Thug, Tex Perkins experimental nosie band). Overseas readers may remember Mr Spasm from his membership in the quasi-supergroup of Crunt (with Babes in Toylands Kat Bjelland and John Spencer Blues Expolsion’s Russell Simmins) that released a self-titled record on the much missed Trance Syndicate label. Lubricated Goat were also released on Amphetamine Reptile and had a single of two released by Sub Pop. To my mind they are like a fine antipodean example of pre-grunge pub rock.

Sadly this record in now out of print and I managed to secure this mint copy on ebay last year. In fact all of the Red Eye and Black Eye releases are now out of print, Kim Salmon and the Surrealists (if anyone wants to sell me a copy of Hit Me with That Surreal Feel on CD leave a comment), Beast of Bourbon and Thug are bands that defined an era but whose records are now very hard to find.

Lubricated Goat would have managed to slip under the radar in Austalia had it not been for a performance on Andrew Denton’s talk show Blah Blah Blah in 1988. Blah Blah Blah for overseas readers was the ABC’s (Australia’s BBC equivalent) attempt at edgy youth programming. Below is the video for In The Raw which you may have guessed Australian slang for being naked. Lip-synching nude on Australian TV? Brave, very brave.

Died Pretty - Winterland

Lord this takes me back. Mr Ron Peno may be the strangest looking man in rock but fuck could he write a mean tune. He’s still releasing records. The last one was with Robert Forster(Go Betweens)  as the Darling Downs.