Our weekly fix of the best new music as Julia Mason (aka The Decibel Decoder) brings us her reviews of new music with singles from Party Dozen Money & The Drugs and Gut Health Cool Moderator
Artist: Party Dozen
Track: Money & The Drugs
Sydney punks Party Dozen (Kirsty Tickle and Jonathan Boulet) have released Money & the Drugs from their forthcoming fourth album Crime in Australia, out 6 September via Temporary Residence. What a flipping wondrous racket this is. Wild and free, raucous and thrilling. The opening build up demands the attention, with the drums then leading the way with an undercurrent of saxophone. This is rock 'n' roll and then some, all fire and brimstone, teetering on the edge and literally hanging onto the riff.
Jonathan shared the following: "The first section of this song is inspired by a sound that we heard at the airport pick up zone in Sydney. A small aircraft coming in to land low would project this low bending rumble into the cement car park filling it with resonant frequencies. Money & The Drugs features Kirsty really letting it out into her saxophone void. Then it picks up a coupla gears into a rockin’ frenzy. It’s one of our most fun songs to play live. But sometimes too much of a good thing can land you in deep water. Sometimes this song gets away from us.’
The accompanying video is a blistering live performance filmed at New Zealand festival Camp A Low Hum by Aaron Streatfeild and Will Agnew, and edited by Jonathan. It captures the energy of a performance the group felt just might have been their best.
The new album Crime In Australia was written, recorded, produced and mixed by the duo themselves in their studio in Marrickville, Sydney. The location was more of an influence than on previous occasions, as Jonathan explains: "Marrickville in the 1960s-70s was a notorious crime hot spot. If a car was stolen, or someone was missing, they’d look for them in Marrickville. Since then, the area has been highly gentrified and slowly the once grimy industrial warehouse lined streets are being swapped for monstrous apartment blocks with palm trees.
We began without any theme in mind, just the beginnings of some song ideas. As we were discovering the songs for this album, each song felt more and more at home in an old cop tv series soundtrack. The crime theme quickly became apparent. The record feels split into two contrasting sides: The first half is ‘order’, being as listenable as Party Dozen has ever been. Each song is law abiding and dignified in its own place. The second half is ‘disorder,’ becoming more unlawful, unhinged, louder and noisier.”
Apparently the album is an exploration of their “many dumb ideas”. Bring. It. On.
Party Dozen Tour Dates
November
17 - BE Brussels, Ancienne Belgique*
18 - NL Utrecht, Tivoli*
19 - DE Cologne, Carslwerk Victoria*
21 - DK Copenhagen, VEGA*
22 - DE Hamburg, Grosse Freiheit 36*
23 - DE Berlin, Columbiahalle*
25 - DE Munich, Tonhalle*
26 - CH Lausanne, Les Docks*
27 - FR Paris, Olympia*
* - w/ Amyl and the Sniffers
* * *
Artist: Gut Health
Track: Cool Moderator
Naarm/Melbourne’s hypnotic dance-punk sextet Gut Health have announced their debut album Stiletto set for release on 11 October via Highly Contagious/AWAL. To accompany this news they have released new single Cool Moderator.
This has such a groovy yet edgy vibe. The initial chaotic opening settles into a funky twangy rhythm which is sharp and set up for dancefloor. Each of the six members of Gut Health come from vastly different corners of music - soundscape design, jazz, brash punk, folk, R&B - and therein lies the joy. The combination of influences creates its own soundscape. This is music to put a smile on your face and twitches in your body. Cool Moderator finishes too quickly, and I have to admit the repeat button was hit many times!
Gut Health have also announced the return of Highly Contagious, now reimagined as the label imprint on which Stiletto will be released. Highly Contagious was first founded by Gut Health’s bassist Adam Markmann with Fergus Sinclair (Romero) and Rowena Lloyd as a label and zine that celebrated the outsiders of music and art that they love and admire, and earlier this year reappeared as a series of curated live events at Brunswick Music Festival. Now revived as Gut Health’s label home and hub for special projects and events, run by Adam with singer Athina Uh oh, Highly Contagious exists as a means to help facilitate the sharing and support of independent music and the creative communities it exists within.
With regards to the album the band shares: “Uncertainty plays a lot through the album, we don’t want the listener to know exactly what is going to come next in the album to create excitement, intrigue and unease when faced with a present unknown.”
Expect the unexpected then. On hearing Cool Moderator I'm in.
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