HTRK

http://blowinguptheworkshop.com/project/gast

INVOCATIONS II
(THE OBELISK OF TJ // AGE OF APATHY TAPE)

RECORDED WEEK 42 OCTOBER 2014

“POOR LIL TOMMY WHO LOST HIS WAY. FALSE SUMMITS EVERYWHERE.”

34 ◆ John T. Gast

LST - Lego Swept Terrains (A1 from LP, Th Duo)

Vincent Over The Sink - Redmund & Winston

Welcome to Seymour (pop. 6,360). Have a beer, mate. And listen to the warm drone, like very big bees.

Released 10th of June. 

Order: http://bit.ly/1SU99C4

YouTube: http://bit.ly/1T7linC

Tackle - Benzedrine

"...swaggers like a baddun, thumbs in belt-loops like some OG farmboy on a friday night during the local disco’s industrial hour..."

Tackle - Stung

Tackle - AGR 803

Magda Mayas (piano, DE), Monika Brooks (accordion, AU) and Laura Altman (clarinet, AU) release an echt zeit musik LP from a 2014 ABC studio session in Sydney. This forbiddingly beautiful and jagged real-time orchestration brings together extended technique improvisations to conjure a vast sound imagery that shifts from wide, empty pastures to terrifying Schwarzwald isolation and claustrophobia.



Great Waitress - Pleats (excerpt)

“Today will not bring those visions.”

Presenting the unsettling sound world of Great Waitress’ Hue.

Magda Mayas (piano, DE), Monika Brooks (accordion, AU) and Laura Altman (clarinet, AU) release an echt zeit musik LP from a 2014 ABC studio session in Sydney. This forbiddingly beautiful and jagged real-time orchestration brings together extended technique improvisations to conjure a vast sound imagery that shifts from wide, empty pastures to terrifying Schwarzwald isolation and claustrophobia.

Order: http://anotherdarkage.bigcartel.com/product/great-waitress-hue-pre-order

Great Waitress - Ribboning (excerpt)

Pre-order: http://anotherdarkage.bigcartel.com/product/exek-biased-advice-another-dark-age

Another Dark Age is proud to release Exek's debut LP, Biased Advice, which follows one self-titled cassette EP (2014) and a single contribution to a split cassette (2015). The album collects rerecorded and past material, which together stands as the fullest realisation of an Exek identity, honed during two years of haunting Melbourne’s live gig circuit. 

Before forming as a four-piece band in 2014, Exek remained an abstract concept in the mind of front man-to-be, Albert Wolski. With songs written but no musicians to perform them he enlisted Andrew Brocchi (synthesiser), Henry Wilson (bass) and Sam Dixon (drums) and together they began recording material according to Wolski 's vision.

"Then they were there, on my arms, on my legs, everywhere." - 'Foregin Lesions'

The addition of Nell Grant on saxophone made previously murky reference points plainly obvious: Exek are the progeny of a Melbourne scene that established itself around Dave Chesworth and Philip Brophy’s Innocent record label of the 1980s and its greatest offering,  Essendon Airport’s Palimpsest LP (1981). But Exek  dared to abandon the pop and funk tropes of the early Australian new wave scene reaching out to  German post-punk of the same era. Wolski’s songwriting is akin to that of the records put out by Hannover’s No Fun Records and Hamburg’s Zickzack, channeling the droll lyricism of The 39 Clocks and saturated with self-deprecating Attitude. 

"New friends, new influence, new ring around the finger, a hedonist who finds regret.”  - ‘A Hedonist’

Exek are messengers for today’s young, unemployed, immobile, self-obsessed middle-class.  The themes of societal isolation, heartbreak, consumerism are all funnelled through metaphors of terminal illness, monsters and bondage. Their vision mirrors Tuxedomoon’s ‘Holiday for Plywood’ but crucially Biased Advice is a sermon that Exek preach to themselves. The band pit themselves as both victims and saviours living in a world that’s trying to extinguish them, or worse still, mould them into boring automatons. 

“Spitting image, two legged, stick figured, adolescent, disinfectant, replicant.”  - ‘Replicate’

The conceptual weight carried in Wolski’s lyrics follows on from process. Dub and other studio techniques are used throughout Biased Advice and are no better evidenced in the 16-minute modern (and instant) classic, ‘Baby Giant Squid.’ This song remains unchanged from it’s cassette release on Melbourne’s Resistance/Restraint label but spread out over one side of a record it lays bare its perfection. Basslines that stand out one moment give way to dubbed out percussion, hissing tape delay and reverb drenched vocals. Simply, this post-kraut-dub-psyche-punk excursion looks back over it’s shoulder as it leaves ‘Bella Lugosi’s Dead’ for dead. It’s a sublime balance of improvisation and cold calculation. 

“Excitement entails the probability of murder to eliminate stress.”  - ‘Baby Giant Squid’

It’s the tension between this teetering psychotic nihilism and arrangement with studio-like precision that gives Biased Advice the tone of a forewarning. But of what?

“Listen well.”  - ‘Submitted’

Exek - A Hedonist

Biased Advice

Exek - Submitted

Single written by Traffic Island Sound released on handnumbered, handstamped 7" vinyl. Limited to 100 copies. 

Pre-order: https://anotherdarkage.bandcamp.com/album/all-aboard

Traffic Island Sound - All Aboard

ADA008

Mikey Shanahan - The Lake

Mastered by Brendan Zacharias at Cirrus Audio

Via App - Chatter

One-take synth improvisation, taken from 'All In The Same Room'.
Buy tape + digital at nicemusiclabel.bandcamp.com/album/020-all-in-the-same-room

LST - Lego Swept Terrains (A1 from LP, Th Duo)

Another Dark Age

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