New Weird Australia, Collapse Theories is the 30th New Weird Australia compilation released since 2009 and is available as a free download / stream from Bandcamp from Friday 2 December 2022.  

newweirdaustralia.bandcamp.com/album/new-weird-australia-fragile-states-nwa022 

SLEEVE NOTES:
Brian Eno defined “ambience” as “atmosphere”, as “a surrounding influence: a tint”, and he created Ambient Music to induce “a space to think”. In the intervening forty-five years, the genre classified as ambient has instead generated an endless catalogue of anodyne day-spa sounds that run perilously close to the Muzak that he reacted against. 

  In Fragile States, we return to ambient’s origin story, to capture the atmospherics of our time, highlighting the values of “doubt and uncertainty” that were so present, and so prescient, in Eno’s work. Although he sought to make his ambient work “as ignorable as it is interesting”, we seek not to rescind the agency of sound. Our environments are too perilous to be ignored.  

Instead, Fragile States proposes a ‘conscious ambience’, one which is entirely in lock-step with our social and political malaise. Across 25 tracks, we find all manner of misgivings in our surrounding influences. The tint is now tainted, yet we move on nonetheless. This is ambient music for connection and purpose; a runway to resolution. Music for life support.

New Weird Australia, Fragile States | NWA022

K Wilson - Open Palm

James Hazel - bodies stretched beyond the mediant

Sebastian Field - Vanishing Point

Chloë Sobek - Metamorphosis

alsi - When you touch me, I see visions

amby downs - a lightning ridge opal mine anxiety

Nina Buchanan - Special K

Third Space - Dowlais

Reuben Ingall - Thinking About Something Else

'Valve Is Released' is Edition No.13 (NWAED013) in the New Editions artist series, curated by New Weird Australia. 
newweirdaustralia.bandcamp.com

Sumn Conduit is the duo project of Dharawal/Inuk vocalist
Sonya Holowell , and modular synthesist and composer Ben
Carey . Working across new music performance, electronic
music composition and improvisation, Holowell and Carey
have quickly become two of Sydney’s most exciting
independent artists in the field. Within their unique pairing
of the acoustic and electronic, the duo investigates the
potential for oneness and multiplicity, exploring the threshold
where one ends and the other begins. The duo navigates a
spectrum of improvisational and compositional practices
using a range of text, visual and conceptual scores as
provocations for sounding. Their performances are strikingly
dynamic, incorporating extended techniques, polyrhythms
and a rich genre ambiguity resulting from their diverse
backgrounds. Like a shifting storm, their sound can be both
fragile and heavy, and in this duo the material pours out.

As both solo and collaborative artists their work has appeared
at the Sydney Festival, Adelaide Festival, Resonant Bodies
Festival, Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art, Vivid
Sydney, Sydney Biennale, the NOW now Festival, Totally
Huge New Music Festival, the Festival de Mùsica
Electroacùstica (Chile), the Huddersfield Contemporary
Music Festival (UK) and the New York City Electroacoustic
Music Festival (USA). Carey’s latest solo release
METASTABILITY was released on 45rpm vinyl in June
2023 (Hospital Hill). Holowell has released two albums,
Mungo with Splinter Orchestra (Splitrec) and Afternoon
Tea at Six with Eishan Ensemble (Art As Catharsis).

In June 2022, after torrential rain washed out a planned
Sydney performance, Sumn Conduit retreated to Carey's
studio to record what would become the duo's first studio
recording. Exploring a new methodology, the duo worked
from a pre-created text source; a graphic/text score by
Holowell which had been previously published in ADSR
Zine. The result is Valve Is Released, a longform
performance subdivided into six tracks, connecting air and
steel, flesh and electricity.

Effervesce

Hold

A, B Or C

What Energy

'lastwave' is Edition No.14 (NWAED014) in the New Editions artist series, curated by New Weird Australia. 

www.newweirdaustralia.com.au

Ambient through the looking glass of Indigenous Futurisms… Kombumerri artist salllvage (Rowan Savage) mutates a palette made 100% from field recordings (plus mysterious vox) to construct a soft post-apocalypse. 

Eschewing the clubbier leanings of his recent work, lastwave is sonic mysticism in action – from gentle-yet-intense drones to fried, bassy skitterings and heavenly, sinister bells. Deep listening to Country is the doorway to a path guided by indistinct voices dredged from the depths of 1970s wyrdness, speaking of bodies, love, and death – and by the cries of animals and insects in warning or in recognition. 

Field recordings were gathered on Kombumerri Country (Gold Coast, Australia) and Gadigal Country with permission (Sydney, Australia). 

Mastering by OVRSCN (Holosuite Mastering).

The Boilermaker's Dream

Pigface Arcana

O'Drone Park

Dive Reflex

Fronds Of Iron

Mutant music from the upside down.

New Weird Australia supports new, eclectic and experimental Australian music through a variety of evolving projects. Established in 2009, projects have included a long-running compilation series, podcasts and radio shows (FBi Radio, Resonance FM), live events and tours, and artist projects such as the Wood & Wire netlabel and New Editions limited-run series.

Submit your music for any of our projects by emailing info at newweirdaustralia.com.au.

newweirdaustralia

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