smRts CD launch

Yes, I've been quiet lately. Wanted to write about Craig McElhenney and Silver Bulletin, but just didn't have enough time. So, instead will write about my own band, that at some point had both these guys in it.

smRts are launching the debut album "sun sets on a new tomorrow" at the Rosemount Hotel, North Perth, on Friday 10 September. Our special guests are Wind Waker, Erasers and awesome new-ish jazz combo Rolling Pin. It's $10 to get in and CD will be for sale for $10, kinda special price for the night.



Album was recorded on a hot early summer day, 13 December 2009 at the then rehearsal place - a tin-roof shed behind some offices. It was at least 10 degrees hotter inside. Matt Bairstow (smRts guitarist/Injured Ninja's drummer) and Will Hooper (Wind Waker bassist) brought some microphones and recording gear. Took us a couple of hours to set up and another couple to record. From memory, we did two takes of 8 songs, 3 takes of "Happy Hobo" and only one take of "Serpent Bites the Young Lion".

Matt took it home and mixed it. Then we listened to it a couple of months later and suggested a few changes, minor ones though. Then he brought the final mixed and it ruled! Then we sent it to Bob Weston in Chicago for mastering. Then we got it back and pressed it on CD - it came out on awesome Heartless Robot Productions. And that's it.

Andrew Forster - "Accept and Forgive Human Flaws" CDEP (Owls)

Andrew Forster is a tall, handsome, young man who used to play keys in Shock! Horror! – a band that burnt out too quick, but luckily at least 3 of its members continued making cool music (I’m hoping Natasha is onto it soon as well).
After the band’s demise Andrew started recording/releasing a bunch of CDs with his own music recorded, I assume, at home. Before I heard any of those CDs I saw him playing live. Since I’m also relying on technology and looping pedals when I do my solo live stuff I’m always paying extra attention on other people’s use of similar gear, and Andrew was brilliant that night!
What amazed me was his use of samples, many of which came from “world music” field. It turned out his mother has a huge collection of world music records, or something along those lines, and I’m glad Andrew doesn’t seem to shy away from it, but rather he is using it to enrich his already rich music.
“Accept and Forgive Human Flaws” is the release I’m talking about here and while it might have a bit of a pompous title once listening to it assures me it’s not a tongue-in-cheek. It is a very spiritual, in the best possible sense. It’s captivating, mesmerising and it takes me places. And if you think Perth band such as: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ and _ _ _ _ are psychedelic, think again, because this shit is psychedelic!!! I’ve been playing it at work all morning and the cleaning lady came in to ask what it was – she was impressed too. And on such a high compliment I’d like to finish this writing.

SEAMS - Early CDEP

First time I heard Seams was when I played a gig with them. They were on after me and I could not quite settle down and pay much attention, but what I remember was the variety of styles they went through their 30-odd minute set. I mean, it didn’t go from hardcore to minimalistic ambiental stuff, or anything as diverse as that. Rather, it sounded like the band has deliberately worked on their songs not sounding too similar, which works, if you have good songs. Which is what Seams seem to have (pun intended).
Second time I’ve seen them was again after I played, but this time there was a band in between to help me calm down from performance high (although I can’t really say that Frozen Oceans, band in between, can help anyone calm down). But there I was, ready for Seams. And they were ready for me – they delivered an awesome set of tunes, minus the drummer, who was away. Still, with a little help of technology these youngsters managed to go through the set of great pop tunes, so I was very excited when one of them – a young chap named Lyndon – gave me their EP titled “Early”. I was so excited that I decided to share my excitement right here with you, my electronic friends.
Not sure if this is just a promo EP or a regular thing you can buy in shops/at shows, but that thin line has got even thinner these days with all the CD-Rs as regular releases/internet downloads. Who the fuck cares, this one has a nice cover and 3 cool songs that can keep my attention span, so that’s enough for me.
Similarly to their live shows, this EP also shows signs of diversity, starting with slightly complex take on modern psych pop that is "Cabinsong", which takes off lightly with cool beat and guitar loops. Soon male/female vocals join in and not long after the song is turned into a little soundtrack to space travel.
Next one, "Andromeda (Dream Away)" also ventures into a psych waters, but leaning more towards prog school – the beginning reminds me a lot of "Moon Child" by King Crimson, but not for long. Must say this one is my least fave of all three songs here, which is more to say about my taste in music than anything else. This one is the only song recorded properly in studio, hence it sounds a lot bigger than other two.
Title song really does it for me, with jungle beats throughout and general happy vibes. It was my personal highlight of their second live show I witnessed and I’m glad it ended on this release.
So, to bring this writing to the end, this is a great EP that shed some light to a young Perth band and as such it serves its purpose: it’s a great indicator of what may yet to come from Seams. Bring it on!

Mental Powers interview

If you live in Perth and go to decent gigs semi-regularly, then surely you are familiar with these guys.
Mental Powers started some years ago, first as Microwaves. As a matter of fact I organised their first show at the Hydeys back in the day. They had Claire (now in Golden Staph) and Jacob Smith (currently not playing in bands, as fas as I know) and they were awesome.
Soon they changde the line up and the name and started playing more and more show, with each show getting heaps and heaps better. Now, yes, I've seen them a couple of times when they were so-so, but then I've seen them at least ten times when they were brilliant. Brilliant, I say!


How to describe them? See the review below. A bunch of nice guys with clear idea in mind of what the band should be like/about. It took them a while to reply to my questions, but here is the interview, finally:


When Mental Powers first started as Microwaves, everyone involved was studying Art at university – did you all meet at school and decide to pursue musical adventures together? At that time could you see yourself still making music some years later?
Microwaves and Mental Powers could be seen as separate ventures. Mircowaves started out playing at a party, the line-up changed a few times but it we didn’t really think to hard about what we played or practice that much. By the time we christened ours MP we got a bit more focussed and started to see ways we could develop. It is right that we all went to Art school, but none of us really studied together, and we didn’t all go to the same Uni. We knew got to know one another outside of our studies.
Lewis become associated with the band a bit later on. Since then the evolution of our music has slowly been taking place ever since and now we seem to have settled into some kind of vernacular. So I suppose whenever we found ourselves looking to the future it was always in terms of the next gig, or how we could develop a new song, or working on a recording or whatever. We have just stuck at it to be honest.



Mental Powers seem like a strong collective of individuals where the whole band make decisions together. Is this the case? Please describe your creative process. How do MP create songs?
I guess it is true that we are a strong collective, we collaborate on equal terms, nobody takes on the role of leader. Our music grows from week to week, we are a once a week band, every Saturday we get together, that’s band day. We meet at Jamie’s, have a cup of tea, listen to a bit of music, watch some TV and then we have a play, a break, play some Frisbee, play a bit more, talk about what’s working and what isn’t that’s pretty much it. Some have described us as a band that always sounds different to the last time they saw us, that’s not surprising considering the way we work. We allow ourselves the space to vary what we do within a song, there may be rough parts and rough structures but it’s not important that we get it perfect because we never become attached to some ideal way a song should be played. We do latch onto ideas and sounds that stand out as interesting or exciting, and those ideas or sounds are what make up the meat of a song, but nothing is ever locked in solid. Its an unusual process in many ways, it may be born (in part) out of our lack of technical proficiency, and also the trance-y, repetitive nature of our music, but its also to do with our desire to develop the music week by week rather than say “right, that songs finished we can put that into our bag of tricks and start on the next one”. No Mental Powers song comes to fruition in a day, we seem to have a beat or a guitar part or whatever, some nugget that we like and then we keep playing it each week trying out new things are adding things, removing things, thinking up a change or a movement within the track, get a sense of where it starts, where it goes and where it ends. Slowly it forms, sometimes very slowly, but that’s the only way we can do it. With some of our recent songs we have been keeping it pretty simple in terms of structures and the complexity of the main theme/part. Once we have a simple central idea we find a way of playing it that is self-perpetuating, parts flow well, and the song has drive, that involves organising ourselves and the song more than some people might think. There is a lot that goes into a song of ours that might appear to be something we are just jamming out, a cacophony of sound, even an auditory assault in some cases, but there is a particular quality we are looking for, its subtle and we may not always hit it. Most of the time its about momentum, we’re very rhythmic, especially these days.



How much is MPs music improvised live?
I wouldn’t say we play that much improv live. Some tracks are a bit looser, but again we may like it that way for whatever reason, but we still try and considered what each instrument is doing. We might play something for longer at one gig, than shorter at another, maybe a little faster, slower, we might hang onto a part of a song for a bit longer where the rhythm is a certain way, there may be subtle shifts in the rhythm that we couldn’t have predicted, but that is more to do with the feeling at the time, the energy of the music at the time, rather than some predetermined decision to variate or improvise.

Was your CD recorded all live or all instruments separately? How did MP handle the studio and do you feel it is different from practice/live show.
The recording process went surprisingly well considering we were a little out of our element. We recorded a certain way based on suggestions from our recording engineer for the session Jay Brandner. We did record some instruments separately and used a few overdubs on some of the tracks. It was a good process for us to learn about, the music became a little leaner, a little tighter than normal because we were working out the bugs slowly, and making sure we had good takes. We are glad we approached the recording process in this way for the first time proper, jumping into the deep end so to speak. Before we went to the studio we rehearsed the 3 songs we wanted to record, two of them were pretty new at the time but we liked them enough to record them.
In a way we treated the recording session like a gig, except the gig lasted a whole long weekend. It was raining a lot of the time outside, be were bunked down so we didn’t notice, it felt like we were down there until the Monday evening, so that was a both fun and but also intense thing for us able to work on something together for that long. Currently we have been working on recordings at home, utilising a combination of all live and overdubbing techniques and learning a lot as we go. We have recorded at home before, hopefully this time we will only be better at finding out what works.

How do you see MP in the not too distant future.
We see the band chugging along as usual. Playing shows here and there, hopefully we will have a couple of recordings out. At the moment we are looking forward to playing our first gig in awhile.

Heartless Robot Productions interview

Here is the first in series of interviews I was planning to do. As you can see, I will try to stick to 5 questions only. Why? Because I will interview some of these guys again soon and because I'd like others to be encouraged to ask further questions.

Scott Bishop has been running HRP for a while now. You can check HRP myspace HERE. But for you who don't know, HRP is an independent label ran by Scott and his misterious friend. They have released 6 cool albums/EPs so far and many more to come. But, enough of that, do your own research. Here we go:

I believe the decision to start HRP was made on a drunken NY eve 2008. At that time did you think it will be something you will still be running it strong in 2010? What was the prime motif to start the label?
Yes, like all crazy decisions the idea to start a 'label' was planned out over too many beers! At the time it was planned to be a one off release and then maybe a few shirt designs. We had no idea it would still be running two years later, but we had no idea to start with, so it balances out.

What are some of the criterias in deciding which band/act to publish? Have you ever experienced any significant difficulties in dealing with the bands and have you ever had cold feet about any of your releases?
There is no set criteria really, all the HRP crew (myself and the mysterious Ninnanuam) come from a heavy metal background, so we generally like things a little harsher sonically, or at least having a 'dark undercurrent'. All the bands/solo artists we have released are all good people and friends and have demonstrated a good 'work ethic' so to speak. For any bands interested in dealing with us, we accept bags of cash and/or good sandwiches.
We have never had cold feet on any of our projects based on the sounds, more to do with deadlines approaching. Getting the finished products on time for launch shows etc. All the bands have been great and we work together to try and promote the music.

How different is HRP from other independent Perth/Australian labels? Do you feel like you are creating a particular "scene" with your acts or do you see them as all different? Would you rather have similar acts or variety of them?
Hmm, we are not so different from many other labels in Perth, they are all doing great and unique things. We like to try and have some nice packaging as opposed to digital downloads and musically we like the harsher sounds. I dont think we are creating a 'scene', its already there and thriving, we are just trying to boost it and provide a platform for cool sounds. I think HRP has many different styles/genres and will continue to be diverse, until we sell out and start marketing to the hipsters.

So far almost all of the bands/acts have been from Perth. Which other local and international bands would you like to see released on HRP in future?
Aha! Bariken are from Japan (minus 1 point for you), we are also soon releasing a split tape between Chris Cobils and PSYCHEDELIC DESERT (also from Japan). Theres a LOT of cool music from Perth and it is easy to get in touch with people here. That being said, we are planning more releases from Perth and maybe a few from overseas/interstate. Coming up is the aforementioned split tape, split 12" Abe Sada/Sub Ordnance, Injured Ninja cd, smRts cd and releases from Armadillo Overlord (drone/doom) and Salamander (harsh electronic sounds).

Are there any labels that you admire and why?
I admire all the independant labels in Perth that have come before and after us such as Meupe, Badminton Bandit, Grave New World and Prime Cuts. Internationally we like Hydra Head, Relapse and Ipecac for their commitment to heavy/weird sounds and quality releases.

The Futurist

The Futurist, ah The Futurist...

The ones who have seen them are blessed, the ones who didn't are unfortunate.

Here are two live recordings from Flying Scotsman (10 March 2006 - recorded by myself) and RTR FM (18 March 2006).

I was lucky to do a regular DJ gig on Fridays in first half of 2006 at Scotto. I think we played together (meaning I DJ-ed before their set) at least 10 times. Often they were OK, sometimes good, but sometimes, when everything clicked, they would be the best live act around. The best!

Crazy Steve on Rhodes

First time I played with them was in early 2006, when I got a DJ-ing gig at Scotty, spinning mostly jazzy stuff. I was told there is band that will play after my set, around 10pm. They were called the Futurist. I never heard of them and din't know hat to expect, so I expected nothing.

They rocked up just before 10pm and started setting up on the floor - two Rhodes and old amps and a drumkit. Soon they started playing. I was in the corner with some friends, having a beer, but a couple of minutes later I had to get up and get closer, as the band was amazing. Kind of reminded me of Medeski, Martin & Wood, but a lot rawer and heaps more interesting.

As I said, we played many show together and then Kim Williams and me got them support for Damo Suzuki when we brought him over here. The Futurist haven't played many shows outside of Scotto and they played a couple there with guests. One was with some guy on guitar and it just didn't work at all. The other was with Joe 19 on keys/melodica, which was better, but still not so great. They were the best when they were just a three-piece.

I don't know what happened, but some months later they slowly stopped playing and broke up...

Steve is in Intenso 33 these days. I played one show with them a few weeks back and was the worst musician in band by far. But I hope to play some shows with them again...

RTR Fremantle Winter Music Festival

Everyone's fave local radio RTR FM is doing their annual Fremantle Winter Music Fstival on Saturday 26 June. You can read more about it HERE, I'm just pointing out that Mojo's will be on fire with Underground Solutions crew, with special guests.

ERASERS - 7"EP

Erasers is a relatively new Perth band that has Rupert and Andrew from Shock! Horror! on guitar and drums, respectively, as well as Rebecca on vocals.

They started somehow quietly, playing small gigs at parties and shops an slowly went into proper music venues, climaxing with a great performance at this year's In The Pines.

So, I was very surprised to hear they have a 7" EP title "Autumn" out now on Metal Postcard Records in Hong Kong (via Sydney and USA). I saw Rebecca at my workplace the other day and scored myself a copy, and what an awesome record that is!

I'm hoping to do an interview with them soon and will write more about this EP, but for now let's just say that all 4 song are brilliant excursion into dreamy psych pop with some post-punk elements. But fuck the labels, Erasers deliver it with their own style that does not sound like anything else around. It's not the new kind of psych revival that people might be familiar with through Perth bands that I won't even bother to mention here. Neither it is a Fabulous Diamonds rip off, as someone suggested recently on a certain social networking website. It's just Erasers. Full stop.

Mental Powers CD (Badmington Bandit 2010)

This review of Mental Powers CD was sent to Mess & Noise, who totaly ignored it. Here is why:

Experimental music (a dreaded term, for sure) in Perth has been thriving in the last couple of years. Written off as crappy attempt at musicianship by music “populists”, and glorified as the best thing ever by the “elitists”, Perth’s own different music is alive and well, and Mental Powers debut CD is here to prove that statement.

The composition they released on a split 7” single with Free Choice some months ago was just a tip of an aural iceberg that these young men had in pipeline for anyone willing to listen. This time they came up with three complex, yet very engaging and listenable numbers.

The CD (which comes in a handpainted/handprinted cardboard sleeve, the artwork done by MP drummer Jamie Doohan) kicks off with “Contador” (song titles are not listed on the cover – this info was supplied by a person close to the band and it might not be correct, mind you). The drums at the beginning sound like a drumkit, together with the drummer, are falling down a steep set of stairs. In comes the saxophone that evokes images of a young beast awaking and then the whole band kicks in, changes the beat entirely, making it sound very chaotic and angular, and then finally they lock in a “groove” and stay on its course.

Once there, it’s kind of reminiscent of early material by Can and Faust, which is not to say that Mental Powers are “Kraut” revival combo. What makes them similar to those seminal German bands is the ability to come up with cool unusual beats and riffs and to repeat them with a good sense of measure.

“Ology”, the second and longest track on the CD starts with what sounds like bass-y and percussive slow and long aural outbursts and some 3 minutes later steel drums’ beat begins its mantra (handled by one of band’s guitarist Lewis Waters) and stays on until the end of the song. Smoothly the drums come in with a simple bass line and vocalist’s Deni’s chant. Nearly 11 minutes into the song the instruments drop and it’s up to steel drum to bring it to the end.

The last track “D+D” is by far the noisiest of the three, evoking (and I’m reluctant to admit here) some of the best Sonic Youth noisy moments, but not for long – things get more subtle in the second half of the song, when the sax comes in again. Before you know it 25 minutes are over, and that would be my only problem with this CD - it feels like it should go for a lot longer.

Mental Powers might not be the greatest musicians and the CD certainly is not “produced”. There are mistakes and they are not difficult to spot, but what counts is that the music is captivating, the band members know how to bring out the best in them and, what is so rare these days, it feels like nothing can be added or subtracted to their music.