Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Baddest Moon

It was miraculous that last night I managed to peel myself from my couch on Sunday night and go out to something I should have gone out to a long time ago and kept going to every week since. Audiopollen, it's called, located out the back of this hippy organic food restaraunt, this garagey bit with milk crates and rubbish bins, the bit where all the old veges go to wait and rot until they get chucked out or just decompose or whatever. A few old couches scattered about and a whole heap of instruments and speakers. The clove cigarette of the guy next to me muffled the stink of those veges but anyway, it was mainly just miraculous that I got there because it was the day after Australia day on which I got very patriotic which led me to walk quite quickly into the corner of an open car boot. Thankfully I belong to the right stereotype and could cover up my forehead bruise with my fringe. Still, the headache still showed but it was still amazing hearing some new sounds and different textures during the evening, particularly from Brisbane's Blank Realm, a four-piece that shift from Neu! like rock build-ups to droney ambient with melodic bass lines running beneath like some subterrainian Black Sabbath. The bass bits remind me a bit like Tim Hecker and how he sounds like some deep deep ocean, muffled, distant melodies audible only slightly. Theirs' is a dissonant sort of drone but definitely an intricate one, mostly quite slow-paced but giving way to the odd drum-freakout or otherwise build up of textures and scrapes and clicks, maybe a little Black Dice-ish but hey this isn't their badly written press release. I don't think it's easy to get yr hands on their recordings but I'll try get some up here in the future. Also I'll be covering them for Cyclic Defrost's next issue, too.

I took some bad digital photos of them on Sunday:







[Blank Realm MySpace]

3 comments:

Mel said...

You got patriotic on Australia Day? Save it for Anzac Day, Kiwi. We grew here, you flew here, etc etc.

Nah, just kidding. Hope your headache has dissipated by now.

RICHARD said...

i was trying to think of the NZ equivalent of australia day but i dont think there is one. aussies seem to care more about anzac day anywhoo

anyway, by patriotic i just meant really drunk. but that seems to be one in the same over here :P

Shaun Prescott said...

oooh, Blank Realm. Been meaning to hear these guys properly for a while. Look forward to the article, aren't they doing a show with Damo Suzuki soon?