VIDEO PREMIERE: Prudence – Better

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Electronica, New Music, Post-Punk, Premiere, shoegaze, VideoLeave a comment

Sydney musician Tom Crandles, better known as Prudence has a brand new four song 7″ Untitled EP out today (May 14th) via Endless Recordings. Featuring the tracks ‘Celestial’, ‘Chlorine’, ‘Better’ and ‘Relief’, it showcases the lush and baroque avant-pop that Crandles has been developing across a handful of tracks and an EP over the last few years.

We’re very pleased to premiere the video for ‘Better’ here on DS today. On the song, and the wider EP, Prudence filters the sound of David Sylvian, Talk Talk and numerous other auteurs of forward thinking art-pop into his own sound. Melodies run strongly through the bass guitar while tones and textures drift and blur across the speakers. It’s a beguiling mix of ornate and intimate songwriting with sonic obfuscation and a dreamy, narcotic-infused atmosphere – with Crandles’ voice leading you into the ether with quiet drama.

Director McLean Stevenson says of the clip for ‘Better’, “We shot this in Tom’s late grandparent’s abandoned, half burnt down home a few weeks after Tom met Dom (the actor) in hospital. It was shot on a 2017 Chinese manufactured Android device.”

From a wholly solo project for Crandles, Prudence has developed into a full live band with pianist Aleesha Dibbs, bassist Kat Harley and drummer Liam Hoskins.

Untitled is available to order digitally and on 7″ via Bandcamp and on the usual streaming services.

NEW MUSIC: The Goon Sax return with new single and album announcement

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Indie Rock, New Music, Post-Punk, VideoLeave a comment
photo by Elliott Lauren

Brisbane trio The Goon Sax are back with the first single/video from their forthcoming new LP Mirror II, due out on July 9th on Chapter Music (Aus/NZ) and Matador Records (rest of world).

The first single, ‘In The Stone’, shows the band changing gears from their quirky bedroom guitar pop and exploring no wave, avant pop and post-punk sounds. There’s still that unique homespun feel they always bring to their songs but there’s also a clear indication that the new album is a big step forward in their collective songwriting.

Mirror ll, recorded in Bristol at Invada Studios, owned by Geoff Barrow of Portishead and Beak, with producer John Parish (Aldous Harding, PJ Harvey), is the result of three years of writing, and some considerable time spent apart: Louis relocated to Berlin and worked at a cinema (he sings in German on the track ‘Bathwater’), Riley and James formed an angular post-punk band called Soot. All three experimented with abstract, atonal sounds before recapturing the essence of The Goon Sax: “pop melody,” Louis explains. “The first two albums are inherently linked. They had three-word titles; they went together. This one definitely felt like going back to square one and starting again, and that was really freeing.”

NEW MUSIC: Bandicoot – Dark Too Long

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Guitar Rock, Indie Rock, krautrock, New Music, Post-Punk, Psych, VideoLeave a comment

‘Dark Too Long’ is a song that Swansea, UK band Bandicoot describe as a “frenzied cry of desperation from the depths of excess and loneliness, influenced by the driving rhythms of NEU! and Can.” After the initial ambient drift of the intro, it tumbles along in synchronous perpetual motion. There’s the unhinged end of the Radiohead spectrum in play here, as much as a swaggering art pop aesthetic in the production and precision of it all.

They’ve since released another new single Fuzzy which heads in a fun glam direction and which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Supergrass record.

NEW MUSIC: Warren Ellis – Purple Perilla

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Ambient, Experimental, StreamLeave a comment

From Dirty Three to the Bad Seeds and now a parallel career as a composer with and without Nick Cave, Warren Ellis has certainly led a fascinating creative life. He’s just released a new project with Marianne Faithfull and in another first he’s composed the soundtrack to a book – a recently released collection of short stories by Chinese writer Can Xue.

This piece initially has a wonderfully languid and cloud-like feel and lightness to it as it drifts in multiple directions, changing form, disconnecting and re-engaging into new shapes and amorphous ebbs and flows. Then as the 42 minute piece evolves, it draws on drones and ambient tonal washes and bell-like celestial movements.

Ellis says “The day before Christmas 2020: I find myself the only person staying in an eighty-six room hotel in East London. It was originally the Old Street Magistrates’ Court and Police Station. I’m reading Can Xue’s stories and it dawns on me to use the empty swimming pool, bowling lanes, courtroom, and holding cells as rooms to create a soundscape for the text. I set up a zoom mic, playing back field recordings from before the lockdown and using the ambience of each room as reverb. The sound of rooms waiting. It can be started at any point in the track, or put on a loop. There is no beginning, middle, or end.”

NEW MUSIC: Scowl – Lord Porno

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Guitar Rock, Indie Rock, New Music, Post-Punk, Punk, StreamLeave a comment

Interesting angles in aggressive music is what floats our boat and Kent UK trio Scowl tick that box with this track, their second single, charmingly titled ‘Lord Porno’. In the punk-fuelled chorus the widescreen wall of distorted guitars crash and careen between the speakers while the rhythm section ushers the song along in the verses with a rolling, tumbling post-punk feel. Over it all, the singer howls and castigates the listener with a sense of anthemic desperation.

As the band explains, the song (named after bassist Sadie’s first band) “is an anthem, borne out of the deep seated anger and frustration one feels when you come to terms with a situation that’s irreparable.”

For fans of Eagulls, Slaves, Idles.

NEW MUSIC: Jakson – hey jeff come to bendigo i just want to chat i totally won’t punch you in the head i promise // guillotine

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In the words of Bendigo VIC artist Jakson, “this song is a call to arms against the world’s richest. Eat the rich.” In a colloquial accent he reels off some of the world’s richest and their associated estimated wealth.

Over jagged, scratching guitar and a dub-influenced post-punk rhythm section, the song builds intensity, bursting into see-sawing distorted guitars that sound like a cross between 3Ds and Jesus Lizard before it all collapses like a drunken game of Jenga. For fans of Squid, Black Country, New Road.

The song comes from his new five song EP Filth.

NEW MUSIC: Torrid Horror – To Tear At The Sea

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Indie Rock, New Music, Post-Punk, Psych, Punk, StreamLeave a comment

Pummelling is an apt description of this new post-punk track from UK duo Torrid Horror (Caine and Maud). Across seven minutes they dispatch frantic organ-led ‘carnival in hell’ riffs and rhythms while the singer howls and barks across the maddening crowds. At its mid point it pauses to get it’s sonic breath back, inhaling, hands on knees before the waves settle amid a spoken word passage. It’s only temporary though, things quickly ratchet up again – chopping, twisting and squealing before an exquisite saxophone-led section of heavy funk (courtesy of Pete Fraser) fills the room.

File these guys alongside Black Country, New Road, Black Midi and Viagra Boys.

NEW MUSIC: Lu – This Is Kangaroo Court [video]

On By Doubtful SoundsIn Electronica, New Music, Psych, VideoLeave a comment

This recently released track from Lu (a Colombia born drummer and electronic musician based in Philadelphia, PA) hits a fine line in dark Krautrock-flavoured electronic music. Heavily rhythmic and propulsive it gathers momentum and heads for the stratosphere on a psychedelic lunar mission.

The song comes from his album We Are Luminous Fragments Shining In The Dark, out now via Bandcamp.