Tuesday, 25 September 2018

Extra Matinee Show: Blank Realm + Primitive Motion


Hi Folks - the evening show has sold out so we've put on an extra show at 4pm, 14 October at the Junk Bar. You can get tickets with the link below - no booking fee. Come along!
Remaining tickets available at the door for the 4pm show.

Tuesday, 14 August 2018

SOLD OUT Blank Realm + Primitive Motion, The Junk Bar

Howdy hound loving friends - BR and PM are teaming up for their first show together in The Skukum Lounge at The Junk Bar. You can book your tickets here - no booking fee! We'll send you a confirmation email and put your name on the door list.  Don't panic if it takes a few hours to get your email - we're onto it! Records, t-shirts and sweet sounds available on the night.

SHOW SOLD OUT SORRY - keep an eye out for extra matinee show

“We knew them when they were tucked into their hoodies, leaning over their gear like monks, out the back of a West End fruit and veg shop. Their pockets were always stuffed with zucchinis and the latest Finnish underground CDRs, The Skaters Dark Rye Bread LP casually tucked under the arm. Blank Realm - man, they were like the Partidge Family of Brisbane noise. You know, nice kids. Good clean fun. Except one of them threw up at my dinner table once. On the back deck, choked on some BBQd lamb and threw clear over the railing into the neighbour’s yard. Anyhow, the dogs took care of it. And I still like them. Should be a nice show.” - Primitive Motion
“They were seriously good in The Deadnotes. We saw them play at the Melbourne Town Hall once in a jazz fest, and they totally owned it. Brotzmann was playing downstairs, but people were just lining up to see The Deadnotes. Right out the door. Imagine that. It was heavy. But seeing them play on their own, well I mean those two are just so short. Of course it sounds great - the sax is sweet, and I love it when she sings. It’s just really hard to see them on stage. And I dunno - he’s always trying to show people this pre-Shadow Ring trophy cassette he has, edition of 50 bla bla bla. It’s kind of annoying to be honest. Look, it’ll be a good night and you should be able to see them. But maybe get up close.” - Blank Realm

Wednesday, 25 April 2018

The Ivytree - Unburdened Light

Portrait of man under hood and tree with guitar, 2001
 It was the early two thousands and the time of the CD-Rtist. It was a mini-revolution of sorts. No more endless hours dubbing cassettes or paying a small fortune to manufacture CDs. Vinyl was nearing the end of its lengthy digital exile, but not yet a feasible option. Word got around that you could make your own CD at home. Some of us had inkjet printers with CD-trays, so you could even make it look ‘real’. Mine still works, as does my Sony Mini-Disc recorder, the portable studio of the CD-Rtist. 

 My friend Ian Wadley passed me my first CD-R, a beautiful warbly recording of Ian and Alastair Galbraith’s end-of-tour jam in Ian’s Brisbane abode. Just the thought that you could record on a Walkman and make a cd on your computer at home! Worlds of possibility. I had been in the room that day the Ian/Alastair magic transpired. So was Jon Dale, who not long afterwards released my first CD-R Organ Notes on his micro-imprint The Rhizome Label.  

 Jon was always hooking me up with new things to listen to, a pilotage that happily continues to this day. He told me about a couple of guys in San Fransisco called The Blithe Sons who were recording their music outdoors and had reportedly listened to Organ Notes in the car on the way to one of their locations. Jon sent me their Waves of Grass CD-R and a fresh wind blew through the window.  

 Here was a new music I could relate to: spontaneous and magical, full of light and space, playful and simple, and intuitively improvised. Fragments of melody nestled in harmonium drones, and the environment bleeding into the microphone. A music that celebrated the natural world. You could smell the grass! 

Portrait of beard with man and guitar, 2002
 I was soon exchanging mail with Blithe Son Glenn Donaldson, and soaking up the CD-Rs issued on the mysterious Jewelled Antler label he ran with band mate Loren Chasse. Outdoor recordings, beguiling early christian and naturalist references combined with Glenn’s artwork of collaged birds: ninja birds, heraldic birds, monastic birds, birds in armour.  The music was in orbit, full of space, quiet time-dissolving jams; these guys were listening to Morton Feldman on the car stereo!

 And the song titles were like poetry: “Everyone of Us a New Leaf”, “Inner Groves”, and “I Fell Asleep in the Sun-bleached Grass (I’ll just Pass Away)”. Releases were recorded at “True Cross”, under bridges, in meadows, bunkers and headlands. And the bands! The Franciscan Hobbies, Thuja, Of, Buried Civilisations, Once and Future Herds. It was a nature/psych union that felt like the perfect tonic for the time.

 An email group called “Routes for War and Travel” linked like-minded CD-Rheads around the globe, with a new axis joining the dots between Finland, New Zealand and the Bay Area. Great labels too: Deserted Village, Pseudo Arcana, La La Lal et al. A steady flow of CD-R releases was arriving in my letter box until at one point, and for the only time in my wonderful underground music journey, I almost had too many things to listen to. Almost.

Jewel in the Crown
 The CD-R revolution didn’t last long, and with cassette revivalism poking its head around the corner, the vinyl resurrection was the final nail. To be honest, none of us complained. But I do have some favourites from the flash flood of CD-R releases, and gently bobbing on the crest of the wave is Volume 3 in the Jewelled Antler Library of 3” CD-Rs: The Ivytree - The Sun is the Lamp.

 Glenn had already released a pinnacle of the Jewelled Antler catalogue with The Birdtree album Orchards and Caravans, a beautifully constructed work of fuzzy home studio four-track odes, redolent of English acid-folk, but bathed in a DIY/West Coast glow. The Ivytree release was more paired back, and with parts recorded live to Mini-Disc in a bunker at the Marin Headlands, the environment was a palpable presence. An acoustic guitar and voice soaked in concrete reverb, transmitting a fragile beauty and summoning something other. The Ivytree felt closer to the darkness and light of Haino-san than the pastoral joys of Heron. 

Portrait of keyboard with man and harmonica, 2003
 An album Winged Leaves followed soon after and a split release with Australian Chris Smith was the last gasp for The Ivytree (although Glenn carried the torch through his involvement with two other unheralded West Coast folk classics - Flying Canyon's self titled album and the Giant Skyflower Band’s Blood of the Sunworm.) 

 Cut to 2017, and news that Glenn had dusted off the Mini-Disc and was transferring archival Ivytree sessions to his computer was met with much anticipation in this household, and as you may have gleaned, more than a touch of nostalgia. But there is more than nostalgia going on here…

 The resulting album, Unburdened Light, released on the exemplary Recital label, has life force coursing through it’s veins. It’s all there. The field recordings, the quietude, worlds of reverb-drenched dreaming home-spun on an acoustic guitar, casio keyboards and organ. Songs that radiate from the speakers like tree auras in a Charles Burchfield painting.

There’s more too. A surprise piano ballad “Evil is Circular” almost steals the show with its Budd-like changes, notes suspended in the air. A stunning reprise of the Canadian folk tragedy “She is the Swallow Pt. 2” (Pt. 1 previously aired on Winged Leaves). And what about that voice? Real and sung from the heart, the lessons of Wyatt learnt, bravely pushing into the upper register. It goes straight in.

 
 Hey friends, these times are about as fast as we’ve gone and it’s all happening all the time. Kind of nice to park the car for a while. It seems to me that we need records like this now more than ever. So turn off your phone, lie on the couch and put this record on. Close your eyes, feel that breeze blowing through the window and dream a little.  Walk the fields in unburdened light.

Unburdened Light is released on 4 May on Recital - pre-orders available here.

Leighton Craig


Sunday, 8 April 2018

House in the Wave - Album Launch



Book your tickets here - no booking fee. We'll send you a confirmation email and put you on the doorless. Bring a cushion!! BYO.

Folks - the show has pretty much sold out now. Peeps with tickets on the door will have priority in the main studio, but there will be some limited spots in the adjoining studio control booth with the sound piped in if you'd still like to come along.

Friday, 23 February 2018

+++Primitive Motion+++ (((House in the Wave)))


Primitive Motion's 5th album "House in the Wave" is released today on Bedroom Suck Records.  

We made this record over three Sunday afternoon sessions between 2014 - 2016 at Sandra's home studio, Woodburn Laboratory.

Most of what you hear is recorded live in the room with some contributions from life in the garden. 

All the songs were improvised, and some had a few overdubs added later. There is piano on every song. And there were dogs in the house.

You can purchase the record from BSR here

+++PRIMITIVE MOTION+++

(((HOUSE IN THE WAVE)))

      Build your house
      In the weight
      In the current
      Of a shadow life


        





        
              Like clouds the foam is quiet

              Wood wire sponges 

              Mud glass electric light