Daily Archive

Ah, Australia.  Land of great hotness, ferocious wildlife, beery bonhomie, and nothing else whatsoever.  A musical desert, where people are so laid back they have to listen to shit like Jack Johnson and the John Butler Trio just to get themselves all angry and fired up so that they can swim real fast like.

Although, to be fair, there appears to be a healthier ambient, improvisational, jazz-inflected piano driven electronica scene than exists in most other outposts of the Commonwealth, whatever that word means, I think I read it in a book of facts or on a coin or a flag or something.

I adored Triosk’s Moment Returns record, which crackled with a glorious blue static electricity. Headlight Serenade is a bit different, favouring a much more live sound, closer to Tortoise (without the marimba) or fellow Aussies The Necks (without the hour long tracks which go dummm dummm dummmmmmmmmmm tink dummmm dummm dummmmmmmmmm tink).  Eschewing the processed sound of Moment Returns in favour of such an organic sound is a winning move; skittery drums chattering like nervous tree creatures (most likely to be more venomous than a tree frog eating a cobra which has a big jar of ricin shoved up its ass, if snakes have asses…which I suppose they must.  God damn them and their poisonous slithery asses!).  “Intensives Leben” is typical - simple, slow, one note bass riffs are repeated in Necks-ish fashion, while the track is hammered into place around them.  Note also how the drifting “Lazy Boat” is tied to the dock with improvised but well constructed drum pattern knots.

The electronics do become marginally more intrusive as the album progresses, to include the occasional outbreak of concrete munching, sounds treated to sound like tambura (which, when combined with the piano, brings Alice Coltrane to mind), and brief sampled drum explosions on “Headlights”.  So restrained, until the last track when, like when you truss up your kid, feed them Sunny Delight and Mars Bars for a full day and then eventually let them loose, things get thrown around and things get broken, who do you think is going to have to clean that up, and oh dear, someone is crying now.  The track in question, “Fear Survivor”, is the only moment on The Headlight Serenade which doesn’t quite gel; a disappointing end to a marvellous record.