OUT NOW
Ivor Cutler meets early Brian Eno on Dealings, an adaptation of John B Cornaway's poems, tangled and twisted into sweet and sour post punk vignettes by Klimperei and Eric Chabert.
Front cover image by Emmanuelle Pidoux.

French all-star girl group that includes Krine (Headwar), Armelle (The Dreams, Heimat) and Solene (Avenir, Dudu geva): “At times it sounds like Kleenex singing with King Crimson backing or something equally incongruous” (Blog to Comm). Badaboum will bring you as much joy as chaos and spook.

BACK IN STOCK (limited supply)
10 tracks of uncompromisingly nihilistic outsider RnR. Inspired by the indifference of the city the band calls home and the sad events that can happen to the characters within it, Battle Of Brisbane is a bitter ode to existential dread battered through a minimalist punk facade. Recorded by Luke Walsh (Blank Realm) and mastered by Marly Luske, Battle of Brisbane is a uniquely fucked oddity in the modern rock landscape. “Battle Of Brisbane proves there is no-one as fervently potent in producing personal disenfranchisement and disgust.” (The Quietus)

Robert Vagg (Meat Thump, Kitchen's Floor) delivers ten confessionals that drift around tragedies, hopelessness, failed systems, nonconformity, and physical/psychological experiences. Set to the minimalist sparse compositions of Dan McGirr and Natasha Buchanan, whose guitar and synthesizer lines entwine around the bleak lyrics and help paint Robert's world of despair and loneliness. Only more downer, time hasn't healed the wounds, they've only become deeper. The Durutti Column meets Lou Reed's Berlin on this Australian band's second LP, far from their shambolic debut single on Negative Guest List. “Tracks like the stunning “Thieves Who Dream” playing like Flying Saucer Attack shot through a kaleidoscope, pushing all the right buttons over here at SSHQ, and the overall somber Alastair Galbraith/Chan Marshall-esque intonations at stake here are bettered by these rare glimpses of sunlight.” (Still Single)

Soft, caressing and subtly disturbing, Frightening Lights’ songs move like menace through fog. Singer Elizabeth Downey says she first envisioned the songs as a kind of deathbed confession, their violence is carefully suppressed, modulated perhaps through long penitence. Shreds of instrumental sound – a funeral organ, an offkilter accordion, discordant bowing on a borrowed danbo – flit in and out of the peripheries, creating eerie, flickery landscapes around Downey’s sleepy murmurs. “It’s a strong mix of a contemporary sound offset in traces of the avant-garde, and though the comparisons to Mazzy Star and Opal are strong, they don’t detract from what this duo has to offer.” (Still Single)