2010 musical preview part 1: Australian acts

Rip It Up Digital looks into its crystal ball and gives you the most comprehensive look at the best Australian releases set to drop in 2010

Silverchair
Daniel Johns called up Triple J’s Robbie, Marieke and The Doctor on their last day of broadcasting to give some details of the new Silverchair album, due out next year. Although very much in the early stages of production, Johns said fans could expect a more experimental album than the band’s last, Young Modern.

“I guess it’s dirtier,” a tired-sounding Johns said. “It doesn’t feel as polished and pop but I don’t know, I can’t tell the difference. The main difference is a lot more experimentation with instruments. I think there’s only guitar on four songs so far out of fifty. We’re just doing a lot of jamming with old Brian Eno synths and stuff. It’s weird, it sounds like there’s a lot more going on than there actually is on a lot of the tracks. It’s surprisingly rocky considering there’s no guitars.”

Johns also talked about his time writing the new material while in New York.

“I had a pretty serious bout of writer’s block but then something snapped that needed to snap and I ended up writing quite a few songs that I was happy with. Then I came back to Australia and met up with the band and we did some more demoing, and it all ended up working out quite well.”

British India
In case you couldn’t tell, British India are pretty popular. Maybe its because they never go away. Mere months after they wrapped up touring their second album Thieves, the Melbourne-based quartet gave us a new single Vanilla with promises of a third album early in 2010. Well that album will be called Avalanches and according to frontman Declan Melia, we can expect a slightly different sounding record this time around.

“Far and above, (the new album will be) better than the last two,” he told FasterLouder a few weeks ago. “A bit different sounding. Thieves and Guillotine were recorded quite close together, so they’re pretty similar. Not a huge difference between the album, like side A and side B really…but this one kind of feels like this is only our second record honestly.”

British India play The Gov on Sat Dec 12




Midnight Juggernauts
“It probably is a bit more experimental. However, there are still some definite pop moments. So that will still be the basis for the majority of the songs, but we kind of branched out into different musical terrains, and some songs go off on strange tangents, like bleeped, psych-out jam moments which are probably too self-indulgent but were fun to record in the studio.”

This is what Midnight Juggernauts singer Vincent Vendetta told The Vine about their forthcoming album, which is yet to be given a name. If it’s anything like what he says here, I think we can expect a pretty wild ride. The Juggers recently debuted some of their trippy new material on a tour of Australia and their song This New Technology has been enjoying plenty of airplay. It might sound a bit out there, but Vendetta assures us that there’ll be something for everyone on album number two.

“Maybe people who aren’t into dancefloor stuff will be more into this album, but we’re not isolating our previous audience either. It’s still going to have a dance energy, but we wanted this project to have a more live direction”

Fire! Santa Rosa Fire!
It’s been a long time coming but the debut album from our very own Fire! Santa Rosa Fire! will be with us shortly. The band have once again worked with local knob fiddler Matt Hills (who produced Wolf & Cub’s acclaimed debut Vessels among others), and are hoping to unleash their record in February of 2010. Drummer Sam Stearne recently caught up with Rip It Up to give us the low down on the album.

“We're thrilled with how the album sounds so far, and we hope the continuous transformation of the band can be heard on the tracks. There's a mixed palette of songs on there - pretty much everything we've done or hinted at doing gets a mention, from indie dance-rock to mellow folk...for lack of a 'cooler' description,” he jokes.

“We're going with the title Sea Priest  and it’s in its final mastering stages. We've been through a long recording process, with a few days per month in the studio, and lots of writing in between. We’re absolutely busting to get these songs out and let people hear them, so we can’t wait for the opportunity.”

Clare Bowditch
Melbournian songstress Clare Bowditch has been hard at work on her fourth album and hopes to release it in the first quarter of 2010. A new song The Start of War has recently surfaced and it sounds very different from Clare’s previous work. It’s angsty and energetic with an obvious political message tied in as well. Expect lots of new things on Clare’s new album, which was partly recorded in Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios, famous for housing the likes of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and U2.

“There's a lot of satire on this album and it's fairly agitational,” Clare recently told Rip It Up, “as well as having a pretty immediate sound. We just want to play it for the people who've followed us all the way and see whether they laugh, whether they dance or if they just go, ‘What the fuck was that?!?’”

Calling All Cars
It seems like a lot of the best Australian music due out next year is coming out of Melbourne. Post-hardcore trio Calling All Cars are joining in the new releases party for 2010 and have recently given fans a sneak peak on their massive headline tour over the past few months. Produced by Tom Larkin of Shihad, Hold, Hold, Fire will surely be a hard-edged and pacey affair if the first two singles are anything to go by. Bass player Adam Montgomery recently spoke to FasterLouder about their experiences working with Larkin.

“I don’t know if we get on well,” he said jokingly. “He’s very hardline. He doesn’t settle for anything other than fucking nailed, which might be a drag when you’re in the studio and it’s hard work. But everything is sounding so good. You can’t deny that that’s an excellent way to produce.”

Angus and Julia Stone
Things may have been quiet in the Angus and Julia Stone camp for a while, but that doesn’t mean the brother/sister folk duo haven’t been busy. The pair toured the US of A earlier this year and Angus even managed to squeeze out a solo album under the moniker Lady of the Sunshine. While in America, Mr and Miss Stone began recording the follow-up to their hugely successful record A Book Like This. While catching up with Triple J a few weeks back, Angus talked about the journey of recording of new album Down The Way.

“It’s been spread out over a long time. We've been in Cornwall recording about a year ago. Then New York about three months ago and then Coolangatta so the whole thing's just been quite a long process. When there's been a gap between touring for the last couple of years, wherever we are we find a studio. All the songs were written so far away from each other that the styles and moods are really different.”

Meanwhile a new song And The Boys has recently surfaced and the pair have announced an Australian tour which will be dropping by Thebarton Theatre on Fri Apr 2 of next year.

The Swiss
Adelaide’s disco darlings The Swiss are due to drop their forthcoming EP Bubblebath in late January. After impressing audiences all across Australia supporting Ladyhawke in October, the funk house trio are sure to win over loads more fans with a new EP. But they’re keeping pretty tight-lipped about it. When Rip It Up enquired about the latest goings on of all things Swiss, this was the reply we got:

“The EP is out on January 29 on Modular Recordings. We recorded it all live at Linear Studios in Sydney over a week in winter 2009. It was produced and mixed by Donnie Sloan in the studio used by Aeroplane and The Chemical Brothers in London. There will be some great remixes by Knightlife and Tensnake on the EP.”

Let’s see if Donnie Sloan can’t wield some more Empire of the Sun-like magic with The Swiss then.

Hungry Kids of Hungary
After two EPs of increasingly promising pop panache, Brisbane’s Hungry Kids of Hungary are set to launch themselves into the studio early next year to record their debut album. fans Singer and guitarist Dean McGrath was kind enough to drop Rip It Up a line to let fans know what to expect once the ball gets rolling.

“We've just started pre-production on our debut album, and at this stage it's shaping up to be a little different to our previous releases,” he said enthusiastically. “We're getting quite ambitious with arrangements and instrumentation and want to create something really special. Expect huge vocal harmonies and some darker moments alongside our usual brand of sunny pop.”

So I guess it won’t be an album full of Scattered Diamonds then. Shame.

Cassette Kids
Electro pop might be on the decline, but that won’t stop Sydney’s Cassettte Kids from entering the long-playing realm in 2010. Their debut, entitled Nothing On TV, has been produced by renowned producer Richard Wilkinson (Hot Chip, Adele, Magic Numbers, Carl Cox), as well as Mikey from Van She. The quartet showed much promise with their 2008 EP We Are Cassette Kids and after touring with the likes of The Presets, Lily Allen and The Fratellis, they’re sure to have picked up a trick or two to throw into their album. Expect Nothing On TV to land sometime in March.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring
Another Melbourne band set to make a strong impression on 2010 is garage punk four-piece Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Following up their Australian Music Prize-winning sophomore album Primary Colours, the band have a new song out called Anxiety. It’s a straight-up ECSR song, with clangy guitars and more grit than a construction site. The song will feature on the band’s third album Ready To Release. According to Triple J, the group spent no money on the production of the album and recorded the whole thing in just six hours. Believe what you want, but no doubt Ready To Release will be a highlight of next year.

Art Vs Science
No official word from the Art Vs Science camp yet on a debut album, but the electronic trio have just dropped a new single Friend In The Field and it is highly expected that the band will be releasing an LP in 2010. Stay logged on for more details as they come in.

Architecture In Helsinki
According to various sources, experimental pop group Architecture In Helsinki are meant to be releasing an album by the name of Vision Revision on New Year’s Eve this year. If this is the case, it will be one of the more surprising album releases in some time considering they have no single out and have done a pretty shit job in promoting it. But chances are the band will have something out later next year.

The Avalanches
And a musical preview of any year wouldn’t be complete without the obligatory Avalanches predictions. We have almost no reason to believe the Melbourne-based sample group will have a new album out in 2010, but what the hell, let’s speculate! Earlier this year, Modular Records founder Steve Pavlovic told Time Out that we’d be hearing new Avalanches material in 2009, but unless they drop something soon, that seems an unlikely prospect. On the group’s MySpace, a cryptic message which says they are “clearing samples” suggests they are waiting on legal clearance to release what essentially is a whole heap of other peoples’ music cut up and then stapled back together. Let’s be honest, the second Avalanches album is about as likely as snaring Big Foot, but we can always hope, can’t we?


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