Come on Get your Gills- ‘Sea Lungs’ bring the Brine

Sea Lungs stems from the idea that you don’t need to meet face to face to make music. It can be made from anywhere, anytime. Collaboration in defiance of isolation, threads strung across state lines to knit something taut and redemptive. The musical brainchild of one Jarrad Robertson (Pigs of the Roman Empire, Snakes of […]

The Empire Never Ended – The Pigs get Seasick

Feet firmly planted in the proud tradition of their maudlin Melbournian antecedents, Pigs of the Roman Empire clamber out of your speakers with a smouldering, moody take on post-punk that shoulders a uniquely antipodean twist on their debut EP ‘Seasick‘. This close-cropped quartet of serious young men waste no time in hoisting their banner with […]

These are our Demands cut through the disease on ‘Hospital Radio’

These are our Demands- The Mess we Inherited A new beacon in the sea of post punk revival, UK group These are our Demands have a knack for marrying the angular to the textural on a debut that snaps at its leash convincingly. Originally published for Collide Art & Culture Magazine, I am revisiting some bandcamp […]

A Deeper Criminal – An Interview with The Soft Moon’s Luis Vasquez.

Birthed as the tail end of the 70’s ‘Year Zero’ mentality bled into the nascent futurism of the 80’s, post-punk in its many guises is a genre that refuses to die. There’s something about the emotional, abrasive and angular that is latched onto by successive generations, and from a tapestry woven out of luminaries such […]

To the Batcave!

The underground has always been powered by the DIY spirit, where in a world of consumers, some dare to participate. Ever since the days of ‘Sniffin Glue’ and ‘Spiral Scratch’ the urge to create and take matters into one’s own hands, enduring the papercuts of progress has permeated the subcultural landscape. Where some moan about […]

Refurbish your Helmet with HOWL and BATCAVE PRODUCTIONS

Emerging from Sydney Australia in 2012, Howl are a group of four pale orphans who ignited the local scene briefly with their unique helmet-on-the-bus style take on Deathrock and Post-Punk themes. Sticking around long enough to record the seminal (citation needed) Rat Helmet EP, they burned bright before realising they were all far too sexually […]

Puritans- Seven Inches of Autonomy

Fundamental Illness Records is a Sydney based label and distro that is hoisting the DIY banner proudly in their inked and calloused hands. Following the digital only release of their ‘El Corridor Maldito’ compilation in conjunction with Eterna Oscuridad they’ve hit hard on the second swing with their first physical release. Puritans from Vancouver belie […]

El Corredor Maldito – Deathrock Rides Again. Pay what you want.

The underground has always been a fertile, fecund place. While the topsoil of bedroom wall icons and their cheekbone legacies lie fallow if not forgotten, their seeds and spores have drifted on the wind and sprouted in innumerable places throughout the globe. And no scene seems more fertile and evergreen than the triad of Deathrock, […]

Dressed like a Salad:Dogs in Space and the legend of The Ears.

“Mind Explodes, out come dogs, they shoot off, into space” Melbourne Australia, 1970’s. A grim, exciting time to be young, unemployed and riding the residual spray of the punk rock wave as it eventually lapped at this convict nation’s shores. The Boys Next Door, The Young Charlatans, Whirlywirld, The Primitive Calculators, Tsk-Tsk-Tsk, The Ears. Each […]