Whalehammer and Splendid Friends at Subterranean Party

The year was o8, when things were really great. Leederville, Wooshie and co's house. 'Do you wanna party? It's PARTY TIME' - 45 Grave. At this party Whalehammer, controlling the rotting corpse of Cam 'Farmer' Frontier with nothing but telepathy, tooth picks and coleslaw, released their 'Subterranean' CD on Farmer Frontier. Buy it and prop up the capo pigs (eg YOU) for one more high, just one more. We promise!!! 'Do You Party?'





www.myspace.com/splendidfriends

http://meupe.net/farmerfrontier/

http://www.etherichymns.bigcartel.com/

http://myspace.com/whalehammer

RIVULET OF SPORES

New site - photos and crap. www.http://rivuletofspores.wordpress.com/

Leopard Messiah - 'Live In North Perth' Recording

Leopard Messiah played live at 'Goodbye Horses' on the 30th July 2008 at Bar 459 in North Perth. Camryn Rothenbury from Farmer Frontier put on the show. It was their first show and also Craig McElhinney's first show. DJ James Beck left the crowd speechless that night with his mind-boggling mixing skills and Healing Crystal Meth also played. LM's set was bootlegged by Scott from Whalehammer and is now available on www.doddrell.com/mp3. The sound is not too bad, although Richard's guitar is somewhat inaudible at times. They play songs from the 'Emerald Fyre' album and a few newer tracks. Budding acoustic artists could take this lesson from the recording - memorise all of your lyrics. Mumbled syllables just don't substitute for forgotten lyrics when you don't have walls of amplifiers and a flailing caveboy drummer behind you. Thanks go out to Scott for his bootlegging prowess and the above photo is by Jillian West.

Download the recording at www.doddrell.com/mp3.

Suffer (2006) - Puke In A Bag EP

Scott, singer in Suffer (2006)

The presentation of this recording must be prefaced by a clarification – this act, Suffer, was a short-lived band from 2006 featuring Scott and David from Whalehammer. It is not the band called Suffer who are also from Perth, who exist currently and play awesome Infest-influenced power violence/hardcore. Now, all possible confusion averted, I will procede with the presentation, and all references to a band named Suffer will be related to the band from 2006 featuring Scott and David.

Suffer got together in the summer of 2006, intending to write some songs with the express aims of a.) using downtuned (B, for any guitar jerks reading) electric guitar and b.) sounding brutal. Their main influences were Iron Lung, Pig Destroyer and Eyehategod. Subject matter concerned various aspects of Perth existence, like solvent abuse (‘Puke in a Bag’), getting bashed and then dumped in a Multiskip bin and subsequently being crushed by a rubbish truck (‘Multiskip Coffin Pts 1 and 2’) and chronic weed smoking (‘Rotted Mind’). Having started without a drummer they programmed the beats to the songs using the computer sequencing program Fruity Loops and recorded these tracks. The combination of insanely shattering drum machine, heavy, chaotic riffing by David and hoarse, throaty, weed-ravaged vocalising from Scott displayed on the EP is quite original and cool in my opinion.

After recording the tracks they intended to use them as a demo to find a drummer in order to play live. The concept of playing live with a drum machine was brought up but David was then playing in Extended Summer Surgery who used a drum machine live and was keen to play with a human being. In hindsight that viewpoint was possibly somewhat short-sighted. Needless to say they never found a drummer, Perth being a total sh**hole and all. They did give James Vinciguerra of AIDS, The Collapse, Total Control et al a copy of the demo but he declared the music to be ‘power electronics’, a genre that Suffer were not high-brow enough to be aware of, and declared himself too burned out to take on the project. It was to be his, and the world’s loss. Eventually the impetus faded after a lengthy, fruitless search and the project was abandoned, leaving only the hammering, malignant juggernaught of the ‘Puke In A Bag’ EP behind. Scott and David would later play in Burning Sensation and Whalehammer. Anybody with a healthy appetite for power violence, in-the-red production, down-tuned guitars and epileptic drum machines will no doubt find their new soundtrack to self-mutilation, killing small dogs and smashing buckets upon downloading the Suffer set.

Download the EP from www.doddrell.com/mp3 in the Suffer folder.

Wretched Blood of the Concubine - 'Feeble Child' - 2007

It brings me great pleasure to make available the third Wretched Blood of the Concubine recording to the world of wide web. Wretched Blood of the Concubine deal in both black and grey metal, and black ambience of the most nefarious kind. The band consists of Nick Tripodi (of Hailstones Kill 200, Inter Alia, Kids with Guns for Hands etc) who currently resides in Melbourne and David West (of Whalehammer, Orgy of the Undead, Extended Summer Surgery, Burning Sensation, Rat Columns etc) who exists in Perth. Driven to either ends of a vast land by mutual hatred and disgust they still recognised their own brilliance as a duo, and thus with great pains collaborate in Perth when Nick visits to ironically recognise pathetic Christian superstitions such as Christmas. This particular collaboration occurred in the summer of 2007 I believe.

Having worked with drum machines in their previous two recordings the pair sought out some fresh human blood to flail the skins. After some negotiations some somewhat-fresh blood was found in the young James Vinciguerra (of AIDS, The Collapse, Total Control, Lace Curtain etc) and the band entered a rehearsal studio in Leederville to hammer out this epic tune. Overdubs and mixing were completed in David’s residence that evening.

‘Feeble Child’ is a song suite telling the tale of a peasant man’s life in feudal Eastern Europe. Born a peasant, he enters into the rebellion of the serfs against brutal, repressive landlords and nobility. A great battle is waged and strides are taken towards a proletariat victory…hope is in the air. However, the Feeble Child (now a young man) is struck down with a mortal blow. The throes of death are long and painful, and he succumbs. Thrust into the darkest void, he negotiates the afterlife, a confusing, surreal vortex. Eventually his fate is settled – he is thrown into the screaming wasteland of hel and is sentenced to eternal misery and pain. Thus ends the tale of the Feeble Child.

Download the track at www.doddrell.com/mp3 from the Wretched Blood of the Concubine folder.

www.myspace.com/wretchedbloodoftheconcubine

J.A.Z.Z Crack Combo - 'Take Off The Monacle'

It pleases me to note that, at long last, the infamous J.A.Z.Z Crack Combo album has become available for download from the music archive site www.doddrell.com/mp3. This crazed work caused a minor skirmish on a Perth internet idiot board resulting in demands for suicide, name-calling, declarations of musical worthlessness, mass confusion and related turmoil. I wish I could print the hilarious contents of the ‘discussion’ but alas it seems to have been buried deep in the digital graveyard.

‘Take Off The Monacle’ is the J.A.Z.Z Crack Combo’s sole release. It is an 8 and a half minute free-for-all fire fight between insanity and delusion which throws away the concepts of rhythm, harmony, melody, jazz and pop in favour of a surreal flight of fancy into a land where jazz doesn’t suck, cybernetic creatures inhale vaginal dust and cat soup is always for dinner. It is J.A.Z.Z not jazz, certainly not jazz as you know it, rather, Jazz Accelerated by Zionist Zest. It is free jazz stripped of its overblown gestures and ego, compacted and split through a kaleidoscope into both violent and serene colour streams.

The recording was made on a summer’s afternoon in 2007 in Perth. It was conceptualised by David West (of various acts such as Frank A.T.C.I.S, Whalehammer, Orgy of the Undead, ESS, Burning Sensation etc) and realised by the J.A.Z.Z Crack Combo, some of Perth’s best and most avant-guarde musicians. One cannot cite precedents for such a wildly original work but fans of such disparate acts as James Chance and the Contortions, Sun Ra, Ruins, John Coltrane, The Boredoms, Moondog, Devo and Stravinsky, and adventurous music listeners in general will find plenty to appreciate.

The songs are short, fractured and intense. The lyrics reveal the truth in dementia. The performances are twisted and inspired. This is J.A.Z.Z!

An insightful review of the album by Evan Davies (of Budlust, Sonny Malibu and the Shorebreak Kings, Camel etc) ran thusly;

'Berets will burn and goatees will be singed upon contact with the megaton blasts of free-form psyche-jazz contained in this set. Depending on your viewpoint, this set is either meticulously arranged or a shambolic, churning mess. Like a household tabby gone feral, at no stage do the arpeggiated piano lines threaten to come back ‘inside’. Horn lines fall in on one another amidst skittering and seemingly arbitrary percussion. Rest assured that there will be no resolving ii-V-i progressions here, ladies and gentleman. A word of warning: the lyrics cover highly irregular subject matter that would frankly make most jazz enthusiasts blush. ‘Take Off That Monacle’ is certainly a purist’s worst nightmare, but if one were to shed their tired preconceptions about what jazz should be and embrace the challenges posed by this wild, neo-experimental freak-out, one would be richly rewarded indeed...Best tracks: Northern Girl, Cat Soup...Score: 8/10'

To immerse yourself in the parallel universe of J.A.Z.Z, head to www.doddrell.com/mp3 to download the album as a zip file.

Myspace link – www.myspace.com/jazzcrackcombo

Photos from Whalehammer 'Subterranean' CD Launch Party

Photos from the Whalehammer 'Subterranean' CD Launch Party at a Mount Hawthorn residence in Perth. All taken by Jillian West http://www.jillianwest.com/.


Balloons.

More balloons.

Steven 'vogueing'.

Shock news! Some people find improvised noisegaze extremely boring!

Highly fanced enthno-psych-hip-hop-gaze duo Splendid Friends incite frenzy.

Scott gorging himself on cable spaghetti.

DJ Wooshie scattering divine petals of delight over the d-floor.

Two tall men discuss video art (probably).

WHALEHAMMER GIG - FRIDAY 21st November 2008 - Mojos

Greetings

Whalehammer is playing a show at Mojos on Friday 21st November 2008. We are supporting a couple of eastern states bands, who are all pretty impressive. Lineup:

Circle Pit - from Sydney, used to be in Kiosk, trashy RTX hesher rock

Lakes - from either Sydney or Melbourne, heard some stuff of theirs the other day which was kind of woozy psych organ/acoustic folky stuff, really cool

Wasted Truth - some kind of offshoot of Lakes I think

Mental Powers - kosmiche, rhythmic, calming, one of the better acts in Perth

Us

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In other news we have some new stuff that is soon to hit the north - an as-yet-untitled full-length recording which is being mastered APPARENTLY and a pretty dungeony mix of stuff recorded to cassette in July at Dream Studios called 'dream tape' which is about done. Get in touch if you want one or any other of our recordings - whalehammer@gmail.com. I think you should be able to purchase our cd 'subterranean' which is on the farmer frontier label from Planet Video, 78s, Dadas, Meupe webstore and other places right now HOPEFULLY.

What else...the launch party for Subterranean was great, thanks to Cameron of Farmer Frontier, the occupants of the house Dylan, James and Kyle, Splendid Fiends, the person who donated the lights and vicious smoke machine, DJs, everyone who came, everyone who attended the party.

I'll have to put some pictures up.

Whalehammer 'Subterranean' Launch Party - Saturday 11th October 2008

Perth music label 'Farmer Frontier' (run by Cameron who has been in such famous bands as Soul of Condemned Ape, Joy Division and At War With Gayle. Watch out for his long-awaited print zine 'Ferris Bulwer' which I hear is coming out soon and contains lots of great writing not tainted by bad humor/taste) is putting out our album 'Subterranean' in a nicely packaged CD format. Thanks Cameron!

As part of this initiative there is a launch party happening on Saturday 11th October at a house in Leederville. Whalehammer and Splendid Friends (an ethno-psych-gaze supergroup consisting of At War With Girls, Craig McHardspelling and Dylan Michel) are playing but this is not really a gig but a party. Bands just get in the way of a good time IMO. There are bunch of dj's who will be playing music. Is it somebody's birthday as well?

Due to the private nature of this residence I am unable to divulge its exact location, also I do not know it. However I will give a bunch of cryptic clues to let people who should come know where it is...

*eerie strata plan*

*i had a dream about studios in a metropolitan video store where I walked down a street about 4 blocks away from a bunch of thugs who had recently graduated from oxford university (majoring in hotel AND street management no less!) and then 'whoosh' i.e i lived in the house with dylan thomas*

*swimmers once bathed in me*

As for the CD, 'Subterranean' was recorded in late 2007 I think, or early 2008. It was recorded at a rehearsal studio in a day, on the same street as the launch party actually. It kind of tells a story of a subhuman underground mutant who lives in total darkness, infects the over-ground populace with poisonous sex spores, and grows desperate for union with another, only to be enveloped and destroyed by a female of the species when this union finally occurs. It may or may not be a dream, narrated by a human ripped to the gills on opium tea.

Musically it runs the gamut from dreamy psychgaze to blackened sludge to abstract shimmer. Personally I think it's worthy of multiple listens at worst, ritual suicide at best.

Here's the Farmer Frontier verbage on this matter, from their site (http://www.meupe.net/farmerfrontier/)

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WHALEHAMMER - SUBTERRANEAN - Krautocosmic drone ship orbiting reanimated birth ritual surgical swab...

FARMER FRONTIER is having a top secret house party to celebrate our fifth release (FF005): WHALEHAMMER's SUBTERRANEAN.

On October 11 2008, come see WHALEHAMMER, performing with special guests SPLENDID FRIENDS.+ DJs DYLAN MICHEL, JAMES BECK, DAVID WEST & BEN TAAFFE!

STARTS AT 6 PM! COME EARLY FOR BBQ, DRINKS, FRISBY AND DJs. ENTRY: GOLD COIN DONATION BBQ: GOLD COIN DONATION [VEGANS WELCOME!] BYO

EMAIL US (farmerfrontier@gmail.com / whalehammer@gmail.com) for event details or try searching the event on FACEBOOK.

Farmer Frontier catalogue will be available on the night. Whalehammer's Subterranean will thereafter be available from Dada Records, 78 Records, Harry High Pants and Planet.

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Hope to see you all there.

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In other news, one of my semi-solo projects Frank A.T.C.I.S (aka Frank & the Can I Speaklys) has a myspace, check it out - www.myspace.com/frankatcis. Kind of a mirror image of Rat Columns I guess (www.myspace.com/ratcolumns).

Enough garbahge - see you later

Gig - Friday Sept 19 - Grim Fandango, Suffer, Burning Sensation, Magic Window

5$ / 9pm start / hyde park hotel

Grim Fandango - rev/sum dc-ish punk rock, killer twin guitars
Suffer - PV/HC Infest-esque
Burning Sensation - trash punk treble
Magic Window - art-punk new-wave strobing