Next Best Thing

Different Noises 82

Robert Forster and Grant McLennan feature heavily on this edition. I continue to explore the Go Betweens Box Set #3 as well as a first look at the new release of the collected works of Grant’s other venture, with The Church's Steve Kilbey, Jack Frost. In addition, amongst other wonderful things, a look back at a classic album from Ut, a new EP from Blokeacola, and a new album from Bury’s greatest export Adventures of Salvador (yes they are better than Black Pudding!!)

SHOW AUDIO

PLAYLIST

1. Adventures Of Salvador - Where Have The Cowboys Gone - Happiness

2. Blokeacola - Courage To Sing - Shoulda

3. Ut - Mosquito Botticelli - In Gut's House

4. Jack Frost - Every Hour God Sends - As Seen On TV

5. The Go-Betweens - Born To A Family - G Stands For Go-Betweens: The Go-Betweens Anthology - Volume 3

6. Salem Trials - Under The Ground - Heavenly Bodies Under The Ground

7. Divide And Dissolve - Monolithic - Insatiable

8. Jeff Myers - Orbital -Goodnight

9. Kiji Suedo - Animal Confusion - Hypnosis

10. Adventures Of Salvador - Brain of Eno - Happiness

11. Jack Frost - Birdowner - As Seen On TV

12. Maud The Moth - Exuviae -The Distaff

13. Michael Grigoni & Pan•american - New World, Lonely Ride - New World, Lonely Ride

14. Ut - Dirty Net - In Gut's House

15. The Go-Betweens - Finding You - G Stands For Go-Betweens: The Go-Betweens Anthology - Volume 3

16. The All's Eye - The Simian - The Simian

17. Laughing Clowns - Mr. Uddich Schmuddich Goes to Town - Cruel, But Fair (The Complete Clowns Recordings)

18. Jack Frost - Civil War Lament - As Seen On TV

19. Blokeacola - Perfect Silence - Shoulda

20. Shaw's Trailer Park- Memory - Shaw's Trailer Park

21. Ut - Landscape - In Gut's House

22. Russ Spence - D North - Document and Ritual

23. Divide And Dissolve - Provenance - Insatiable

24. Maud The Moth - Despeñaperros -The Distaff

25. Michael Grigoni & Pan•american - Mirage/Afternoon - New World, Lonely Ride

26. Poppycock - NDE - Magic Mothers

27. Cristiano Varisco - Hexagonal - Cristiano Varisco IV

28. Adventures Of Salvador - Haven’t I Suffered Enough - Happiness

29. The Dave Graney Show - Leavin’ The Mount - Heroic Blues

30. Jack Frost - Thought I Was Over You - As Seen On TV

31. The Go-Betweens - No Reason To Cry - G Stands For Go-Betweens: The Go-Betweens Anthology - Volume 3

SHOW NOTES

Adventures Of Salvador

As chronicled below

Blokeacola

A message from Blokeacola HQ

This EP was recorded during Chinese New Year 2025 at my mother-in-law's in Ningbo using an old laptop, a condenser mic, an acoustic guitar and not much else. The not much else included a recorder and a harmonica because they were easy additional instruments to grab and take with me in a car crammed full of gifts for in-laws. I felt a couple of the tracks could benefit from percussion so for the first track I just tapped the condenser mic case with my fingers, using the ring on my ring finger for some extra snap. The room I recorded in is used for storing stuff so for the fourth track I was able to make a beat banging a small cardboard box and the desk my laptop was on before overdubbing a shaker. The shaker was actually a small container of toothpicks.

Chinese New Year is a difficult time for me because by this point I've already been feeling pretty depressed about not seeing my friends and family for the duration of Christmas, which isn't a holiday in China. I haven't been home for Christmas for well over a decade now. I love Chinese New Year for the fact my wife and kids get to spend time with their extended family but the reality is it's pretty boring and somewhat lonely for me, very much on the outside looking in, trying and for the most part failing to keep up with whatever conversation is going on.

Rather than endlessly doomscrolling on my phone I decided this year I was going to do something productive and challenge myself to make as much music as possible within this short time frame, and to see what was possible with very severe limitations compared to what I've grown used to in my home studio. I made and stuck to certain rules, in summary no reverb or delay or any kind of plugins, just the very basic DAW EQ in the ancient version of Sony Acid that's on the laptop. I was fascinated to see what I could achieve just through my playing, writing and arrangements, not endlessly overthinking things.

I wanted to work on pure instinct and also to finish mixing the tracks before I returned to Hangzhou where I could then just do a simple mastering job on them. I finished mixing the EP in the Zhejiang countryside (outside Baita near Xianju) in a B&B we were staying in whilst visiting more family in my wife's original hometown. I thought it was important to finish mixing the EP whilst on the road as there'd be a risk it would turn into something different once my usual tools were available to me at home.

For the most part, making this EP was a lot of fun, the stress of trying to squeeze in decent takes in a noisy family environment aside. I surprised myself with what I could achieve with, for the most part, just an acoustic guitar. The change in situation encouraged me to be inventive. For example, turning down the treble and turning up the bass means the acoustic can become a functional bass guitar, which I used mainly just for depth and rhythm to anchor the compositions rather than trying to do anything fancy. If an arrangement was lacking something then obviously I could also use the acoustic to play some lead guitar parts. These I sometimes doubled at a lower or higher octave and then panned for a stereo effect which tended to work quite nicely.

There was a lot of nostalgia associated with working this way. When the old band I was in split up in the naughty noughties, I was very disillusioned with music and was thinking of knocking it on the head. Perhaps I shoulda! But I very quickly found that the urge to create was still very much there so I continued making music on just a laptop using a computer mic. Although the tracks I made back then were very rough around the edges, it felt like there was exciting potential within them, and for better or worse, it was enough to keep me engaged in writing and recording. The way I was working over Chinese New Year 2025 felt similarly magical though a decent condenser mic has made a massive difference regarding the finished product.

I wanted to give this EP away for free as I'm aware I've been constantly promoting the same double album for a while now so it felt like an opportune time to do something completely different and put some new music out there just for the pure love of it. I hope you get something from it. Lots of love and best of luck for the Year of the Snake. I think we're going to need all the luck we can get...

Ut

I received an e-missive from my good friend t’other Bob who recounted his journey to London to see Ut. Which reminded me of their standout album “In Gut’s House” so I thought I would share a few tracks. For those who do not know them Ut was an American band which originated from New York City's no wave scene, in late 1978. Mixing rock, free jazz, and the avant-garde Ut's members were Nina Canal, Jacqui Ham, and Sally Young. They were joined briefly by filmmaker Karen Achenbach in 1979 before resuming as a three-piece band and relocating to London in 1981. They toured the UK with The Fall and the Birthday Party. In Gut's House was originally released in 1988 and made NME's Top 50 that year. The review from t’other Bob was as follows:

Of the three originals Sally and Jacqui remain on guitars with help from Paul May on drums, an occasional bassist (did I hear him being introduced as Mark Smith?) and another guest for three numbers at the end. I was always in love with their debut In Guts House not released until 1988 (the bands career progress can be described as quixotic at best) with it`s clattering and clanging deconstruction of song form. The opening track Evangelist could be the best track The Fall never recorded. Tonight Sally sings the more formed songs "this one`s a bit up tempo, not like our usual dirges" she says at one point, whilst Jacqui attempts the scrappier semi formed songs, overlaid by her astringent “Scanlonesque” guitar, but nothing has a chorus or any particular structure. It seems logical that overtime technical proficiency is a bit higher, the drumming more minimal than the earlier tribalism. But nothing in music before 1978 is ever referenced (unlike other New York groups, Sonic Youth clearly), it is as if they have no influences at all, or even any interest in music apart from to use it as a means to their own artistic expression. And they may do a couple of old songs but this is not an exercise in nostalgia, it`s music that is right there in the moment. The band used to swap instruments to deconstruct their own proficiency and group image. Tonight extra noise is generated by some old timer who scrapes a violin and blasts some alto sax. Turns out this is Tim Hodgkinson (of the parish of H Cow) who somewhere along the line oversaw some Ut recordings. On the last extended piece Jacqui womans the primitive kit (Tom Toms only) whilst Tim squeaks some left field free jazz and Sally bashes the bass like Doc Shanley. What I mean is it sounds great.

Jack Frost

And so a new multi-disc compilation of Jack Frost, the collaboration between The Go-Betweens' Grant McLennan and The Church's Steve Kilbey. Both the duo's albums are long out of print, the latter of which finds itself now issued on vinyl for the first time. The collection also includes a never before released set from the pair's one and only tour.

“An improbable pairing yet when we merged it was imperceptible. Sometimes we couldn’t tell who was doing what, and then we came up with some extraordinary stuff. Viva Les Frosties!” Steve Kilbey – Jan ‘25

Both musicians were well-known on the Australian music scene. Coming together in 1990, Steve had recently seen The Church’s international breakthrough with their Starfish album and ‘Under The Milky Way’ single, while on the other hand, The Go-Betweens, recently returned from overseas and frustrated by the relative failure of their 16 Lovers Lane album and attendant singles, had split.

After an approach from Kilbey, the pair began working on a series of songs which, as much as their bands differed stylistically, complimented each other perfectly. Recorded at Steve’s Sydney studio Karmic Hit and released in late ‘90 through Red Eye/Polydor in Australasia and Arista in the US and Europe, Jack Frost brought out the pulsing post-post punk of ‘Every Hour God Sends’ and ‘Birdowner (As Seen On TV)’, the jangling pop-rock of ‘Didn’t Know Where I Was’, ambient enterprise ‘Number Eleven’, the elegiac ‘Providence’ and blissfully acoustic meandering ‘Ramble’ to make a shimmering, cohesive whole.

It took another five years for a follow-up, but ‘95’s Snow Job, released through Kilbey’s own Karmic Hit label, was the match of its predecessor, from the heavy rocking ‘Pony Express’ and the droning psych of ‘Shakedown’ to the Eastern-flavoured ‘Haze’ and the haunting waltz ‘Angela Carter’, a paean to the then recently deceased English novelist. Causing fewer ripples on its arrival than its predecessor, Snow Job was the last time Kilbey and McLennan would collaborate, the latter resuming his Go-Betweens career before suddenly and tragically passing in May 2006. Kilbey, meanwhile, has continued with The Church their latest configuration seeing the band’s highest profile in years.

Unavailable for several years, Jack Frost (previously only reissued in 2006) and Snow Job (never reissued and for the first time on vinyl) are both presented as part of As Seen On TV, a 3-CD clamshell edition or a lavish 3-LP gatefold set, complete by several rare bonus tracks, including a Santa Monica radio session and a never-before-released live set – featuring two Go-Betweens songs – from the 9:30 Club, Washington in ’91 as part of their only tour.

The Go-Betweens

Talking of Grant I continue my leisurely ramble through the GB’s Box Set Number 3

Salem Trials

More from the latest album and the hardest working man in grass roots music Andy Goz with his trusty partner Russ Spence

Divide And Dissolve

Helmed by Black and Cherokee composer and multi-instrumentalist Takiaya Reed, Divide and Dissolve has announced her new album, Insatiable, due out April 18th via Bella Union. Already legends on the international doom metal scene, the new album is an evolution of sound and intricacy. Over the 10 tracks, it runs the gamut of doom metal, building upon the genre’s trademark sludgy guitars and thundering drums with Takaiya’s deft and wondrous saxophone. The lead single “Provenance”, a powerful and dynamic composition that evokes the spirit of hope and possibility. Takiaya shares, “Provenance is an examination of where things begin and how they can end.”

The album title Insatiable, came to Takiaya in a dream. She had a vision of a better world, one that gelled seamlessly with the optimism of her take on heavy music: “I saw and have felt the impact of people committing great acts of harm, causing pain in a never ending cycle. I have also seen and felt the strength and power of people committing great acts of love,” she says. For Takiaya, this is what it means to be “insatiable”; it’s the way we choose either a path of destruction or one of compassion, and experience it to its fullest. “It’s an album about love, and it feels important to experience this, now more than ever.”

Divide and Dissolve's music is an acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence, it honours ancestors, opposes white supremacy and calls for indigenous sovereignty. Strapped with thunderstorms of crashing cymbals, crunchy feedback, stomach-churning riffs and neo-classical inflections, the new collection delves into the idea of freedom through impermanence and destruction vs compassion, an urgent call to imagine a better world before it’s too late.

Jeff Myers

When is a piano not a piano?

Goodnight, enigmatically, is Jeff Myers’s answer: floating piano sonorities tracing where a piano once was, but without all the hardware. Perhaps, as it were, an after-dinner sleep dreaming on both.

“As a night owl, often going to bed a little before dawn, I often find myself with adequate quiet time where I can sit with long sounds and stare into them with my ears. In the middle of the pandemic, I began to make extended drone compositions for my own enjoyment or, sometimes, as a way to relax and fall asleep. I drew on my large catalog of piano harmonics as fodder for these dronescapes; stretching, shaping, and layering them to make walls - and clouds - of sound.”

While the waking Myers often gravitates towards narrative stories told through his acoustic compositions, this set of nocturnal, spectral sounds exists more as atmosphere – phases and feelings suggestive of a night well spent. “The result is something of an outlier in my creative output, but something I truly enjoyed, and I hope that listeners will drift with the flow as I have.”

Enthusiasts of La Monte Young, Eliane Radigue, Sunn O))), Hans Joachim Roedelius, or Georg Friedrich Haas will find themselves in vaguely familiar territory.

This is a digital-only release. No CDs are available.

Kiji Suedo

Kiji Suedo is a musician based in Osaka, Japan, whose new EP reflects a creative journey of crafting music with a laptop and a small mobile recorder, capturing the textures of everyday life through field recordings. By interweaving these curious fragments of sound, he shapes distinctive sonic landscapes. Recently, he has found himself captivated by the organic melancholy that seems to emanate from synthesizers, and this EP serves as a canvas for that emotion. This release also features NewKyd, a Switzerland-based artist, whose haunting vocals enhance the synthesizer’s wistful tones, adding layers of somber beauty and atmosphere.

Maud The Moth

The solo project of Spanish-born and Scotland-based pianist, singer and songwriter Amaya Lopez-Carromero and a track from her album, The Distaff, released via The Larvarium (digital +CD) and La Rubia Producciones (vinyl), with Woodford Halse/Fenny Compton contributing a tape release.

Amaya has long used the mantle of Maud the moth as an alter-ego, a séance-like conduit to explore themes of rootlessness, identity and trauma. The Distaff in particular refers to the stick or spindle onto which wool or flax is wound for spinning, and an object which has historically been used across multiple cultures as a symbol wielded by the “virtuous woman”, an authoritarian ideal around which much of the trauma surrounding the feminine coalesces. The album takes the form of a sort of self reflective and surreal autobiography. It was in part inspired by the poem of the same name written by the Greek poet Erinna, as she mourns her friend's loss of individuality and agency in exchange for marriage - and therefore safety and acceptance in the eyes of society.

About the track "Exuviae", Maud the Moth says;

Exuviae was written at dawn, after a sleepless night where defeat felt raw and hyperreal. The summer in Scotland is strange and the sun barely sets; A soft blue glow substituting night and weighing your chest down. Through the window, I could see the sky being torn and felt myself split.

Michael Grigoni * Pan•american

A preview from their first collaboration. New World, Lonely Ride will be released via kranky on 4th April. The album’s title gestures toward its meditative orientation. The duo offers a series of reflections on the zeitgeist of our present moment, the spirit of our age: the isolation and loneliness that continues to echo in the wake of the pandemic; the fractures that mar our political discourse; the uncertainty that has stamped itself on the future of democracy. The vast geography of America and the absence of a common ground, a shared political vision, have contributed to the affective landscape of contemporary American life—of what it feels like to live in the United States today.

Using instrumental voices and textures drawn from the traditional American forms of folk, country, bluegrass and blues, and informed with a modern sense of ambience and space, the sound is both contemporary and deeply rooted. With New World, Lonely Ride, Grigoni and Pan American join countless American artists who have drawn upon this landscape—physical and affective—giving it a voice and shape, listening to its character. And in starting there, with listening, offer a response for the future.

Aside from his musical endeavors, Michael Grigoni is an Assistant Professor of Religion at Wake Forest University where he teaches courses in religion, ethics, and politics. Having studied at Duke University and Harvard Divinity School, he uses ethnographic method in his research to raise questions about religion, politics, and everyday life in the American context.

Mark K. Nelson has a rich and varied history of releases as Pan•American in addition to founding Labradford.

The All's Eye

Their latest single an exhilarating and richly layered track that stands as a testament to their genre-blending artistry. Recorded at the iconic Carriage House Studios in Connecticut during the Summer of 2024 and completed at Music Factory Studios, this release is a collaboration that showcases the band’s core lineup alongside special guest Jason Hann of The String Cheese Incident on percussion. The core band consisting of Guitarist and Composer Ari Joshua, Drummer and Ben Atkind from Elephant Proof, and Keyboardist Kris Yunker from Bearly Dead. The chemistry and sound between Kris and Ben are as potent since their time playing together in Goose. An instant classic, weaving together a vibrant tapestry of layered strings, organic keyboards, and uplifting lyrics that evoke the soul-stirring essence of The Allman Brothers Band. .

Further tracks from recent featured albums by Laughing Clowns, Shaw's Trailer Park and Poppycock. The latter of which is not as some reviewers would have you believe Una Baines recounting of an actual NDE (Near Death Experience) but instead tells the tale of a smoke emitting keyboard in the band room at the Eagle Inn in Salford at a gig I promoted when Poppycock were supporting Australian visitor Harry Howard and his band the NDE. We were setting up to soundcheck and Una plugged in and immediately the keyboard malfunctioned. Una rushed off into the night to find a replacement returning just in time to play the set.

Russ Spence

Salem Trials vocalist Russ with his second solo album which reflects a disparate variety of influences.

Cristiano Varisco

Brazilian composer and guitarist Cristiano Varisco unveils his 4th instrumental album, Cristiano Varisco IV, a masterful tribute to cinematic film music. Inspired by the grandeur of the big screen, Varisco blends vivid harmonic landscapes with unconventional musical storytelling. Each track feels like a dramatic script brought to life—slow-motion sequences meet thrilling rhythms as eyes and ears explore an immersive soundscape. This album bridges instrumental music and the seventh art, offering listeners a journey through unique sonic narratives, rich with emotion and visual allure. Cristiano is joined by studio and guest musicians and plans to tour in 2025 as a band.

The Dave Graney Show

Of this track Dave says

I grew up in Mount Gambier. A blue collar timber town in South Australia. We called it "the Mount". This is a 70's scene, built around a picture of a few girls from that time.