Tag: indie rock

Orlacs Hände – CD – May 1st 2011

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Cat #: 057TZM

Not much good comes from Brisbane, but when something breaks through and makes an impact, it makes the city and those who pay attention to its music take an awestruck step back. During their all-too-short lifespan, Orlacs Hände was a band that did just that. 

For years, the record meant to be Orlacs Hände’s debut EP laid in a state of dormancy. It saw a limited cassette release overseas and quickly became impossible to track down, and those wondering if it would ever see the light of day finally lost hope. Now, tenzenmen is proud to announce that we will be righting that wrong and releasing the EP ourselves – the way it was meant to be. 

Everything that made Orlacs such a formidable and affecting live act is here: the gut-tearing screams; the shattered-glass guitars; the polyrhythmic, driving drums – but the six songs that make up the record are the real stars here. There aren’t many releases in this genre that pack so much originality and anguish into a package as compact as this one. This is a lost classic, and it’s about time it got the attention it deserves. 

FOR FANS OF: Portraits of Past, Noisy Sins of the Insect, Funeral Diner, & Tristan Tzara.

31st Mar 2021 – I remember this first sentence causing some controversy with some Brisbanites but this text was actually written by a local!

Alternative China – 1st May 2011

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Alternative China tumblr

Wooozy, Pangbianr, Carsick Cars, China Music Radar, P.K.14, Vietnam, Supersize Saigon, 10, Itta, Marqido, 2Kolegas, D-22, Lowbrow, Zoomin’ Night, Matthew Niederhauser, MDN Photo, Xiao He, Maybe Mars, Soviet Pop, The Offset: Spectacles, City Weekend, Liz Tung, Alok Leung, Hong Kong, Lona, Unixx, Helen Feng, Pet Conspiracy, QingDaonese, Beijing Daze, Midi Festival, Strawberry Festival, China Music Valley, Subs, Voodoo Kungfu, Suffocated, Skip Lunch, You Mei You, Flying Mantas, Rustic, Yang Haisong, New York Times, NeoChaEdge, AV Okubo, 24 Hours, HangGai, Duck Fight Goose, Mamer, Jennifer Conrad, Little Punk, Layabozi, Boys Climbing Ropes, Lucifer, Urbanatomy, Kazutoshi Chiba, Mao Live, Queen Sea Big Shark, SXSW, Converse, Italy, Xinhua

mr. sterile Assembly – Transit – 1st April 2011

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Cat #: 054TZM

Recorded at Mike Gibson’s Inca Studios, the old home of the NZ SIS, the Security Intelligence Service, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.

mr sterile: Drums, lyrics, vocals, noises 
Chrissie Butler: Bass, vocals 
Aaron Lloydd: Bass 
Jeff Henderson: Saxophone 
Nell Thomas: Gender (Javanese gamelan) 
Maria McMillan: Poet, words in Drought 
Dean Hapeta: Recording, lyrics & vocals 
Mike Gibson: Recording, mixing, mastering. 

Artists: 
Campbell Kneale 
Tao Wells 
Garage Collective 
James Robinson 
Stefan Neville 
Jeff Henderson 
Andrew Ross 
Suhartono 
Deborah Barton 
Roger Morris 
Kerry Ann Lee 

For this project, all the above members, musician, word smiths, and visual artists, are included in the pantheon of members-of-mr-sterile-Assembly.

Bang! Bang! Aids! – Rat Charm – 1st April 2011

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Cat #: 059TZM

2nd Apr 2021 – When I stayed at the Abbotsford Warehouse in Melbourne when organising things for China’s P.K.14 shows there I came across a box of this unreleased album and figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask Rhys and Marcus if they would like some help promoting and selling them and adding BBA to the tenzenmen catalogue. So, that’s how many copies of this album managed to avoid landfill.

Dear Eloise – The Words That Burnt – 1st April 2011

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Cat #: 056TZM

It’s not surprising if you haven’t heard of Dear Eloise. They are a mysterious band known by very few people. But once you have listened to their songs, they will be branded into your heart. 

The band came out around 2007, no definite date. It’s just an extension from a simple idea. Dear Eloise are Yang Haisong (P.K.14’s vocal) and his wife Sun Xia (P.K.14’s former bassist). No more words are needed, you will know how fantastic they are. 

In their new debut album, 8 songs, like 8 journals, are the monologue of frail, words that were burnt. Not only is the melody as pure and beautiful as a childish rhythm, but also the background is as noisy as an aged guitar factory. However, the songs have delicate fluctuations and layers similar to a possessed river, the water of which keeps flowing without stop, while rumbling in marvelous dark and light colors. After silence is demolished by noise within a second, a sweet but defenseless angel appears on the ruins with a peaceful and merciful look. She has a voice like a beam of light. Besides, her white feet moving in the darkness not only seem to be a piece of poem flowing in summer, they also sound like mumbling in cool well water or under large shades. In addition, the noise is performed magically and mysteriously appears to build up like looming rain drops. In this aural atmosphere of dimness, the swinging lights bring discomfort and anxiety . 

For most people, it is a brilliant album. What is rare is that it attracts people with its’ innocence and purity. Let’s imagine a picture in which the stars scald the sky and we crouch down on the lawn, stretching out our necks putting pressure on our knees. We look up to the dim but exciting glimmer, which hurts our eyes. Will we then cry? 

The world you imagine is very far away. It resembles a fading cigarette end or a scar… If you can find meaning to my voice, then you can comprehend this fairy tale. Get out of the fluttering dream, dear Eloise. I am going to take you to a lively and awesome place where there are castles and festivals and days go by with a roar. 

Hot and Cold – Any Monkey Is Dangerous – 1st April 2011

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Cat #: 052TZM

Hot & Cold was born in 2005 in New Delhi, India, the brainchild of Joshua and Simon Frank. Sparsely pairing lo-fi bass and megaphone vocals, the Frank brothers’ single Delhi performance incorporated a bedraggled Yamaha keyboard, and involved throwing candy at small children from above. 

In 2006, Joshua (20) and Simon (18) relocated to China’s chaotic, industrial capital – a city far better suited to their dirty robotic clangour. At the encouragement of internationally-acclaimed composer Shouwang, they began to accumulate an arsenal of effects pedals, quite literally launching themselves at Beijing audiences in frenzied 20-minute sets. 

Even in Beijing – one of the most exciting cities for new music today – Hot & Cold have proudly stuck out. Rather than gradually descending into chaos, their notoriously frenetic performances explode from the get- go. Their debut, Any Monkey is Dangerous captures the band’s shambolic grooves with all the vitality of their live performances. Hot & Cold channel their penchant for obliterating noise through a deep love for the fuzzy anthems of Pavement and Pixies. Their angular riffs and keyboard jabs have drawn comparison to New York no wave and Cabaret Voltaire, while lo-fi drums loops, rollicking basslines, and irreverent vocals evoke the Fall in both sound and attitude. Crystalline melodies emerge from their pulsing sonic chaos, and touches of yesteryear Bollywood hits pierce through the melee.

Alternative China – 7th March 2011

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Alternative China tumblr

Pangbianr, Mini Train Heart, Carsick Cars, Push Shove, China Outlook, A4 Destroyer, Hong QiLe, Zen Lu, Birstriking, 24 Hours, Noisey.com, D-22, Maybe Mars, Michael Pettis, Artspace China, SXSW, Queen Sea Big Shark, Converse, Modern Sky, Matthew Niederhauser, MDN Photo, Sound Kapital, Xiao Long, Zoomin’ Night, Zhang Shouwang, Liu Xinyu, Beijing Punk, EChinaCities, Misandao, Shaun Jefford, Flying Mantas, We Live In Beijing, You Mei You, FYeahChineseIndie, Fragile, Chopxticks Records, Hong Kong

Guai Li – Flight of Delusion – 1st March 2011

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Cat #: 051TZM

Taken from a well-known Confucian saying, “Guaili luanshen”, the band’s name refers to weird forces and unexplainable supernatural phenomena. Though Confucius never advised the public to blindly believe in unexplainable weirdness, the band certainly does – they have created sufficient levels of oddity and discomfort in their music and sing highly of it. 

In their much-anticipated debut album, Flight of Delusion, this twisted sense is heard not just in the grammatical chaos but also in the complex music arrangements. 

As a double-guitar band, Guaili is renowned for its daring spirit in musical structure and in this album, they’ve proven a maturing ambition to master the tools of their trade by playing multiple guitars and drums in a single piece. To top that off, they have also shaken up a stunning mixture of celesta, electronic keyboard and artificial industrial noises. But there is more depth than even critics will be aware of. A 20-Hertz sound wave, lower than the frequency that humans can hear, has been added into the tracks to provoke alpha brainwaves and stimulate creativity.