Hack No More (If It Was Ever Hacked...)

I have a veritable mountainload of tenzenmen releases that have been rolled up and really deserve your attention, but I thought I would focus on this one, the self-titled record by Sydney night-people Hacks. The act are supposedly a mysterious band of edge dwellers even on the alternative music scene in Sydney, emerging occasionally to swagger effortlessly through a chaotic set of improvised tunes only to drop out again into the realities of life. Not only is their existence relatively unrecognised (no one I know ever saw them play - are they even real??), but unlikely to blow up any time soon as one of their members looks set to set up shop in the European wilderness, no sign of return. It's a real shame, because the four tracks on Hacks are all kinds of beautiful improvised noise and mayhem.


Hacks can be gleaned here. It's good.

Hacks - Between Hawk And Buzzard

Sinking Into The Sea At Null Hour

Due to my self-imposed exile there are a few albums that got released in the past couple of weeks that are hurriedly deserved of attention. The first I want to focus on is Null Hour, the debut LP from Wellington, NZ trio Sunken Seas. Leaning heavily on the post-punk roots of its members, yet delving into far colder territory, the ten tracks on display procure a feeling of spiralling despair that is impressive in its all-encompassing nature. Its density and darkness mirrors that of harder-hitting doom dwellers Heirs, yet the compositional flourishes throughout out Null Hour into another realm. Think something in the murkier regions of post-rock, grafted onto HTRK's back and set forth in Snowman's backyard. There is much to be mined here, Ive been living with it for a fortnight, and I feel like I'm only scratching the surface. A great release that needs exposure.


Null Hour is out now through tenzenmen and Muzai Records. You can (and should) grab it here.

Sunken Seas - High Rise
Sunken Seas - Paid Your Price

Tenzenmen Terrorists Take 2 (Sydney Killers)

A second batch of Australian releases from excellent tenzenmen Records...


Sydney's Mere Women is a tight, menacing ball of barely-tempered vitriol, and their cyclical brand of post-punk is something to behold. Old Life is their debut, and it's pretty damn killer. Shouts, breathy whispers, skitchy pop, serrated post-punk, singsong lullabies, sunny soundchecks crashing into a overcast sea of noise - it is all wrapped up here, often in the same song. I've heard some exciting things about their performances, and they are promising a sojourn north later this year, so I for one wait with bated breath.

Mere Women - TB
Mere Women - Amends


Also hailing from Sydney is Hira Hira, five guys take brooding yet hook-laden punk and cram it through the anguish wringer. Now Here Forever is the result of a lot of blood, sweat and tearing of flesh, and it's slick as all get out. It's skittering punk is muscular yet sinuous, difficult to get a hold on until its choking you to death. Also promising a Qld trek this year, get acquainted with their gear now.

Hira Hira - Bugs

Shaun assures me there's a hell of a lot more where this stuff came from, so stay tuned... In the meantime, pick up these great albums here and here.

Tenzenmen Terrorists Take 1 (Brisbane Roars)

Shaun Tenzenmen keeps whipping out the releases, and here are two more to sink your teeth into - and they are both from Brisbane!


Little Shadow are offering what is their first release in Possessions, a six-tracker that welds melodicism, math-oriented compositions and some angular grit. Evoking the likes of Cursive and The Nation Blue in their penchant for honest storytelling (courtesy of To The North's Cam Gillard, dialling down the throat tearing for more melodic vocals) and brutal musicianship, Little Shadow are attempting to temper their hardcore edges to achieve something new. There is a lot of promise here.

Little Shadow - Balancing Act


A band that is NOT tempering anything is IDYLLS. A co-operative split label release with their own Monolith Records and tenzenmen, Farewell All Joy intensities in ten cities, man! 20 minutes of bristling fury. These guys are monster musicians too, so to hear such vitriol and despair rip through the ether into you headspace is incredibly confronting - and exciting.

IDYLLS - Funerals In Queensland
IDYLLS - Bombs Reign Youthless

Both bands have great shows lined up. IDYLLS will be launching Farewell All Joy this Friday night at Fat Louies alongside Marathon, Jurassic Penguin (NZ), Capeweather and Wallow, followed by a support slot to Nikko at the Waiting Room Saturday June 23. Little Shadow will be supporting Closure In Moscow on Thursday 28th June at X & Y.

Grab both albums here.

Dressed In Wild Colonial Gold & Red

Brisbane's Nikko have been busy with supports for ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead and Boris, plus having made a brief sojourn to Melbourne. And although one member still lies ensconced in that chilly city, and other projects have occupied some (Ryan Potter's The Scrapes and The Maryettas getting shows around Brisbane), they are about to drag you further down into their darkly eloquent Gothic Outback Western apocrypha as they prepare to drop new LP Gold & Red through the stellar tenzenmen Records (alongside Music Fix).

Opening with the brooding, ominous 'The Child', Nikko envelop you with their atmospheric wall of sound, here perfectly captured by Cam Smith (of Tiny Spiders/Ghost Notes/St Augustus fame, and whose recording efforts include Velociraptor and the mighty No Anchor) in the cavernous orchestral hall of Brisbane's historic Old Museum. In fact, such an environment is perfectly suited to the band's melodic post-rock steeped aesthetic, with that lost country twang in the saddle also (the drawl of 'About The Spirit' perfectly exemplifies this). Aaron Cupples (The Drones, Snowman) and Nao Anzai (Laura, Because of Ghosts) mixed and mastered respectively, and their presence is immediate. Anzai in particular is well versed in these instrumental-based multi-layered sounds. Ryan Potter's voice is beautifully captured here, which isn't an easy task (his deep baritone can lose its rich timbre if not mixed properly). In fact Gold & Red is epic in every sense, the noisy moments are incredibly emotive, the quiet moments offered enough space to dance to its own tune without feeling perfunctory. 'Never Danced' is one of the most beautiful songs they have ever created, whilst the chugging rush of 'Dark Eyes' is a locomotive of smouldering tension. The title track is the most likely to evoke Western epics like Deadwood or The Proposition in its plaintive plinks, the itch before the storm, and it is the perfect example of how clever and evocative these guys' compositions are.


Nikko continue to carve a unique path across the Australian musical landscape, and Gold & Red is further proof that such rustic post-rock mysticism is warranted - nay, vital - to our Australian musical landscape.

The album is out on CD soon, and later on gold & red vinyl - I'm gettin' me some o that! They are also launching the album at The Waiting Room on Saturday June 23, as well as having an in store at Tyms in July before embarking on a national tour.

Tenzenmen Rack Up The Heavy Comps

Here are a couple more releases from Shaun at Tenzenmen Records - and believe me, there is a lot to take in here.


Firstly we have this internationally flavoured four-way split LP between US band 97-Shiki, Australia's Bare Arms, Italy's Milvains and Malaysia's Inquiry Last Scenery. It's a pretty rad punk record, melding screamo tendencies with myriad different influences (trumpets! melodicism! languid segues!). It links together pretty well, which is quite surprising really - a serendipitous tapestry of tearing vocal cords.

97-Shiki - Massive Yachts
Bare Arms - Omar Comin'!
Inquiry Last Scenery - Behind The Mask
Malvains - #1


Stay Together Volume 5 is another compilation beast entirely. In early December 2011 64 music fans at a punk charity concert in Banda Aceh’s Tamen Budaya Park in Indonesia were violently arrested by the Shari’ah police. They were not (and cannot) be charged with any crime but were forced to undergo religious education which included their heads being shaven and forced into the lake to bathe. The religious police have threatened a continuation of arrests and re-education against the punks “until they are better”. When questioned about the targeting of punks due to their cleanliness the Police Chief justified the actions by drawing a distinction between them and “the clean punks that exist in different classes”. Asked why the police aren’t then targeting the homeless he stated “there are no homeless in Aceh, there are only punks.”

Fucking arseholes.

Therefore, the Stay Together compilation series exemplify the support the punks show for each other, in Indonesia (where the bands are from), in Australasia (where all the record labels involved in the release are from) and in the world (where the punk community has come together to help). As part of this community, Tenzenmen offers this release with 50% of physical and 100% of digital sales going to help the punks in Aceh. Available via mailorder and digital download here. It's a fucked up world we live in sometimes - so try to make it a better place!

Tetap Berbahaya - Delirium
Mutant Troopers - Reanimator
Strong To Hold - I Will Never Give Up

Thrill Jockey Avalanche #1 - Jon Porras (of Barn Owl), Luke Roberts, Man Forever

My inbox is overflowing - I have no idea how I'm going to get all this 2012 good music to your delectable ears! So I'm doing a whole bunch of multiple artist posts (see Tenzenmen post here as an example of what I mean). I could just list releases, post a song, move on. So much easier too! But that is NOT how I do things here at Sonic Masala. So this week I aim to catch up on all the recent and upcoming releases from label favourite Thrill Jockey, starting with these three lovelies.


Jon Porras is more famous as one half of brilliant drone duo Barn Owl. However, just like other half Evan Caminiti, they have individual projects going on too. Black Mesa is Porras' solo venture, and it's a excellent excursion into guitar experimentation, taking elements of Japanese psych, West Coast amble and Southern twang, having his collages percolate through the prisms of elongation, tremolo and twang, deconstructs and reconstructs over a ten month period, and then offers it up as an album. 'Into Midnight' has some Neil Young Dead Man era darkness pulsing through its veins, alongside warblings that the Black Angels' Christian Bland would find wholly appealing. Yet there is something overtly immersive about Black Mesa that makes this more than a vanity project or an attempt at creating an artistic gesture. Many of these songs feel fully formed - the longer tracks are justified at their extrapolated timeframes, the shorter tracks evoke the right mood without feeling half baked. Like the outpourings of Mark McGuire, Black Mesa is a sublime album from a continually exciting performer.

Jon Porras - Into Midnight


It seemed only yesterday that Luke Roberts released Big Bells And Dime Songs (when he didn't even own his own guitar!), yet last month he was back releasing The Iron Gates At Throop And Newport. He wrote this sophomore release on his own guitar, and on tracks such as 'His Song' and 'I Don't Want You Anymore' Roberts seems to have grown in confidence and scope also. The arrangements have been noticeably beefed up, so that his plaintive vocals are embedded amongst complementary orchestration rather than plastered on a blank canvas, pulling all the weight. Yet it would be easy to drown out these emotional odes with bombast and flair, but every arrangement is specifically chosen. It's a beautiful album, one that stands on its own pedestal yet promises so much more.

Luke Roberts - I Don't Want You Any More
Luke Roberts - His Song


Finally today we are looking at Pansophical Cataract, the stunning album from percussive magnets Man Forever (AKA John Colpitts AKA Oneida's drumming maestro Kid Millions). The two track release was always going to be an exercise in drumming exploration, the tub-thumping counterpoint to Porras' offering, yet the boisterousness inherent in the cyclical suites he constructs here are a little more out there - and all the more enjoyable for it. The album is relentlessly driven by Colpitts' endless quest to find pattern in percussion. It's a rhythmic roar that is as calming as it is unsettling, a paradox that aptly showcases the possibilities within this musical framework. And although Side A 'Surface Patterns' delves into the pulses of electrical instruments rather than the skin variety, it is no less hypnotic and captivating. Colpitts, like many of the artists he works with that live on the periphery of what we know as 'pop music', is an exciting presence and a godsend.

Man Forever - Surface Patterns

Grab all of these from Thrill Jockey here.

Tenzenmen Tsunami

Shaun Tenzenmen is awesome. I seriously love this guy. He has brought to my ears the amazing self-titled debut by Auckland noise rockers God Bows To Math, and the subsequent Sonic Masala-run show at The Waiting Room killed (plus they are super nice guys). He is also a very busy man, bringing us music from all over the world, all of it excellent. But he has been uber busy lately, releasing a whole bunch of seven-inches and albums, so I have some serious work to do to ensure the word is out! So, here are some of the Tenzenmen releases floating in the ether (and at your local record store - I picked up a couple 7"s at Rockinghorse last weekend...)


First up we have Yes I'm Leaving, a Sydney noise act that is far too underrated for any sane man to comprehend. This three piece are crafting some beautifully dissonant rock that does everything you want from the genre and more, and on new release Nothing they truly nail it.

Yes I'm Leaving - Untitled
Yes I'm Leaving - Nothing

Now, who's up for some Asian hardcore? Yeah, me too! Why not throw some Spanish screamos in the mix too! This split 7" features a few tracks from Malaysian brutalisers Inquiry Last Scenery, as well as the last recordings of Spain's abrasive brethren El Eje Del Mal (translates as Axis Of Evil). It's fast, furious and fun - pretty essential then. (Plus the crudely drawn Star Wars riffing cover is pretty ace!)

El Eje Del Mal - El VHS Contenta
Inquiry Last Scenery - I.L.S


Remember Bikini Eyebolt? Not really? Shame. They existed (if you could call it that) in Melbourne around 2007-2008, and featured DEAD's Jace on guitars and vocals. This release showcased what most of the world missed - a band willing to follow in the footsteps of the post-punk giants such as Gang Of Four and Wire, without succumbing to malaise, pretension or disco. This is authentic, serrated, and above all none of it is throwaway. It sure is a shame that these guys aren't still killing it - but then again, Dead might not exist as it does now, so swings and roundabouts I suppose...

Bikini Eyebolt - Rats Love Me
Bikini Eyebolt - Walking Asleep


Heading back to Asia - Shanghai in China, to be exact - we'll finish off with Duck Fight Goose, an experimental math rock hybrid who are causing ripples all over the world since forming back in 2009. History is a 7" preceding their upcoming 2nd LP Sports, and is a worth precursor. There are only 50 copies in Australia (well, 49, because I am now a proud owner!) in white vinyl, and is well worth the purchase.

Duck Fight Goose - History

There are more to come this week, so keep the goodness flowing! You can get these releases and shedloads more here

A Chinese Tenzenmen Triptych

After the amazing news that Auckland noise magnets God Bows To Math are coming to Australia, courtesy of Tenzenmen Records, and seeing that Sonic Masala is putting the last show in Brisbane in April, it's fitting to start bringing into the SM fold some of the great artists that Shaun at Tenzenmen has under his belt. Ill ease you in with three of the best...


It should be stated that Tenzenmen really got started after an initiative with China, which has led to Shaun bringing to light a bunch of Chinese bands that outside that nation we were quite likely never going to hear. The following bands all fall under that umbrella, starting with Dear Eloise. The trio are a lo-fi bedroom dream pop band that delve in shoegaze noise on the side. What blows my mind is that they are exactly that - a bedroom band. They have never played alive performance. In some ways that's a shame, in others - right on. The two tracks below are from their concurrent 7"'s Castle and Song For Her that came out last year. Normally you have to hunt far and wide for this - because of Tenzenmen, I bought Castle last fortnight because it was sitting at one of my favourite local record stores. They also have an album out there that deserves to be hunted down - STAT.

Dear Eloise - Castle
Dear Eloise - Song For Her


A newer Tenzenmen release is this crazy good 7" from Fanzui Xiangfa, a hardcore punk band based in Beijing. The name translates into the more traditional hardcore name of Criminal Minds, hence me not tagging them as such. With three tracks on either side and it all clocking in at just over a sixth of an hour (that's ten minutes for those not mathematically inclined), this record is a hell of a lot of breakneck fun. Have at three of the tracks below - all in a five minute long single track, like a mega mix, yeah!

Fanzui Xiangfa - Garbage/Rip Off/Target Me


Thirdly and nowhere near finally we have Hedgehog a truly kick ass band. A killer guitar pop band with more than enough lashings of pop hooks (listen to 'Elf' and tell me this isn't the Shanghai Ratcat!), Hedgehog are starting to make a name for themselves. Four albums in six years means they certainly don't sit on their hands, and the best part is their consistency. My current fave of the four albums is Noise Hits World, hence the two tracks below, but listen to em all. DO IT! Hedgehog are amazeballs.

Hedgehog - Pumpkin
Hedgehog - Elf

Tenzenmen is an incredible label bringing the unlikeliest of bands to our attention, and he stocks records at at least one record store in your capital city, little Vegemites! Brisbane's port of call is Rockinghorse. There is a lot more to come from these guys...

Minute Men, Noise, New Zealand, Sonic Masala, Waiting Room = FUCKING A!

This post is fucking amazeballs for three reasons. Firstly, I initially wanted to talk about the incredible debut album from NZ's God Bows To Math. Put out by the indelible Tenzenmen Records (responsible for helping bands like Nikko, To The North and Dead! put stuff out, whilst also bringing many Asian acts such as Dear Eloise and Carsick Cars to Australian ears - there will be many posts coming from their quarter in due course) as well as our trans-Tasman friends Muzai Records, the self-titled releases is heavy, unmitigated sound that pounds the eardrums with the relentless monotony of a king tide. Three years in the making, and recorded twice after a hard drive failure wiped the originals, it makes sense that the final product was mastered by the hallowed Chicago Mastering Service (run by Bob Weston and Jason Ward). It has that nihilistic yet pedantic brutality that Melbourne's My Disco are the kings of, yet flirts with the serrated wit of Welsh legends Mclusky. They aren't reaching either of these heady heights yet, but what they have come up with is very exciting nonetheless.



Then it came to light that they are enacting an assault on Australia's fine shores in April! This is incredible news, all the more amazing seeing as it was put together by local act Make More. Here are the dates:

April 13th - Adelaide - Crown & Anchor - with No Action and SparkShifter
April 14th - Melbourne - Gasometer - with Shit Weather
April 15th - Melbourne - Irene’s Warehouse (All Ages) - with Palisades
April 17th - Newcastle - Pharmacy - with Lennin Lennon
April 18th - Wollongong - Yours & Owls – support TBA
April 19th - Canberra - Phoenix – support TBA
April 20th - Sydney - The Roxbury - with Hira Hira and Mere Women
April 21st - Brisbane - Fat Louie’s - with Make More
April 22nd - Brisbane - __________________________________________________

What's that gap, you ask? It's the third reason that this post is blowing my mind, as Sonic Masala is combining with Tenzenmen to put on a second Brisbane show at The Waiting Room for the band! Supported by Make More and Tiny Spiders, the show will be on the Sunday April 22. This is a fantastic chance to see a brilliant abrasive up and coming act from across the ditch, up close and personal (well, up closer and more personal than Fat Louie's, anyway...not that I'm dissing that show, go see em twice you donkeys!). They may only be from the other side of the Tasman, but this counts as Sonic Masala's first o/s band, and that is all that matters!

Get there!!!