Super Best Friends Do The Can Can With Megatron

It's a gloomy Friday in Brisbane - well it is a Sonic Masala show on tonight, and it has rained on every occasion, so it makes sense. So I needed music that would get me through. Fang Island's newie got the ball rolling - then I cam across London collective Super Best Friends Club. Seeing as I'm in a party mood, but don't have the requisite drugs available to get it going (working in a school has that issue...), their EP People We Forget This Is Love was my substitute. An ecstatic tribal drone explosion that sounds like members of Zen Zen Egui, Cave and Black Dice got together with Devendra Banhart and Alexander Ebert, then got tastefully fucked up and recorded the effluent that resulted. There are so many ideas floating about in here, its fair to say a few miss the mark. Nevertheless, its all done with so much gay abandon that its nigh on impossible to hold it against them.


You can get People We Forget This Is Love here. They also have two new tracks, 'Yes You Are!' and 'Universe Universe', here.

Super Best Friends Club - Sunshine, Super Megatron!

Rolling The Young Black Prisms

There have been announcements of all kinds of interesting releases in the past couple weeks, and I thought I'd focus on a couple more that are piquing my interest.


Seems that Black Dice are primed to drop Mr Impossible, their sixth official LP since their inception some fifteen plus years previously. Easily one of the most influential experimental rock bands to ever walk the dirty corridors of this earth, the NY trio never approach music the same way, offering instead a distilled focus on creating something insular, unique, and unequivocally Black Dice. THAT is why my skin is tingling at the thought of this release. Mr Impossible comes out April 9 on Ribbon Music.

Black Dice - Pigs


Whilst not at the heady heights of excitement, this one is still up there. An early highlight of 2011, San Francisco band Young Prisms' album Friends For Now married the shoegaze aesthetics that has attracted so many bands of late with an earthier, more playful style that nevertheless was a little too throwaway. Now they are prepping to hit us with some clearer, fresher dream pop madness courtesy of sophomore effort In Between on Kanine Records. I enjoyed the first album, but there were chinks in the armour, so I'm eagerly awaiting the drop of this LP to see if they come back stronger. The first taste is below. I'm not entirely won over to be honest, but the crisp production could play in their favour if there is enough deviation in their sound. The premise - the band has based the record on the loss of a dear friend and an unexpected stranding in London's Heathrow Airport - certainly alludes that this may be the case. Time will tell...

Young Prisms - Floating In Blue

VIDEO VACUUM - Ben Salter, Ganglians, Wooden Shjips, TV On The Radio

Only a couple days now until the inaugural Sonic Masala Presents... launch, and you can see how excited we are here on the ranch - that's a real life photo of me above... But we aren't dropping the ball, no siree! It still gets us to the grind, so here are four vids that should grease up those wheels - with music attached, of course...

Ben Salter is a Brisbane musical mainstay, his stints with the likes of Giants Of Science, The Gin Club and the Young Liberals speaking for themselves (is that even a grammatically correct sentence? Salts, can you help me out on that one?) Anyway, he brought out his long-awaited debut solo rekkid, The Cat, earlier this year (produced by none other than Gareth Liddiard of The Drones, no less), and it's a real doozy. Here is the video for leading single off it, 'The Coward' (which is so old it used to be called 'Yellow', but when Coldplay brought a certain song with the same name he deemed it necessary to change it. Wow...) I love it because it's on the Brisbane trains. And Salter looks like many of the crazies you encounter on the train to Ipswich at any given hour...



Wooden Shjips' latest effort West is pretty killer. Just to show HOW killer, the San Franciscan psych dwellers have gotten together a video for spiky number 'Lazy Bones' - directed by none other than Black Dice! You can't get more excellently referential than that. We saw Ripley Johnson in his other form as Moon Duo last weekend - excellente! - and we get to see Black Dice touch down in a couple months. Still waiting on an actual Wooden Shjips tour though...

Wooden Shjips - Lazy Bones from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Im kinda hot and cold when it comes to Ganglians. They are one of those acts that tend to drag me in with their recordings, then disappoint when it comes to the live arena. This is a pretty unusual dilemma, but it occasionally happens (Real Estate have also led me down this path...) Anyway, John Hinckley's video for Ganglians' latest single 'Bradley' is pretty ace. Ill probably keep giving these hipster hippies the benefit of the doubt til the day they die...

Ganglians - "Bradley" from John Hinckley on Vimeo.

TV On The Radio have had a tumultuous year to say the least, but they continue to roll on, and that adds more stars on their lapels as far as Im concerned. Their fourth album Nine Types Of Light may have perplexed some, but I liked it more than their last album. Go figure. They are playing in Australia next month, so here is a track to get us all lathered up for it...



NOW GET BACK TO WORK!