Always – Bear Pride + Gross Odour (Chapter Music)

Cumming straight outta the NSW/Victoria border towns of Albury-Wodonga, Alex Vivian has to be the only tape loop producer celebrating bear pride and gross body odours. The art/music/prankster plays stupid techno as Slam Dunk and used to go under the name Viviano. He likes jockstraps, percussion, garbage, stale food, fart spray, “90s USA teenage tape labels and old fashioned hamburgers. It comes through. “Cruising + Body Odour’ is John Waters-gone-homo sleaze, zine culture and cut up production. It’s stupid, but cool. Young enough to have grown up with the Internet, even in Wodonga (Albury’ poor cousin, apparently), Vivian’ been nipping out of class for years to keep his blogs and myspaces and livejournals updated. But he started getting zines in his early teens and was mail-ordering records from Guy Blackman’ Chapter Music by the time he turned 14. That explains a lot, because musically he’ a long way away from Chapter’s usually fantastic, but often earnest fare. This is definitely not earnest! Imagine a capella chanting “Freedom, freedom, freedom, power, power, power” until it sounds like an ejaculatory climax and you can pretty much replicate the experience of this seven inch long player. It’s closer to the wonderfully amateur lo-fi exuberance of mid-“90s riot grrls like Huggy Bear, despite the results being more radio-play than indie-rock.