I can still quite vividly recall a searing northerly wind and a temperature nudging 45 degrees, one Melbourne summer about a decade ago. This seemed quite a surprise to me, as my perception of Melbourne generally was that it was somewhat cooler and more “European” than most Australian cities, a place where a hipster could wear a scarf at any time of the year. Certainly I digress, I was only prompted into such off-topic musings by the name of the crew putting together this compilation. An ice age wouldn’t be such a bad thing where I find myself right now; an encroaching glacier sliding down the Swan Valley would be just the ticket. Compilation artists Infinite Decimals and Aktion Unit could almost be the sound of an Isolationist post-rock glacier grinding through the striated layers of Melbourne’s post-punk and alternative environs.
Peter James, who records as Wolf 359, runs Iceage Productions. You can read an expose on the label by prolific Cyclic contributor Bob Baker Fish here. “Urban Decay” by Wolf 359 sounds like a thousand angry C64’s trapped in the maximum-security prison that Manhattan becomes in John Carpenter’s schlock suspense thriller Escape from New York. Constant Light also hark back to the late 70s/early 80s for their stately brand of naive lo-fi motorik kosmische repetition, complete with snippets of a BBC radio commentary on imperial measurements. Who said experimental music couldn’t be informative and fun?
Automating’s “Tapped” has a lengthy rain-soaked field recording intro that gradually turns into a Popol Vuh dream/dronescape. Slowly, a steady drum machine (reminiscent of Big Black’s drum machine on downers) and massive reverbed guitars assert themselves. Guitarist Zac Keiller delivers a breathtakingly poignant and delicate piece of ambience on “By Darkness & By The Moon”. Springvale’s angriest not-so-young men, the reformed Primitive Calculators, contribute a live rendition of “Love”, recorded at the Applecore Backyard Festival in 2009. It’s a somewhat confused take on the love song canon, that makes more sense when put in the context of being written around thirty years previous; the love sentiment certainly seems to be coming from the perspective of youth.
Mystic Eyes comes through with the goods in fine style on “La Cicatrice.” Sharing a name with the 1972 film by French director Philippe Garrel, Lisa MacKinney’s one-lady drone machine builds up layers of hypnotic devotional sonorities in the manner of Spacemen 3 or Terry Riley. Nico stared in the film, but she doesn’t appear in this reimagining of an arresting avant-garde cinema classic. Without being privy to Lisa’s movements or address, I suspect that Perth has equal claim to this one. The final impressions of The Shape of Sound Vol. 1 are a nasty, muddy garage krunk, recorded in the bowels of a unhygenic grease trap, by The Paul Kidney Experience. Limited to one hundred copies, the CDR comes with splattered artwork on the disc, a piece of which unfortunately lodged in the laser of my CD player, sending it to an early grave. This example demonstrates that Cyclic reviewers, like Iceage Productions, go that extra (imperial) mile to come up with the goods.
An addendum to the last paragraph – Only the promo discs came with the splattered artwork, so your CD player should breathe a sigh of relief with the official CD from Iceage Productions.
Oliver Laing
