SYDNEY: Saturday January 14 @ St Stephen’s Uniting Church, Sydney Festival. SOLD OUT
SYDNEY: Sunday January 15 @ Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Sydney Festival. SOLD OUT
MELBOURNE: Wednesday January 18 @ The Toff with Leah Senior. Tickets on sale now. SOLD OUT
HOBART: Friday January 20 @ MONA FOMA Festival. Tickets on sale now.
MELBOURNE: Saturday January 21 @ Sugar Mountain Festival. Tickets on sale now.
Mistletone very proudly presents the debut Australian tour by rising folk/soul auteur Moses Sumney.
“Moses Sumney knows lonely. For the past couple of years, he’s been serenading our alien impulses one track at a time, giving voice to the part of our psyche that would rather burrow inside a tree stump in a forgotten forest than face the outside world. He takes the elastic phrasing of Nina Simone and the purple-black undertones of Nick Drake and invites us to a place of eerie calm… His songs sound like lullabies for the self, hymns of fragile persistence” – PITCHFORK BEST NEW MUSIC
Born in San Bernadino, California, Moses Sumney moved to Ghana with his Ghanian-born parents at the age of ten. While studying creative writing at UCLA, he taught himself how to play guitar and began performing at age 20. At 26 years old, Moses currently lives in Los Angeles and, since 2013, has been gaining attention for his soulful folk music, though he has not yet signed with a record label or released a debut album.
With famous fans such as Solange, Sufjan and Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, Moses Sumney has shared stages with forebears such as James Blake, St. Vincent, Erykah Badu, Karen O and Beck. His new EP, Lamentations, was released in October 2016 and has won unanimous praise, including “Best New Track” from Pitchfork.
Moses Sumney first emerged as an independent artist to watch with the self-release of his debut EP, “Mid-City Island,” and followed by 2015’s Terrible Records 7″, “Seeds/Pleas”. Since then he has been riding a wave of word-of-mouth praise, hushed recordings, and dynamic live performances.
2016 has seen Moses widening the sonic spectrum of his intimate music, releasing songs that feature fleshed-out production and focused song-writing. In-between stops at festivals around the globe — Primavera Sound, Pitchfork Music Festival, Eaux Claires — he has been locked down putting the finishing touches on his debut full length.
Moses recently contributed vocals to Solange‘s new album A Seat at The Table, listen out for his layers on “Mad” (with Lil’ Wayne), and “Dad Was Mad”; his lead vocals also graced The Cinematic Orchestra‘s brand new single, “To Believe”.
SYDNEY: Thursday January 19 @ Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Sydney Festival. Tickets & info here.
MELBOURNE: Friday January 20 @ Northcote Social Club with Lost Animal + Poppongene. Tickets on sale now. * SELLING FAST!
MELBOURNE: Saturday January 21 @ Sugar Mountain Festival. Tickets on sale now.
BRISBANE: Sunday January 22 @ Junk Bar (solo show). Tickets on sale from Oztix. * SELLING FAST!
Mistletone is delighted to present the great Weyes Blood, touring Australia for the first time in January in full band formation.
Though Natalie Mering, who performs and records as Weyes Blood, chose to distort her project’s name (giving “Wise” an appropriately outré, olde feel) with a nod to the ocular (w’eyes), her entire output thus far has been an exercise in exploring the atemporal. She is a musician, a singer, after all, but the particular process of Weyes Blood’s development, and her experimentation with everything from early 2000s local-noise-scene strangeness to her present mastery of timeless balladry, highlight her as an meticulous sonic alchemist.
Active in underground music since 2006, Natalie Mering has collaborated with a slew of strange birds including Jackie-O Motherfucker and Ariel Pink. She’s released four records as Weyes Blood. The Innocents, Weyes Blood’s Mexican Summer debut, deepened and broadened the shimmering murkiness of her earlier album, The Outside Room (attributed to Weyes Blood and The Dark Juices), shaving away the fuzziness of that album’s lo-fi production and revealing a songwriting ability at once classic and singular. Cardamom Times, the EP that followed, went further down the folky, lyrically evocative river that The Innocents travelled so deftly. The influence of classical and Early music can be felt throughout these two works, rivaling the ostensible folk music lineage within which one may like to situate Weyes Blood’s songs.
Weyes Blood’s new album, Front Row Seat To Earth, captivates immediately with its frank clarity in both sound and word. Though still retaining a deep influence of the classical often felt in her songs as a sense of ancient resonance, Natalie Mering is at her most intimate and vulnerable here, due in large part to her stunning vocals and simple, essential lyrical phrasing.
Produced by Natalie with Chris Cohen (who also contributes his deft, subtle drums to many tracks), the album is warm and close with a pop sensibility that sends it soaring into the atmosphere. The closeness of this record – how personal, alone, and frank it feels – conceals its aspirations to the outside, to the “Earth” of its title.
Natalie Mering wants to lead us through the microcosm of the personal to the macrocosm of the transpersonal. Her witness harbors devastating weight (“… and now you can’t stay, please baby don’t go away”) while also universalizing the strange ways of identity and relationships. These are not typical love songs or protest songs — they are painful, poignant riddles that celebrate the ambiguity of love.
Weyes Blood affirms the conflict of harmonious life within a disharmonic world — she illuminates and mythologizes it, projecting it back over the whole of Earth. The inner ecology leads outward, bridging “us” with our obscure inheritance of nature.
“She crafts emotional epics that masquerade as psych-folk ballads, subtly symphonic songs that are informed by yesterday but live and breathe right now” – PITCHFORK BEST NEW MUSIC
“The exceptional voice of Natalie Mering never ceases to sweep us off our feet” – THE FADER
SYDNEY: Sunday January 15 @ St Stephen’s Uniting Church, Sydney Festival. Tickets & info here.
MELBOURNE: Thursday January 19 @ The Toff with Two Steps on the Water. Tickets on sale now.
HOBART: Saturday January 21 @ MONA FOMA Festival. Tickets on sale now.
Mistletone very proudly presents Circuit des Yeux, aka Chicago artist Haley Fohr, touring as an ultra dynamic duo for her first ever Australian tour.
“Since she was a teenager, Haley Fohr, now 27, has been a kind of one-woman post-cabaret movement, using finger-picked folk-guitar mesmerisation, synthesizer ripples, aggressive drone chords and a severe, semi-operatic low voice. She’s hard to contain” – NEW YORK TIMES
Haley Fohr’s music strikes a unique balance between the personal and universal. As Circuit des Yeux she creates music that embodies the complexity of human emotions, juxtaposing tenderness and grief, ecstasy and horror, using sounds as representations of the emotional spectrum that we all experience.
Haley’s striking voice, an impassioned baritone, is the music’s centerpiece and guiding force. For her most recent Circuit des Yeux album In Plain Speech, Haley was joined by some of the most progressive musicians in the Chicago music community; Cooper Crain (Cave, Bitchin Bajas), Whitney Johnson (Verma), Rob Frye (Bitchin Bajas), Adam Luksetich (Little Scream), and Kathleen Baird (Spires That In The Sunset Rise). Haley cements her reputation as a fearless songwriter and inventive arranger with this stirring collection of songs that are both gorgeous and emotionally potent.
In Plain Speech represented the start of a new, more collaborative chapter for Circuit des Yeux. While previous works were solo affairs, not only in performance, but emotionally tied to a sense of confinement and place, these new songs were composed after a move to a collective living space, giving Haley an opportunity to break free of the isolation that informed her previous albums. Haley brought her community, literally, to the recording. In Plain Speech was her first recording with a full band, who are all leaders in Chicago’s new wave of creative musicians. Her songs, while always potent when delivered solo, shine in this new band context. Companionship and solidarity are themes woven throughout the album. “Do The Dishes” is a meditation on sisterhood, and a message to other women to take risks, follow their passions deeply and to love themselves. “Fantasize the Scene” explores the idea of eternal friendship.
Extensive touring influenced the making of the album in several ways. Having toured solo for months throughout Europe and the US, no band, no tour manager, no driver, Haley in that solitude learned to commune with the audience in a way that she hadn’t ever before. That connection sparked in her mind a conversation with the audience, and many of the lyrics on In Plain Speech are directed at “you,” the listener. She also became acutely aware of disquiet, a pervasive anxiety, which permeated society in almost every city she visited. “I felt an uneasiness that superseded phonetic communication,” she writes. “Something dim is in the air, and it is looming large.” This anxiety creeped into songs like “A Story Of This World,” which is a call for change of priorities and values among the world’s leadership.
Haley’s latest release on Thrill Jockey is credited to her alter ego, Jackie Lynn…
Jackie Lynn was born in Franklin, TN on June 1st, 1990: “I’ve always been the source of action. My mom didn’t even make it to the hospital before I decided to come into this world. She had to lie right down on the sidewalk in front of Rolling Hills Hospital as doctors hovered around to help. It was storming that morning, and right as I was coming into the world a bolt of lighting fell from the sky, striking my mother right in the belly. They say I shot out of her like a bullet from a gun, right into oncoming traffic.”
Jackie, now a 25-year-old Gemini residing somewhere unknown, has mysteriously disappeared after leaving a chronological musical artifact that the city of Chicago is now using to try to trace her whereabouts.
This is what we know: Born and raised in Franklin, TN, in May of 2010, Jackie took a Greyhound bus from Franklin, TN to Chicago, IL. Upon her arrival in the city of Chicago, Jackie found a cheap sublet on the south side. She soon became acquainted with Tom Strong (real name unknown) on a short CTA bus trip to the Chicago Loop. We believe that Tom & Jackie together ran a multimillion dollar business distributing the illegal substance of cocaine around Chicago & the Chicago tristate area for over four years. Authorities believe that a local automobile shop was used as the main distributions headquarter.
Over the years, Tom & Jackie have become well known for their large and lavish parties thrown at an apartment located on Sacramento & 26th street. Police have been hot on their trail, but have found no probable cause to make an arrest. A domestic dispute was reported on February 18th of 2015. When police arrived, the apartment was found deserted. Traces of cocaine were found on a red and gold LP jacket with the following recording enclosed.
SYDNEY: Thursday January 12 @ St Stephen’s Uniting Church, Sydney Festival. Tickets & info here.
MELBOURNE: Friday January 20 @ NGV Friday Nights. Tickets & info available from NGV.
MELBOURNE: Saturday January 21 @ Sugar Mountain Festival. Tickets on sale now.
HOBART: Sunday January 22 @ MONA FOMA Festival. Tickets on sale now.
Mistletone is proud to present the debut Australian tour by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. American composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith is cresting a new wave of electronic music, with dazzlingly beautiful compositions to open up our consciousness of the natural world, inner and outer space. Her pioneering work with the rare Buchla 100 synthesiser is rebirthing a forgotten technology to create an auditory world that is at once deeply human, spiritual, futuristic and present.
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s formative years were spent communing with nature on Orcas Island in the northwest region of Washington state, a place she describes as “one of the most magical and peaceful places I have ever been.” Though she wouldn’t begin experimenting with modular synthesis until many years later, her creative work continues to be infused with and inspired by the vitality and serenity of Orcas.
Kaitlyn left the island to attend Berklee College of Music, where she studied composition and sound engineering, initially focusing on her voice as her primary instrument, before switching to classical guitar and piano. She employed many of the skills she refined in college in her indie-folk band Ever Isles, but a fateful encounter with a neighbor who lent her a Buchla 100 synthesizer, had a profound effect on her. Mesmerized by the Buchla’s potential, she explains “I got so distracted and enamored with the process of making sounds with it that I abandoned the next Ever Isles album.” Starting with rhythmic patterns and melodic pulses, she soon began sculpting lush and exciting worlds of sound.
“Sheer poetry: charming, playful, evocative, and showing mastery of her medium” – SUZANNE CIANI
“It’s a difficult balance, pulling in pieces from the fringes of electronic culture and framing them in something so delightfully breezy. Smith triggers sounds that bounce around like hyperactive jellybeans, making it feel like her electronic bleeps and bloops are lost in joyous conversation with one another” – PITCHFORK
“Adventurous, mesmerizing sonic compositions which cause me to remember my love of music in the early days of electronic sound making machines” – REGGIE WATTS
“Gorgeous, droning ambience” – BROOKLYN VEGAN
“Mind-expanding suites of melody and unhurried curiosity” – DECODER MAGAZINE
Watch Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith demonstrate her signature Buchla Music Easel and arsenal of modular synths at her LA studio for FACT:
Mistletone presents the return of Parquet Courts, touring nationally for Falls Festival plus a Sydney headline show and a very special Melbourne show at the Shimmerlands Outdoor Auditorium at The University of Melbourne.
PARQUET COURTS TOUR DATES:
SYDNEY:Wednesday January 4 @ The Factory Theatre. Tickets on sale now. Presented by Mistletone, FBi Radio and Fasterlouder.
MELBOURNE: Thursday January 5 @ Shimmerlands Outdoor Auditorium, The University of Melbourne with Tyrannamen, Ausmuteants, Terry + DJs Etta & Tilly. Presented by Mistletone and Shadow Electric. Tickets on sale now. * SELLING FAST!
PARQUET COURTS return to Australia fresh off the release of their critically acclaimed new record, Human Performance, out now on Rough Trade Records / Remote Control, and recent television performances on Conan and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The Brooklyn band has steadily achieved universal props as one of the best rock bands of their generation whilst staying firmly rooted in the DIY punk aesthetic and philosophy.
Parquet Courts began their 2014 release Content Nausea with the repeated refrain, “everyday it starts – anxiety!” And while that track left off at just its start, 2016’s Human Performance dives in, picking apart the anxieties of modern life with the band’s most innovative and emotional collection of songs to date. Human Performance brings expansive sonic experimentation and shining melodic introspection onto matters of the heart, matters of humanity, of identity. It’s also their most pop-oriented collection yet.
Across six years, four full-length albums, and two EPs, Parquet Courts have always littered their lyric sheets with question marks, interrogating the outside world to varying degrees. Light Up Gold considered peanuts versus Swedish Fish, an introduction of their sharp, young wit and language of mundane, everyday NYC imagery. Sunbathing Animal channeled that language into noisy punk philosophy, raising wide-view questions about agency versus captivity, choice versus freewill. Content Nausea wondered about anxiety and emotional deterioration under the age of big data, in an aptly self-aware way: “And am I under some spell? And do my thoughts belong to me? Or just some slogan I ingested to save time?” And with Human Performance, the question marks get turned on themselves more than ever. Andrew Savage cites existential crises as the catalyst for the band’s new direction. “I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance,” says Savage.
To quote The 405: “Socrates died in the fucking gutter,” Andrew Savage memorably exclaimed on Parquet Courts’ debut LP. In that inciting phrase, he went a fair way to encapsulating the band’s character; a nod to both their amusing intelligence and an image of the strains and disappointments of city dwelling, which have become more pronounced as they’ve progressed. This post-punk collective are cutting, both in their musical style and in their lyrics, coupling them with dynamics and understanding that show off both these strengths.”
Below, watch Parquet Courts perform “Captive Of The Sun” with rapper Bun B on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, receiving a standing ovation from the studio audience. “Captive Of The Sun” is taken from Human Performance, out now on Rough Trade Records.
“The final product of this album is Exhibit A that we made it through the shit, solved the problem, had the chuckle, took the piss, made up with the other guy, and got home in one piece,” laughs bassist Sean Yeaton.
Whereas other Parquets Courts albums were recorded in a matter of days or weeks, for Human Performance the band took an entire year; it’s the first LP that finds all four band members contributing songs.
Human Performance brings expansive sonic experimentation and shining melodic introspection onto matters of the heart, matters of humanity, of identity. “I told you I loved you, did I even deserve it when you returned it?” singer/guitarist Andrew Savage wonders on the title track. It’s also their most pop-oriented collection yet, coming only months after the release of the largely instrumental Monastic Living EP; a record that was actually made at the same time.
“In a way, Monastic Living was like a palate cleanser for us as a band,” explains singer/guitarist Austin Brown, who produced the entire record, and mixed it in Austin at Jim Eno’s Public Hi-Fi, “maybe a return to our roots of improvising together, and being a bit more free, and seeing what kind of new sounds we could make.”
The recording sessions started at Justin Pizzoferrato’s Sonelab in Western Massachusetts. Some of it was also made with Tom Schick and Jeff Tweedy at The Loft, Wilco’s visionary studio in Chicago, but the majority of Human Performance was made at Dreamland Studios, a massive upstate NY pentecostal church where records have been made by The Breeders, Dinosaur Jr, and the B-52s (including “Love Shack”). They spent three weeks straight there, writing by day and recording with Pizzoferrato by night.
The result is a record with a palpable sense of fragility. “The process of writing and recording Human Performance, for me, was a fairly uncomfortable confrontation with my emotions,” Andrew says. “Emotions I don’t think I’ve fully explored in my life, artistic or otherwise.”
Human Performance is fittingly laced with as much static as softness, with tight-wound percussion pushing along meandering, wistful melodies. There are dazed and disoriented earworms, echoing group chants, downtempo ballads with wired riffs. Lovers leave, existential confusion replaces them, weeks pass, the J train rolls by.
The record leads with “Dust”, a 4-minute opener that takes the mundane daily duty of sweeping the floor and turns it into a frantic, obsessive call for action. “Dust is everywhere … Sweep!” they drolly repeat, before their cyclic back beat gives way to explosive, everyday city sound of car horns.
Andrew says “Human Performance” is his most personal song on the record, a solemn musing on love drifting away, a picture-perfect memory of the beginning of things and a hazier recollection of the ending. “It didn’t feel right to be shouting, barking,” he says, reflecting on his tendency to really sing for this first time on this album. “I think a lot of people are attracted to a sort of cerebral side of Parquet Courts, in the lyricism. There has always been the emotional side of our band, which I think has always been an important balance, but Human Performance marks a point where the scales have tipped. I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance. I felt like a malfunctioning apparatus. Like a machine programmed to be human showing signs of defect.”
“There is a lot of darkness, and general anguish being worked out on this record,” Austin adds. “But it ends kind of peacefully, kind of accepting that you can’t do much about it.”
Mistletone very proudly presents “A Night With Uncle Jack”; a celebratory event with Uncle Jack Charles and a host of surprise / special guests from throughout his brilliant career.
A NIGHT WITH UNCLE JACK TOUR DATES:
MELBOURNE:Tuesday September 6 at Trades Hall Council. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
CASTLEMAINE: Friday September 9 at Old Castlemaine Gaol. Tickets on sale now from Try Booking.
National treasure, award-winning actor, Aboriginal elder and activist Uncle Jack Charles will celebrate his longevity (73 years and counting) in the warm-hearted and freewheeling style he’s known and loved for, at “A Night With Uncle Jack” on Tuesday, September 6 at Melbourne’s historic Trades Hall Council. “A Night With Uncle Jack” will also come to Castlemaine’s Old Gaol on Friday, September 9. Uncle Jack will be joined by a host of special guests (many of whom will be surprise guests, to add to the party atmosphere) with musical performances and intimate story telling by the luminaries he’s worked with in film, theatre and television throughout his long and storied career.
Uncle Jack Charles is an actor, musician, potter and gifted performer, but in his 73 years he has also been homeless, a heroin addict, a thief and a regular in Victoria’s prisons. A member of the Stolen Generation, Jack has spent his life in between acting gigs, caught in the addiction/crime/doing time cycle. Today — no longer caught in the cycle — he lives to tell the extraordinary tale.
Acknowledged as the grandfather of Aboriginal theatre in Australia, Uncle Jack co-founded the first Aboriginal theatre company Nindethana in 1972. His acting career spans over six decades and includes roles in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Bedevil, Ben Hall and The Marriage of Figaro, Jack Charles v The Crown and more recently, Wolf Creek 3, Rake, Black Comedy, PAN and Cleverman. Uncle Jack was the subject of Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s award-winning documentary Bastardy, and was awarded the prestigious Tudawali Award at the Message Sticks Festival in 2009, honouring his lifetime contribution to Indigenous media. He was also recipient of a Green Room Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.
Uncle Jack made headlines in October last year when he was refused a taxi unless he paid the fare upfront, just moments after he was named Victorian Senior Australian of the Year for 2016.
Having sold out 5 x warmup shows at Melbourne’s Curtin Bandroom, “A Night With Uncle Jack” will feature Uncle Jack talking and sharing stories in his inimitably entertaining style (and picking up his guitar for a song or two). The evening will be hosted by respected broadcaster Namila Benson and will feature many special guests and surprises on the night.
BRISBANE: Monday, December 5 @ The Zoo with Golden Age Of Ballooning. Tickets on sale now from Oztix. Presented by 4zzz.
SYDNEY: Wednesday December 7 @ Oxford Art Factory with The Laurels. Tickets on sale now from Moshtix. Presented by 2ser.
MELBOURNE: Thursday December 8 @ The Corner with ORB + Krakatau + Psychedelic Coven DJs. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout. Presented by Triple R.
MEREDITH: Friday December 9 @ Meredith Music Festival. The Meredith ticket ballot is open now.
PERTH: Sunday December 11 @ Rosemount Hotel with Nicholas Allbrook, Dream Rimmy + DJ Defs Worthit (Kevin Parker). Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
Mistletone proudly presents Swedish psych rock legends Dungen, touring Australia for the first time since 2006 to perform at the 26th annual Meredith Music Festival plus headline shows in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth.
Dungen have announced a new album called Häxan on Smalltown Supersound. The album is out November 25 as an official Record Store Day/Black Friday release, and the first single from the record is called “Jakten genom Skogen.”
IN BETWEEN the release of Dungen’s most recent two albums (2010’s Skit I Allt and 2015’s Allas Sak), the beloved Stockholm quartet was asked to create an original score to Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 touchstone The Adventures of Prince Achmed, understood to be the oldest surviving full-length animated feature film. Inspired by the nature of the work and the characters portrayed within, the members of Dungen collaborated on themes to represent their take on the film’s narrative, and immersed themselves in the groundbreaking visual language of this landmark film.
Häxan (translation: “The Witch”) is the result of those works, Dungen’s first all-instrumental album, and a continuation of all the things we love about their music. Moody, evocative, stormy, and brimming with life, Häxan provides both a tacit summation of the Dungen journey up to today, and gives the beloved group a chance to stretch out like never before. Here, the psychedelic rock is more bombastic, the softer passages more exquisite, the tension in their musical interplay more dramatic, their intentions remarkably robust. Häxan allows Dungen to move deftly between styles in a more circuitous fashion than their previous works, allowing them to build a story of their own around the action and characters in the film – Prince Achmed, Peri Banu, Aladdin, the Sorcerer, and most of all, the Witch – that reaches beyond the source material, returning to the hooks and melodies that come earlier in the album.
More pronounced collaboration with Häxan’s producer, Mattias Glavå, set the tenor of the sessions, fostered the interstitial moments between tracks, providing a more seamless listening experience. Recorded, mixed, and edited by hand to tape entirely in the analog domain, Häxan was sequenced away from the linear narrative of the film. This process helped to create a path of its own, fully capturing the rawness and spontaneity present in the sessions, as well as a loose, abstract, and fragmented collage feel, evident in the dense and dissonant free-form rock-outs, haunting ambient passages, and gorgeously cinematic soundscapes present in the work. As a result, Häxan works as new, original music by Dungen, both with and without the presence of the film itself.
With Häxan, the indulgences taken by Dungen find new corners in their creative space. “Trollkarlen och fågeldräkten” approaches the excitement of early ‘60s post-bop in a way that the band has yet to reveal until now, with Gustav Ejstes’ attentive piano melody connecting to Mattias Gustavsson’s bass, as Reine Fiske stretches out atmospheric strains of feedback-laced guitar overtop, while drummer Johan Holmegard establishes a busy, polyrhythmic background with a light touch, almost exclusively focused on cowbell and cymbals.
The breezy, groovy theme to Aladdin’s appearances is cut across a handful of Häxan’s runtime, extended to both compact, flute-led bursts of melody, and a more luxuriant synth-based variant. Ejstes applies church organ sternness and harmonic majesty to “Kalifen,” which melts from a stately, Procol Harum-esque introduction into ‘70s soul stabs across a coolly understated rhythmic backing. Elsewhere, “Andarnas Krig,” “Wak-Wak’s portar,” and the title track represent some of the heaviest music Dungen has made to date, recalling the similarly burnt-edged Middle Eastern themes that Agitation Free cut for Vertigo decades ago. “Achmed flyger” ties it all together, with Ejstes and Fiske performing dual piano and synth leads, as the drums and bass surge underneath, creating a driving and focused backing, just as the film’s action begins to take flight.
Most recently, Dungen performed Häxan alongside the film at Mexican Summer’s 2016 Marfa Myths festival, marking its American debut performance. Asked about the experience overall, Gustav says, “In this setting, the movie becomes a solo instrument of its own, and we are simply backing up what we see on the screen. In many ways, it was a liberation to share the focal point with an audience when you’re performing with this kind of accompaniment. It’s a refreshing change to be playing live, and not be the center of attention; it’s the movie instead.”
Dungen‘s mastermind and main songwriter. Gustav Ejstes, has been making music—at first for himself, then eventually and inevitably for all of us—for nearly twenty years. Growing up in rural Sweden, he became obsessed with hip-hop and sampling. Digging through crates and searching for obscure source material provided him with an informal education in ‘60s pop and psychedelia, and soon he learned to play the bits and pieces he was sampling. He took up guitar and bass, drums and keyboard and even flute, then took to his grandmother’s basement to put it all on tape.
When Ejstes recorded his first album, he released it in 2001 under the name Dungen, which means “The Grove”— a nod to his village upbringing or perhaps a deeper reference to American folk songs like “Shady Grove.” While his music has routinely garnered comparisons to acts like Love, Pink Floyd, the Electric Prunes, and Os Mutantes, he has always emphasized a strong sense of songcraft. The music has deep roots in history, but it blooms in the present.
With 2004’s breakout Ta Det Lugnt, Dungen garnered an avid fanbase outside of Scandinavia. Pitchfork lauded the album with a 9.3 and asserted that Ejstes’s “songs are painstakingly arranged with a sense of depth, gradations, and tonal three-dimensionality redolent of something as off the charts as Pet Sounds.” Only on the road did Dungen blossom into a full band, with a rotation of musicians joining Ejstes onstage and eventually coalescing into a fully democratic band that includes Reine Fiske on guitar, Mattias Gustavsson on bass, and Johan Holmegard on drums. Starting with 2007’s Tio Bitar and 2009’s 4, the band members helped Ejstes realize his own vision while adding flourishes of their own. As a result, Dungen grew into something bigger and more formidable: one of the best and most consistently inventive psych rock bands in the world.
At the height of their powers, however, the band took a step back. The five years between 2010’s Skit I Allt and 2015’s Alles Sak was by far the longest interval between releases for a band that proved especially prolific and inspired during the 2000s. During the interim, several members of the band released albums as the Amazing, including 2012’s Gentle Stream and 2015’s Picture You. Ejstes himself co-founded the Swedish supergroup Amason, which includes members of Idiot Wind, Little Majorette, and Miike Snow. They released their debut, Sky City, earlier this year.
Allas Sak picked up where Dungen’s previous album left off, but somehow it sounds bolder and livelier, feistier yet more focused. The four of them jam with greater purpose and principle on songs like the otherworldly instrumental “Franks Kaktus” and the stately “En Gång Om Året,” while the prismatic “Flickor Och Pojkar” and closer “Sova” reveal subtle nuances in the band’s arrangements. Listening becomes an especially galvanizing experience, heady and enlightening. If psychedelic music has often been associated with drug use, for Dungen music itself is the drug: the most effective vehicle for transcendence.
Again, it comes back to the listener. Even as the band continues to grow, the listener remains a constant collaborator, not only inspiring new songs but rejuvenating old ones. “I can definitely feel a new significance in some of our older songs, mainly because of the people we’ve met and the stories about their own experiences with the music.”
“I love Dungen” – Kevin Parker, Tame Impala, who has acknowledged Dungen as his major influence.
Fun Tame Impala fact: In 2007, a young Kevin Parker got in touch with Dungen and sent them through his latest recording, asking them to mix it. The band’s response? “No, we don’t have to mix it! Just put it out! It’s amazing as it is!” Prescient.
Mistletone proudly presents the return of the mighty Cass McCombs, performing at the 26th annual Meredith Music Festival plus headline shows in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
CASS MCCOMBS TOUR DATES:
PERTH: Sun Dec 4 @ Rosemount Hotel with Akioka. Presented by Cool Perth Nights. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
SYDNEY: Tue Dec 6 @ Newtown Social Club with Ela Stiles. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout. * SOLD OUT
MELBOURNE: Thu Dec 8 @ Melbourne Recital Centre with Twerps. Tickets on sale now from MRC.
MEREDITH: Fri Dec 9 @ Meredith Music Festival.
BRISBANE: Sat Dec 10 @ The Zoo with Andrew Tuttle. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
Over the past decade, Cass McCombs has established himself as one of our premier songwriters. It’s a career that has twisted and turned, from style to subject, both between records and within them. Diverse, cryptic, vital and refreshingly rebellious — just when you think you have him pinned down, you find you’re on the wrong track.
However, Mangy Love, his Anti Records debut (out now via Anti Australia), is Cass McCombs at his most blunt: tackling sociopolitical issues through his uniquely cracked lens of lyrical wit and singular insight.
Click below to stream Mangy Love in its entirety:
Cass uses himself as a mirror to misguided and confounding realities, confronting them head-on: “Rancid Girl” reads like a ZZ Top study in Kardashian politics, “Run Sister Run” a mantra for a misogynistic justice system, “Bum Bum Bum” displays a racist, elitist government through the allegory of sadistic dog breeding; the album is sewn together by a common thread of ‘opposition,’ most directly articulated in “Opposite House,” with allusions to mental illness. ‘Laughter Is The Best Medicine’ provides a possible recipe for healing, with the help of an authentic medicine man, the legendary Rev. Goat Carson. The severity of his lyrics is contrasted by the music, which ventures into groovy realms of Philly soul, Northern California psychedelia and New York paranoia punk, articulating the spontaneity and joy of his live show better than ever before.
The record is unquestionably a work of great studio aptitude: a carefully arranged, high-fidelity production by veteran Rob Schnapf and Dan Horne. And as usual, Cass is joined by many notable members of his eclectic musical tribe, whose names are proudly displayed on the back cover.
Mostly written during a bitter New York City winter and while traveling in Ireland, Mangy Love is Cass at the top of his game, reaching new sonic heights, creatively evolving lyrically, and resulting in his most provocative and complete record yet.
Click below to watch the video for “Medusa’s Outhouse”, an intimate short film by filmmaker Aaron Brown who shares Cass’s love for the American mythologies of Hollywood and the archetypal West:
MELBOURNE FESTIVAL: Wednesday October 12 + Friday October 14. Tickets on sale now.
BRISBANE: Saturday October 15 @ The Junk Bar. Tickets on sale now from Oztix.
SYDNEY: Sunday October 16 @ Newtown Social Club with special guest Marcus Whale. Tickets on sale now from Ticketscout.
Mistletone proudly presents the return of the incomparable, alchemical, JULIANNA BARWICK. Once memorably described by Diplo as the sound of “Care Bears making love”, Julianna Barwick’s cleansing frequencies have also been praised by Pitchfork as “among the best and most artful ambient music being made today”. Her live shows take listeners to a psychedelic other-world, creating an epic auditory landscape of huge majesty.
Since her third full-length album, Will, came out in May on Dead Oceans Records, Brooklyn experimental artist Julianna Barwick has toured with Sigur Rós, sung with children’s choirs around the world, recorded and performed with the Flaming Lips, recorded Bach’s “Adagio from Concerto In D Minor” on Sony Masterworks, played piano and sang with Yoko Ono and brewed a wasabi beer, Rosabi, with Dogfish Head. Julianna Barwick’s diverse past has also included collaborative albums with Ikue Mori and Helado Negro, a remix commission from Radiohead and her song “Vow” remixed by Diplo. Upcoming Barwick projects include a film score and a music box.
Julianna’s latest, revelatory album Will was a surprising left turn. Ominous and compelling, Will is a departure from 2013’s Alex Somers-produced Nepenthe. If that last record conjured images of gentle, thick fog rolling over desolate mountains, then the self-produced Will is a late afternoon thunderstorm, a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures that sounds looming and restorative all at once.
“Downright medicinal, altering the listener’s surroundings in ways that make them uncomfortable, yet still wondrously inviting” – NPR
“Her ethereal multi-tracked harmonies have the devotional quality of gospel choirs, and the oddball allure of Bjork or Yoko Ono” – NEW YORK TIMES
Watch Julianna Barwick’s video for “Same”, directed by Zia Anger, below:
“Breathtaking, sci-fi-influenced electropop that urges you to dance and dream” – THE GUARDIAN
Mistletone is super happy to announce the first Australian tour by Welsh electro-pop goddess Gwenno. Touring Australia as a trio, Gwenno Saunders is a sound artist, DJ, radio presenter and singer from Cardiff, whose day jobs prior to her solo career included writer and performer for Brighton-based conceptual pop band The Pipettes, and touring synth player for Australia’s own Pnau and Elton John. Following a series of critically acclaimed singles as Gwenno, she released the dazzling album ‘Y DYDD OLAF’ (The Last Day), which won her the 2015 Welsh Music prize as well as Feature Albums on RTR-FM, 3RRR (Melbourne) and FBi (Sydney) and Double J Best New Music.
In a period of governmental and cultural revolution, Gwenno’s brilliantly spacey and synth-heavy ‘Y DYDD OLAF’ was a political concept album inspired by an obscure 1970s Welsh language sci-fi novel, subtly disguised as a blissful kraut-pop record. The album, which is sung entirely in Welsh (apart from one song in Cornish), is Gwenno’s response to the political upheaval she sees playing out all over Europe — from the borders of Scotland to the Basque country and beyond — as well as a war cry to all those who are dissatisfied with the way things are.
‘Y DYDD OLAF’ is a political, feminist, brilliantly executed record; and although this particular revolution might not be televised, it certainly will have a great soundtrack. As Gwenno told The Guardian, she made a comparison between globalisation and the “robotic control of the masses” predicted by the novel that inspired the album, in which a hero prevails against robotic overlords by speaking Welsh, a dying language that his enemies cannot decipher.
“A language dies every two weeks”, Gwenno explained, “and with that language dies a whole history of people. Those are things that connect you with the past. They are man and woman’s way of communicating and telling stories.”
PRAISE FOR GWENNO:
“A visionary of synth-pop moods and textures…Saunders’ beguiling melodies and execution also make it one of the best British debuts of 2015” – Pitchfork (8.0)
“Each track expertly evokes the eerie analogue pop and psychedelic grooves of BBC radiophonic pioneers such as Delia Derbyshire – and more recent innovators Broadcast and Stereolab – while maintaining their own, unique, identity” – 3RRR (Album of the Week)
“Channels Broadcast and Boards Of Canada via fragrant kosmische grooves… Seldom is the personal married to the political in such an enchanting fashion” — Uncut (4 Stars ****)
“At once spooky and playful, romantic and angry… Mixing an ancient, bucolic language with otherworldly dance music is a genius move” — MOJO (4 Stars ****)
