London based, South African-born powerhouse Nakhane — musician, novelist, actor and queer activist — has announced their return to Australia next March. Fresh from collaborations with Nile Rodgers, Perfume Genius and Moonchild Sanelly, Nakhane is a star in the making, who makes the dancefloor a place of tenderness. Tickets on sale now!
NAKHANE AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES:
FRI MAR 3: SYDNEY WORLDPRIDE @ CITY RECITAL HALL. Tickets on sale here.
SAT MAR 4: BRISBANE POWERHOUSE. Tickets on sale here.
WED MAR 15: MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE. Tickets on sale here.
Mistletone proudly presents the return of Nakhane, the rapidly-rising South African polymath whose fans include Elton John and Madonna (who name-dropped Nakhane as one of the influences behind her 2019 album Madame X). Multi award winning singer, songwriter, actor, and novelist Nakhane has been hailed as “a real star in the making” (The Observer) who “makes the dancefloor a place of tenderness” (VICE).
Nakhane’s latest single, ‘Do You Well’, brings the funk in a sweaty, sensual collaboration with Perfume Genius, accompanied by a video with explores queer Black love and lust:
It followed hot on the heels of ‘Tell Me Your Politik’, featuring Nile Rodgers on guitar and a ferocious rap from fellow South African artist, Moonchild Sanelly. Mutually political and erotic, the song is a call to action, demanding that prospective lovers be ideogically aligned; a bold declaration that sex is a political act. With a polyrhythmic wall of sound echoing the sounds of South African Gqom and kwaito, these two striking singles are a stunning return to music for Nakhane after a four year break.
Nakhane’s previous album, You Will Not Die, garnered acclaim from Pitchfork, The New York Times, The Observer, MOJO and Noisey; Q magazine called it “remarkable; defiantly modern and unashamedly emotional” while Pitchfork wrote that the album was “an instant revelation on its own terms and strikingly intimate.” Madonna called Nakhane out as one of her two favourite artists, and Elton John interviewed Nakhane on his Beats 1 radio show.
In their many guises in music, film and literature, and as a non binary artist, Nakhane has been instrumental in challenging the status quo in conversations about gender and sexuality; steadily building a body of work of cultural importance that hits every dancefloor sweet spot.
SATURDAY JANUARY 7 – SYDNEY FESTIVAL: CALL TO THE MORNING. Dawn ambient performance, Sydney Harbour foreshore. Tickets & info here. SUNDAY JANUARY 8 – SYDNEY FEST: THE WEARY TRAVELLER. Club show. Tickets & info here. MONDAY JANUARY 23 – MELBOURNE RECITAL CENTRE with special guest COOL MARITIME. Tickets & info here.
“Art is awe, art is mystery expressed,” writes Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith. “Art is somatic, even if it is experienced cerebrally. It is felt.”
The central mysteries of Smith’s ninth studio album, Let’s Turn it Into Sound, have to do with perception, expression, and communication: How can we communicate when spoken language is inadequate? How do we understand what it is we’re feeling? How do we translate our experience of the world into something that someone else can understand?
For Smith, a self-described “feeler,” the answers are inspired by compound words in non-English languages, translation, sculptural fashion, dance, butoh, wushu shaolin, and other forms of sensory and somatic experience. Just like fashion uses lines, shapes, colors, textures, and silhouettes to communicate on a sensual level separate from the conscious mind, Let’s Turn it Into Sound strives to use sound to communicate what words alone cannot.
“The album is a puzzle,” Smith says, “a symbol of receiving a compound of a ton of feelings from going out into a situation, and the song titles are instructions to breaking apart the feelings and understanding them.” The energized “Is it Me or Is it You” comes from traversing the gaps between how you see yourself and how another might see you, through a filter of their own projections. The hushed sense of revelation that brackets “There is Something” refers to the feeling of walking into a room and being subconsciously aware of the dynamic present. All the while, Smith interprets these feelings through sound.
This auditory interpretation process, driven by earnest curiosity, led Smith to record some thoughts and questions that popped up along the journey in Somatic Hearing — a booklet which accompanies the album.
Over three frenzied months, recording alone in her home studio, Smith allowed herself to pursue new experiments to accompany her usual toolkit of modular, analogue, and rare synthesizers (including her signature Buchla), orchestral sounds, and the voice. She created a new vocal processing technique, and gave herself permission to pursue a pacing that felt intuitive, rather one that followed typical song structures. She walked around in the windiest season with a subwoofer backpack and an umbrella, listening to the low end of the album amidst 60mph gusts. She listened to herself, and, in doing so, to an inner community which suddenly opened to her.
Underlying the album is a dynamic relationship between what Smith describes as six distinct voices, each a multifaceted storyteller. By acknowledging these characters, she was acknowledging her whole being: the woven plurality of self, the complex process of noticing and resolving inner conflicts, and the joy of finding harmony in flux.
“I started to feel so embodied by all of these characters. This is all the felt, unsaid stuff [my inner community] wants to communicate but it doesn’t have the English language as its form of communication, and so this album was a form of giving space to let it talk and not judge it and just let it play.” By not adhering to expected song structures, each song feels even more like a conversation, with each character getting to express themselves in full.
Smith has never fit neatly into the ambient genre conversation she’s most often associated with, and here she forges even further outside of it, traversing avant-garde pop, neoclassical, and the otherwise unclassifiable. The result is a playful, inquisitive, excitable work which appeals to us as social, sensitive animals, and invites listeners into a wholly idiosyncratic world that is both experimental, and, feels like the most human thing in the world. Proceeding through Let’s Turn it Into Sound is like peeking into a secret realm: one that delights both in the discovery of the magic hidden in the everyday, and the shimmer that lingers long after the portal itself shuts.
SUN MAR 12: BIKINI KILL SPEAKS – TALK EVENT AT SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE. Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail & Kathi Wilcox join Marieke Hardy for an exclusive conversation about activism, music, and women taking up space. Tickets on sale here.
MON MAR 13: SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, CONCERT HALL* all ages Tickets on sale here.
“We’re Bikini Kill and we want revolution Girl-style now! ”
Bikini Kill is the infamously fierce, riot grrrl band feminist punk band that was based in Olympia, Washington and Washington DC, forming in 1990 and breaking up in 1997. Kathleen Hanna sang, Tobi Vail played drums, Billy Karren (a.k.a. Billy Boredom) played guitar and Kathi Wilcox played bass. Sometimes they switched instruments. Bikini Kill is credited with instigating the Riot Grrrl movement in the early ’90s via their political lyrics, zines and confrontational live show.
The band started touring in June 1991. In addition to touring the US, Europe and Japan, they toured Australia in 1996 as part of the Summersault touring festival, followed by a headline tour in 1997. Bikini Kill recorded and released a demo tape, two EPs, two LPs and three singles. Their demo tape was self-released, while their first two records came out as a full-length CD/tape, and their singles were posthumously collected on CD. The band recently pressed the Bikini Kill EP as a limited edition vinyl issue to celebrate its 30th anniversary, and 10 years of Bikini Kill Records. Their iconic song “Rebel Girl” was recently named “10th best song of the 90s” by Pitchfork.
Bikini Kill believed that if all girls started bands, the world would change. They actively encouraged women and girls to start bands as a means of cultural resistance and to be and enjoy themselves even with resources online that tell you where is the gspot in women so they can enjoy even more. Bikini Kill was inspired by seeing Babes in Toyland play live and attempted to incite female participation and build feminist community via the punk scene. They used touring as a way to create an underground network between girls who played music, put on shows and made fanzines. This independent media making and informal network created a forum for multiple female voices to be heard.
Bikini Kill reunited in the spring of 2019 playing sold out shows in NYC, LA, London and headlining Riot Fest in Chicago; their international touring continues in 2023, with original members and feminist punk pioneers Kathleen Hanna, Tobi Vail, and Kathi Wilcox touring Australia for the first time in 25 years next Feb/March for a slew of festivals and all ages shows.
Mistletone proudly presents Niger psych-rock guitar sensation Mdou Moctar, bringing his mighty band to Australia. Tickets on sale now!
MDOU MOCTAR TOUR DATES:
THURSDAY MARCH 2: PERTH FESTIVAL. Tickets on sale now. SATURDAY MARCH 4: NINE LIVES FESTIVAL, BRISBANE. Tickets on sale now. SUNDAY MARCH 5: NATURAL BRIDGE FESTIVAL, ELTHAM HOTEL. Tickets on sale now. THURSDAY MARCH 9: BRUNSWICK MUSIC FESTIVAL @ ESTONIAN HOUSE with COOL SOUNDS * SOLD OUT! FRIDAY MARCH 10: THEATRE ROYAL, CASTLEMAINE with COOL SOUNDS. Tickets on sale now. SATURDAY MARCH 11: GOLDEN PLAINS XV. ticket ballot here. SUNDAY MARCH 12 + MONDAY MARCH 13: WOMADelaide. Tickets & info here. TUESDAY MARCH 14 + WEDNESDAY MARCH 15: SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE @ UTZON ROOM. Tickets on sale now.
A self-taught Tuareg guitar prodigy, Mdou Moctar boldly reforges contemporary Saharan music and “rock music“ by melding Eddie Van Halen pyrotechnics, full-blast noise and guitar shredding, field recordings, drums rhythms, poetic meditations on love, religion, women’s rights, inequality and Western Africa’s exploitation at the hands of colonial powers to rip a new hole in the sky.
Mdou Moctar’s home is Agadez, a desert village in rural Niger. Inspired by YouTube videos and traditional Tuareg melodies, he mastered the guitar which he himself built and created his own burning style. A born charismatic, Mdou went on to tell his story as an aspiring artist by writing, producing & starring in the first Tuareg language film: a remake of Purple Rain called Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai – which translates to “Rain The Color Of Blue With A Little Red In It”, winning the approval of his family and his community.
The word and the sound travelled across West Africa via mobile phone data cards, a popular form of local music distribution. Gruelling DIY world tours and albums on the independent US label Sahel Sounds followed, including 2019’s landmark Ilana: The Creator album that earned Mdou Moctar an ecstatic international audience.
Afrique Victime, the latest Mdou Moctar album, was a combined effort of Mdou and the members of the band that shares his name. Mdou’s crucial collaborator is Ahmoudou Madassane, who’s been his rhythm guitarist since 2008; their two guitars are an alchemical combination. As a songwriter, producer and recording artist, Ahmoudou is the premier musical ambassador to Tuaregs in Niger, empowering young musicians with instruments, recording opportunities, and visas. Masassane helped form the revolutionary first woman-fronted Tuareg guitar band Les Filles De Illighadad, whose debut album and tours caused an international sensation in 2019. Along with bassist Mikey Coltun and drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, it’s an alchemical combination that has seen Mdou Moctar hailed everywhere as one of the greatest live bands in the world.
The band‘s youngest member is prodigal drummer Souleymane Ibrahim, also a member of both the well-known Niger band Sultanat Star De L’air and the longest running wedding band in Agadez, Etran De L’air. Souleymane’s playing on this album ferociously sets a new standard for the “rock” drumset.
Producer & bassist Mikey Coltun flies 20 hours from Brooklyn, NYC, then takes a 28 hour bus ride to reach Agadez so the band can practice and record. With no support from a major label or a manager, they made this journey out of Niger every time they toured. In the past three years, Mikey’s played over 500 shows on three continents as Mdou Moctar’s bassist, road manager, producer/recording engineer, and friend. Coltun recorded and produced Afrique Victime around the band’s travels in 2019- in studios, apartments, hotel rooms, venue backstages, and in field recordings in Niger.
Recording and honing songs as a touring outfit forged a livewire new sound, and If Ilana was a late ’60s early ’70s ZZ Top and Black Sabbath record – Afrique Victime is mid ’70s to early ’80s Van Halen meets Black Flag meets Black Uhuru. The ferocity of Moctar’s electric guitar and the band’s hypnotic rhythm section are on awe-inspiring display on songs like “Chismiten” and the mournful yet incandescent title track.
Moctar finds inspiration in highlighting lesser known facets of the group: “While people have gotten to know Mdou Moctar as a rock band, there is a whole different set of music with this band done on acoustic guitars which we wanted to incorporate into this album in order to go through a sonic journey,” he says. Mdou pays homage to one of his heroes Abdallah Ag Oumbadagou, the legendary Niger musician and political revolutionary, on songs “Habibti” and “Layla”. “Abdallah was a contemporary of Tinariwen and helped to pioneer the sound of Tuareg guitar music blended with drum machines and electronic sounds”.
“From prison to Nobel prize. They ceded to Mandela / Africa is a victim of so many crimes / If we stay silent it will be the end of us / Why is this happening?” Moctar asks on the heartfelt and rallying title track. “I want the world to know that we are making music to promote world peace and be with everyone on the same level, fighting against racism”, he says. “All colors and genders are equal. Women, Men and children all suffer in the desert due to the colonization by France and therefore there is a lack of the basics – hospitals, drinking water, schools.”
The needs of Agadez are a major part of what drives Moctar as an artist, and promoting the region’s youth through music is an especially personal cause. “I know what it’s like to have been in that position,” he says, “to not have the support of your family, or the money for guitars or strings, it’s really hard. I have a lot of support from the younger generation, because I help them out a lot. When I get back from tour, I give them gear that I bought while I was away so they can go out and form their own bands.”
Says Coltun: “In Agadez the music and feeling at Tuareg weddings is exactly like the best of Western DIY/Punk shows. It’s loud, energetic and powerful. There is a sense of everyone helping out. Tuaregs are a tight community. If you’re Tuareg you’re considered family.”
The music listeners are the beneficiaries of the staggeringly powerful do-it-yourself musical ethic of Mdou Moctar – the man and the band – who’ve worked so hard to bring the spirits of families and communities in Niger to the West. Afrique Victime sounds and feels like a Tuareg hand reaching down from the sky, and we are very lucky for this chance to get lifted.
A force of nature at the height of her powers, Sharon Van Etten brings her full band down under in the wake of her brilliant new album, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong.
SHARON VAN ETTEN TOUR DATES:
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE CONCERT HALL: THURSDAY DECEMBER 1 Tickets on sale now; ticket link
BRISBANE: THE TIVOLI: SATURDAY DECEMBER 3 special guest: BATTS Tickets on sale now; ticket link
FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE: MONDAY DECEMBER 5 (sold out), TUESDAY DECEMBER 6 special guest: Banjo Lucia Tickets on sale now; ticket link
MELBOURNE / NORTHCOTE THEATRE: THURSDAY DECEMBER 8 FRIDAY DECEMBER 9* extra show by popular demand * sold out special guest: BATTS both shows have now sold out. These events are part of ALWAYS LIVE, a new state-wide celebration of contemporary live music supported by the Victorian Government through Visit Victoria. Presented by ALWAYS LIVE, Triple R and Mistletone.
Mistletone presents Sharon Van Etten (Shazza to her mates), returning to Australia with her stunning touring band: Jorge Balbi on drums, Devon Hoff on bass, Teeny Lieberson on vocals and synths, and live musical director Charley Damski on synths and guitars.
Special guest for the Brisbane and Melbourne shows will be BATTS (Melbourne producer/singer-songwriter Tanya Batts), with whom Sharon recently collaborated on “Blue”, the first single from the new BATTS album The Nightline (out October 14 on Mistletone Records).
Sharon Van Etten has always been a wholehearted artist — the kind of songwriter who helps people make sense of the world around them. Her newest work concerns itself with how we feel, mourn, and reclaim our agency when we think the world – or at least, our world – might be falling apart. How do we protect the things most precious to us from destructive forces beyond our control? and how do we salvage something worthwhile when it seems all is lost? In considering these questions and her own vulnerability in the face of them, Van Etten creates a stunning meditation on how life’s changes can be both terrifying and transformative; articulating the beauty and power that can be rescued from the wreckage.
Alongside her impeccable back catalogue, with such undeniable classics as Remind Me Tomorrow (“an album of hope, intimacy and perseverance” – NEW YORK TIMES) and Are We There (“one of the great albums of the century”– ROLLING STONE), Van Etten has collaborated with COURTNEY BARNETT, ANGEL OLSEN and NORAH JONES, as well as Melbourne’s own BATTS; and last year released epic ten, a tribute to her 2019 album epic, with covers by everyone from Lucinda Williams and Fiona Apple to Idles; celebrating Sharon’s legendary status as one of the great songwriters from the very beginning.
As always, we are at the mercy of Van Etten’s voice: the way it loops and arcs, the startling and emotive warmth of it. What started as a certain magic in Sharon’s early recordings has grown into confidence, clarity and wisdom, even as she sings with the vulnerable beauty that has become her trademark. Sharing her songs remains an optimistic and generous act which tells a larger story of hope, loss, longing and resilience; all held together by Sharon’s uncanny ability to both pierce the hearts of her listeners and make them whole again.
When the time came to return to her solo work, Van Etten reclaimed the reins, writing and producing the album in her new recording studio, custom built in her family’s Californian home. The more she faced – whether in new dangers emerging or old traumas resurfacing – the more tightly she held onto these songs and recordings, determined to work through grief by reasserting her power and staying squarely at the wheel of her next album. In fact, that interplay of loss and growth became a blueprint for what would become We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. The album artwork reflects that, too, inspired as much by Sharon’s old life as her new one. “I wanted to convey that in an image with me walking away from it all. Not necessarily brave, not necessarily sad, not necessarily happy..”
Sharon’s new work is intensely personal, exploring themes like motherhood, love, fear, what we can and can’t control, and what it means to be human in a world that is wracked by so much trauma. We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is as much a reflection on how we manage the ending of metaphorical worlds as we do the ending of actual ones: the twin flames of terror and unrelenting love that light up with motherhood; navigating the demands of partnership when your responsibilities have changed; the loss of centre and safety that can come with leaving home; how the ghosts of our past can appear without warning in our present; feeling helpless with the violence and racism in the world; and yes, what it means when a global viral outbreak forces us to relinquish control of the things that have always made us feel so human, and seek new forms of connection to replace them.
Sharon Van Etten’s Melbourne show is part of ALWAYS LIVE, a new state-wide celebration of contemporary live music supported by the Victorian Government through Visit Victoria.
ALWAYS LIVE and Mistletone proudly present Toro y Moi‘s first headline Australian shows in over five years.
TORO Y MOI HEADLINE DATES:
BRISBANE: TUE NOV 15 @ PRINCESS THEATRE with Touch Sensitive. tickets here
SYDNEY: MON NOV 21 @ THE METRO with Touch Sensitive. tickets here
MELBOURNE: WED NOV 23 @ NORTHCOTE THEATRE * SOLD OUT with Touch Sensitive. This event is part of ALWAYS LIVE, a new state-wide celebration of contemporary live music supported by the Victorian Government through Visit Victoria.
Toro y Moi; aka South Carolina-reared, Bay Area-based Chaz Bear, emerged as a figurehead of the ‘chill wave’ sub-genre, the sparkling fumes of which still heavily influence musicians all over today. Over the subsequent decade, Chaz’s music and graphic design has far surpassed that particular designation.
Across nine albums with Mistletone (and US label Carpark), Chaz explored psych-rock, deep house, UK-style hip-hop, R&B and well beyond, without losing that rather iconic, bright and shimmering Toro y Moi fingerprint. As a graphic designer, Bear has collaborated with brands like Nike, Dublab and Vans. As a songwriter and producer, he’s collaborated with Tyler, The Creator,Flume, HAIM, Tegan and Sara, and Caroline Polachek; and stretched out with side projects such as house moniker Les Sins and ambient project Plum.
Mahal, Toro’s first album with Dead Oceans, dropped in 2022 — and it absolutely slaps. An instant classic, Mahal takes its name from the Tagalog word for ‘love’ and honours Chaz’s maternal heritage (his mother is Filipina, his father Black), with album artwork and videos celebrating the jeepney; the brightly-coloured public transport minibus of the Philippines.
Mahal follows Toro’s highly celebrated 2019 album Outer Peace, which Pitchfork described as “one of his best albums in years” along with his Grammy-nominated 2020 collaboration with Flume, “The Difference,” which featured in a global campaign for Apple’s Airpods and landed at #3 in triple j’s Hottest 100.
Mistletone proudly presents an intimate solo tour by brilliant New York-based guitarist and songwriter, Steve Gunn.
STEVE GUNN TOUR DATES:
Wednesday 12 October – Black Bear Lodge, Brisbane QLD with Andrew Tuttle * Tickets Thursday 13 October – Eltham Hotel, Eltham NSW with Mylee Grace * Tickets Friday 14 October – Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne VIC with Andrew TuttleTickets Saturday 15 October – The Great Club Marrickville, Sydney NSW with Andrew Tuttle + John Sharkey IIITickets Wednesday 19 October – Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney (Sol LeWitt: Affinities and Resonances) Tickets
* Presented by Jet Black Cat Music Tickets on sale Friday 22 July at 1PM AEST.
With a career spanning nearly fifteen years, Steve Gunn has produced volumes of critically acclaimed solo, duo, and ensemble recordings, steadily processing his inspirations into a singular, virtuosic stream. Close listening reveals the influence of blues, folk, ecstatic free jazz, and psych in his continually unfolding output.
Steve Gunn returns to Australia in the wake of Other You, his sixth studio album released last year by Matador / Remote Control; a shined-up, mid-sixties pop apotheosis in a state of high songwriting accomplishment. Other You is a journey that can’t help but summon up Gunn’s debut WayOutWeather in its transformative ambition and refreshing set of ideas about what was interesting about psychedelia, a love for the guitar as an instrument, melody, timbral originality, a keen ear for production.
Gunn’s voice and lyrics take a new front seat on Other You, right where we can hear them. There’s a person inhabiting these songs, a subjectivity, not just one of the best guitarists in contemporary music, not just a reporter with a winsome observational genius, here, a singer-songwriter, with a first-person voice, even if the songs seem rarely or only glancingly confessional. Now we have beautiful shimmering melodies, great melodies, and also that aching voice, at the tenor edge, and harmonies, singing up front.
You could imagine listening to OtherYou on a trans-continental rail journey, or while summiting a mountain range, or while going through an enormous stack of your grandparents’ snapshots, or while baking a cake that has no particular occasion, or while sitting out a pandemic, or while realising, looking out that window, that it’s okay to set aside your regrets, in this beautiful, hovering now, and listen.
Other You features contributions from friends and fellow artists including Julianna Barwick, Mary Lattimore, Bridget St. John, Jeff Parker and Bill MacKay. This collaborative spirit carried into 2022 with Nakama, an EP of reworkings and reimaginings featuring Mdou Moctar, Natural Information Society, Circuit des Yeux and Bing & Ruth.
Mistletone proudly presents Ty Segall, touring Australia for the first time since 2014 with his colossal Freedom Band (Emmett Kelly, Mikal Cronin, Ben Boye and Charles Moothart), a happy return many years in the making! tickets now on sale via links below.
TY SEGALL & FREEDOM BAND TOUR DATES: WED JAN 18 – PERTH: THE RECHABITE with GHOULIES. Tickets on sale here. FRI JAN 20 – ANGLESEA, VIC: MEMORIAL HALL with PARSNIP. SOLD OUT! SAT JAN 21 – MELBOURNE: THE FORUM with CLAMM. Tickets on sale here. SELLING FAST! SUN JAN 22 – ADELAIDE @ UNIBAR with THE CONDOS. Tickets on sale here. Presented by PAK. TUE JAN 24 – WOLLONGONG – UNIBAR with R.M.F.C. Tickets on sale here. WED JAN 25 – SYDNEY – THE METRO with STRAIGHT ARROWS. Tickets on sale here. FRI JAN 27 – BRISBANE – PRINCESS THEATRE with PARSNIP + SLOWRIP. Tickets on sale here. Presented by Jet Black Cat Music. SAT JAN 28 – GOLD COAST – MIAMI MARKETTA with PARSNIP. Tickets on sale here. Presented by Jet Black Cat Music. SUN JAN 29 – BYRON BAY – THE NORTHERN with PARSNIP. Tickets on sale here. Presented by Jet Black Cat Music.
Hot on the heels of his new album “Hello, Hi” – a cosmic assortment of love songs flowering in righteous unconsciousness – Ty Segall & Freedom Band return to melt our brains and hearts with Ty’s signature blend of psyched-out jangle and space-rock fuzz. Don’t miss Ty Segall & Freedom Band diving down to Australia from a clear, open sky, down through the marine layer and the shimmering waves of all the years.
Tossing down straight acoustic shots with electric guitar back, “Hello, Hi” rides through the valley of yer ol’ Canyon legends, finding an isolated place to unspool Ty’s copious reserves of nervous energy beneath an open sky. Swarms of harmony vocals caper among the clouds, but there’s a rider on the horizon behind, with crossbow trained on his very own heart — the engine driving all the relationships of life, whether down Broadway or over the cliffs at night! Whatever doesn’t get killed is getting stronger all the time. A lean, mean deal, baked in saltwater and sunlight, compassion pouring out its beautiful blue eyes.
Ty has shared “Don’t Lie”, just one of the many highlights of his forthcoming album, “Hello, Hi”, out July 22 on Drag City. An acoustic take on beloved Oakland garage-pop band The Mantles, it’s an earworm passed through Ty’s brain, straight to yours:
Some songs are so good, you just can’t get them out of your head. And you never want to! Storing them deep inside allows you to dig ’em up again, like (re)discovered treasure, so they can reinvigorate your worldview all over again. And so the love grows.
For Ty, The Mantles’ 2009 slice of garage-pop perfection, “Don’t Lie” is one of those songs. Having played and toured with The Mantles in the Bay Area back in the day, Ty descends compassionately into the layers of morality within their affirmation anthem, uncovering a haunted sense of time passed while remolding the surging rock around the original melody into solo acoustic performance. Intimate and disarming, Ty talks to himself with guitars and voices, an exquisite filigree for the romance cleft ruthlessly open in the lyrics; heartbreak vibes for a new age.
“Hello, Hi” is expansively rendered by Ty, mostly by himself, at home. The isolation suits the songs: you’re only ever as ‘at home’ as you are with yourself in the mirror. Ty’s acoustic and electric guitars and vocal harmonies layer self upon self, forming a spiny backbone for the album. Textures at once gentle and dissonant root the songs as they make their move: melodic arcs convulsing in doubt and bliss and rage. Released from the endless gridlock into open space, these spirits pass on through.
Tossing down straight acoustic shots with electric guitar back, “Hello, Hi” rides through the valley of yer ol’ Canyon legends, finding an isolated place to unspool Ty’s copious reserves of nervous energy beneath an open sky. Swarms of harmony vocals caper among the clouds, but there’s a rider on the horizon behind, with crossbow trained on his very own heart — the engine driving all the relationships of life, whether down Broadway or over the cliffs at night! Whatever doesn’t get killed is getting stronger all the time. A lean, mean deal, baked in saltwater and sunlight, compassion pouring out its beautiful blue eyes.
“Hello, Hi” follows two releases by the ever-prolific Ty; last year’s surprise release of killer album Harmonizer, along with his first ever feature film score, the soundtrack for Matt Yoka’s documentary Whirlybird, both released via Drag City.
photo by Denée Segall poster artwork by Callum Rooney.
Melbourne producer and songwriter BATTS joins the Mistletone label fam with her stunning new single “Blue” (feat.Sharon Van Etten) and its dreamy video above, directed by Melanie Scammell.
Showered with global acclaim, “Blue” premiered on Triple R Breakfasters, was added to Double J rotation, featured by Lauren Laverne as her BBC 6 Music track of the day, and won coverage from Brooklyn Vegan, NME, Stereogum and Far Out Magazine; to name just a few.
“It’s a gorgeous slow burner that sees BATTS – real name Tanya Batt – crooning above an atmospheric bed of guitars and keys, before an equally striking verse from Van Etten” – NME
“A spacious bed of lilting guitars and steadily-loping rhythms – self-produced by BATTS – set the dreamy stage for these two voices to shine. ‘You watch the sun it rises over these blue horizons’, Batt gently sings. Later, Van Etten mirrors that imagery with her equally elegant verse: ‘I feel the moon descending over backlit high rises’. The track truly takes off during a gorgeous bridge and the moment their voices harmonise in the song’s simply yet effective chorus: ‘I wish I could see the blue, babe / But all I do is feel the blue'” – DOUBLE J
The track is simply a dream. There are flecks of early ’70s psychedelia, as well as of BATTS’ fellow Australian, Julia Jacklin. Her voice is as warming as a soft blanket on a cold winter’s day” – FAR OUT MAGAZINE UK
“Blue” is BATTS’ first official release since her 2019, AMP-nominated debut The Grand Tour, which saw her collaborate with US Space agency NASA using samples collected from their Voyager Mission. “Blue” now sees her moving away from space collaborations and onto collaborating with one of her songwriting idols – Sharon Van Etten. After touring Australia together in 2019 and creating a beautiful bond, it led to them wanting to create something together.
“It’s a huge honour to write and create with Sharon – someone who has carved such a powerful path in this industry and remains so kind and humble, a truly special human. I started writing Blue when I was staying with my Mother-in-Law and watching a lot of Antiques Roadshow”, Tanya Batt recalled.
“I picked up my guitar to try and write a song that would feel like if Shaz or I played it solo it would feel authentically either of ours – I was in the depths of grief at the time and when Blue started to write itself, it clearly reflected how I was feeling. Sharon sent her verse over and the first time I listened to it was such a moment. She just got it, her lyrics were perfectly in keeping with it all. She absolutely completed it. It holds a very special place in my heart.”
Sharon Van Etten recollected, “I got to meet Tanya before I ever got to see her perform live, and she was a bright huge light who wanted to let everyone in and it only let her light shine even more. When I actually got to hear her sing, I was taken to another time, another place that she coloured for me. Helping me step out of myself and feel another soul’s journey. I felt quite grounded and comforted in her essence and all who surrounded her. So it felt quite natural to want to feel included in this group hug that I could tell she was nurturing with everyone around her.”
BATTS has spent a large portion of her career building up an impressive touring resume supporting the likes of Sharon Van Etten, Nilüfer Yanya, Lucius, The Teskey Brothers and Cub Sport (to name just a few). To launch The Grand Tour, Batt worked with the team at Scienceworks to build a dazzling visual experience for three sold out shows in the Melbourne Planetarium.
2022 marks a new chapter of music for BATTS, signing with Mistletone in AUS/NZ and launching her own label, I Feel Fine Records, for the rest of the world. ‘Blue’ featuring Sharon Van Etten is just the beginning of much more to come.
it’s a great joy to welcome Meanjin’sAndrew Tuttle to the label roster. A longtime friend of Mistletone, and one of our most admired Australian producers/composers will release his sumptuous new album Fleeting Adventure on Mistletone/ Inertia locally and Basin Rock (UK/Europe), on July 29. Pre-order here.
ANDREW TUTTLE TOUR DATES: MELBOURNE: Saturday 6 August @ Melbourne Recital Centre, Primrose Potter Salon + special guests Cold Hands Warm Heart. Tickets on sale now. BRISBANE + SYDNEY dates to be announced soon!
Pilerats has premiered lead single “Overnight’s A Weekend”, featuring Steve Gunn and other international guests; a mesmerising slice of “cosmic Australiana”;
“Overnight’s A Weekend” ripples with the electric guitar textures of Steve Gunn, just one of the celebrated guests gracing the album’s seven glittering, contemplative instrumental tracks. Other guests on this profoundly delicate, gently mind-expanding zoner include Michael A. Muller (Balmorhea), Joe Saxby (These Guy) on saxophone, and France-via-Stockholm violinist, Aurélie Ferrière.
As time warps in these strangest of times, life itself feels like a fleeting adventure. Our worlds are smaller and our little lives more fragile. The music made by Andrew Tuttle trickles into the cracks of the pandemic-frazzled psyche like the first rains on bushfire-scarred country. Golden plucks of banjo, gauzy electronics and cosmic guitar shimmer into gloriously expansive melodies that conjure peace and space, comfort and wonder.
This is “comfort music” at its most restorative; a gentle portal to the magical realism of the momentary. A reminder that when we listen deeply, every moment is a fleeting adventure; without traveling, we have already arrived.
Thinking of all his musician friends around the world – each confined to their localised bubbles – Tuttle has been patiently joining dots between the bubbles. Other American innovators who lend their talents to Fleeting Adventure include “cosmic americana” trailblazers Luke Schneider, Chuck Johnson and Josh Kimbrough, who each bring their considerable talents to Tuttle’s generative and collaborative musical practice.
Tuttle’s 2020 breakthrough album Alexandra (ROOM40) won lavish praise; * “Joyful and full of subtle vigour, it’s the perfect headphone-heard walking companion when you don’t want lyrics crowding your thoughts” – MOJO 4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ * “In each composition, there’s an unwavering cinematic quality in the crispness of the production and the ease in which the arrangements flow” – THE QUIETUS * UNCUT 8/10 * THE AUSTRALIAN 4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Standout track ‘Sun At 5 In 4161’ popped up on many playlists by peers and pioneers such as Liars, Ben Watt, Yasmin Williams, Forest Swords, Balmorhea and Hannah Peel.
“I started recording in September 2020. I know a lot of albums at the moment are ‘the lockdown album’, but this consciously wasn’t that. Where I live in Brisbane, we’ve really been quite fortunate, because there haven’t been too many cases. So the album is all about this sense of fleeting adventure and excitement, putting things into a new perspective. It’s me opening up to the world again, hearing stories about friends doing things and being able to go to a gig for the first time in a year, or go to the park, or get on a plane.
“I’ve had guests on albums before, but working on A Cassowary Apart earlier this year, with Padang Food Tigers [Spencer Grady and Stephen Lewis], was a great eye-opener. It really got me thinking about working further with collaborations. So it’s a combination of new friends, old friends and everything in between. You have some of the Brisbane crew, like Joe Saxby [saxophone], who I’ve known for years, people who I’ve toured with, like Steve Gunn, and people I’ve met in residencies. And then there are a few people who I met online last year – like Luke Schneider and Michael Muller from Balmorhea. It’s like we became playlist friends.
“I gave everyone a really free brief. If it was a guitar-led track, I’d say, “Do what you want, then send it back. I’ll keep some of it and we’ll go from there.” That made it really interesting for me, because I wasn’t sure what I was getting back. I didn’t know what instrumentation they’d provide or what song they would play on. And I got to play around with things, which I think really helped with getting that spatial element in the music.
“There are two tracks that are really guest heavy: “Overnight’s A Weekend” and “Filtering”. And three tracks are just banjo, acoustic guitar and pedal steel, but it’s not the same people on each one. One track [“Correlation”] has Josh Kimbrough and Chuck Johnson and the other two have Luke Schneider and Darren Cross [“Next Week, Pending” and “New Breakfast Habit”], so it’s funny that there’s almost an accidental trio in there.
“For the first part of the album I was listening to a lot of those things on the Sahel Sounds album, so Les Filles de Illighadad [Tuareg band] and North African guitar sounds. Things that were really ongoing, structurally, and you weren’t sure when each track was going to finish. I hadn’t really spent much time with Fela Kuti before, but it’s stuff I’ve been listening to a lot. And a lot of peers as well. Ryley Walker’s latest album [Course In Fable] was just gorgeous and really kicked my butt into gear. So a lot of different things were inspiring me as I went along.”
FLEETING ADVENTURE by ANDREW TUTTLE Written, produced, edited by Andrew Tuttle @ Bella Vista, 2020-2021 Additional engineering by Aidan Hogg @ The Plutonium, 2021 Mixed by Chuck Johnson, 2021 Mixed by Lawrence English, 2021Andrew Tuttle: banjo, acoustic guitar, signal processing. ++ Aurelie Ferriere: violin (1) Chuck Johnson: pedal steel guitar (3) Claire Deak: harp, piano, electronics (6) Conrado Isasa: acoustic guitar (6) Darren Cross: acoustic guitar, electronics (2, 5) Flora Wong: violin (6) Joe Saxby: saxophone (1) Josh Kimbrough: acoustic guitar (3) Luke Cuerel: saxophone (6) Luke Schneider: pedal steel guitar (2, 5) Michael A. Muller: electronics, electric guitar (1) Spencer Grady: banjo, electronics (6) Stephen Lewis: dobro, electronics (6) Steve Gunn: electric guitar (1) Tony Dupe: piano, electronics (6)
