The Middle East fanboy rears his head once more, this time having heard and swooned over this pair of tracks from The Middle East’s Mark Myers, who performs under the moniker of The Starry Field. I say “now” but if I remember correctly, The Starry Field supported a Middle East show I saw at the Spectrum and that must have been at least 5 years ago. So then it seems, perhaps, maybe, The Starry Field is no new thing. Of the solo projects that each former TME band member has to their name, this may be the one I’ve best connected with. Here’s a brief overview of what the others have been up to:

● BREE has released just the one single so far, the haunting yet beautiful Winter and is now a part of Matt Corby’s ensemble.

● ROHIN is in the process of recording that jaunty disconnected acoustic fare he’s been dishing out (rough yet promising). He’s also contributed a single called ‘All My Friends At A Petrol Stop‘ to Why Don’t You Believe Me’s BANANAS

● JORDAN has been touring Europe in support of Holly Throsby but is back in the country. Here‘s a taste of what isn’t yet on record.

● JOSEPH has released a Kurt Vilesque EP with his band Joseph Liddy and the Skeleton Horse, purchasble via itunes. Maybe slightly heavier than Kurt Vile, but in the same vein.

● JACK has worked under the name Skeleton Jack but everything that was once available seems to have drifted into the ether. Here’s a solo track he recorded live at one of The Gate’s living room shows about two months ago.

● JAVED is playing drums in Holland who have an EP out which you can listen to here. Before that, though I think they’re now inactive (?) he sang in Sydney band Huntings have a pair of tracks available for your downloading pleasure on their Unearthed page. He’s also playing bass in Bexley de Lion who have a new EP out next month

That’s all I know for now but feel free to point me to anything that I’ve overlooked. The songs at hand, these are of the hardworking Mike Myers, a man who, since the parting of The Middle East, has spent less time on stage and more in studio. He’s been behind the production for artists such as Tin Sparrow, Emma Louise, The Medics, Courtney Young, Founds and Faith Lee. It’s not a list to be scoffed at with some few of those budding and blooming even as we consider the musical labours of Mr Myers himself but he’s always seemed fairly content to stay out of the spotlight like all true former Middle Easterners. PR was never their strongest suit as they annoyingly talked down their music in the rare interviews they took but it’s hard to keep songs this emotive from seeing the light, even if they’ve taken five years to surface properly. Boy I sure had a task ahead of me figuring out what ol’ order we’d listent to these but I’m going for the safer option first with the more bizarre ‘Man From The Future’ bringing it home. I can’t get enough of that quavering, fragile voice, and that’s before it drags me back into sweet memories of the golden Middle East.

The Starry Field – ‘If All Your Troubles Were A Sea’ [DOWNLOAD]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The Starry Field – ‘Man From The Future’ [DOWNLOAD]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Here’s a track that Mark contributed to an EP called Dragging Pianos which came come couple with a children’s book a few years back but I believe is now out of print. Also, if anyone has a line on the record by Starry Field, we need to talk.

Dragging Pianos – Peel The Carrots

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I’ve made genuine attempts to do the legwork on this post so that it didn’t just look like I knew nothing about the artist and blindly posted on the back of a song that ‘sounds nice’, but it’s come to this. I’m blindly posting about an artist because the song sounds nice. He seems to have a few albums to his name yet somehow I can only stream one, single track online. What’s that about? Come on Champers, I want to try before I buy. I don’t even know where he’s from. Townsville maybe? The following is an excerpt from his bio,

“Having released two celebrated EPs, received glowing reviews, gained admiring fans, played just about every festival under the Australian sun and built a firm reputation as one of the most exiting young performers in the country.”

DANIEL! Let me celebrate your EPs! Has noone shown you bandcamp yet? Is soundcloud unavailable in your region? The future is here and its name is spotify. Just give me aaaaaaany one way to hear a few songs online and I’ll know if I want to buy your album. This might be a new song, it might not, it doesn’t really matter. It could be the product of 2006. What I mean to say is, it’s an acoustic track with a little string and a little build so it’s not going to be the catalyst that gives birth to the next genre hybrid. This isn’t to say that your ears don’t bear witness to excellent songwriting and some glorious fingerpicking though. The man knows his way around an acoustic guitar better than… well, he just knows his way around an acoustic guitar. When writing up this sort of track I often find that I try to distance myself from the artist as if I’m somehow better than a simple folk staple. I like acoustic folk, it’s a reality. Maybe sometime soon we’ll hear some more Champagne recordings digitally.

To make up for the disinteresting text in this article I have added an extra dose of lightning to the above image. It was a choice between lightning or lazer eyes but lazer eyes wouldn’t look realistic.

Daniel Champagne – Secrets in the Dark [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I went this entire post without saying something about his name but seriously, IT’S DANIEL CHAMPAGNE.

Jeremy Neale’s ‘Darlin’ is going to be big. He’s cut his teeth in Velociraptor and come to the obvious conclusion that the next career step from a moderately successful garage-rock outfit is a doo-wop throwback project. Neale’s crooning vocals are smoother than the output of a broken softserve machine and that sax- THAT SAX. It squeals and screeches antagonising, yet never compromising the melody. Given the current situation of the Australian music market one might wonder if there’s any further room for tunes this historically derivative but I say ‘yay’. There certainly is. The strength of that melody serves as guarantor against any other criticism that might be levelled at the track but there’s also unmistakeable technical ability. I think the single has been about for just a few days but word is travelling, chins are wagging. Also included for your listening pleasure is his first single ‘Winter Was The Time’. Download both tracks courtesy of Triple J Unearthed.

Here’s a set of Melbournites that are pushing the artistic envelop. Think a drum and bass Seabear without that much drum and bass, but still with a little bit of drum and bass. Then minus the drum and bass, throw in the ocassional breakbeat and some well rounded bass rumblings and there you have it, I’lls. It’s a grammatical nightmare of a name but when you think about it, and you will, it’s actually a pretty great way of spelling Aisles/Isles etc. And I know, I know, I know I say this all the time but please believe me, you won’t understand the quality of this act until you listen to it with suitable auditory apparatus – this means apple headphones, laptop speakers, ringtones, those eskies with built in speakers, they’re all off limits. Maybe just wait until you get home if I’ve mentioned something relevant to your current circumstance.

The vocals are serene and caringly layered behind the wash of sound (I would have liked to hear them a little higher in the mix) made up of those earlier mentioned drums, the regular quick finger trill of delayed electric and a piano melody that is often lost underneath all the rest ( though it comes to the fore at the end of ‘Thrice’). If you’ve ever listened to any Radiohead (at all, ever) you’ll have trouble listening to ‘Take higher Ground’ on it’s own merits, but do try as I’lls are definitely more than the sum of their influences. As far as I’ve discovered, there are member connections to other Melbourne bands such The Ocean Party and Kins and no doubt a few others I’m oblivious to so we’re not talking about fresh to the game upstarts here.

Their 7 track Thread EP is available here or there’re two tracks up for free download on their unearthed page for the frugal.

I should preface this right now by saying that the record in question isn’t for the faint of heart. If you’re looking for sweet sounds, close this page and come back later in the week. Consider this a temporary respite. It’s simply that Oberon will likely find itself in my top five Australian releases of the year so I figured I’d better write something on it so that when that list appears there isn’t gross public outcry. “What!? Why haven’t didn’t you mention it then, tossbag!?”. The band is made up dudes from Parades, I.I, Jonathan Boulet, Light Giant and Sleepyhands. Plot that on a genre graph why don’t you.

Look, let’s get this out in the opening early: I’m smitten with this record. I’ve been listening to it constantly and unabridged for the past two weeks, declaring it the bees balls and mostly sweating on anyone who’ll listen. Amongst this I’ve wondered how folks that have never been purveyors of heavier music have picked up on this record so excitedly but I think the answer is simple enough; Oberon transcends traditional genrefication. Snakeface refuse to attend to your heavy music heart using the tried and tested formula. Here’s a list of features that are absent on Oberon:

For better or for worse, Oberon has somehow managed to position itself outside the spectrum of heavy music, at least in my eyes. It could be the absence of the earlier listed features or it could be some other unidentifiable anomale. There are moments where I know I should say “this smells like Converge” but I don’t, and I don’t know why. So you can keep your Northlanes, your Dream On Dreamers and your freshly cut cookies, I’ll have Oberon thanks.

The record opens with the Spaghetti Western brooder ‘Listen Up’. What I actually thought was electric guitar I’ve since discovered to be vocals auto-tuned so as to be unrecognizable and the effect is disquieting to say the least, and indeed, the most. It’s disconcerting and a worthy introduction before the meat arrives in track 2 ‘Devil’s Leap’, which is the first the first of the the record’s decelerations of grit. ‘Devil’s Leap’ is a lurching drunk, wandering the streets shouting obscenities while his late life, years-of-green induced neuroses lend themselves to voices in his dome.

‘Cash Grab’ is a more straight down the line nadcrusher laced with societal rage. “When was the last time you looked at your surroundings?”. Probably not recently enough. The track swells and swells with a third voice making its entrance before the vocal swarm takes over then the wave once again crashes back into uncertain twings and twangs punctuated by silence as much as noise. The song crushes out before it can build into the mosh part that kids have saved their best two-step for and I think that’s why I’m appreciating this record so damn much. There’s no pavlovian moments where Snakeface buy into the prevailing way of things. Somehow modern hardcore has convinced itself that the only way to demonstrate anger, sadness, rage or guilt is with more noise. Not so Snakeface. The tracks ‘Oberon’ and ‘Oberon ii’ are interludes between the interludes, both backed by a single resounding, organ tone. Ergo, the album rings out with of the run-down, the poor and the underfoot. Let’s also take a moment here to welcome ‘ergo’ to the Sound Doctrine word family. A great debut appearance.

A good portion of the record is centered on throbbing riffery, notably tracks like ‘Scum’ and ‘Occupy’ though this isn’t to be confused with “crushing guitars” which are thankful absent. ‘Occupy’ is a brash call to action prefaced by the slamming of a rusted door, that places the entirety of the song in abandonded country yard, probably in the deep of night, and if the house’s occupants are anything like the band members they’re touching themselves inappropriately. Distortion swells until it swallows.

I think music pundit Joe Hardy put it best when he said that this record contains “a tangible sense of Australian identity that feels neither contrived or forced, nor cringeworthy”. At no point during the 29 minutes that is Oberon did I feel like Snakeface were trying to demonstrate a sense of Australianism yet the record is unmistakeably Australian.

Oberon: $10/$10

Head to the Snakeface bandcamp to get a hold of the digital release or pre-order the vinyl/documentary combination which will ship in a little over a week.