CONSUME/VALVE

I HEART HIROSHIMA

Earlier this month Susie, Matt & Cameron boarded flight SQ326 bound for Frankfurt to start an absolute thrilling spree of shows across Europe and the UK…

So far they have found themselves swept up by adoring crowds In Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, France and Netherlands, selling large amounts of CDs and shirts at all shows… and earning the praise of their generous hosts THE RAKES.

Brisbane’s I Heart Hiroshima now fill their weeks up with more shows in the UK after the Euro dates with The Rakes with their first on Saturday past in THE HOPE at THE GREAT ESCAPE .

In the meantime I Heart Hiroshima are making more friends picking up a return set of European dates with MAXIMO PARK… plus more dates in Germany, Holland, France and the UK.

As they travel on their merry way through this new uncharted territory witness their travelogue as revealed on the tour blospot – http://ihearthiroshima.blogspot.com

During this time Andy Gill will be mixing their next album in London aiming for a September release… the guys have had the great fortune to witness Gang of Four play at The Great Escape on the weekend in Brighton. In the meantime new single Crime/Got Bones makes its place on UK radio waves…

EURO/UK TOUR exploits continues…

SAT 16 MAY – THE GREAT ESCAPE Brighton, UK “Artrocker showcase”

SUN 17 MAY – VERA Groningen, The Netherlands with The Rakes
MON 18 MAY – MELKWEG Amsterdam, The Netherlands with The Rakes

THUR 21 MAY – UK, London, Camden Barfly
FRI 22 MAY – UK, Liverpool, Bumper – Liverpool Sound City
SAT 23 MAY – UK, Bristol – Dot To Dot Festival
SUN 24 MAY – UK, Nottingham – Dot To Dot Festival
MON 25 MAY – UK, Glasgow, Twisted Wheel
TUES 26 MAY – UK, Manchester, Night & Day

MON 1 JUNE – LE CARGO CLUB, Caen, France with Maximo Park
TUES 2 JUNE – LA TRABENDO, Paris, France with Maximo Park
WED 3 JUNE – MAGAZZINI GENERALO, Milan, Italy with Maximo Park,
FRI 5 JUNE – FRI-SON, Fribourg, Switzerland with Maximo Park
SAT 6 JUNE – KOFMEHL, Solothurn, Switzerland with Maximo Park

TUES 9 JUNE – venue tba, Munster, Germany with Gregory and the Hawk
WED 10 JUNE – MOLOTOW, Hamburg, Germany
THUR 11 JUNE – MAGNET, Berlin, Germany
SAT 13 JUNE – ROTOWN, Rotterdam, Holland
TUES 16 JUNE – BPM, Nantes, France
WED 17 JUNE – 1929, Rennes, France

TUFF TEEF out in the UK on Valve/Weatherbox.
Features GOT BONES, CRIME and PUNKS.
PINK FROST available on iTunes now.
Tour compile EP FRIENDS WITH SWORDS also available.

Celeste Potter never belonged in rural South Australia. It was most likely a combination of being the only Asian kid in town, the coke bottle eyeglasses and lack of netball skills. Whatever the reason, she soon blew that Popsicle stand and moved to Melbourne to go to art school. There she found herself immediately thrown together with fellow country misfits Ben Wundersitz and Steve Huf. With no money and no friends, all they had was a shared rock and roll obsession and three appetites for destruction. The exiles spent many months locked up in their little lounge room drinking whisky alone together, swinging their guitars around their heads, breaking things and making pancakes. Around this time the ferocious collective now known as Ouch My Face was born. They have since traded their dark confines for a touring van and a pandemonic reputation, inflicting hearing loss upon themselves and others across Australia and New Zealand Via: their art-punk slabs of rage.

Ouch My Face is three country kids who through necessity found themselves squished together inside a little concrete shoebox in the inner suburbs of Melbourne. It was in this shoebox that they nurtured the beginnings of their musical affinity. With few other friends to speak of, they stared at each other with perplexed faces when the phone rang and refused to open the door for the Mormons or landlords who came knocking. Their days were spent at school or down the dusty aisles of Warren’s Record Paradise and having handed all their money over to Warren, nights were spent eating lemonade scones and watching their mammoth collection of Rage videotapes. On Saturday nights they could often be found in their living room that had no light-bulb, with a bottle of whisky in one hand, guitar in the other, perfecting rock moves they had just witnessed on a chosen video tape. One pivotal morning inevitable progression witnessed them writing and recording a song about Weetbix on an old PC. Over the next three years they worked feverishly on a growing body of songs, extending their content beyond breakfast foods. They wrote and recorded in different shoeboxes but always together. In 2006 they were lured out of the dark confines by a manager with a little moustache and snakeskin shoes. He showed them how to pour their efforts into the giant bubbling cauldron that is the Melbourne music scene. They have since started smoking, quit smoking, bought a big white van and drove it across the state border a couple of times, started smoking again and learned how to stare boldly into the face of an audience without flinching.

“Celeste Potter sure has impressive vocal chords. She shrieks, howls and spits furiously all over Ouch My Face’s debut EP. Still, she somehow manages to rein in the histrionics just enough to not become grating over the course of these five songs. It’s a fine balancing act, especially when she is backed by music that is so in-your-face, it threatens to exit through the back of your head like a high-calibre bullet.
Despite the fact that the three-piece recorded in two different studios with two different engineers, the seamlessness of this EP leads me to believe that they had a very definite vision of what they were trying to achieve. Reminiscent of the glossy production values of mid-’90s post-grunge, all the instruments are up-front, but clearly separated in the mix. This isn’t subtle – and neither should it be.
Potter’s guitar careens wildly around a rhythm section that keeps flexing its muscles. Steve Huf’s bass has the metallic clang employed by the likes of Rage Against The Machine or, closer to home, The Sinking Citizenship. The drums fall into lockstep on the second track ‘Knockouts’, while a male voice barks commands in military fashion and Celeste yells something about getting naked.
‘Firehead’ introduces a funk metal groove, before being smothered in distorted guitar and more furious banshee wails. ‘Obscena Misdemeanour’ mutates from a dance-punk floorstomper into something a lot heavier and leads into the full-blown metal riffing of the short closing track ‘Don’t Take A Knife To The Graveyard’. I’d love to see them go even further in this direction. The fact that they list Sepultura as one of their influences indicates they might. Overall, it’s an impressive opening salvo from Ouch My Face. Don’t ask me what it all means, but with its slick sound and immediate impact, this record is custom-made for “youth” radio and dance floors. You can even mosh to it, if such is your wont, and Potter is a star in the making. Worse things could happen”. by René Schaefer (MESS + NOISE May 2009)

SAT 30 MAY: EP Launch – The Tote Hotel, Melbourne
w/ Fait Accompli, Assassination Collective, East Brunswick All Girls Choir, Drumheller +DJs

THUR 25 JUNE – Club 77, Sydney (My Sydney Riot)
w/ Fait Accompli and Zea Horse

SAT 27 JUNE – The Annandale, Sydney
FBI Fundraiser show

SAT 11 JULY – Ric’s Bar, Brisbane plus guests

OUCH MY FACE
debut selftitled EP out on Valve/MGM mid MAY!
Features KNOCK OUTS, FIREHEAD
and OBSCENA MISDEMEANOUR
(video here! – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R67UffxocQ)

SHONEN KNIFE
The all-female Japanese garage pop punk legends Shonen Knife, championed by Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Red Kross etc return with latest album Super Group. Formed in Osaka, Japan in 1981, heavily influenced by 1960s girl groups and early punk rock ala The Ramones, Naoko and the girls craft stripped-down songs, rooted in edgy instrumentation and D.I.Y. aesthetics, expressing infectious melodies and simplistic, exuberant lyrics sung in Japanese and English, which over the course of their twenty-seven-year career has earned them a worldwide cult following. They have released 15 albums since debut 1982’s Minna Tanoshiku and includes Brand New Knife (1997) and Happy Hour (1998) thate featured Banana Chips. They were invited by Kurt Cobain to support Nirvana on their 1991 UK tour.

Last seen in Australia as part of the 1997 Big Day Out tour… they return with the new album Super Group and another super tour later in 2009.

●Very active Shonen Knife!
In 2007, they released an album “fun! fun! fun!” in Japan. Since then, they spent very busy days. They played lots of shows, joined a compilation album for kids, went to North American tour, recorded a cover song of AC/DC for a tribute album and played at rock festivals.

●LET THERE BE SHONEN KNIFE!
The concept of the new album Super Group is “go back to the starting point of ROCK”. All lyrics are written in English. This album includes various cool rock tunes. The first song “Super Group” is very punk pop like Buzzcocks. “Muddy Bubbles Hell” and “Pyramid Power” taste like Heavy Metal. “BBQ Party” starts from Jonathan Richman like intro and changed into punk rock. The harmony at the last part of “Na Na Na” is very cute. The last song is a cover of Paul McCartney and the Wings song “Jet”. Shonen Knife version is very fun and ROCK. This album makes everybody happy.

Playing music is an exciting thing like eating a giant cake during my whole life.

http://www.shonenknife.net http://www.myspace.com/shonenknife
Super Group music video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSveOVUdkPI

SHONEN KNIFE plays SOUNDS OF SPRING in brisbane on SAT 26 SEPT along with The Living End, Josh Pyke, Frenzal Rhomb, Quan, The Hard Ons, The Fauves, My Disco and more…

SHONEN KNIFE – NEW ALBUM SUPERGROUP featuring Supergroup and Jet
OUT IN MAY ON VALVE/MGM

MONO
Japan’s MONO draw forth universal rapture with latest album Hymn to the Immortal Wind.

Just in time for their 10-year anniversary, MONO return with their fifth studio album, the absolutely massive Hymn To The Immortal Wind.

After touring almost non-stop for five years, the band hibernated for over a year to focus solely on writing Hymn. The result is their most thoughtful and eclectic album to date. Written and arranged with a hopeful, romantic narrative in mind, the songs string together like chapters in an epic love story. The music is naturally majestic, with MONO’s trademark wall of noise crashing beautifully against the largest chamber orchestra the band has ever enlisted. The instrumentation is vast, incorporating strings, flutes, organ, piano, glockenspiel and tympani into their standard face-melting set-up.

Recorded to analog tape with long-time friend and producer Steve Albini, there is an intimacy captured here that is at once beautiful and a little terrifying. The creaking of old wooden chairs as the orchestra rocks in their seats (both literally and figuratively), puckered lips rolling along flutes, and even the conductor’s opening cue can be heard during the hauntingly quiet opening moments

While Hymn continues to mine the cinematic drama inherent in all of MONO’s music, the dynamic shifts now come more from dark-to-light instead of quiet-to-loud. The maturity to balance these elements so masterfully has become MONO’s strongest virtue – - save for perhaps their uncanny ability to sound every bit like a plane crashing into a Beethoven concert.

Mono are Takaakira “Taka” Goto (guitar), Tamaki (bass), Yoda (guitar) and Yasunori Takada (drums).
Touring Australia late 2009.

FOLLOW THE MAP video is available here and going out soon to video world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bAUK-aoqt8

Amazon has chosen ‘Hymn To The Immortal Wind’ as one of their Top 4 Albums of the Year so far.
Also it debuted at #40 on the Billboard Top Independent Record Charts first week in US.

Screw ‘Music For The People’, this is music for the gods. Japan’s Mono have been tugging the heartstrings of the faithful for almost 10 years with their, y’know, grand post-rock symphonies, and their fifth album is as ambitious as ever, teeming as it is with crashing guitars and cinematic strings. ‘Pure As Snow (Trails Of The Winter Storm)’ soars above a maelstrom of melody and noise, the 13-minute ‘The Battle To Heaven’ conjures angels and demons clashing with flaming swords and ‘Everlasting Light’ burns and builds and dies with staggering grace. Pretentious, yes, but defiantly so. ‘Hymn…’ feels like the imaginary soundtrack to the film inside your head and is an outstanding work of epic beauty. Ben Patashnik – NME 8/10

http://www.mono-jpn.com

MONO’s Hymm to the immortal Wind out on Valve through MGM NOW…
Features something so sublime that this bramble of words can’t possibly convey.
Trust me.