HTRK forget their PIN
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HTRK IS GONNA ROCK YA – Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang
Source: HeraldSun
All the latest indie music news you need to be cooler than the other side of the pillow
Work, working 9-5
After the gloom comes the glow. HTRK (pronounced Hate Rock, not Hot Track as Mrs Rock City believed) got through an especially difficult second album Work (Work, Work) after losing member Sean Stewart and have consolidated with a purple and pink hued/hemmed album Psychic 9-5 Club.
The title comes from an idea the two have which will be enacted later in the year. “We’re going to find a space in the Melbourne CBD that we’ll make like a day club – sort of like the backroom of a rave where you pull out all your best dance moves – with smoke and lasers but no drugs and alcohol. We want people to be hyper-aware. We were writing music for the club and that became the album,” says Yang.
“We want all the office boys who are going to work at 9am with their headphones on to see smoke seeping out of the doors and come in for a look.” Um, CAN WE START THIS CLUB YESTERDAY? Meet you at the left speaker, 10 metres back.
Second track Blue Sunshine floats along a chorus “Healthy dose of inner peace, blue sunshine.” Singer Jonnine Standish reveals “We found the KLF Manual: How To Have A Number One 1 The Easy Way behind a speaker in one of our friend’s studios so we followed that. I was aware of having positive messages in the choruses, that’s where the ‘inner peace’ line comes from.”
Conversely, The Body You Deserve is like an anti-commercial for the Oil Spill of Olay. “It’s amazing you say that. You’re right, it’s an anti-infomercial. We watched a lot of Darknet videos and ended up buying a few where women film themselves working out and it follows their heartbeat as it goes up then slows down, it’s slightly surreal,” says Standish. “It’s a really high quality recording of the heartbeat and the women are looking straight at you. A lot of men are listening to that as they fall asleep at night, it’s comforting, they don’t feel so lonely. We got really interested in fetish videos on Darknet,” says Yang.
HTRK show how far they’ve come on this album with a track based around..laughter. For Feels Like Love “we were playing around with the idea of a Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot type affair-laughter song, the high summer crush, we were being quite literal,” Standish says.
“Jon was creepily good at doing the fake laugh,” Yang chips in, before Standish goes with it: “I think females are used to perfecting their fake laugh. It’s an idea where we wanted to bring in that idea of laughter between friends or lovers, the soundscape is designed around a fling.”
Psychic 9-5 Club is as soundscapey as previous records but instead of grey, charcoal colours there are violet rays. “We wanted to explore a more fun vibe and just go with the flow a bit more. After moving back to Australia we found the country quite exotic after London. Moving back to Sydney for me synched up to how I was changing as a person,” Yang says. “Wherever we recorded it happened to be summer. We were conscious of that and we were trying to go with that ‘creative environment being effected by climate.’ It’s cool that you said there are lots of pinks [Standish coos “YEAH” in the background] in the record because we wanted that pink sandstone (sound) that’s shifting all the time.”
The sand/goalposts shifted during the recording of their second album Work (Work, Work) when bandmember Sean Stewart took his own life. This album was recorded at Blazer Sound Studios in New Mexico with Excepter’s Nathan Corbin, someone who didn’t set out to fill the gap Stewart left but in the end that’s kinda what happened.
“They’re both into electronic music but their true love is punk rock. We were listening to stuff like Bad Brains and Sean and Nathan had similarities for sure,” Yang yins. The two are Skypeing with Rock City from Sydney and Melbourne respectively.
Love is Distraction could be a companion piece to Massive Attack’s Dissolved Girl “Passion’s overrated any way.” Standish stands by her contention. “I think love is distraction. The initial concept was the desire for youth. The line ‘Elbows flash like diamonds’…I have imagery in my head of skinny young kids out at night with nothing to light them except car-lights. Hang on I just put in the wrong PIN at the ATM,” she says, pealing off with that smoky laugh.
“I forgot my PIN NUMBER! One sec. [beat] I’m a huge romantic and I enjoy love as a distraction but there’s nothing stopping me from questioning it and wondering what life would be like if love didn’t exist as an emotion at all. It’s an ego-fulfilling emotion. I’m all for love though, it’s a pleasant distraction. There’s some danger in this one, love can take you to obsession.”
As a great philosopher in the 1890s once said (or was it the 1980s) Love is a Battlefield. “That’s our favourite song for the studio!!” Yang perks up before a girl called Jonny takes over “More importantly it’s one of the best video clips, the arm dancing, the elbow above the forehead!! When I’m particularly drunk those moves come out naturally. I’m doing it right now at the ATM, my elbows are up.”
Shine on you crazy diamonds.
Before we conclude the HTRK LUV here’s a review of the record.
PSYCHIC 9-5 CLUB – HTRK [MISTLETONE]
* * * 1/2
HTRK always have something to say about the state of this decaying, fraying planet. If time is a flat circle then the duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang clearly want to defy any retreading of the boards. Sure, they again defer to withdrawn, dubbed-out electronics but this time there are brighter moments – spontaneous laughter on Feels Like Love (!) – than second LP Work (Work, Work) which scurried down the rabbit hole after member Sean Stewart left this mortal coil. The most resonant moment here is the ominous closer The Body You Deserve, caustically echoing Thom Yorke’s ‘reassuring ‘ line on Mode Selektor’s White Light: ‘You have all the time in the world." Gulp.
Sounds like: Shuddering synths, throb-step, real talk
In a word: foggy
See them launch it at The HiFi. Email michael.cahill@news.com.au with the subject heading HTRKLF TIX PLS for your chance to win one of two double passes.
The HiFi, 125 Swanston St, city. April 26. thehifi.com.au
Proof is in the Pudding
Three albums in three years? Hell, yes. BrisVegas dork pop band Ball Park Music put out Happiness and Surrounding Suburbs and Museum and now they’re piffing Puddinghead at us. “I discovered that word in school. One character in a Shakespeare play called another character a puddinghead. I have heard more vitriolic insults," says singer songwriter Sam Cromack. “Our drummer Daniel found out it means a person capable of f—ing up the most basic task."
The quintet had 20, count-em, 20 songs to choose from when it came time to record.
Deerhoof, Dandy Warhols and Rolling Stones all helped sculpt Puddinghead as well as “Funk and jazz music. That’s always been a guilty pleasure but on this record we couldn’t ignore it any more," Cromack shrugs. Galloping, tear-out organ cut Struggle Street is "about feeling hung-over like you’re on Struggle Street. We dedicated the song to Ray Manzarek from The Doors who died."
Beck and M83 mixing engineer Tony Hoffer was enlisted to help the guys put the finishing touches on the record after they self-produced in a -70s fibro shack in Brisbane. “He even knocked some off his price to do it. I thought he may have a headstrong attitude, like, ‘It’s my way or the highway,’ but he wasn’t like that at all, I was gobsmacked. He honoured what was there and improved the existing content," Cromack says, chuffed. “We embraced our new skills."
While it may seem like Cromack looks after the social media side of things, it’s actually the twins in the band, Dean and Daniel Hanson. Some recent missives: "You know a spider is f—ing big, when you hear it before you see it," and "Ball Park Music is going on DEFINITE HIATUS. We’ll be back in action in one week."
Cromack gives them free rein: “They have a sincerity to what they write and I pretty much just let them roll with it now."
See them rock very shortly.
Hey, here’s another review for you before then.
PUDDINGHEAD – BALL PARK MUSIC [STOP START/INERTIA]
* * * 1/2
Wow. They’ve really gone for it. Ball Park Music want the hits, the whole hits and nothing but the hits. It largely works for the Brisbane fivesome on their third record, a bashful, upbeat collection of emancipated indie pop. Lead singer Sam Cromack doesn’t “wanna tarnish what appears to be my perfect record of sleeping with a guy" on Next Life Already, and Error Playin’ has a cascading beauty to it. Cromack splices his timbre between Thom Yorke and Jake Shears and the song jaunts and jags along like a lost ’70s classic made by retrosexual futurists. Tripping the Light Fantastic is too cutesy/calculated, though, and it tarnishes revelatory moments like Struggle Street and Cocaine Lion. Good fun but.
Sounds like: Givin’ the people what they want
In a word: ambitious.
Corner Hotel, Richmond, May 3-4, ticketscout.com.au
No Palace In Metro
Sadly, the inevitable has happened. The Palace Theatre’s landlord has decided it’s time to stop raising the roof with rock and instead raze it to rubble. Yep, it’s gonna become a hotel after May.
Rubbish!
“Palace Theatre management had requested assistance from both state/local government to seek alternative locations to ensure the ongoing success of Victoria’s thriving live music industry. Regretfully, to date, this avenue of relocating … has been unsuccessful," says general manager Greg Young.
Remaining shows include Tyga, RUFUS and John Newman.
In The White Room
Tim Rogers, Josh Pyke, Chris Cheney and Phil Jamieson are defibrillating The Beatles’ White Album shows. Jameison told ol’ mate Cam Adams: “Tim and I are more showman-esque, Chris is a showman with his guitar histrionics and has the raw talent, Josh is introspective. My wife told me Tim blew me off the stage every night, but as I told her, that is his wont. There’s no point trying to compete with Rogers, you just have to let that bird fly."
All four got a blackbird tattoo after the last tour. Neat.
Hamer Hall, the Arts Centre, July 15-16 ticketmaster.com.au from April 17
Soho Bros Go Go Goes
Violent Soho proved there were brains behind their brawn on last year’s Hungry Ghost and remain a rib-shaking live band. They’re taking The Smith Street Band on tour, too!
Tops.
The HiFi, 125 Swanston St, city, July 5, $ 35.50, thehifi.com.au
