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October / November News 2012

Welcome to Undercover Music News for October - November 2012!

The Lovetones

The Australian music scene’s best-kept secret

Fiddlers Feast

New album ‘Caravan’ set for January 2013 release

Eric Bogle

Tops Australian Options Ten Australian protest songs that matter

Mic Conway’s National Junk Band

Tour Dates

This month’s edition of Undercover Radio showcases songs from the new Gary Shearston album The Great Australian Groove (plus some other ‘classics’) & Antenna’s Installation LP. It also features Prop, The Presets, The Lovetones, Eric Bogle, Jim Low, Fiddlers Feast, Mic Conway’s National Junk Band not to mentioned The Celebrated Knackers & Knockers band conceived and produced by Warren Fahey.

Check It Out Here!

Eric Bogle

As fellow Rouseabout artist Jim Low comments “I feel very honoured to be included in their roster of artists alongside two of my favourite Australian songwriters, Gary Shearston and Eric Bogle.”

Like Shearston, Eric Bogle’s possibly most famous song of all And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda was recently included in Australian Options list of Ten Australian Protest Songs That Matter not least at number 1. Jack Humphrys’ summarises “The Scottish Australian looked at our most enduring myth and wrote our best anti-war song.”

‘And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’ is available to download from iTunes as part of Bogle’s Singing The Spirit Home (RRR49) collection.

You can catch Eric in concert throughout the remainder of the year.

Tour Dates: See top right of this page.

More Information: Artist Page

Fiddlers Feast

The new Fiddlers Feast album ‘Caravan’ is set to be released in January 2013 to coincide with Fiddlers Feast’s shows at the Tamworth Country Music Festival and other tour dates.

Marcus Holden who is locked away in his studio putting the finishing touches on the album recently blogged “We’re stoked about this one, new songs and silliness as well as lots of fiddles…well what do you expect?”

Tour Dates: See top right of this page.

More Information: Artist Page

Jim Low

“TRAVEL WELL WITH JIM LOW” so says Australian Options’ Rob Durbridge in his review, further adding “Jim Low’s new CD brings together a number of themes from an historian’s knowledge and love of Australia. Jim doesn’t adopt the twang but like (Gary) Shearston uses our accent for an unmistakably Australian album.Neither does he follow the current “folk” style of facile “it’s all about me” lyrics and breathless adolescent delivery … he’s got things to say and wants us to hear them.

Invasion and Indigenous dispossession at Myall Creek and Angledool, the dreams of explorers like Burke and Leichhardt, family and Sydney history in ‘Luna Park’, ‘Mr Eternity’ and ‘Engines of the Southern Cross’ and children’s goldrush graves create an historical framework for Jim’s songs. Most of the songs are beautifully realized and invite you to join.

The politics of Boundaries and Songs of Peace reveal Jim’s critique and vision about how Australia should be. As Jimmy Little observed, if you say it in song, people are more likely to get the message.”

More Information: Artist Page

Gary Shearston

Gary Shearston regrets to advise that, due to unfortunate circumstances beyond his control, he has had to withdraw his announced participation in Ian McNamara's Australia All Over ABC concert dates for late November and December. However, he hopes due compensation may be found in listening to his newly-released CD, The Great Australian Groove.

The Great Australian Groove is the new album from Gary Shearston who "...occupies a singular place in Australian music history"
(Keith Glass, The Australian).

It features eighteen brand new songs from one of the nation's most eulogized singer/songwriters who feels the rhythms rising from the land and turns them into timeless music.

The Great Australian Groove was recorded and mixed by Roger Ilott who also plays guitars, pedal steel & keyboards and features Lee Williams on bass (& guitars), Gary’s son Luke Shearston on drums and Penny Davies on backing vocals. The album was mastered by William Bowden.

Gary Shearston will launch The Great Australian Groovewith a series of special performances as part of ABC Local Radio’s Australia All Over Concert Series presented by the inimitable Ian ‘Macca’ McNamara who is a long term fan of his work, recently playing ‘She’s A Classic’ from Gary’s Renegade album on rotation.

The Great Australian Groove (RRR57) will be released through MGM Distribution on 21st November 2012.

Meanwhile, Gary’s classic ‘We Want Freedom (Aboriginal Charter of Rights)’ from his Here & There, Now & Then anthology has made Australian Options list of Ten Australian Protest Songs That Matter. Jack Humphrys comments ‘a powerful musical arrangement and performance of Keith Walker’s (later Oodgeroo Noonucaal) great early 1960s poem in difficult times.

Tour Dates: See top right of this page.

More Information: Artist Page

Warren Fahey

Warren Fahey

Ten years ago Warren started to compile a book on Australian bawdy songs, recitations, toasts, graffiti and other assorted filth. He was concerned this traditional expression was disappearing and it just about has! None of his usual publishers would touch it - yes, it was sexist, racist, ageist, homophobic and every other no go zone. A couple of year's back he decided to record some of the material with The Celebrated Knackers & Knockers Band (a group of unnamed musicians - obviously The Larrikins - and some mates. Rouseabout Records released two hilarious albums 'Rooted in the Country' and 'Sing Us Anothery, Dirty As Buggery'. Both are available through iTunes and most record stores plus directly from Undercover Music via mail order). Anyway, Warren has decided the book must be published and it will now appear as an e-book on his website. Stand by for the filthy announcement. (source: Warren Fahey's Bodgie News October 2012 )

Elsewhere a 60 minute documentary of Warren’s life & work entitled “Larrikin Lad” directed by Rebel Penfold-Russell & Pat Fiske was screened at The Entertainment Quarter’s Cinema Paris on Monday 22nd October. More screenings soon to be announced.

More Information: Artist Page

Mic Conway's National Junk Band

Having recetly blown everyone’s socks off at the Marrickville Festival, Mic Conway’s National Junk Band will be a busy bunch in November and January with shows on the NSW South Coast, Canberra & then Tamworth (more TCMF dates to be announced soon).

The word on the street is a new album is in the works. For more information visit their website.

Tour Dates: See top right of this page.

More Information: Artist Page

Antenna

Founded on mutual respect and admiration, Antenna was a band with an unrivalled vision, a partnership that challenged the stereotypical oz rock dream and took you to sensory heaven and back.

Antenna comprised four unique talents. Justin Frew & Stu McCarthy from Sydney techno subversives Southend (‘The Winner Is…’), Kim Salmon from his Surrealists & The Scientists and Dave Faulkner of our dearly beloved Hoodoo Gurus, who joined their craft to make Antenna a musical tour de force that defies comparison. As well Antenna featured guest vocalists Chrissie Amphlett (The Divinyls) and Matt Thomas from The Mavis’s.

The album, Installation, an ambitious, eclectic pop gem originally released on Mushroom Records in 1998 is now available for the first time digitally through MGM Distribution.

“There’s been no other Aussie record like it.” (FHM)

Installation includes the single ‘Come On Spring’, a song of true seasonal splendour featuring a stunning vocal take by Kim Salmon which ignited firecrackers of praise and sent music directors lunging for their adds. It was THE radio tune of the season and has just been licensed for Adam Spencer’s Mytunes Vol 2 compilation alongside the likes of New Order, The Stone Roses, Florence + The Machine & MUCH more that is being released on ABC Music in early November.

Watch Antenna performing ‘Come On Spring’ live on ABC TV’s ‘Recovery’
plus check out the original video.

The digital reissue of Installation is accompanied by a brand new video mash-up of 10-4 conceived and edited by Gary Hillberg.

More Information: Artist Page

The Lovetones

“The Lovetones are the Australian music scene’s best-kept secret. Over the past 10 years, the band created several psychedelic masterpieces that were adored by a small cult following both here and in the US. Hearing this ‘best of’ will have you wondering how The Lovetones didn’t make it big. The dreamy pop bliss of ‘(I Gotta) Feel’ is the best top 10 hit Australia never had. If you’re a fan of The Byrds, Pink Floyd or Deep Sea Arcade, then you need to discover The Lovetones. Provenance is the perfect introduction.”
(Andy McLean, Charter Magazine)

The album can be heard in its entirety on Undercover Music’s SoundCloud and features all their classic pop masterpieces and loads more including a bonus DVD filmed by Moshcam at the Metro in Sydney.

More Information: Artist Page

Prop

If you haven’t heard The Presets new album Pacifica then you must be living under a rock – it has to be on the shortlist for album of the year

In a recent Rolling Stone feature Julian & Kim spoke about where it all started and that was an instrumental outfit on our Silent Recordings label called Prop who did cause quite a stir in the scene.

Balmain boy Hamilton was studying piano and music education, while Northern Beaches boy Moyes was studying percussion. By day they were learning about Stockhausen and Beethoven; by night they were seeing everything from jazz to Underworld and the Prodigy. Trying to reconcile all this, they formed Prop, a quintet with the line-up of vibraphone, marimba, keyboards, bass and drums. The group was both intense and hypnotic, creating a post-rock/groove-based instrumental sound that played with minimalism and repetition. They supported Sonic Youth and Tortoise and released two albums, Small Craft, Rough Sea (2001) and Cook Cut Damage Destroy (2003).

But Hamilton and Moyes were also clubbing, and their fondness for techno, the Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and Rage Against the Machine found them straining the leash to try something else. At the end of Prop rehearsals, when the other three members went home, the duo would stay behind and make a lot of noise with Moyes on drums and Hamilton on synth. The seeds of the Presets were being sown.

“Prop was very beautiful,” says Hamilton. “We all listened to each other intently and it was very fulfilling musically. It was rewarding but it was cerebral. We wanted to try something that was more about the body, so it came from the hips instead of the head.”
(source: Barry Divola, Rolling Stone, September 2012)

The Presets first ever release was featured on Cook Cut Damage Destroy and we have included it in this month’s edition of Undercover Radio along with ‘Portal’ from Small Craft, Rough Sea.

All power to The Presets!

More Information: Artist Page

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