Another Melbourne band that I saw many times across all sorts of venues. For a hot moment it seemed like they were about to “break out”, but it never quite happened.
They were a 3 piece: drums, and two bass guitars, and they could extract sounds out of those bass' that one would never expect to hear. The song I'm linking here was always their closer for a gig. On their EP the track runs about 8 minutes, but every time they played it live they would change it a little and it would usually end up going for anywhere from 10 - 15 minutes depending on how they felt and how the crowd was reacting.
If you can stand the somewhat lofi recording from a live gig, check out Accelerate by Pre-shrunk
https://youtu.be/Vo8trXPVI8I
@“穴” I didn't know we could embed Bandcamp links! [color=orange]WOW[/color]
https://zacharygarren.bandcamp.com/album/i
here's the first solo album by Zach Garren, guitarist of my favorite math rock group Strawberry Girls. It's truthfully exactly like the group's music: virtuosic guitar with plenty of good riffs and hooks. Very high energy for a "math" rock band, in contrast to Chon, for example. This is what sets them apart for me; their music has a real personality to it that is not outshined by intricately technical lines, which certainly has its time and place. This album is a little bit less poppy than the band's recent output, and I think I prefer it for that. However, it does have a fair amount of samples that I would expect in offbeat hip hop
Mint Field is one of the few good bands from my city right now! I think they are great. My band's first gig was supposed to be opening for them, but that show was scheduled for april 10 2020… and you can guess why that never happened
@“穴”#p38886 I‘m freakin jealous! My band’s guitarist has suddenly moved to Arizona, but the drummer and myself are going to try to reboot our whole thing
Anyway
This is Jonah Parzen-Johnson. I can't really give a little blurb, but he plays really chill (post?) jazz with saxes and cool rhythms. I love going to sleep to this, which is NOT meant to be a diss.
@“dylanfills”#p38991 we are trying to reboot everything as well! we started rehearsing again about 2 months ago, but we forgot how to play almost everything that we had pre-covid , we released an ep late in 2019 but our singer/guitarist doesn't like those songs anymore, so we are literally starting again from zero!
favs are this song ^ Congestion and this song Torn v
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_I-AgawZxw
_Watch Out For Snakes is 8-bit synthwave from Atlanta geek Matt Baum. Layering NES and Game Boy chip sounds, WOFS creates darkly energetic tracks that pay homage to old video games and 80’s films without taking things too seriously._
@“穴”#p38992 I will never not long for the group cohesion that my recently fractured band has. I hope that your own restarting is only more enjoyable and fruitful than ever
So, after some days in big sad city, I have reemerged with Borneo, an Australian group that I love so dearly and first heard from a facebook ad, of all places. They have a guitar rock sound that cosmetically reminds me of Talking Heads, although I feel they are much more transparent about the absolute nonsense that their lyricism consists of.
https://youtu.be/SAYXWdBDosM
This video is lodged in my heart like Iron Man's glow thingy
Not obscure compared to most recommendations in this thread but, since we are surrounded by Australian bands in recent posts, it reminded me that my sound of the summer a few years ago (2013?) was Jagwar Ma.
https://youtu.be/7fBa-E9aq5U
Found out about them through the Parisian duo who remixed this track above, the Pachanga Boys, who were a pretty big hit - both musically and in person – amongst my Parisian circle of MDMA-fueled friends back then. They had one [club hit](https://youtu.be/2e21NOp69hM) but most of their stuff remains obscure according to Youtube views.
@“chazumaru”#p39476 Jagwar Ma‘s Howlin was on constant rotation on the office playlist where I was working at the time. I haven’t listened to it much since because it probably got a little over-played by us, really.
Might have to give it another go soon. Thanks for the reminder
my favorite bay area punk band as a Mad Teen. some of the most fun shows I've ever been to featured these guys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz1rsSzPVtY
this one comes via my partner who was obsessed with this album when she was a youth. This band is extremely not anywhere now and copies of this album seem basically non-existent. They have a newer one that's on streaming services but this EP only exists because this one person uploaded it to youtube!
So before I maybe leave my house, I have another Aussie Artist (maybe NZ, I don't want to go and look it up) called Ruby Fields
I can only describe her debut single as transcendent, although maybe her best song
https://youtu.be/6bATwF6zXG8
This more recent release is also, pretty cool
https://youtu.be/l_s-AHJ7Rqg
PS I fully intend to go back and listen to all the other posts mentioned and comment on them, but I am comfortable saving up those experiences for now
PPS Even though I feel like this thread has unfortunately, maybe with my hero, become just a dumping ground of "oh this obscure artist is cool" without any discussion
PPPS Going through this whole thread is currently being hindered by mine own struggles with the American situations of depression. So, sorry for typing so freakin much
@“rejj”#p38428 Unless I‘m getting my most vivid experience of de ja vu, you or another australian has posted this before but it’s still so freakin good.
I think this qualifies as “Music that nobody knows about” by virtue of the fact I can't even find lyrics for it online BUT it is weirdly linked to a lot of musical acts that range from relatively to extremely well-known.
Daevid Allen of [Canterbury Scene](https://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canterbury_scene) band Gong had a short-lived Post-Punk band called New York Gong. It's genuinely interesting seeing Allen apply his whimsical jazz-influenced prog-psych talents to a post-punk sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHbLKwOtbxQ
So, the thing I learned about this project which kind of blows my mind: The rest of "New York Gong" split off and became No-Wave band Material. Material would later record a cover of a Canterbury Scene song called Memories (originally performed by Robert Wyatt of Soft Machine), featuring a young Whitney Houston on guest vocals, in her on-record debut.
A few years later, Material would collaborate with Herbie Hancock on his Electro-Funk period albums, most famously including the hit track Rockit.
Today I received this CD from 1992 and I had no clue why.
Some years ago, I had put a customized alert on auction sites for the album _Vortex Symphony_ by the short lived band Midori. I finally found one copy for cheap this weekend but, by then, I had completely forgotten why I was looking for this album in the first place.
A quick search on the people behind the band taught me that the main couple at its core are the founders of Lantis, a rather well known music label specialized in anime music, and the husband has also helped arrange [several game music albums.](https://www.discogs.com/artist/1479675-Yoshiyuki-Ito) Those were red herrings, though. It seems the actual reason was convenience store chain [Family Mart.](https://www.family.co.jp/)
Fortunately, it happens that seven months ago, a couple of tracks from the album have started appearing online. Including this one:
https://youtu.be/6MSn9J1h9Fs
Which happens to be the song used in this old commercial for Family Mart (also re-uploaded very recently).
https://youtu.be/0pBJguFXcwU
If you have lived in or been to a country where Family Mart does business, you must have noticed the design of the store and brand colors are very different from the modern one.
I now remember that I first saw this TVCM when an animator friend had to create a layout for the background of a convenience store in a story happening circa ^1988~1989. We decided to look up for TVCMs of that era, to find out how a typical store of that era would look like. I guess Midori’s music stuck with me back then.
Here is the other track available online at the present.
@“AlecS”#p40167 A few years later, Material would collaborate with Herbie Hancock on his Electro-Funk period albums, most famously including the hit track Rockit
Well, I didn’t know the bands _Gong_, _New York Gong_ or _Material_, but "helped discover Whitney Houston" and "actually did all the work on Rockit" definitely sounds like the familiar footprints of legendary bassist and producer [Bill Laswell.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Laswell)
@“AlecS”#p40167 That is so much wild information. I love Herbie. This is also rad. I love this sort of post punk/punk adjacent sound
So I'd like to share Calva Louise, whom I don't think I've shared before. They just released their second full length within the last week or so. This track gets me really jazzed up. They're a Manchester group that uses noise rock, punk, reggae, and latin sounds (not just because they have some lyrics in Spanish)
https://youtu.be/Ym62lX5HRYc
@"穴"#p38886 I've been listening to this album by Mint Fields for a couple of weeks now. I totally forgot this was where I first heard them. Really good!