The prospective incorporation of a drum machine into the band’s dynamic – defined, arguably, by Rohan Rebeiro’s illimitable drumming – felt like it had to be a game-changer: ‘Guided’, as My Disco’s most recent release, seemed to confirm an effective stylistic hook turn.

Any who attended Sunday’s gig with hopes pinned on a dramatic and controversial back-catalogue flip-off, however, may have left disappointed. As was perhaps more probable all along, My Disco have integrated any movement in new directions seamlessly into their established sound, presenting something that echoes two-third side project Kangaroo Skull without any suggestion of being superceded by it.

Support from QUA – AKA Cornel Wilczek, currently working with My Disco in audio engineer capacity – reflected the electronic fascination apparently developed by the headliners. A minimal tech/house affair with an understated noise aspect to it, Wilczek’s set carried a definite analogy with that which was to follow.

Leaking from the stage under and over the curtain in anticipation, the now trademark cumulus of dry ice – veiling the stage and spilling into the crowd throughout My Disco’s performance – didn’t quite envelop the NSC bandroom, but managed nonetheless to frustrate any would-be photographers for the duration. The sweat-lodge atmosphere and intensity made up for the limited inconvenience, however.

As propulsive and abrasive as ever – a meaner, grittier rendition of ‘Sunbear’ was a highlight – Sunday’s set was far from a revolution in the sound of My Disco. More a case of drop the ‘R’, it reflected a movement towards musical forms that have always been paralleled in the hypnotic repetition central to the band’s style. As deftly incorporated as new approaches were on Sunday night, album no. 4 promises to be an intriguing forward movement for an iconic Melbourne act.

As much a mash of influences as the next well rounded act, perhaps the defining aspect of No Art – on record as well as in the flesh – is the tangible absence of pretension in the delivery of their style rather than the influences that have shaped it. When we reviewed them last year we were struck by the sense in which No Art’s ongoing creative process and movement felt almost tangible in their playing, and how this charged their set with an engaging DIY naivety. While the June 14 performance was perhaps delivered with a more seasoned aspect, that same extra element remained, colouring and elevating the music.

Unsurprisingly, the set list was not dominated by a wealth of new appearances. The opportunity to hear the Exotica material again after the lengthy wait between journeys south was a welcome one though, and left us hoping for a briefer interim this time before their next Melbourne visit.

No Art continue their tour through June and July:

Friday 28 June
The Hotel Metro, Adelaide with Naomi Keyte + Menagerie

Sunday 7 July
The Hideaway, Brisbane with Unity Floors + Footy

Friday 12 July
Black Wire, Sydney with Unity Floors, School Girl Report + Lenin Lennon

Saturday 13 July
North St, Batemans Bay with Making, School Girl Report + Corpus

Sunday 14 July
The Hollywood Hotel, Sydney with Sunset People

Step S’ways

Psych ‘n’ soul in one smooth live rec take, Lands in fronds of reverb, ‘Fronwards’ through slack paced progression and soaring organ. Feat James Tom of former fame. Lands a whole underwent of an album to come – recording en process en route – notes in here sample precurse: vocals via Joseph Fairburn tic to a Jana Hunter in the mournful/hopeful nostalgic, elsewhere Tom summons some whiter shades of synth drama (see circa 1.52).

It’s Meant to be Served Cold

Rusted pulse – a tickover Beefheart en Can ensemble – pulsing clack of metal and cracks and dust, and Where Were You at Lunch? The tangible grate Australiana psych, in reminisce mention comparison with Wild Dog Creek, the rattle of insects and the tin shed reverb.

A Stopped Clock Twice a Day

The stripped inner workings, the plotted ad lib – sketch live and primal in another turn of twisted Australiescence – Sky Needle accustomed junk built instruments and kick shit percussion, blend electronics phosphor or a chant style vocal turn. Akin Unwar, just a symptom sign music the machine run down – what it does when it doesn’t anymore – when works what then broken, rabid spurting luminescence.

Sky Needle – 08.06.2012 from Joshua Watson on Vimeo.

Not that it’s halted any progress in camp I’lls. Since their inception in 2011 the trio have steadily built themselves a devoted following, and supported the likes of Chet Faker, Flume and Collarbones. Having signed to Sydney label Yes Please earlier this year, I’lls have released A Warm Reception, their second EP.

Trading in things equal parts melancholic, disorienting and ethereal, on A Warm Reception, I’lls succeed in both cohesion and in hinting at potential future stylistic avenues.

On opener “Speak Low”, a hypnotic beat and flurries of chiming guitars and synth textures mask Simon Lam’s alluring whisper. There’s a heavier R&B indebted bent to the EP, travelling right through “Outright”, which flows like Clams Casino stripped of any maximalism.

As well as intoxicating, if subdued beats, I’lls are apparently just as apt at sedentary soundscapes. On the minute-long “Sharing”, they use acoustic guitar, synth bleeps and hushed vocal harmonies to trigger something entirely nostalgic; similar to memories of a loved one becoming a non-linear blur of single frame images over time. It hints at a more straightforward measure of ambience that could become part of the I’lls canon.

Similarly, after building “To: All The Blurred”  to a euphoric crescendo, they douse the entire song in dread, turning it into something far more akin to Demdike Stare; and far more unsettling than anything they’ve done before.

On the hilariously titled closer “Mine’s Here or My End’s Here or Nineteen”, they slowly plod along before an ending which brings post-rock into their ever-expanding genre catalogue.

Considering their penchant for restraint, it’s a telling close to the EP, letting us off knowing that despite their consistent and exciting catalogue, they’re still capable of bigger things.

Extremely well picked and deserved support The Laurels warmed a crowd that could at the very least be described as a swelling, salivating, trendy mass. In waves of luscious, complex neo-psychedelic pleasure, the Sydney based four piece proved with ease why they’ve been garnering a solid reputation as a great live act. Superb tunes like ‘Tidal Wave’ washed through the Enmore as we all gladly fell into a closed eye, rhythmic trance. Containing a punk-like restless energy, not usually associated with the shoegaze sound, guitarist/vocalist Luke O’Farrell at times looking possessed, the crowd lapping up every note in a welcoming embrace.

It’s pretty safe to say that the crowd was now filled with folk who had gotten weird or wanted to get weird and with a giant projector hanging behind the drum riser, we could only imagine what wild and cosmic images were about to be displayed before us. The Black Angels took to stage modestly to an unrestrained cheer from what was clearly a dedicated fan base.

Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Alex Maas introduced the band simply with “Hi, we’re The Black Angels from Austin Texas, thanks for having us.” The band were obviously familiar and aware of their place, with each member slotting in to their respective pockets nicely. It must be said that drummer Stephanie Bailey cemented herself as a fiery and intense player, providing a wicked backbone for songs like ‘Entrance Song’ and ‘Evil Things’ to resonate wildly through out the punters psych-addled brains.

A danger that was flirted with occasionally, is the trap of one-dimensionality, the band seemed to be aware of this ever present danger by throwing curveballs such as the stomping track and single of Indigo Meadow, ‘Don’t Play With Guns’ at the start of the set. Older songs such as ‘The Sniper’ off Phosphene Dream proved crowd favourites and equally showing the technical abilities of guitarist Christian Bland, a player that has the most proper stance we’ve probably ever seen.

Pushing close to a two hour a set, you could see restlessness settling in and brains being stretched, yet the band weren’t quite done just yet. An absolute standout arrived in the three-song encore that culminated in the band arriving on stage in a staggered format to punish us with an extremely powerful and heavy rendition of ‘Black isn’t Black’.

The Black Angels are a band that knows what they’re good at and how to use that to penetrate the dark, trippy recesses of our minds. We get the feeling that these guys would be amazing in the dingiest of warehouses, the fact that they created that feeling in the Enmore is absolutely stellar. As long as there is a strobe light and The Black Angels you can count us in any day, a band to put in the calendar.

Kveikur comes barely more than a year after the beautifully delicate quiver of Valtari’s string section faded to white. But this time round the turntable, the distorted wind and crackling bass burst straight out of the black that since crept in. ‘Brennisteinn’ growls and groans with a darkness not heard since their first release Von in 1997. Now, a decade and a half down the long and icy road, and back to being a trio after the departure of keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson, Sigur Rós’ delivery is even crisper. The air that fills the album with the endless dark space so aptly reflected by the haunting cover art is the very same that gives its focus.

The opening track flows into ‘Hrafntinna’ almost seamlessly with the industrial percussion and brass motif making it more of a variation than a separate piece. This is the first indication of the more melancholic Sigur Rós welcomed onto the world stage back in 1999, and it delivers with a maturity well worth tipping your unfashionable woollen winter hat to.

The entire album functions as a thematic experience; an experiment in different recurring sounds that swell out of the mix here and there – horns, distant calls, tribal beats, and familiar chords. That being said, Kveikur is not the cohesive story of its predecessor. Where Valtari ebbed and flowed with chapters of one entity, Kveikur creates a musical montage linked with masterful transitions and patterns.

Slow-burner ‘Yfirborð’ is one of the sweetest points. A distant dance beat kicks in under the swell of singer Jónsi Birgisson’s familiar hooks, with the first real signs of brightness on the record. But it is second single ‘Ísjaki’ that marks the high point by far. Something in the chorus just screams to be heard. There’s an ‘Iceland-does-oriental’ feel in the cymbals, the quick-pulsing strings, and the straight articulation of the vocals, which is similarly present on ‘Stormur’, whilst the echoing wolf howls frost over to give meaning to the title’s translation of ‘Iceberg’.

Perhaps wrongly emphasised is the album’s aggression. In actuality, the opening and title tracks are the only moments of intense grit, but even these dissolve into comfortability, driven by the fuzz and stomp that have garnered such excited media attention.

Kveikur may well be their best realised work since the band’s inception, and it is indisputably the perfect follow-up to 2012’s Valtari, but the real beauty is in its retrospection. Jónsi and co. acknowledge their years together in order to mould a new masterpiece. There’s a nod to each record with a hidden smile. Listen for the darkness of Von, the orchestral horns, electric piano and almost cinematic interludes of Ágætis byrjun, the melancholy pacing of ( ) (otherwise known as The Bracket Album), the sun-breaking-through-the-trees lightness of Takk… found on ‘Rafstraumur’, and the pop sensibility of Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. Don’t worry, we have no idea either.

But the strongest tie is with its forerunner, like a response to the expansive and vivid sounds of Valtari. If Sigur Rós had the foresight to devise their work accordingly, the explanation for Kveikur may be a poetic seventh addition, the dramatic climax, in a story arc that has been rolling forward towards the end, yet arriving at the beginning again. What the next part brings will likely thrill us with much the same poetry… not to mention the confusing Northern names. We do try our best though.

Queenscliff Music Festival are promising to unthaw your soul this Saturday 22^nd June, for a one-day special concert to get your juices flowing in preparation for the full blown festival in November.

Featuring The Voice runner up Darren Percival plus everybody’s favourite eight-piece Melbourne band Eagle and The Worm, blues crooners Chris Russell’s Chicken Walk and spirited young lads EMPRA – the Winter Warmup is sure to leave you feeling all toasty inside.

If that isn’t wild enough for you, then we suggest you take a seat in preparation for what you are soon to learn.  Not only is the Winter Warmup guaranteed to warm your soul to its very core, but it can also claim the title of the one and only prestigious event to have the pleasure of announcing this year’s Queenscliff Music Festival full line-up.  Take a moment to calm yourself.

So if you’re sick of living like a Stark of Winterfell and feel like hearing some great tunes, get your sweet-self down to the Queenscliff Town Hall this Saturday for a Winter Warmup to remember.

Purchase tickets here.

In the lead up to the Australian leg of the Boris tour, Vulture had the opportunity to ask the trio a few questions about the band itself, influences, their connection to the music, vinyl releases and the motives behind some of their recent decisions, like revisiting the past with their performance of the 2000 epic Flood.

VM: As such a prolific band, constantly recording and releasing material in conjunction with constantly touring – how do keep dynamic and still functioning, after so long?

B: When we listen to our recorded material, we can hear many different types of sounds. Whenever we are on tour, we’re able to see the audiences face. That circulation hasn’t stopped now, so that’s why we keep going.

With your extensive catalogue of critically acclaimed releases and recent albums such as Präparat, why is it you have chosen to tour with Flood? Do you hold emotional attachments, or are meanings behind the album that are relevant to the present time?

The idea first started last year in Japan. At the “Leave Them All Behind” Festival, we played Flood, and it felt quite good. When we’re always going on big tours you end up releasing a lot of new albums, and those songs become the center of your set. We think we’ve been touring overseas quite often since 2005, so we haven’t been able to play songs from previous albums. Songs like ‘Flood’ and ‘Feedbacker’ are good songs, but it’s hard to fit them into a set. So, now is a good time to move Flood from the past into the future. We were thinking it would be good to also incorporate our new songs into the show.

Playing an album recorded over a decade ago, do you connect with the album the same as you did when released? Over the years have you changed how it is played live?

We had completely forgotten the way we felt when we worked on the album. We’ve changed the equipment that we were using back then, also our physical bodies get different, the feeling, and even our mentality is completely different. The current meaning of Flood and its significance to the audience, we’ll find out together.

Over the 70 minutes the album encapsulates, for me at least it manages to invoke many emotions, from a sense of hopelessness or despair in sections to beautiful almost triumphant moments in parts of ‘Flood III’.  When writing the album, did you make a conscious effort to write music that connects emotionally in this or similar ways with the listener?

Rather than emotion, we think we were more conscious of writing the good melody. If we remember correctly, heavy and melodious music wasn’t really around at that time. Unlike the studio album, an arrangement for the show is about 40 minutes.  Being on stage and in the studio are worlds apart and different rules exist.

What were the major sonic influences when recording Flood? With your sound constantly shifting over the years, are there different influences affecting your music now? 

At that time, it was after the big influence from the bands like Melvins and Earth had, after old-school rock, psychedelic music, for example Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things, Funkadelic, which we were listening to a lot of. At the same time, contemporary music, minimal music and drone sounded interesting to us as well. Artists like Steve Reich, Alvin Lucier, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, you know? No specific music styles influence us anymore, though around the time when we worked on Flood, our style can be shaped and some part of Flood appeared from the music we listened to.

Präparat, your most recent album was released in a vinyl only format.  Was there any particular reason for this as a conscious decision, when albums such as Flood were never released in LP format?

Absolutely. This time we simply wanted to do it as vinyl format only. It’s annoying to think about all the illegal downloading, compressed digital files. We thought it would be a nice way to deliver the music to the people who are listening to our music. On the Internet, it’s easier to browse and view, but music isn’t easy.

On tour we’re going to meet audience directly. Speaking to each person and personally delivering our records to the listener directly would be good, right? Unfortunately that’s impossible, so between us and the listener, we have to reach out and meet through various kinds of ‘hands.’ Like To hand out the physical format to our fans in person, we wanted to do that sort of thing once again.

The Flood vinyl version is unlikely due to our contract with the label. If we have to spend lots of times on paperwork, we’d rather work on new songs instead.

Is it possible any of the songs from Präparat will be making it into some of your tour shows?

We tried at rehearsal, but it didn’t fit into the flow of the set, so we decided to leave it out.

With your constant string of collaboration albums with some amazing artists, are there any collaborations you would be interested in doing with an Australian artist?

We’ve never said that we want to collaborate with anyone. It’s important to have natural flowing things, and saying those sorts of things, we think, can intrude this flow.

Boris’ Flood tour takes in the following dates:

Wednesday June 19- Corner Hotel, Melbourne w/Margins

Friday June 21- Manning Bar, Sydney w/ Dead China Doll

Saturday June 22- DARK MOFO, Hobart

Tickets on sale now from www.handsometours.com

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros have always resonated pretty loudly with us here at Vulture, they seem to offer a soothing sense of calm and uncorrupted joy whenever life decides to get ‘heavy’ on you. ‘Better Days’ is the first single from their upcoming third album. It’s a romping folk-tinged anthem containing an infectious amount of soul that makes you want to slip on a sarong and dance through the street.

Slow jams are a necessary requirement in the seduction process, however playing ‘Clean The House’, the new Fat Freddy’s Drop, may just be plain unfair for the potential seduced. The masters of smooth have hit it again, with a sensual yet dark groove employing a rolling groove to coach us all the way to the finale. We will be honest and say the eight ball was dropped, so we’re featuring it now.

The amalgamation of Australia, New Zealand and Britain seems to be a pretty good combination, at least musically; this seems to be the case for Splashh. Combining equal parts shoegaze, fuzzy psychedelia and an infectious sense of summer ‘All I Wanna Do’ gives the listener a perfect excuse to escape into the spacey realm of their mind.

Admittedly on first listen to Jenny Broke The Window’s ‘Abracadabra’ we didn’t really know what was going on. Quickly realising this was the point, we embraced this uplifting pop gem from the Sydneysiders. Tapping in to the naivety and bliss of youthful imagination, they’ve presented us with an antidote to gloom. The bass line alone could be enough to create a double rainbow. Looking forward to more from Jenny Broke The Window.

Ultimate slashie David Lynch is responsible for some pretty mind-boggling films (Mulholland Drive or Twin Peaks anyone?) and we’re beyond excited about his new solo album The Big Dream that’s soon to emerge. ‘I’m Waiting Here’ is our first taste of what’s to come and it’s a collaboration with equally impressive Swedish beauty Lykke Li, leaving us very hungry. A haunting, spacious song with a touch of melancholy, it stirs a strange feeling within listen after listen, which seems to be something Lynch is mighty good at.

With a voice (and face) as cute as pie and a mop of hair to make Robb Stark jealous, Vance’s lyrics are genuinely romantic and his tunes sweet enough to make Goldilocks’ pants drop – they’re juuuuuuust right.

‘Riptide’ is that runaway hit you’ve been hearing all of the J, that makes you forget Winter is coming (fuck off GOT) and dream of sunny New York days and riding bikes in the country side and picnics in the Spring time amongst other Indie shit that never happens but you wish did.  The perfect cold weather pick-me-up.

Having already sold out the ‘God Loves You When You’re Dancing’ tour earlier this year, Vance and his musical cohort are hitting local stages in (r)Adelaide, Brisbane, Fremantle, Melbourne and Sydney at the end of August.

Having spent recent months touring the US of A in support of American artist Lissie and closer to home, Vance will also be supporting homegrown-homie Bernard Fanning throughout July and August on his sold out ‘Departures’ tour.   Vance will also make an appearance at the famed Splendour in The Grass in July.

With much of this curly-haired muso’s time this year already spent on the road, we recommend you don’t miss this tidal-wave of a tour because it’s the last chance your pretty little eyes will feast upon Vance for 2013.

Check out when Vance will be near you.

Wednesday 14^th August – Jive Bar Adelaide

www.moshtix.com.au/ 1300 (GET TIX) 438 849

Friday 23^rd August – Fly By Night, Fremantle

www.flybynight.org/ (08) 9430 5976

Friday 30^th August – Oxford Art Factory, Sydney

www.moshtix.com.au/ 1300 (GET TIX) 438 849

Sat 31^st August – The Zoo, Brisbane

www.oztix.com.au/ 1300 762 545

Tuesday 3^rd September- The Corner, Melbourne

www.cornerhotel.com/ 03 9427 9198