Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 121 i Australian Guitar

Rarely does a band like Polish Club – and even more rarely does an album like their debut, Alright Already – make their and its way to the public eye. The duo rose seemingly from nowhere via relentless touring (and a meme-heavy social media presence) over a calamitous 2016, their spirited alloy of slick ‘50s Motown blues and blistering underground punk earning them a coveted spot at the top of the food chain. Anyone that’s witnessed one of their loose and livid live shows can agree that it’s not in the slightest undeserved, but given their niche sound and commercial abeyance, it is just a tad surprising. “I’ve always told people that we’re completely irrelevant in the music we play,” says a blasé David Novak (guitar/ vocals) bet ween drags…

YOU CAN HEAR LITTLE BITS HERE AND THERE THAT ARE OUT OF TUNE, AND THE INSTRUMENTS AREN’T QUANTISED AND OVER-EDITED AS IS THE NORM THESE DAYS.” – JOSH SMITH Out of nowhere on a sleepy Friday in March 2017, a hunk of smoldering prog-rockinfused metalcore fell from the sky and alarm bells rang out across the internet: Sydney’s heavy hitters had released a new album called Mesmer, and you could stream it right away. Commuters went bananas, bloggers struggled to pound out reviews in record time, and the fans basked in yet another album riddled with the most thundering of thundering guitars known to mankind at this point on the timeline. “We’re able to spend time crafting the music we want to hear with the benefit of not having to…

Like most acclaimed rock outfits, The Smith Street Band cut their teeth playing shitty run-down bars for little more than a hardwood floor to sleep on. Ironically, it was songs about exactly that (see: “Don’t F*** With Our Dreams”) which threw the Melbourne indie-punks into a chasm of mainstream adoration. Now selling thousand-cap theatres out as if they were the local bowlo, the quartet are leaving their scratchy and pensive roots behind with More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me: a concept album darting through the unified tumult of love and adulthood à la sprawling orchestral undercurrents and rollercoaster soft-loud dynamics. On earlier releases, frontman and rhythm guitarist Wil Wagner adhered to a simple, yet effective formula: crank everything up to eleven, snap a couple strings and wring…

JVB STRINGS TWIN PACKS RRP: VARIES | www.jvbstrings.com JVB now offers various strings in twin packs, giving you more string for less money. Available sets include Nickel Steel Electric, Phosphor Bronze Acoustic, Bright Bronze Acoustic and Nickel Steel Bass Round Wound. Chuck a set on your guitar and keep a spare in your case, or have a pair of stage-ready instruments good to go without paying for two full sets. ERNIE BALL FLEXTUNE CLIP-ON GUITAR TUNER RRP: $38.95 | www.cmcmusic.com.au The Ernie Ball FlexTune is a high quality portable tuner suitable for guitar, bass and other stringed instruments. It has an oversized 2” LCD screen and a large, vibrant display that’s easy to read from any angle. This large screen is complemented by the tuner’s dual-axis…

Canada’s Godin Guitars have been building guitars for over 40 years. They’ve developed a range of instruments, under an assortment of marques, that cover most of the variants that anyone might want: traditional solidbodies with various pickup configurations, thinline electrics, old school-style jazz boxes, traditional acoustics, chambered solid acoustic/electrics, nylon acoustic/ electrics with curved fretboards, solidbody acoustic/ electric mandolins and ukes, and hybrid guitars that will do electric, acoustic and synth-access all at once. They also do quirky: the Merlin (a fret-able dulcimar-ish instrument), the acoustic/electric solidbody Multioud, the Inuk (a fretted Multioud), the acoustic/electric solidbody Cavaquinho, the synth-ready A10 (a solidbody six-string with triple courses for the first and second strings) and the strange, but too-much-fun Glissantar: an 11-string chambered solidbody with no frets. BACK TO BASICS It’s a…

Audiofly are a relatively new Australian headphone company. They pitch their products as a meeting of audiophile standards with a boutique hipster aesthetic. They make the kind of headphones that would look great on you while you tap on your Macbook, sipping a long black and stroking your beard at the cool café down the street. You’d be hearing a signal in your cans as fresh as your look. Seriously though, these are excellent design goals to have. Much like the venerable Rode, Audiofly are bringing a high standard to consumer electronics and using local talent to do so. The AF120s are a set of in-ear monitors, while the AF240s are large over-ear headphones. We’ll look at the ins and outs of both separately and give you the low-down on…

Creative bands will find all kinds of clever places to record outside the standard studio. Garages, sheds, bedrooms, fields and forests – musicians and microphones have graced these locations at one point or another with unique results. But boats? Or it was until melodic folk-pop duo Busby Marou decided to take their unrecorded third album, Postcards From The Shell House, out to sea. “The Shell House is a place on Great Keppel Island [Queensland] and it’s one of the most amazing places in the world,” Jeremy Marou recalls fondly, speaking about working with his old friend Thomas Busby. “We were in our space, fishing during the daytime and recording at night on the water. That’s an extremely tough way to record, but we seemed to make it work. We actually…

For the longest while, it looked as if Strangers were done and dusted. Persona Non Grata – the quintet’s promising debut album – dropped all the way back in 2012, and while touring efforts had remained decent-to-casual since, the sheer notion of a second album seemed futile at best. That was until the latter months of 2016, when it was announced the now-quartet (having since axed second guitarist Ben Kinsela) had signed to Sony Music for the release of their second opus – no small feat for any old bar band from Melbourne. Diving into the months leading up to Mirrorland’s inception, bassist Tristan Griffiths says a hiatus was escaped via relocation and some legit dedication to their art. “There were talks of breaking up,” he reveals. “A few of…

There seems to be two schools of thought for recording, and they’ve been coexisting for as long as multitrack recording has existed: one is to use the studio as a tool – a creative medium through which to sculpt and fine-tune a song until it reveals more about itself than it otherwise would – and the other is to capture the moment as honestly as possible. But it seems like more and more artists are choosing the latter at the moment, despite the unprecedented choices of the former. Lewis Watson has elected to record as honestly as possible for his new album, midnight, out now through Cooking Vinyl. So you recorded the album with a live band. Yes! It’s something that I’ve really wanted to do. This is a great…

Ninety years is pretty astonishing for any rock’n’roll star, and Charles Edward Anderson Berry lived hard – to the point that many people were shocked to hear of his death, assuming that he’d joined the rockin’ invisible choir decades earlier. His legacy is incredible: “Maybelline”. “Rock And Roll Music”. “Roll Over Beethoven”. “Johnny B. Goode”. And, um, “My Ding-A-Ling”. You can hear his influence today in everything from The Beatles and The Stones to every single three-chord punk band, Ramones to Green Day inclusive. If they play rock’n’roll, they owe Berry a debt – and he was a man who was notoriously assiduous about collecting what he was owed. Berry was born in St. Louis on October 18th 1926; the fourth of six children to Henry and Martha Bell Berry.…

TIME TO GET CONNECTED The front plate contains tried-and-true gain, EQ and master volume controls. The extras are in the upper row, where the BIAS amp settings can be tweaked. 25 classic amp simulations are accessible, and can be customised based by gain stage, power amp and cabinet simulation. The back plate contains stereo outs (balanced and unbalanced), a speaker jack, headphone jack, MIDI sockets, footswitch inputs, and an effects loop. The BIAS Head can run as a soundcard via a USB connection and also has wireless capability when Bluetooth-paired with Positive Grid’s iPad software. Be aware that the Bluetooth capability will be necessary to access the program’s GUI when you’re away from your computer. A TONE-WORLD ON THE GO Overall, the above capability indicates that Positive Grid have most…

In some ways, the Fender Stratocaster is the perfect platform for experimentation. That’s why we have terms like ‘SuperStrat’, after all. But the basic Stratocaster concept still holds up in much of the same ways it has since the 1950s. The American Professional Stratocaster doesn’t attempt to redefine what the Stratocaster is, but it doesn’t ignore the last 60-something years of progress, either. PRO LEAGUE The American Professional Stratocaster has a solid alder body with a gloss finish, and is available in plenty of cool colours: Sonic Gray, Black, Sienna Sunburst, Antique Olive, Olympic White and three-colour Sunburst (yo Fender, where’s red? Everyone knows Strats sound better when they’re red). The neck is made of maple with a maple or rosewood fretboard depending on what finish you opt for: our…

For many, the holy grail is an analog stompbox that has the feel and response of an authentic tube amp. Many have tackled it over the years but the results have always been a little unsatisfying. Seymour Duncan’s approach is a little different, and it wraps up elements of the company’s past and future: SD was the first company to make a power-scaling amplifier back in the ‘80s, so their history with amplifier circuits runs deep. And Max Gutnik (Senior VP of New Products at Seymour Duncan) is the guy who brought Line 6 Helix to the market, and as VP of Products and Marketing at Avid he was integral to products like ProTools and ElevenRack. He’s also a heck of a shredder who takes analog tone very seriously. In…

Musician, comedian, voice actor, writer, director, and all ‘round nice guy Brendon Small has done so much for metal. His animated show Metalocalypse brought death metal to the masses, and his Baked live comedy/music shows, with Steve Agee and a cast of comedy and rock greats, is a must-see if you find yourself in LA. He’s also been responsible for some of Gibson and Epiphone’s coolest models. The Snow Falcon is Small’s second Epiphone signature model. SNOW TROOPER The Snow Falcon is a mahogany-bodied, mahogany-necked V designed to be versatile and very playable. It has a 1960s Slim Taper D-Profile neck, which is very shred-friendly, with 22 medium jumbo frets on a phenolic fingerboard. The hardware includes a fully-adjustable solid nickel LockTone bridge and stopbar tailpiece, solid nickel heavy-duty ¼”…

The upsized sibling of Audiofly’s in-ears, the AF240s, excelled on first listen. A quick comparison with some cheap Sennheiser HD202 cans revealed that the AF240s output a relatively quiet signal. But as you crank the volume to a comparable level, the frequency response of the AF240s really shines. The high-end of the spectrum retains a tremendous amount of clarity, and even aggressiveness when appropriate for the genre. Sibilant sound sources like vocals and cymbals are reproduced with a smoothness that sacrifices little of the presence required to enjoy a great recording and performance. All this without ever devolving into harshness. Midrange is articulated very well, the body of music translating powerfully while avoiding the mushy, inarticulate roar that so often characterises consumer-grade cans. This last problem is something that was…

On April 1st, the music industry lost one of its leading lights with the passing away of Ikutaro Kakehashi at the age of 87. Mr. Kakehashi was a man of many titles: engineer, businessman, entrepreneur, visionary and, best of all, music enthusiast. He was the founder of Ace Tone, and then the Roland Corporation. He partnered with Laurens Hammond to produce, in Japan, a new series of Hammond keyboards; he created portable, affordable drum machines that are still used today; he developed, with Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) – a groundbreaking instrument communication system, still the gold standard to this day; he brought to the market incredible keyboards (for home and stage) that quickly overcame the “American-made” bias; under the Boss marque, he reinvented…

British power trio Cream’s ongoing legacy has well outlived the band’s explosive, yet brief tenure, and will be celebrated by their bloodlines with The Music Of Cream – a 50th anniversary tour. The core trio consists of singer and guitarist Will Johns [Eric Clapton’s nephew and son of the late audio engineer Andy Johns], singer and bassist Malcolm Bruce [son of Jack] and drummer Kofi Baker [Son of Ginger], who will be joined by blues guitarist Robben Rord and bassist Glenn Hughes [Deep Purple’s Mark III line-up]. We spoke to Johns about the impending tour. When did Cream become an important band for you as a musician? I guess from when I started playing guitar at the age of 15. One of the first CDs I had was The Cream…

Yeah, I’ve heard of them. I think I saw them once…” That’s not something that’ll ever be said by somebody who has witnessed the pure rock fury of Canberra’s colourful punk quartet Glitoris. They’re a band with a message, who know how to command an audience’s attention on both a visual and a sonic level. Their level of six-string mastery has brought instrument makers to their door and punters to the front row, as guitarist and vocalist “Andrew” explains. Fill us in on the background of the band – how did you form, what was the message you wanted to share, and how has it transformed since its inception? The band was originally a three-piece with Keven 007, Tony and Malcolm. Glitoris was conceived as a one-off band for a…

One of the most daunting things about setting up a home studio is figuring out what goes with what. System compatibility can be a big problem, and the prices can be kind of a downer. Steinberg has made both of these concerns a little easier by bundling three products together with all associated cordage. They call it the UR22 mkII Recording Pack. NICE PACKAGE The UR22 mkII Recording Pack starts with – surprise surprise – the Steinberg UR22 mkII interface. It allows you to record and compose music in studio quality, with 24-bit/192kHz recording quality, connections for electric guitars and basses via a Hi-Z switch, plus connection for MIDI gear such as drum pads and controllers. It has two Class-A D-PRE mic preamps, a mix knob to select between DAW…

TIME TO BOOGIE Although I’m meant to be an objective journalist, I’ll admit that it’s easy to get excited unboxing this latest head from MESA/Boogie, not least because it exudes heritage and class simply from its sleek, classic-looking design. Tellingly, there are also subtle cues in the Triple Crown’s classy design that suggest the company’s intention for the amp. The channel LEDs — yellow for clean, blue for low gain and red for high gain — mirror those of a Bogner Ecstasy, evoking the classiness and tonal excellence of high-end boutique designs. Yet MESA/Boogie are one of the biggest amp makers of all time. Reading the Triple Crown’s official hype sheet – replete with breathless claims of both versatility and matchless tone – one can’t help but think of Marshall’s…

NORTHLANE Mesmer UNFD After struggling to find their feet on 2015’s Node, pseudo-djent warriors Northlane have stunningly perfected their rebooted fusion of hyper-experimental prog rock and pit-churning metalcore. Instantly are guitars heavier and more restless – Josh Smith nails the rhythm section with temperate baritone riffage, but lead axeman Jon Deiley is downright f***ing remorseless with a seven-string. Mesmer offers the two a scopic canvas on which they wreak havoc: sepulchral bends flood the sullen “Intuition”, while “Fade” makes way for shimmering melodies and “Solar” shines with a wah-tinged groove. In a lot of ways, Mesmer feels like a welcome step backwards in Northlane’s musical evolution – it keeps the soaring atmospheric soundscapes they explored on Node, but also reintroduces the cold and callous breakdowns that made 2013’s Singularity a…

Fender created the Telecaster Deluxe in 1973 in response to the higher levels of drive that players of the era were using. But the ‘70s weren’t exactly Fender’s golden years, and while you can find some damn good vintage examples, there are some turkeys out there as well. Fender’s quality control has come a long way from the dark days of the ‘70s, and these days, you can get Tele Deluxes in a variety of different series. The American Professional is the latest. WHAT’S ON THE TELE? This Tele’s body is made of solid ash, and our review model is a pretty light piece of wood compared to a lot of Telecasters I’ve played. Our model is black (and finished in glossy polyurethane) but you can also get it in…

Mastodon guitarist and vocalist Brent Hinds has an instantly recognisable style and sound. He’s used a variety of different means to achieve it over the years, but his new Epiphone Flying V Custom signature model – announced last year and now hitting stores – is the most direct way yet for you to achieve that same sound and attitude. V INTERESTING Ever since Tool’s Adam Jones popularised the use of silverburst, it’s come to symbolise low riffs and crunchy tones – sort of like a semiotic cue or visual shorthand of what to expect from a guitar. Hinds’ signature model looks great, and is immediately identifiable. It has a mahogany body with a mahogany neck, carved to a “1958” rounded profile which feels chunky and solid in the hand. The…