Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 136 i Australian Guitar

The term ‘power couple’ is often tossed about with a sense of irony these days, but when it comes to the husband-and-wife team of Ali Barter and Oscar Dawson, there’s no better term. Having been a co-writing force throughout all of Barter’s solo career, the pair kept the ball rolling with the collaborative writing, recording and production of her second album, Hello, I’m Doing My Best. “I write all the lyrics, melody and the chords,” explains Barter. “Then, Oscar and I will build it up from there – I’ll have the idea for the sound and the tone, and I’ll often have very clear ideas. When it comes to mapping out a solo or a guitar part for Oscar, I tell him exactly what I want in the spirit of…

Never before has country music enjoyed such a resurgence in the mainstream. Part of its recent squeeze back into the charts is thanks to an array of artists fusing their own unique sounds and styles into the genre – like Bristol singer-songwriter Yolanda Quartey, who takes a distincty twangy base and adds to it a full palate of tonal idiosyncrasies. Better known simply as Yola, the genre-bending soul-soother had her big break come back in February with the release of her stunning debut album, Walk Through Fire. She’ll be taking it to the Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2020 – so, to kick the hype train into overdrive, we saught to give her a quick buzz. For those of us who have never had the privilege of seeing you perform live,…

Okay, so Apocalyptica aren’t guitarists, but they’re revolutionaries in their own right. The Finish outfit have made waves over the course of their 26-year career for their ingenuity in marrying the traditionally classical cello with heavy metal, fusing together the two worlds in an epic chasm of effects pedals and headbanging. Three of the band’s members sit in the green room of the Sydney Opera House – cellists Eicca Toppinen and Perttu Kivilaakso, and drummer Mikko Siré – killing time before they take to the stage for a special performance of their debut album, Plays Metallica By Four Cellos: the release that started a movement all of its own and put Apocalyptica on the map. But we’re not here to talk about that. Apocalyptica are about to release a new…

From opening spots at their local YMCA to sold-out headliners in foreign arenas, Polaris are on the type of skyward soar you typically only see in Hollywood fantasies. It was their debut full-length, The Mortal Coil, that lit the fuse on their still-exploding firework – since the day it dropped in November 2017, the Sydney metalcore crew have been kicking goals and brewing pits non-stop. Now, a breath over two years later, it’s make or break. All eyes are on the little rifflords that could for their second shot at the airwaves – and according to lead guitarist Ryan Siew, they’re not about to blow it. How did you want The Death Of Me to kick the sound and style of Polaris up to the next level? It’s been quite…

When you’re starting out on your music recording journey, knowing what to buy can be a bit intimidating. Audio giant Shure is here to help with their Digital Recording Kit, providing reliable no-frills gear that will cover all the bases when you’re starting out. The core of the package is the MOTIV MVi audio interface. This helps you to connect your microphone (more on that later) or instrument to your computer or mobile device, creating a portable recording studio. It’s compatible with PC, Mac, iOS and most Android devices. A nice touch is the five preset DSP modes: speech, singing, flat, acoustic instrument, and loud. These will really help a novice user to get the most out of this overall kit in different contexts. Nonetheless, if you want to get…

If you’ve ever thought to yourself, "I like Fenders, but I wish they had the kind of high-end playability features of, say, a Charvel or a Suhr," well, that’s what the American Deluxe and Elite series have been – you’ve been totally sleeping on it! Whether it’s the model called The Strat in the early '80s, the late '80s-to-early '90s Plus series or later evolutions, Fender has always reserved part of its lineup for the latest and greatest in guitar technology. The Ultra series takes this innovation to a whole new level, reexamining and redesigning everything about the Stratocaster, Telecaster, Jazzmaster, P Bass and Jazz Bass to meet the standards of pro players. The neck joints are super comfortable with unprecedented upper fret access; the necks have a new shape…

Legend has it, there are few guitarists more demanding to design signature gear for than Steve Vai. You don’t rise to such technical and compositional levels of excellence without being extremely driven, and Vai’s demands on gear companies are the thing of legend. So when he turned to Morley to design a signature wah pedal, I’m sure a few white hairs sprung up on the heads of Morley engineers. That was in the mid ‘90s, and the result was the Bad Horsie Wah. It must have been a comfortable collaboration in the end, though, because it was followed shortly thereafter by the Bad Horsie 2, which benefitted from the addition of a footswitchable second mode called Contour, which enables the user to adjust Q and wah level. The Bad Horsie…

The Yamaha THR series has been around for a while now, and these aesthetically pleasing, incredibly flexible little amps are a favourite for many touring guitarists as their backstage and hotel amps. They’re also beloved by guitar teachers as affordable, flexible and portable amps for both them and their students. And they look great on a bookshelf for home use. The THR-II range is beefed up with plenty of new features across a variety of models. On review here is the THR10IIWL, which even a cursory look at the specs list might appear to be the ultimate convenient practice amp. Let’s have a look why. The THR10IIWL wouldn’t be worth a look if it didn’t sound great. It features 15 different amp models – including three bass amps, three mic…

Hell hath no fury like the bloodthirsty fortitude and undying passion of Byron Bay metallers Parkway Drive. Since making their mark on the scene with 2005’s Killing With A Smile, the band have consistently pushed further, fought harder, and cranked up the volume louder with every new effort. 2020 looks to be another wild year for the quintet, as they wrap up a titanic two years of international anarchy on the back of album no. six: the critically adored Reverence. A follow-up is in the pipeline, lead shredder Jeff Ling assures us, but in the meantime, fans will have a new chunk of longform content to sate their Parkway-starved palates with: a full-length theatrical film. Following lowkey home projects Parkway Drive: The DVD and Home Is For The Heartless, the…

Kaleidoscopic in every sense of the term, navigating a dizzying flurry of ‘80s pop, cock-rock, disco and dance vibes, there’s no one proper way to describe Bec Sandridge. The Wollongong-native pop goddess is an absolute anomaly, her tunes at once ruinously retro and freakishly futuristic. And with her debut album – the transcendental Try + Save Me, which she released sans label in October – Sandridge taps into a range of sonic aberrations spanning the full gamut of emotion and creativity. Naturally, we had to learn more… How did you look to explore beyond the boundaries of genre with a full album of material to work with? I think this is the first time I really took the time to work out what actually I wanted for any of my…

Unless you’ve spent the bulk of your life wearing military-grade earplugs, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the fretwork of – or at least some inspired by – Wayne Kramer. The MC5 leader makes the term ‘virtuoso’ seem like a participation trophy, and weilding his Stratocaster like a rifle aimed squarely at the core of the machine, he kick-started a revolutionary chapter of the political punk movement. 2020 marks a prodigious 50 years since the release of MC5’s debut – the rough ‘n’ rugged, yet luminescent Kick Out The Jams – and though it’s grown some dust around the edges, the OG live recording still a crucial listen for any self-respecting music lover. With the revitalised MC50 project, Kramer is set to take Kick Out The Jams on a…

Anew whole decade lies ahead, and if there’s but one thing we can’t wait to see, its how the culture surrounding the guitar will continue to evolve – both à la new acts we’ve never seen before, and by way of the old-time greats taking fresh new approaches to the axe. Scorpions shredder Matthias Jabs is one such rifflord who’s never grown stagnant behind the instrument. On the cusp of his return Down Under, we gave the 64-year-old icon a buzz to chat all things six-strings! So, are you getting all pumped up to make your way back to Australia next year? Of course! I’m really looking forward to going back to Melbourne and Sydney especially, because on the last tour we did with Def Leppard, Klaus has had problems…

There are literally dozens of practice amps on the market, and choosing between them is sometimes just a case of figuring out whether it has the colour or knobs you prefer, or if it has “the look” (whatever that is this month). The Cort guitar company – makers of some truly fine instruments (acoustics, electrics and basses alike) – have decided to target the amateur player with a simple, yet stylish 30-watter that represents some surprising bang for buck. The basic idea is a channel-switching preamp with a full tone set, a nice reverb and a punchy 30-watt power amp driving a ten-inch speaker, all wrapped up in a cab that is just 380 millimetres tall. The brain section is top-loaded for easy viewing and access, and the two channels…

Heinz Electrodynamic Designs (use your “HEDD”) are a relatively new company. They’re essentially a splinter enterprise of well-regarded audio firm ADAM, created when one of the latter’s founders broke off to start a new line. I’ve reviewed my fair share of monitors, and in many ways, HEDD’s products are nothing revolutionary. They’re among a hotly contested segment of the market, where many companies vye to provide the consumer with ever-better performance at ever-low prices. What makes these speakers worth a closer look are some of the perks that HEDD have included in their design and product ecosystem: the Air Motion Transformer, the Lineariser plugin and the Dante interface. The Air Motion Transformer, or AMT for short, is an alternative transducer design to the tweeter. In case you don’t know, the…

I’d never heard of JH Audio before these in-ear monitors (IEMs) landed on my desk for a listen. The company is fairly new, and has a good yarn behind it. Back in the ‘90s, the titular Mr. Harvey was manning the monitors desk for Van Halen. Alex Van Halen needed some custom IEMs, and Jerry Harvey not only created a great pair from scratch for the drummer, but spun it out into a massively successful brand called Ultimate Ears. Fast forward to today, and Jerry has moved on from his first firm and is now working the boutique end of the market pretty hard. The company has so many big names using their products (from Slash to Childish Gambino) that they can afford charging an arm and leg for most…

After a storied 40 years of world domination, you’d forgive the Violent Femmes for taking it easy nowadays – preferring to tend to their crops and focus on planning their next family vacation, rather that continue to smash out crash-hot folk-punk opuses and rip it up onstage the world over... Wait... What’s that? We’ve got the wrong band? The seminal foursome of fury are still going as hard as they did when “Blister In The Sun” was making the airwaves its little bitch!? Huh! Okay, so Gordon Gano and co. aren’t the spry youngsters they were in the late ‘90s – they can’t scale amp stacks like monkeys or stagedive into the abyss – but if their tenth album, Hotel Last Resort, tells us anything, it’s that the Milwaukee monoliths…

You never quite know when your favourite band will end up disappointing you. Because let’s be real for a second: every band ends up sucking at a certain point in their career. Most will fall off the wagon somewhere around the fifth or sixth album – others are luckier, and make it deep into the double digits. Jimmy Eat world are now ten albums down, and not only are they yet to break a sweat, they – somehow – just keep getting better. Easily their most open-hearted and ambitious effort yet, Surviving takes the raw, temperamental poignancy that made the Arizona alt-rockers such a jaw-dropping force to begin with, and ups the ante by a margin the size of their millennial fans’ student debt. Which is to say, of course,…

Wikipedia describes a fever dream as being “particularly intense or confusing”, which makes it perfect to represent the long-awaited third album by Icelandic indie-poppers Of Monsters And Men. Dipping and diving around a spellbinding spate of sounds that covers the entire musical spectrum, the 40-minute mammoth stands as their most diverse and dynamic effort yet. As the band gear up to make their way Down Under for this year’s Falls Festival, we caught up with guitarist Brynjar Leifsson to riff on how Fever Dream came to life, why it took Of Monsters And Men in a bold new direction, and what fans can expect to see when he and the rest of the fivesome tear it up on our stages later this month. What was the mission statement you had…

As we step into a brand new decade, we can all agree that guitar music has had many faces, many trends, and many, many instrumental musicians (pun unintended, but we’ll embrace it) over the last few. “Why not take a look at the faces that have shaped guitar music over the last four decades or so?” we thought. And when we did, we realised something: while the guitar is typically seen as a ‘masculine’ instrument (and, we’ll admit, Australian Guitar is not exempt from having given men an unfairly extended time in the spotlight), a great many of its most talented, most daring and most memorable rulers are women. And before you think about it, no, this isn’t a socio-political exposé into gender equality in the music industry – though…

The floor-based multi-effects family is a much misunderstood part of the wider guitar tribe. Starting to play and attend shows at the turn of the millennium, I can understand why. In the days before the boutique pedal and tube amp renaissance, many guitarists and bassists proudly owned these cumbersome units that gave one access to a seemingly endless library of fizzy distortion and novelty modulation effects. Lots of my guitar mates now look back on these rudimentary multi-effects units (mostly models of the Zoom and Boss ilk) as a humourous relics, conjuring up the two-note riffs we used to mosh to at teenage matinee metal shows while trying to not get roughed up by some guy with cargo shorts and a ponytail. While the sound might have left much to…

COURTNEY BARNETT MTV Unplugged: Live In Melbourne MILK! / REMOTE CONTROL Though her studio output is damn near impeccable (this scribe doled her their ‘album of the year’ distinction in 2015 and 2018), Courtney Barnett is a concert crusher at heart. Her shows are characteristically monstrous, manic and magnetic; she tears into her guitar like it just insulted her mother, and puts so much soul into her voice that we’re convinced she’s got an iron throat. Lo and behold, her MTV Unplugged session could not be more diametric. The CB3 are in tow, of course, albeit stripped to their basics and left to rely on the elements for amplification. Barnett herself weilds a bright, resonant acoustic and sings drier and more pastoral than we’re used to. Birds chirp in the…

We’re now just a few months short of 30 years since the Zoom Corporation hit the market with their groundbreaking 9002 – a multi-effects unit with an astounding amount of processing built into a beltpack unit. It didn’t sound like a Boogie or a Plexi (and it wasn’t meant to), but it had a variety of super useful sounds that were just right for the time. With the market’s continuing focus on acoustic music, Zoom’s new A1 series (A1 FOUR and A1X FOUR) seems quite timely. The A1 units have been designed not just for stringed instruments, but also for wind instruments like trumpet, sax and harmonica. Typical for a Zoom products, the A1 FOUR has an amazing amount of ‘stuff’ inside: over 70 stompbox effects (five at once), 50…

The Fender Twin Reverb has existed in one form or another since 1952, and it remains prized for its clarity, its sheer projection of sound, and the heavenly series of harmonic overtones that kick in when you crank it up just enough to get the power amp a little angry. They’re also heavy – legend has it that the first singer to skip out on his band when they were loading gear was trying to dodge lifting a Twin Reverb. Over, the years Fender have experimented with variations on the Twin Reverb, such as the Super Twin, the Twin Reverb II, and in 2001, the Cyber Twin, which combined tube and digital technology. Now we’ve got Fender’s new Tone Master series, which includes a Twin Reverb and a Deluxe Reverb.…

We have not a single doubt that before too long, the amount of albums in Pat Metheny’s catalogue will outnumber that of years he’s lived. From This Place marks #47 for the Missouri-native jazz icon, and the first of entirely new material since 2014’s Kin. And though it comes so far deep into Methany’s discography, the 65-year-old describes it as “one of the records I have been waiting to make my whole life,” citing a need to explore every other crevice of his creative mind before being able to unearth the inspiration behind it. “It is a kind of musical culmination,” he noted, “Reflecting a wide range of expressions that have interested me over the years, scaled across a large canvas, presented in a way that offers the kind of…