With a strong focus on the Australian music scene, Australian Guitar is a rich source of information on playing techniques, styles, the wide range of instruments available and all the technology that guitarists have to consider in the 21st Century.
SCIENCE SAYS HEAVY METAL LOWERS BLOOD PRESSURE AND REDUCES ANXIETY Gone are the days when heavy metal was regarded as tailor-made for the angriest and most wound-up members of society. In fact, a new study has revealed that the genre is actually one of the best for lowering blood pressure and anxiety levels. The study – conducted by hair transplant specialists Vera Clinic – asked 1,540 volunteers aged between 18 and 65 to complete non-verbal stress-eliminating reasoning tests, while listening to a variety of Spotify playlists. The participants were also fitted with heart rate and blood pressure monitors in order to study the effect of each playlist throughout the experiment. The results revealed that – second only to the ‘80s-pop-themed soundtrack of UK Channel 4 show It’s a Sin, which…
HARMONY BYRNE SHE IS an earnest and emotive singer-songwriter from Melbourne, whose prickly and impassioned, often understated gems of folky indie-rock transport their listener into a fugue state. Between the beauty of her music and the wisdom of her songwriting, it’s undoubtable Byrne has a long career of dropping jaws en masse ahead of her. SHE SOUNDS LIKE that rare, hypnotic purgatory state between sleep and wake where one feels more at peace than they do tired – where coherent thoughts form freely, but with a sense of effervescent whimsy and psychedelic radiance often gridlocked by consciousness. YOU’LL DIG HER IF YOU LIKE Tim Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and the warm embrace of the Australian countryside, brushing your hands over clusters of wattle as you soak in the candour…
AXEL CARRINGTON HAILS FROM PERTH, WA PLAYS SOLO AND IN NEW TALK SOUNDS LIKE DESTRUCTIVELY DYNAMIC ALT-ROCK WITH EQUAL PARTS PASSION AND PUNCH LATEST DROP TIME & MEMORY (LP OUT APRIL 9TH INDEPENDENTLY) What’s your current go-to guitar? My most recent acquisitions have been a mid-’00s Japanese Mustang – bought off my good friend and fellow Perth musician Tanaya Harper – a Yamaha NTX3. The Mustang is so light and whimsical, but still has a similar feel to the Jaguars I adore. The Yami is the ultimate “chill out at home” guitar, and one I look forward to exploring each and every day that I play it. I just wrote, recorded and released a solo album under my own name using nothing but this gat! How did you initially fall…
ag TOP PICK DEATH FROM ABOVE 1979 Is 4 Lovers EVERYTHING ELEVEN / UNIVERSAL In an interview with NME, Death From Above 1979 drummer and vocalist Sebastien Grainger described the making of “One + One” – the lead single from their equally gruff and giddy fourth album, Is 4 Lovers – as a “karmic sequel” to the band’s early hit (and fan favourite) “Romantic Nights”. He explained that “it was just Jesse [Keeler, bass and synth] and I jamming, and my wife was like, ‘This could be dancier – y’know, a little sexier?’ So we conceived a child and then I went home and rewrote the drums. It’s a bit of a nod to our first record. It’s got the beat-du-jour that we used when we were first coming up.”…
It’s a lowkey Wednesday morning for Rick Nielsen: the founding Cheap Trick-ster just wrapped up some chores, he has the house to himself, and aside from a few interviews he’ll do over Zoom, his schedule is kept notably bare. When he jumps on the line with Australian Guitar, he’s nestling a slick red ’62 Coronet – a Dwight model, though, not your typical Epiphone. He twiddles around on the fretboard, sharpening his chops on new material from the band’s forthcoming 20th studio album, In Another World, ahead of some monumental live shows Down Under in May (where Cheap Trick will co-headline Under The Southern Stars with Stone Temple Pilots and Bush). Two minutes into our chat, as he strums a riff from the new album’s Lennon-covering closer “Gimme Some Truth”,…
The last few years have witnessed the rise of some truly astonishing guitar talents from around the world – each striving to carve out their own identity through the instrument, in the hope of telling stories that have never been told. Few, however, have felt as exciting as Yvette Young. The Californian Ibanez endorsee and founding member of Covet is someone who plays by her own rules, using alternate tunings, fingerpicking, two-handed approaches as core fundamentals to bring out the ethereal and progressive sounds in her mind. Having started out on classical piano and violin and later taken heavy influence from the more ambient soundscapes of shoegaze, she once jokingly described her genre as “detail rock”, though in all fairness it’s a term that fits quite spectacularly. In this conversation,…
