ALBION TOP 5 2009

As 2009 comes to a close, we here at Albion take a quick look back on the year that has come to be known as the year Michael Jackson died.

Amazing reunions were announced to floods of tears from fans who have waited years to see them. Namely Faith No More and Pavement.

Albion hosted its very first festival, Fermez La Bouche, scoring us our second Gig Of The Week in InPress.

Our favourite children’s story, Where The Wild Things are, was released on film. Along for the ride, Spike Jonze and Karen O.

Albion went from 1000 readers a month to almost 25,000 readers a month.

Supergroups formed left, right and centre. Our favourites, Them Crooked Vultures and The Dead Weather.

And Oasis, The Rakes, Violent Femmes and Juliette And The Licks called it a day.

We look forward to 2010 and hope you’ll join us for the ride. See you next year!

Future Of The Left to release limited edition Australian tour 7″

To celebrate Future Of The Left’s return to Australia, the band are releasing a special limited edition Australian tour 7″. The 7″ features “Stand By Your Manatee” from the band’s second album Travels With Myself And Another and an exclusive B-side called “Pre Occupation Therapy”. It will be available at all of their Australian shows, through the Rice Is Nice store or all good indie record stores across the country. See them at Falls Festival, Southbound and headlining shows in January.

January 3 – The Zoo, Brisbane
January 7 – The Annandale, Sydney
January 8 – The Corner, Melbourne

Kill Rock Stars releases new Elliott Smith track

Kill Rock Stars will be adding Elliott Smith’s Roman Candle and From A Basement On The Hill to their catalog on April 6th, 2010. The label will be kicking things off with a bang when they release the re-mastered version of Smith’s first album Roman Candle. The album will also be released on vinyl for the first time.

Larry Crane, archivist for Elliott Smith’s family, said “The intention that I had was to make the album more listenable. I felt that a lot of the guitar “squeaks” were jarring and very loud, and that many of the hard consonants and “S” sounds were jarring and scratchy sounding. I felt by reducing these noises that the music would become more inviting and the sound would serve the songs better. When I went to Roger Seibel’s SAE Mastering, he proceeded to equalize the tracks a small amount and to make the volume slightly louder. We never tried to make this CD as loud as current, over-limited trends, but just to match the volume of the rest of Elliott’s KRS catalog in a graceful way. Please note that none of this album is “remixed” from the master tapes – it is still composed of the mixes Elliott created himself.” With the addition of these two records, KRS is now the family of all of Elliott Smith’s independent albums – New Moon, Elliott Smith and Either/Or.

To celebrate, KRS is giving away a free mp3 of a previously unreleased song “Cecilia/Amanda”. It was recorded at Jackpot! Recording Studio in 1997 by Larry Crane. An earlier version of this song was initially written and recorded by Elliott’s high school band, Stranger Than Fiction, and was known as “Time is Ours Now”. “Cecilia/Amanda” is a reworking of that song with almost completely different lyrics. Download/listen here.

The KRS Elliott Smith back catalogue will be available from January 4 via mail order and iTunes.

Deerhoof are coming to Australia

San Franciscan avant garde noise-makers will be in Australia in March to play The Lost Weekend festival alongside Dinosaur Jr, Brian Jonestown Massacre and a  host of other fine acts. While here, the band will play Melbourne with Japanese rockers Tenniscoats. Melbourne will also be witness to the collaboration between Saya from Tenniscoats and Satomi from Deerhoof, Oneone, who will team up with Can Can the following night. No other shows have been announced.

March 3 – The Corner, Melbourne
March 4 – East Brunswick Club, Melbourne
March 6 & 7 – The Lost Weekend, Brisbane

Jay Reatard attacked by fans

Punk rocker, Jay Reatard was attacked by fans while he was wrapping up his Austin show at Emo’s last week. His publicist offered this statement “Jay was attacked, totally unprovoked, by two different people, both of whom were later arrested. One guy bolted onstage and came swinging at Jay, but security took him away pretty quickly. Soon after (the band hadn’t stopped playing, by the way), another guy sprinted onstage and hit Jay. Unlike the first guy, Jay didn’t even see this guy coming. So Jay defended himself with the mic stand until security took that guy away, too. Jay is safe and unhurt, and the cops were there for about an hour afterwards. The two guys were arrested, but I’m not sure exactly what the formal charges were or where they are now.“

Hello Premodernists!

How did you come up with the name Premodernists?
We spent ages without a name, so one night we decided to go out drinking and took a notepad with us to write down any ideas. I vaguely remember myself and Nicholas Leggatt talking about Andy Warhol and postmodern art, resulting in someone writing down Premodernists for some reason. In the sober light of day we thought it sounded alright and the rest as they say, is history.

Who would you say are your biggest musical influences?
We definitely have an interesting band dynamic, or at least without trying to be pretentious, I think so. We all share similar bands that have influenced us as musicians, such as Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana and Franz Ferdinand to name a few, but at the same time we all come from slightly different music backgrounds which gives our music that ‘unique’ feel. Sort of like Captain Planet – except we’re always arguing about who gets to be ‘Fire’.

How did you all meet?
We all met at Brentwood Secondary College in Glen Waverley and become good mates. We were in other bands at the end of high school and the start of uni, and it wasn’t until around late 2007 that Aswin, Tyse and myself starting playing together, adding Nick to the line-up later on.

What made you decide that being in a band is what you wanted to do?
First and fore mostly because it’s fun, I guess. Being able to create something that you’re pretty passionate about with some of your best mates is a good deal. I also do the artwork for the band which I enjoy as well, but it doesn’t match up to the group dynamic that comes with being in a band. We’re all at uni/have recently graduated, so we’ve all got grounded, realistic plans for the future, but it would be pretty awesome if music worked out for us.

Finish this sentence: People who like Dance A Little will also like…
Death From Above 1979, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Hives, Joy Division, Pixies, Queens of the Stone Age, The Vines and of course Captain Planet

If you were given the keys to the Delorian in Back To The Future, where would you go and why?
Well, we’d definitely use the ability for good, not for taking sports almanacs back to the present (if that makes sense). One thing we’d do is travel back to 1912 and replace the band on the Titanic. I’m sure string quartets were all the rage at the time, but some Premod rock might have done a better job of keeping the guys in the birds nest wide awake (while hopefully not distracting them too much). Not only would this save hundreds of lives, but it would hopefully also prevent any sort of soundtrack with Celene Dion on it!