New Jersey’s Home Blitz remain largely unknown in their home state, and that's not going to change anytime soon. They may have played with every good Aussie band - ECSR, Total Control, Royal Headache, Scott and Charlene's Weddings – that’s passed through NYC, but for your average New York Jets supporter, their music still probably falls on the “sounds like horseshit” side of obscure.That doesn't bother the band too much, they seem to dig the obscure. On the eve of their first Australian tour (which includes a set at Newcastle's Sound Summit) we asked them what Aussie bands past/present they’d most want to play with. There was no mention of INXS.DANIEL:The Chosen Few
This band is really sick. A long running duo from Sydney who make really horrible, annoying music with guitars, drums and strangulated retard vocals. I would really like to see them live. It’s a pretty good consolation that the Sound Summit festival we’re playing features both Menstruation Sister Oren Ambarchi and similarly challenged duo xNOBBQx.THERESA:Cosmic PsychosFeedtime
I finally had the chance to see Feedtime on their most recent North American tour. One bottle of scotch and a terrible night's sleep later, I felt like I'd caught a shovel to the back of the cranium. Which I figured was Feedtime doing to my exterior what they've been doing to my mind all along.It's bleak, twisted, sublimely ugly music. All grinding gears and rattling bass, stretched over the bare frames of motorbike percussion and slashed with bottleneck string work. The four records they released in their first run, and 1996's Billy, stand as some of the finest and nastiest rock ever to come crawling out of Australia. To throw down the cultural gauntlet, I think Feedtime are quintessentially Australian in the same way Kraftwerk were essentially German. Both bands drilled deep into the psychological marrow of their respective homelands. Where Kraftwerk rivet their machine-music together with dour precision, Feedtime clobber theirs into groaning hulks of dark, droning horsepower with pure elbow grease. They're good.JASON:The MolesJustice Yeldham
Justice Yeldham plays broken glass with his face, and puts on a really mesmerizing show. He's also tipped me off to so much great music through DualPlover. I just wouldn't want Daniel to get any ideas.HENRY:xNOBBQx
Eddy Current Suppression Ring is a modern rock group that my dad and I enjoy listening to while spreading mulch. We agree in particular on the lead guitar playing, I recall a special moment when I brought up that the singer wears gloves when he sings (we were also wearing gloves for protective purposes).Like the way Home Blitz thinks? Check them out here.
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For me the Chosen Few are the winners of the first wave of Australian thug-rock sweepstakes. Their 1978 EP The Joke’s On Us shares all the most important qualities of the best music: mindless violence, stuff about Nazis and inscrutable swipes at more popular bands. Thanks to the Going Underground label, its wax-cylinder fidelity can now be heard spread across rock’s finest format, the 45 rpm 12”.Menstruation Sisters
This band is really sick. A long running duo from Sydney who make really horrible, annoying music with guitars, drums and strangulated retard vocals. I would really like to see them live. It’s a pretty good consolation that the Sound Summit festival we’re playing features both Menstruation Sister Oren Ambarchi and similarly challenged duo xNOBBQx.THERESA:Cosmic Psychos
Australia excels at producing great drinking music, and there's no better drinking music in the world (with the exception of the Somali Women's Choir) than the Cosmic Psychos. I'm partial to the solid run of 'Psychos albums from the mid 80s to the mid 90s that spawned such ageless chestnuts as “Can't Come In”, “David Lee Roth” and “Lead Me Astray”. It’s bludgeoning, battering, bleary-eyed music with a decidedly wry, if not exactly sophisticated, take on real-shit problems. Like mouthy sheilas, noxious road kill and not being David Lee Roth. Like Ross Knight's mullet, there's a little more to the Psychos than meets the eye. They may be faaahmers, but they aren’t dumb. GIVE US SOME WAH-WAH, DIRTY!!!
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I finally had the chance to see Feedtime on their most recent North American tour. One bottle of scotch and a terrible night's sleep later, I felt like I'd caught a shovel to the back of the cranium. Which I figured was Feedtime doing to my exterior what they've been doing to my mind all along.It's bleak, twisted, sublimely ugly music. All grinding gears and rattling bass, stretched over the bare frames of motorbike percussion and slashed with bottleneck string work. The four records they released in their first run, and 1996's Billy, stand as some of the finest and nastiest rock ever to come crawling out of Australia. To throw down the cultural gauntlet, I think Feedtime are quintessentially Australian in the same way Kraftwerk were essentially German. Both bands drilled deep into the psychological marrow of their respective homelands. Where Kraftwerk rivet their machine-music together with dour precision, Feedtime clobber theirs into groaning hulks of dark, droning horsepower with pure elbow grease. They're good.JASON:The Moles
Though I've seen Richard Davies a bunch around New York, his original Sydney band the Moles is still a mystery. They made some of my favourite recordings ever, but I've never found any live Moles footage other than some clips of the Flaming Lips backing him up. When he plays live these days it's mostly Cardinal and Cosmos songs with some solo stuff but no Moles. I'd give anything to see the original Moles line-up do "Europe By Car" and "Tendrils And Paracetamol."
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Justice Yeldham plays broken glass with his face, and puts on a really mesmerizing show. He's also tipped me off to so much great music through DualPlover. I just wouldn't want Daniel to get any ideas.HENRY:xNOBBQx
XNOBBQX is a sick band that sounds like nothing else and is very inspiring to me.Eddy Current Suppression Ring
Eddy Current Suppression Ring is a modern rock group that my dad and I enjoy listening to while spreading mulch. We agree in particular on the lead guitar playing, I recall a special moment when I brought up that the singer wears gloves when he sings (we were also wearing gloves for protective purposes).Like the way Home Blitz thinks? Check them out here.