Carpetbombing the new album from Melbourne group Harmony is set to be a modern Australian classic, an unconventional concoction of blues balladry, gospel harmonies, punk rawness and a dark familiarity of which Harmony are masters.
The physical release of the group’s second record (out now via Poison City ) comes with a digital Carpetbombing Deconstructions album, a full re-imagining of Carpetbombing by some of this county’s finest musicians including Adalita, TV Colours, Mick Turner, Mikey Young and Summer Flake.
We asked Harmony’s frontman Tom Lyngcoln to give us a run-down of each artist and track featured on the compilation.
Introduction
“After recording and mixing our new album Carpetbombing, I was fatigued with the songs after hundreds of listens and constant critical attention. My original intention was to recreate Carpetbombing, with the help of others, into a beats based bonus album. It quickly turned into the deconstructions project where each artist was assigned a song to do with whatever they wanted. The only rules were that the song title remained to identify the track, effectively allowing the participants to rip the arrangements apart. I realised early on that approaching artists from a broader spectrum outside of just electronic music would work because interpretation is a wildly unpredictable thing.”
The Closing Of The Day by Miles Brown
“Miles Brown and I grew up together in Hobart. The first time I met him was in a moshpit at the Big Day Out in 1994 in Melbourne. Miles was pretty identifiable at well over 6’5” and he graciously assisted me in my first and only crowd surf of my life to date. A week later I returned to Hobart and was walking down Elizabeth St and to my surprise there was Miles, a Tasmanian! Our paths continued to cross until just over 12 months later my friends and I crashed a party he was having in Taroona. His band Puppyfat (with The Drones’ Mike Noga on drums) were about to play when we fronted up and cleared the room after hijacking their gear with some poorly researched and terribly executed grunge covers. It took a little while for the relationship to mend, particularly with Noga who was incensed at our complete lack of idea. Fortunately we would go on to share many of the limited available performance spaces in Hobart throughout the rest of the 1990s and became close friends.”
Water Runs Cold by TV Colours
“I spent most of last year trying to unravel the urban myth of Bobby Kill, the brain behind TV Colours. In the digital age mystique is an impossibility. Everyone I approached about this kid seemed completely reluctant to talk about him or the album. It only fuelled my obsession and upon finally tracking down the rare head responsible, he did little to provide any further insight. Bobby Kill is a musical spectre, but his talent is immense. TV Colours have gone at this song with a sledgehammer, atomising it. It’s a reasonably faithful rendition but they have ramped up the song into an anthemic, blown out joint that the Ramones would have been proud of.”
On Your Summons by Spinning Rooms
“Spinning Rooms and Harmony exist as two exiles on the Melbourne musical landscape. Islands apart and sceneless stylistically. As such, I see them as close to peers as Harmony has. We’ve played together many times and there are numerous bonds between the two bands. I recorded this deconstruction with Spinning Rooms at Bakehouse studios during the sessions for their second full length album Complicating Things. It has the lilting and drunken swagger that Spinning Rooms have perfected but also the weight that Harmony preoccupies itself with. Australian nightmares in music.”
Diminishing Returns by First Chorus Band of Singers
“I can’t even begin to come to terms with the amount of work that went into this deconstruction. I cold called the band leader Virginia and incredibly she accepted the challenge. Let’s break down the significance of this song because I want you to be fully aware of the weight of the undertaking. To begin with as a band leader of an ensemble that comprises six members, I have some appreciation but absolutely no comprehension of how you operate 15 people simultaneously, so there’s that enormous logistical spectre, but how on earth do you then coordinate them in such a way that they are able to perform something so intricate and detailed and refined?”
Pulse by Summer Flake
“Pulse was originally intended for Rites Wild but never boomeranged back at us. Our friends at Rice Is Nice in Sydney work with Summer Flake (Stephanie Crase) and suggested that she have a go at it. What came back a couple of days later was extraordinary. In fact, it redefined our own song and has made performance of the original impossible. Between Steph’s vocal ghost notes and her insanely beautiful guitar playing, Summer Flake has transformed an interlude into a fully realised song in its own right.”
Cold Storage by Simon J Karis
“Cold Storage is a nasty song. Simon J Karis deals exclusively in nasty with his epically heavy Cocks Arquette project and was a perfect choice to take this piece into even darker waters. Revolving around the Hawke / Keating labour party leadership battle of 1991 before disappearing further down the labour party rabbit hole, this piece takes off once our esteemed reptilian overlord Tony Abbott makes an appearance outlining his counter policies. It sounds like the gates of hell opening. Behind those gates are a weird cacophony of spliced notes from the original song. It’s the first of the two central slow burners on the Deconstructions album.”
Unknown Hunter by Heinz Riegler
“I met Heinz Riegler over a decade ago at a writers workshop put on by Mushroom Publishing. Housed in the luxury of Michael Gudinski’s mountain home (where The Nation Blue would later record Protest Songs). We have been really close ever since and have tested the boundaries of the friendship by consistently placing each other in horrendous circumstances well beyond our respective comfort zones. Heinz asked me to come up to Brisbane a few years back and perform solo for the first time in a cool room at Jamie’s Cafe in the Valley, that night, after anxiously fumbling my way through my first solo performance, I drank my nerves back to gold plated. I was soon experiencing an early onset hangover like no pain previously had ever delivered. Heinz recognised my extreme discomfort and suggested we go to the movies to wait it out. That movie was a tense WW2 drama and the choc mint ice-cream I cradled in my feeble hands was a beacon for spew, a clear path through the fog of uncertainty. I can’t detach that extreme discomfort from what Heinz has done here with Unknown Hunter… a slow building and unstoppable force, climaxing into a static ether.”
Underground by Sky Needle
“Sky Needle turned a 20 second sample of the Parisian underground rail network into what sounds like construction of its waste disposal systems. The clatter or pipes and hammers are generated from numerous found and engineered instruments. It’s a sight to behold and Sky Needle have a way with space that is uncommon in largely improvised music. We came to Sky Needle through the genius of Screaming Match who played with us up in Brisbane last year. Both are highly recommended nights out.”
Cut Myself Clean by BJ Morriszonkle
“BJ Morriszonkle is an actual musical genius. He is impossibly ambidextrous and has an outlook on music that is erratic and has been filtered through one too many Looney Tunes cartoons. He has the skill set to achieve his fever dreams though. His one-man band performances are a clusterfuck of multiple instruments strapped and refuckulated to him like medieval torture devices, but he reverses the relationship and dominates them. Listen to the dense layering of insanity here within. His rendition of Cut Myself Clean is anything but faithful and on top of everything he has that Roy Orbison in a microwave voice to anchor everything to. I use bigger words when Morriszonkle is in the room. He commands that kind of respect.”
Big Ivan by Mick Turner
“Mick Turner has been an immense influence on my guitar playing. His use of frenetic noise in his earlier bands Venom P Stinger, Sick Things, Moodists and Fungus Brains through to his drunken drifting for the Dirty Three and in numerous solo guises, goes right to the heart of how I make my guitar sound Australian. As immediately identifiable as Angus Young, Mick Turner is as equally important to Australian music. My love of Mick’s music has embarrassingly manifested in numerous failed conversations and acts of tribute to his catalogue. So for Mick to be at all interested in performing one of our songs is unfathomable. I love this new band that he has put together following the release of his latest solo album Don’t Tell The Driver and we are pretty wrapt to reap the benefits of it.”
Do Me A Favour by Batpiss
“Ah Batpiss. That fucking voice. I never get tired of it. Thomy Sloane is Australia’s Roky Erickson. When his vocal chords start flapping it’s like a door to another dimension opening up. Truly ferocious. Recorded at The Tote, Do Me A Favour is torn apart using all of Batpiss’ blunt instruments; cascading alien guitars, grease trap bass and propulsive battery. The dramatic pause in the outro has made it into our version of this song and we can never go back. Batpiss are supremely talented, indefinable and quite frankly unstoppable.”
Prayer For War by Mikey Young
“Mikey Young has a pretty good track record. I hassle him pretty regularly to master the recordings I work on (including this Deconstructions album) and found a new avenue for punishment. He always takes my short notice requests and moronic questions with typical charm and without him I don’t think Carpetbombing would have turned out as well. His deconstruction of Prayer For War is a perfect example of his sharp ear for composition. Who’d expect that outburst at 1:17? It’s a perfect technique that’s almost predictable by anyone else’s hand, which makes it completely unpredictable from Mikey Young. The only thing that taints this exceptional piece is my monotone drawl. That’s my fault, not Mikey’s.”
Wailing Widow by QUA
“I always felt bad for pushing Wailing Widow onto Cornel (QUA). It’s stupidly short and presents very little to get your teeth into. I shouldn’t have worried because Qua turned in a high-fidelity masterclass. We literally gave him nothing to work with and the results are spectacular. Glitch, blip, buzz and howl, Wailing Widow is now our tour van head banger.”
Vapour Trails by Spod
“The first time I met Spod he was wearing tennis shorts with a pink polo and singing Brittany Spears songs through a pitch shifter in a bar in Sydney. Over the years I have witnessed more flawless hours of comedy from Spod than any working comedian in Australia. You can forget how crazy talented the guy is though. Every time I listen to this I hear things that I know are me but that I can’t even recognise their origin. I have no idea how he arrived at this conclusion but it’s deeply sexual. Somewhere, somehow, R. Kelly has a boner and doesn’t know why.”
Carpetbomb by Adalita
“Adalita and her old band Magic Dirt were singularly responsible for helping me and my folk on the mainland more than anyone. The Nation Blue (Lyngcoln’s previous band) shared stages with them at least bi-annually every year since 2001. We have a deep love for all the members of that band. One of my favourite memories was on that same writers workshop from above where I met Heinz. Dean Turner and I were smoking pot and playing pool on Michael Gudinski’s full size table and complaining about the physical strain involved in big table games when I shanked a shot as hard as I could, as Dean took a big drag. The white ball was basically airborne before it even hit the other balls and they only sought to increase its trajectory far above the confines of the table. The ball smashed into the wall, just missing one of Barnsey’s gold records and rolled across the floor coming to rest at the feet of Michael himself who’d just arrived. I went pale and Dean choked, smoke pouring from all the available exit points in his head. Michael grinned and Dean half closed his eyes and just nodded in approval.”
CARPETBOMBING TOUR 2014
Thu April 3 – Brisbane: Black Bear Lodge, with Gentle Ben & Per Purpose
Fri April 4 – Sydney: GoodGod Small Club, with Day Ravies & Angie
Sat April 5 – Canberra: The Phoenix, with Hoodlum Shouts & Sex Noises
Sat April 12 – Hobart: The Brisbane Hotel, with Native Cats & Naked
Sat April 26 – Melbourne: Howler, with Deaf Wish, Tyrannamen, Laura Imbruglia, Bj Morriszonkle, very special secret guest
