New Weird Australia

Stu Buchanan talks with Sia Ahmad, one of Canberra's most prolific experimental artists, curators and producers, and relentless advocate for the local independent, DIY and underground music scenes. She discusses her recent body of work including 2018's ground-breaking "quiver"; the 2020 albums im/modesty and A Body Full Of Tears; and the upcoming remix collection Realignment.

Music featured in this episode:

- flaw, featured (Remix by...

Jessica at Birth is the solo outsider art project of multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter and performing artist Hanna Jenkin. Fusing vintage tape loops with in-the-box electronic production, Hanna blends spoken word stories with guitar, bass loops and experimental indy-punk percussion. 

Music featured in this episode:

- Paperdaisy In The Spring Rain
- To The Teeth
- Waterburds
- Speedway Queen
- Windy Louvre

jessicaatbirth.bandcamp...

Having dedicated much of her early career to the electronic duo The Golden Filter, Penelope Trappes released her solo debut Penelope One in 2016 on the Optimo label; a release she described as "percussion-less, reverb-heavy haunting atmospherics with dystopian themes". She signed to Houndstooth for Penelope Two, which mixed field recordings, meditations and guitars with synth drones, piano and layers of reverb.

Earlier this year, sh...

Laurence Pike is a Sydney-based artist who for the last twenty years has been investigating the worlds of electronic music, jazz and leftfield rock; initially as founder and drummer of Pivot (latterly PVT); through various collaborative projects including Szun Waves and Triosk; and more recently as a solo artist, release three albums in as many years.  

Using this new album 'Prophecy' as a backdrop, Laurence reflects on the place an...

Sumn Conduit is the duo project of Indigenous Australian improviser and experimental vocalist Sonya Holowell , and modular synthesist and composer Ben Carey.  Their debut release 'Track' highlights the unique marriage of their two worlds, and in this episode we embark on a wide-ranging discussion that covers the 'oneness and multiplicity' of their approach; using visual stimuli in improvisation; the meaning and contradictions of 'e...

Party Dozen is the sonic partnering of saxophonist Kirsty Tickle and percussionist Jonathan Boulet. Loosely based around improvisation, the duo create a mesmerising collision that is wild, weird and well out of the park. Stu Buchanan talks to the duo about creating colour out of chaos and breathing new life into the sax.

Featured in this episode:

- Auto Loser
- Party Dozen
- Scheisse Kunst
- World Prayer
- The Great Ape
- Auto Loser (Mogw...

All of Amby Downs’ recordings are made with a decolonial intention, and engage with deep listening and deep historical thought to explore that which lies beyond the settler-colonial surface. Her latest album “Cylical” continues the connections first explored in her debut “Kinjarling Studies”, channelling ‘place’ through ambient soundscapes, radio recordings, improvised guitar and manipulated vocals.

Featuring:

– tornderrup kep (time-...

Reuben Ingall is a prolific artist, musician and maker of mischief and supports the experimental music scene in his home town of Canberra through both a long-running radio show and monthly gig series.  His latest project is ‘NIMBY2’, a second collection of recordings made with no-input mixing board, and swiftly follows on from ‘Tuft’, an album of layers and loops and lo-fi acoustic instruments.

In this episode, Stu Buchanan talks to...

Perth artist Amber Fresh has been making music as Rabbit Island for over ten years, blending simple songs with experimental, improvised and lo-fi approaches to production and sound design.

Her latest record 'Songs For Kids' is a re-release of songs recorded direct to tape by Amber in a kitchen in Melbourne in 2013.

In this first episode of a new run of New Weird Australia podcasts, Stu Buchanan talks to Amber about the story behind t...

Stu Buchanan talks with Cooper Bowman - musician and artist, and founder of the Australian cassette label Altered States Tapes. The label, which recently celebrated its 100th release, features music that sits across punk, industrial, experimental, electronic and noise, with a roster that spans both Australian and international artists.

Cooper talks about making music and making tapes, and pulls out a selection of tracks from the lab...

Taking a radical detour from her early work with Sydney bands Songs and Bushwalking, Ela’ Stiles’ remarkable debut self-titled album mixed acappella folk, drones and tape loops, and she has subsequently layered dark synths, harmonium and drum machines into the mix. With two new albums due to be released soon - each representing dissimilar aspects of her work - we check out a selection of tracks from Ela's back catalogue, and listen...

Stu Buchanan talks with Andrew Khedoori, the founder of the Sydney based project, Longform Editions. Described as a “collective for deep listening”, the project surfaces prolonged exploratory and immersive pieces, each guiding us towards a re-evaluation of the ways in which we listen to music.

We’ll hear music from a number of Australian artists in the collective, such as Kate Carr, Felicity Mangan, Paul Mac and Andy Rantzen, and li...

Stu Buchanan talks with Sydney quintet Tangents, a band that collide between genres and forms, taking cues from electronic production, post rock, jazz and free improvisation and more. We’ll hear from cellist Peter Hollo and electronic producer Ollie Brown and spool through cuts from the Tangents catalogue.

Originally broadcast on 'Out From Under' on Resonance Extra.

Hosted on Acast. See a...

We explore decades-old Australian music, made available for a new generation of listeners via the unique archival label, Efficient Space. We talk with label founder Michael Kucyk and listen to a selection of off-kilter Australian music from the archives, exclusively curated by Michael.

Originally broadcast on 'Out From Under' on Resonance Extra.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for ...

In the second episode of a two-part Out From Under special, Stu Buchanan talks to Mitchell Jones; founding member of both seminal Australian experimental band Scattered Order and the early 80s record label M-Squared which balanced the prevailing sounds of post-punk with lo-fi punk electronics and experimental explorations from a close knit community of artists.

We hear from M-Squared artists Makers Of The Dead Travel Fast, Systemati...

Whilst the legacies of post-punk, DIY electronics and proto industrial are widely known and documented in the UK and US scenes, their impact in an Australian context is less widely recognised. Bonding over the discovery of Cabaret Voltaire imports in Sydney record stores, Scattered Order formed in 1979 and gorged on a wide range of inputs to create a sound and visual aesthetic that was unique in Australia at the time. Together they...

Brett Thompson has been the guiding force in the Australian band Rand & Holland for nearly fifteen years, but it's been a tumultuous and often torturous ride. Widespread love for their lo-fi folk debut led to a polished pop follow up that furthered their critical acclaim whilst also setting in place a chain of events that led to the band conducing an artistic volte-face. They recorded a dark, intense and experimental third album, p...

Andy Rantzen and Jochen Gutsch discuss their new collaborative project, which fuses Andy’s poetic spoken lyrics and Jochen’s diverse musical background, recording and performing as Hinterlandt. Highly conscious of the potential pitfalls of fusing poetry and experimental music, Andy and Jochen carve a path to an outcome that is tense and fascinating and compels you to listen close. We also hear music from Jochen’s Hinterlandt Ensemb...