Quiet Noise, the annual experimental backyard/house show returns for 2024, with:
Saturday 3 February, 2pm – West Footscray private residence (contact cdgsham AT gmail.com for address). Free entry, contribute $5-10 for a shared meal afterwards.
A first-time trio of myself, Carolyn Connors and Ben Speth will be playing at the Absorb-curated Make It Up Club on Tuesday 26 September, 2023 (8pm) – upstairs at Bar Open (317 Brunswick St, Fitzroy).
A new, more definitive, edit of Greetings From Australia by myself and Colin Hodson.
Sky Needle + Clinton Green
Thursday 14 September 2023, 8pm
Long Play Cinema – 318 St Georges Rd, Fitzroy North.
Sky Needle is an improvising band that originated in Brisbane in 2009, taking its name from the ‘sky needle’, an architectural oddity built by the Japanese pavilion for Expo 88, which remained abandoned for many years. Mainstays of the group have been Sarah Byrne, Alex Cuffe, and Joel Stern, joined over the years by Ross Manning, Michael Donnelly, Glen Schenau, Daniel Jenatsch, and Alan Nguyen amongst others. The band’s performances feature an array of self-made and invented instruments, including ‘leg horns’, ‘speaker box bass’, and ‘the plank’. Sky Needle’s sound is difficult to place but instantly recognizable; a confounding and detuned hybrid of rhythm, noise, repetition, and wordless vocalization that oscillates between broken motorik grooves and psychological collapse. Since its formation, Sky Needle has released various LPs, 7″s, and tapes, including works such as “Rave Cave” (Negative Guest List), “Debased Shapes” (Bruit Direct Disques), “Neckliner” (Albert’s Basement), and “Acid Perm” (Nihilistic Orbs). The band has performed extensively across Australia, Indonesia, and Europe.
Clinton Green is an Naarm/Melbourne-based experimental musician who has worked with hacked and faulty equipment and idiophones, including turntables, bowed metal and telephone pole infrastructure. His latest work involves drawing rhythmic minimalist music from decrepit Walkmans playing parts of themselves.
Clinton Green presents a new work for sound generated from the insides of broken Walkmans.
Jasmin Wing-Yin Leung plays various huqin (erhu, zhonghu, yehu), presents material from her ‘Fishing Songs’ series – fingertip precision, patience, and Cantonese folk aesthetics.
Studio Norwood Lab (Colin Hodson) debuts a new instrument that detournes the bicycle as a sonic object.
Long Play, 318 St Georges Road, Fitzroy North – $15 on the door.
Greetings From Australia is a new video piece I’ve made in collaboration with Colin Hodson, for the “Here and Now” exhibition at Verwalterhaus in Berlin from 13-23 July (cnr Prenzlauer Allee and Mollstraße, Berlin, Germany). Thanks fro Brimbank Council who provided access to Sunshine Art Spaces for parts of the filming process.
Next Saturday (1 July) I’ll be presenting a new solo work I’ve been working on of late. It’s at an event called Exp-West, which I’ve curated for Sleepless Footscray, also featuring Whitehorse, Maltese Well Monster/Mito Elias/Fina Po, and Deep Sneeze (a new trio of Jen Callaway, Llara Isabell Arena and David Palliser). Fucked up music from the Western suburbs will be flying our flag high in the old Club X shop in Footscray.
Saturday 1 July, 7:30pm
Exp-West
170 Nicholson St, Footscray
Clinton Green/Michael McNab/Allanah Stewart + Like + Dale Gorfinkel
Thursday 22 June 2023 – 7:30pm
Long Play, 318 St Georges Rd, Fitzroy North
$10
Flyer (made of clay/pottery) by Allanah.
Tone Glow has included the recent digital reissue of Archive 7:2000 in their favourite music of 2023 so far:
Here’s two hours of varied recordings from Clinton Green aka Undecisive God, an Australian underground legend. I’m drawn to the absolute zero-effort art work for this, the lack of extensive background info provided, and how the majority of the tracks aren’t even listed on the Bandcamp page until you purchase the music. It’s a simple invitation: pay $7 AUD and you’ll get a trove of material that you have to make heads or tails of on your own. I like the quiet beauty of “The World is as I See It,” meditative in its oceanic ambience and glints of guitar. It’s as calming as “Can’t Get Better” is anxiety-inducing. On that track, he mischievously ruptures the space with shards of noise as different radio broadcasts (?) play, one of which is a woman that keeps repeating the titular phrase. The “Three Movements for Batman Bridge” tracks are simple, edited field recording soundscapes that capture everyday mystique while “Guitar and Feedback Study 1” is the process of him trying to attain magic through different tools. Consider Archive 7: 2004 a sonic diary that’s been thrust into the world. —Joshua Minsoo Kim
Clinton Green 