More supremely disobedient a-formal destructo rock from the sainted Breakdance The Dawn cabal, this time it's Antipan minus one member, hence the name-change. Here we have Matt Earle (Breakdance/Muura/Craft Bandits/you name it) on guitar, Anthony Guerra (Black Petal et al) on drums and Nick Dan on bass and vocals. Recorded live at Echo in Shibuya, Tokyo in 2010 by Earle, this may be the wildest side of Antipan music to date with a bass that sounds like a huge electrified rubber band, a guitar that combines crude single-note Blues stomps with cranky Rudolph Grey-isms and drums that mix the detonating style of Rashied Ali with the caveman ugh of yr favourite pluke. Tracks are held together with the flimsiest of refusenik logic, with Guerra keeping it martial even when the strings are expiring in gasps of tortuous feedback. Think early Royal Trux via The Shaggs via Kito Mizukumi Rouber and spin it next to your favourite 'punk' 7 for an eye-opening lesson in total musical freedom. Impossibly great, with the usual beautiful packaging from Black Petal. 

Excellent compilation that covers alla the main action coming out of the great Australian underground imprint Breakdance The Dawn, most associated with XNoBBQX. Compiled by Jon Dale. Features Yr Intestines, Mac Tempel, Mosweintraub Band, XNoBBQX, Stasis Duo, The Minerals, DJ White Pimpernell, James Heighway, Nylstoch, The White Petunias, Impromptulons, Muura, Seventh Sister, Antipan, Tofutron and X Wave.

Limited edition fanzine produced by Black Petal and A Binary Datum featuring art by Joshua Burkett, Matt Earle (Breakdance The Dawn/Craft Bandits/xNoBBQx et al) and Daniel Lebow, photos by Daniel Lebow, photos by Clint Morgan, poetry by Ian-John Hutchinson, a review of the Japanesse curry house run by Pirako and Kageo of Suishou No Fune (!), an interview with Tetuzi Akiyama, a short story by Jienko Kurosato and a review of Takahiro Hirama’s ‘Thr Eat Rhy Thm’ CD-R. Packaged in the usual exquisite Black Petal style, handbound with string with an obi strip and fold-out pages. Each copy comes with an original A4 lithograph by Joshua Burkett. 

Staggering blast of a-formal rock confusion from one of the first group’s to articulate the NON-aesthetic of the whole Breakdance The Dawn scene, contemporaries of xNoBBQx, Your Intestines and Mosseisley. Antipan featured Matt Earle on guitar, Nick Dan on vocals and bass, Anthony Guerra on drums and Sumugan Sivanesan on guitar.  Antipan have a scratchy, devolved guitar band sound that’s somewhere between the stumbling early Rough Trade style, the absolute refusal of No Wave and a disjointed Magic Band and this captures them live at Club Consolador De Dos Caras in December of 2008. There are primitive echoes of free jazz and even stomping two-chord blues but Antipan play the kind of blues more associated with Corwood Industries, wrapped in barbed wire and tuned to the moon. Pretty fantastic. Comes with an original photograph of the group rocking the bandstand and exposed to firelight by Guerra. Recommended.

Massive two-header that upgrades a pair of killer sides from Australia’s sainted Breakdance The Dawn cabal, finally making vinyl editions available of some of the most supremely out rock/roll cut anywhere on the planet circa now: Girls Girls Girls is the amazing Brisbane based trio of Matt Earle of Craft Bandits/xNoBBQx etc on drums and electronics, Adam Park of Sprot on bass and Rohan Holiday of Kitten Party/Teen Sex on guitar. Together they play a radically dilated form of avant garage with creepy, minimal guitar lines over questing, brokedown bass and staggered rhythms. Some massively crankled motorik almost-grooves on this one, if you can imagine the Corwood recording that never came out on Flying Nun then you’re at least close but even more distressed, with single notes creeping along the fretboard like a narcoleptic Magic Band or early Royal Trux while the bass blows feedback at the drums and Earle falls down the stairs in slow motion. This is fractured avant blues at some kind of non-musicianly apex. As Matt Earle puts it: “together we are great like the gentlemen of Brisbane underground rock 'n' roll... there’s all these girl bands here at the moment and they’re all great but they won’t let us jam with them so we started our own.” Edition of only 250 copies in silkscreened sleeves, highly recommended!
X Wave take a more martial approach to punk/rock, coming over like The Afflicted Man playing Spacemen 3’s “Losing Touch With My Mind” while making with massively thuggish/F/X drenched jams that give the nod to Japan’s Minor scene (Rotting Telepathies/Gasaneta et al) while they attempt to rip “Teenage Kicks” from the hands of The Undertones with nothing but a buncha wrong notes. Indeed, this feels closer to the original breakout rock/roll urge than any generic pretender, freaking with it in an intuitive high-energy style that has few parallels. If your idea of ‘the canon’ has more to do with Harry Pussy, Arthur Doyle, The Shaggs and Mars than some longhair weeping into his soundhole then this is where you plug in. Breakdance The Dawn has been the secret underground rock label of the past goddamn decade and it’s only now that the rest of the world is catching up. So don’t be a goddamn dweeb: this is rock ‘n’ roll. Edition of only 250 copies in silkscreened sleeves, highly recommended!

New primitive ‘techno’ outfit from Matt Earle (Breakdance/Craft Bandits/xNoBBQx et al) and Nicola Morton (Wardenburger): minimalist throbbing electro-threat in the tradition of Vanity Records, Two Daughters, John Fothergill’s United Dairies of-shoot etc with automatic/modulated female vocals over druggy keyboard feedback and waves of lapping electricity: “our synth and drum machines were under water for three days in the Brisbane floods, they were given to us to prevent us from self harming. It gave them a unique sound. Wet, dirty and about to set the building on fire.” – Matt Earle. Another singular Breakdance release. 

Great set of electric ritual/blurry drone rock from the Australian trio of Matt Earle (Breakdance/xNoBBQx/Craft Bandits et al), Rory Brown and Adam Sussmann (2779/Emotional About The Rainbow et al): Matt describes this one as sounding “like Miles Davis wit da Skaters in the blue mountains” and that’s pretty spot on, with the kind of expiring brass that illuminated Heathen Earth situated in the kind of drone torrents more commonly associated with the Invasion Of Thunderbolt Pagoda. The ululating percussion is particularly hypnotic as is the smoky production style, with a John Godbert-era Vibracathedral Orchestra feel given that classic edge-of-the-world Breakdance production style.