Featuring 28 unreleased tracks from experimental and underground Australian artists, New Weird Australia, Collapse Theories emerges at the tail-end of the two-year pandemic, and takes a precise psychic snapshot of the bridge between then and now.
As artists endeavour to once again lift their heads and lift their hearts, the compilation asks them to direct their energies (light or dark; focused or fucked) into a soundtrack of the now. The result is part victory parade, part riot – a cathartic burst, a riotous exclamation, a primal scream.
Available as a Name Your Price download / stream from Bandcamp.
All proceeds from this release will be donated to Bundjalung Community Flood Relief, providing direct financial support to Bundjalung Aboriginal communities affected by the devastating impacts of the March 2022 flood, the highest since colonial records began.
Featuring: Alexis Weaver, ALI WAN HILL, ALX; GoSlow, Aphir, Bacchus Harsh, Decadent Discord, Gillian Lever, Haunts, Horse Macgyver, jobfit, Kris Keogh, Lack The Low, Madenda, Megadead, Melanie Eden, Mookoid, Orbits, Puscha, Reuben Ingall, screensaver, Scraps, Silonics, Sudden Debt, The Omega Point, Travis Cook, Universal Cruelty, WPH and Zacharias Szumer
Tracklisting.
New Weird Australia, Collapse Theories | NWA021
1. Kris Keogh – Nintendo Kick Drum Avalanche 01:21
2. Horse Macgyver – Gots To Got Have To Haves 03:51
3. Zacharias Szumer – Stilted Cycle 03:51
4. Alexis Weaver – A Mouthful of Locusts 05:15
5. Bacchus Harsh – Grievous Assaku 04:52
6. jobfit – Cuttlefish Barb 04:45
7. SCRAPS – Peculiar Radio 02:24
8. Aphir – Airlock 02:33
9. Lack The Low – Strong Bones 04:49
10. Universal Cruelty – Borage 03:28
11. Puscha – Enunciate 08:43
12. Sudden Debt – B 02:57
13. Madenda – Putrefaction 07:58
14. Silonics – The Foundry Waltz 02:15
15. Mookoid – At The Crater’s Edge 01:19
16. Orbits – Ultraviolet 04:49
17. Travis Cook – Hell 03:40
18. Reuben Ingall – Boots With The FUUUUUUU 03:35
19. ALI WAN HILL – Stop Chasing No Blame 02:59
20. The Omega Point – Quiero Volar 04:39
21. Decadent Discord – Complexity Is Born 03:47
22. screensaver – Skin (Horse Pills Remix) 04:18
23. Haunts – Bantam 02:32
24. Melanie Eden – End of Known 09:19
25. ALX; GoSlow – Domestic Safety 04:11
26. Gillian Lever – twentyonetwentytwo 08:18
27. Megadead – Stay 04:28
28. WPH – Crumbled 01:48
Compiled by Stu Buchanan
Artwork by Timothy Dwyer
Released March 2022
All tracks previously unreleased.
Download include booklet with full credits, artist bios and links.
NWA021 was compiled on the sacred land of the Darug People. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands on which we work and pay our respects to Indigenous Elders past, present and emerging. Sovereignty has never been ceded. It always was and always will be, Aboriginal land.
Press.
Prolific experimental music label New Weird Australia release their newest compilation, Collapse Theories. Featuring new and unreleased works from 28 different artists, Collapse Theories includes tracks from the likes of experimental spoken-word duo jobfit, industrial, hardware-sorcerer Horse Macgyver, post-classical collective Haunts and avant-pop producer Aphir. All proceeds from the release will be donated to Bundjalung Community Flood Relief, providing direct financial support to Bundjalung First Nations communities affected by the devastating impacts of the recent flood disaster. Continuing New Weird Australia’s long history of platforming local music that exists on the fringe, Collapse Theories highlights underground talent across a broad sonic palette; traversing the worlds of DIY electronics, ambient, experimental soundscapes and realms beyond conventional classification.
FBi Radio, Album of the Week
New Weird Australia’s newest album ‘New Weird Australia, Collapse Theories’ is a digitally charged electrically eccentric album, featuring twenty-eight unreleased tracks from Australia’s most experimental and alternative artists. It kicks off with ‘Nintendo Kick Drum Avalanche’ by Kris Keogh, a short pulsating introduction to the album that both explores and showcases fiery pulsating synths. ‘Stilted Cycle’ by @zacharias_szumer showcases a softer approach to electronic music, making use of a dreamily addictive vocal sample with a variety of additional effects. ‘Airlock’ by @aphir_ adds to the use of vocal samples, using a consistent expressive vocal presence with increasing distortion as the track continues. ‘Enunciate’ by @puscha_music_film incorporates a variety of both gentle and upbeat samples, making the whole track feel like a dreamscape. ‘At The Crater’s Edge’ by Mookoid is a powerful track, with sharp cuts between samples. The use of both scratchy and reverberated synths, give the track so much depth and character. ‘Bantam’ by Haunts is one of the only tracks on the album to feature traditional musical elements, such as strings and percussion. The gentle string elements of this track contrast sharply with the percussion, making for a strikingly unexpected track. The album finishes with ‘Crumbled’ by @walter.p.humfray, a distinctly prominent track in comparison to the rest of the album, with an ongoing roaring, crunchy mechanical sounding synth. ‘New Weird Australia, Collapse Theories’, is certainly an eccentric experimental album, composed of tracks that feature a variety of gentle, crunchy, and sharp elements. With such a diverse variety of sounds and a wide variety of tracks, there’s certainly something for every experimental music lover!
2RRR Radio, Album of the Week
New Weird Australia started as a radio show on Sydney’s FBi Radio more than then years ago. It then continued as a podcast and label, which returned returned during the lockdown with the double compilation Solitary Wave. As always, NWA show great skill in collecting and compiling experimental music from around the country. Their first release for 2021 is 28 track compilation called Space Between Space, that leads off quietly with some great ambient work. What drew me to it are new tracks from Sydney artists Collector and Greta Now. The latter is a cover of The Fiestas’ “So Fine” with DX (Total Control) and Harriet Stewart (Miss Destiny) on backing vocals. Also included are great contributions from Party Dozen and Friendships.
Record Turnover
As usual Stu Buchanan has excelled himself in selecting 26 brilliant experimental tracks from around Australia (including my little-seen trio Haunts, which Stu has kindly supported for years). There’s an emphasis on electronic music – often abrasive, sometimes melodic – but also some distorted guitars and jazzy postrockisms in there. From Sydney, Alexis Weaver‘s electroacoustic piece evokes her title, “A Mouthful of Locusts”, with vocal samples beautifully glitched and bounced around aural field. Multi-talented Melbourne journalist and musician Zacharias Szumer also brings glitched up sounds and unbalanced beats. Aphir aka Becki Whitton, who took over the operation of Provenance from Stu a year ago and reforged it into a collective, provides a piece of characteristic experimental pop with chanted, processed vocals and driving rhythms. And finally for tonight, Orbits (who, like Becki, are migrants from Canberra to Melbourne) showcase their electronic side with delay-fuelled drones, heavy bass and gated drums.
Utility Fog, FBi Radio
Is society on the brink of collapse? Environmental change, the depletion of resources, war and invasion, disease and class inequality certainly make one vulnerable; and if not, how would you describe the current state of affairs, your experience of it and the future …using vibrations? Over the course of twenty-eight previously unreleased tracks, underground experimental musicians from across Australia present their Collapse Theories on the latest release from New Weird Australia. New Weird Australia is “mutant music from the upside down…. designed to challenge our collective understanding of what music can and should be”, so says its curator Stuart Buchanan. What started as a passion project to promote local experimental music in 2009 and initially as a radio program, is now a multidimensional platform. With an output of twenty-six compilation albums, one-hundred-and-twenty-five episodes of a podcast, a film and a newsletter for subscribers, it’s arguably the most definitive source. Collapse Theories opens with Yolnju/Arnhem Land based artist Kris Keogh and Nintendo Kick Drum Avalanche, an electronic firecracker of ’80’s shoot ‘em up arcade sound effects and glitches. The next few tracks feature Ngunnawal/Canberra, Naarm/Melbourne and Warrang/Sydney based artists and altogether they are an eclectic mix of electronica of varying colours and textures highlighted by Grievous Assaku from Bacchus Harsh. Scraps, now based in Nipaluna/Hobart softens the mood with an ethereal piece before Aphir and Lack the Low from artist run collective Provenance lift the tempo and the intensity. The next several tracks tend toward the unsettling, riven with mania and paranoia which is broken by the hypnotic lo-fi rapping of Ali Wan Hill. The brilliant Querio Volar by neo-psychedelic duo The Omega Point, the sorrowful instrumental of Bantam by Haunts and the catharsis of Melanie Eden on End of Known are just some of the highlights on the back end. The album is expansive and heterogenous and a celebration of the diversity, quality and depth of innovation within the Australian underground music scene. It’s also unpredictable, and the outcome of the listening experience will depend on your willingness to take a trip and have your consciousness altered. Whatever your Collapse Theory, trust your psychedelic guide, Buchanan, embrace the pleasurable and surrender to the frightening.
Tristan Birrell, 4ZZZ
CityMag’s tenured cover star Travis Cook (also one half of Collarbones) recently released a frenetic, experimental heater on New Weird Australia’s Collapse Theories complication mixtape and we’re here for it. As the song ‘hell_2022’ slowly builds in a textural crescendo – with what sounds like never-ending fire alarms, rapid-fire glitch samples and perennial piano keys – you’re taken on a metaphysical journey. Whether that’s to the end of the night or the afterlife is up to you.
CityMag
