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Interview with Sundr for Beat Magazine

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Extremely rare Fender custom shop guitar. Only one in Australia 👌🏽

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Alithia

Travel opens our eyes to new ideas and ways of thinking. Different cultures with different sights, smells, and sounds shape the way we think and create.

Melbourne’s Alithia are explorers: a quintet of musicians plucked from different corners of the globe. They know the impact a city rich in culture and history has on an artist’s creative output, which is why they decided to record their second album in Athens. “We did the first album in Budapest,” says bassist Tibor Gede. “You’re breathing different air, you’re eating different food, and shitting different shit. It had such a massive impact on us because we weren’t in our normal lives and we wanted to go through that again. “Budapest and Athens are cities with incredible architecture, history, and culture. Being immersed in that is inspirational and it does have a big impact on the mood of an album.” Alithia spent 18 months writing and three weeks recording the follow-up to their 2014 debut To the Edge of Time. Gede says he’s proud of the new album, which was written as a five-piece and has a greater focus on melody and groove compared to their debut. He’s also incredibly grateful of the band’s fans, whose crowdfunding efforts helped pay for a portion of the album’s recording costs. Nevertheless, studio time is expensive, which meant Alithia stuck to a tight budget while in Athens.

“We had a ridiculously cheap apartment that we found out was in the most dangerous district in the whole country,” says Gede. “It was a district where the police don’t enter. They’d have riot police on the borders and there’d be male prostitutes in the main square offering sex for two Euros. There was one time where someone got stabbed around the corner and we had to call the police. There’s also the “white light” district, which is where all the sex slavery occurs. It’s full on.” Apart from the “dodgy district” where they stayed, the band’s stint in Athens was an overall positive one. They recorded the album with the assistance of producer Dániel Sándor, who encouraged the band to constantly rework and restructure their new material. Melding elements of prog rock, psychedelia and metal, the band are self-dubbed purveyors of astral spacecore. “Astral spacecore represents the sense of the unlimited,” says Gede. “It’s about exploring everything you never thought you could explore. It’s about going through all the unlimited possibilities in your mind and not caring about the status quo. We want to create music that expands who we are both creatively and musically.”

Read the rest here

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Neurosis, The Croxton, 18.02.17

California’s Neurosis have nurtured their ear-splitting noise for over 30 years, gradually transitioning from roots in hardcore punk to the complex post metal beast they’re now recognised as. They’ve crept along the murky outskirts of the heavy music spectrum with a sound too challenging for mainstream ears. 2016 birthed their eleventh studio album, Fires Within Fires, which saw the band continue to mould monolithic slabs of drone into beautiful slow burners. On record, Neurosis are imposing– but live, they completely engulf. With an international act so high in calibre, it could be difficult to find an opener that carried the same weight. However, from the moment Dispossessed exploded upon the stage, it was clear the right choice had been made. The three-piece encompassed a sound that ascended beyond their members, with each hard hit driving home a snarl of discontent and a refusal to be silenced. It’s impossible to talk about Dispossessed without acknowledging the wider narrative that surrounds them, and all of us. As a stoic and unflinching indigenous collective, Disposssed are far from just a noisy punk band to idly enjoy. Vocalist and guitarist Birrugan Dunn-Velasco interrupted the thrashing set abruptly, and addressed the bloody means by which this land was stolen. With words that spat and bristled, he compelled the audience to shut the fuck up, relinquish their complacency and look inside their minds. The crowd was left to consider themselves in earnest, before Dispossessed tore through the remainder of their set and left the stage in silence. Keeping the lineup short but sweet, Neurosis then stepped up to the plate. For two hours, they painted the belly of the Croxton with their signature post metal, smearing suffocating pitch-black doom against moments of shimmering ambience. Even with sound-cancelling earplugs in, they were simply overwhelming at times – not My Bloody Valentine Tinnitus-for-life loud, but getting close. Nevertheless, the deafening volume aided the emotional weight of the whole experience: tonight’s crowd wasn’t there for the usual metal bravado and tomfoolery – this was a show focused on shared cathartic release. Vocalists Scott Kelly and Steve Von Till’s harrowing screams and caustic riffs crashed like waves over the bodies of A Shadow Memory and Bending Light. During those fleeting moments of respite, keyboardist Noah Landis amplified the eeriness with textural overlays that served to complement the chaos.

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Trash Talk, The Toff, 12.01.17

The Toff was packed tighter than a can of John West sardines before Californian hardcore punks Trash Talk hit the stage. Word of the free show had gone viral and every hardcore kid and his dog had squeezed into the modestly sized venue the instant doors opened. Beers were chugged and beads of sweat rolled down necks as punters grew impatient lingering in the sticky humidity. Trash Talk were scheduled to start at 10, but emerged closer to 10:30 to a roar of applause and fist pumps. A fashionably late entrance was followed by a blistering start. Heavily tattooed and shaggy haired vocalist Lee Spielman cast a piercing glare into the crowd as he ordered punters to lose their collective shit, which they did, in chaotic unison. Pint glasses smashed as bodies were hurled in all directions in front of the stage. You were instantly covered in sweat – but most likely not your own. “I’m impressed you managed to break the stage barrier within two songs,” quipped Spielman.

Read the rest here

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Every Tuesday night should involve @going_swimming. Oh, and @horacebones too, especially when they bring Underworld covers 🙌🏽

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@caligulashorse's owning their headline slot at @progfest_ last night 🤘🏽#Progfest #caligulashorse (at Corner Hotel)

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@neobliviscarisofficial delivering the heavies last night 🤘🏽@wildthingpresents (at 170 Russell)

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at State Library of Victoria

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x3 🌭 (at Smythes Creek, Victoria, Australia)

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Here’s an ambient song I wrote in Garageband. I hope you like it.

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Thanks to everyone that came out early to see us play last night. Means the world to me. You're a bunch of grade-A legends 🙌🏽 (at Grace Darling Hotel)

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Getting turnt on a school night because #kaytranada is in town 🙌🏽

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no sign of Robert Del Naja though 🚫 (at The Art Of Banksy Melbourne)

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chats with Dave from Tasmania's finest, @psycroptic_official, in this week's issue of Beat 🤘🏽

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at Archibald Prize Exhibition Ballarat Art Gallery