While in theory, compilations could be awesome extravaganzas of musical celebration and/or perform the role of a valuable document, most often, the process of forming and promoting a compilation is treacherous and usually doomed to failure either on an artistic or commercial level. There are scant few that dodge the many, many obstacles of this process – and those that do usually fall into the ‘valuable document’ category. Those that can fuse both can be geographically and stylistically specific, without the kind of predictable homogeneity that may draw comparisons to anthologies of genre writing. In the best case, a compilation logs the most thrilling elements of the many Venn diagrams that exist throughout musical scenes in the world, and somehow traverse their inexplicable width.
Broadcaster, writer and arts administrator Stu Buchanan has had a significant role in shaping some of the more off-kilter elements of Sydney’s music scene. Primarily, this has involved his programming of daytime shows Fat Planet and Disorient on the independent FBi Radio station. The New Weird Australia disc marks the beginning of a new radio show of entirely Australian music.
New Weird Australia’s success comes from the fact that it doesn’t limit itself to genre distinction. The interactions between these musicians work in more subtle ways – there’s a certain individualism to the way most of the musicians on this compilation define their media. Anonymeye, for example, offsets the organicism of open tuned, fingerpicked steel string acoustic guitar with a very frank use of synthesizers and laptop processing – the medium is the arena by which Anonymeye asserts its identity, one which is particularly Australian in its approach.
At first I thought that, as usual, it was the lack of unity that was the downfall of this compilation, but ultimately, there’s enough awesome tracks to make up for this – and an apt enough programming of them. However, the genre-hopping is ultimately what’s most strong and defining in both the concept of New Weird Australia and its practice. Indeed, it’s the mysterious eclecticism of Australia’s experimental scene that’s defined it in many ways, whether for the better or worse. Here, long-serving sound art genius Pimmon’s “On the Other Hand This Carbon Fire is (Flammable)” sits strangely well against the mind-bending postmodern cut-n-paste-ism of Clingtone, or the beautifully assembled dancefloor minimalism of Telafonica, among a plethora of other seemingly incongruous combinations.
What makes this compilation worth checking out is its endless surprises. Even from those artist one may be familiar with, there’s a certain flippant character to the way their respective forms have been played on for the purpose of fulfilling the compilation’s brief. All in all, Stu Buchanan’s covered a variety of material that fulfils the brief of a compilation better than most others I’ve ever encountered – I can’t imagine any more apt a way to expose the strange and wonderful sounds that are currently making waves in Australia’s experimental and electronic scenes. Well worth the listen.
-Marcus Whale