Sunday 10 June 2012

The Bites - I'm Not Coming Down video (2004)

This is a rather cool video of The Bites that our friend Simon Strong from Pink Stainless Tail shot at Melbourne's Tote Hotel in 2004. Kirsty had recently acquired a video camera and we thought it would be fun to get someone to shoot some footage of us, so we just handed the camera to Simon... little did we realise that this would not actually stop him from dancing. Either that, or he was trying to make some kind of artistic statement here. Or maybe he just had the shakes.

No matter, we really dug the result. Of course the sound sucked completely, so we used the studio version of I'm Not Coming Down. It doesn't sync up properly, but that makes it even better. Whenever I watch this, I start feeling seasick - but in a good way!

 

Sunday 27 May 2012

Scale Models - Scale Models (2012)




Scale Models formed in Melbourne some time during 2010. I had met guitarist Ross Adam at a show by a prog-rock band called Alexandria, for whom he was playing bass. We got to talking about music (as you do), and discovered that we were both interested in the same kind of jangly pop groups from the 1980s. Naturally, we decided to form a band.

We wanted to capture some of the shambolic energy and sugar rush of the early Flying Nun sound, the reckless abandon of The Wedding Present, as well as the muscular power pop of the likes of Guided By Voices. Of course the resulting songs sounded nothing like those inspirations, especially after we  roped in singer, lyricist and trumpet player Clare Hourigan (Go Spot Run, Hissy Fit) and drummer Danny Martinov (Dogs Of Thomas Park).

Clare added her darkly wistful take on romantic relationships to the mix, while Danny contributed a powerhouse rhythmic approach, which guaranteed that things never got too twee.

Scale Models started gigging as soon as we had a handful of songs. We were played a bunch of gigs, including some with musical heroes of mine, such as Robert Scott (The Bats, The Clean) and Harry Howard & The NDE. 

Engineer James Alexander Dean recorded eight of Scale Models’ songs at his home studio in the waning days of 2011, and we launched the resulting CD in February 2012. The hand-printed limited edition of 200 CDs is still available via mail order from Scale Models’ bandcamp page, for those who like to hold physical artefacts in their hands.

Clare’s recent move to Brisbane makes it a bit hard for us to play at the moment, so I’m glad this recording exists. It’s pretty polished-sounding, and my contributions to the songwriting definitely hark back to the style of The Bites and Hand Hell. Having spent the last few years immersed in more experimental ideas, it was fun to get back to writing 3 minute pop tunes, and I couldn’t think of a better bunch of people to do it with.

1. Standing Tall
2. This Is The Time
3. Hey You
4. Keeping Busy
5. Things That You Reject
6. 180 Degrees
7. Appearances
8. Midnight 

Saturday 26 May 2012

Lamefoot - Live At The Old Bar (2010-11)




Lamefoot resulted from jams I started having with my housemate Dannie ‘Bean’ Johnston during 2008. Initially we were a duo, with Bean on drums and myself on guitar. I’d known Bean since the late 90s, when I first shared a house with him and his sister Linda, whose bands Little Ugly Girls, The Dacios and Bulls remain among my all-time favourites.

Bean and I were both listening to a lot of Krautrock at the time. We were especially enthralled with the relentless motorik beat of Neu!, and sought to emulate this somehow. As a fan of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio (1977), and repetition in music in general, I could see the potential of just playing one chord, over and over, slowly building up intensity, but never “rocking out”, so to speak.

Eventually, Matt Bailey (ex-Paradise Motel) and Evan Purdey (Twin Vickers) joined on bass and electric organ respectively. That’s the line-up that appears on the recording made at Melbourne’s Old Bar (my home away from home) on 24 July 2010.

Soon after, when Evan decided to travel overseas for an extended period, Lisa McKinney took over organ duties. As a solo improviser under the name Mystic Eyes, and a fellow devotee of Rhys Chatham, Lisa was perfect for the role, as can be heard on the track recorded in April 2011. 

Unfortunately, plans to have both organists perform at the same time never came to fruition. With Lisa moving to New York in 2012, this is now a remote possibility. Lamefoot is likely to make further sporadic live appearances in the future though.

1. 24 July 2010
2. 1 April 2011

Aktion Unit - Harsh Shit Reality (2008-11)




Dan Lewis and I formed Aktion Unit in 2007, with the intention of making loud, messy experimental noise music. I think we succeeded.

The music is always completely improvised, which is perfect, as we never have to rehearse, write songs, or even talk about what we are going to do on stage. This appeals to my sense of spontaneity and (more importantly) my laziness.

To keep things fresh, we usually invite guest musicians to play with us. Again, we don’t give them any instructions as to our game plan – there just isn’t one. Anything can happen, and it usually does. Depending on our mood and the circumstances of the performance (venue, crowd, other bands, sound facilities), Aktion Unit’s sound can range from “pretty” ambience to complete cacophony.

Dan is the master manipulator of gadgets, pedals, loops and keyboards, while I usually stick to bass or guitar. My approach to these instruments can be percussive and rhythmical, or as tools to create drones and textures. I tend not to use many effects though, preferring to use the sonic capabilities of the physical instrument and over-driven amplification.

Whenever possible, I’ll document our performances on a little digital recorder. Dan has put a lot of these recordings up on Aktion Unit’s blog. Occasionally, when we venture out on tour, we might burn a few CDs to sell, but never in huge numbers. Thus, our output and very existence as a group are kind of ephemeral – and we like it that way.

We like to confuse people. The name Aktion Unit deliberately references an American experimental outfit by the name of Dream/Aktion Unit, and of course, the title and graphics of our CD Harsh Shit Reality (2008) appropriate the classic noise-rock album Harsh 70s Reality by New Zealand band The Dead C.

This download compiles four performances that took place between 2008 and 2011, and feature some of our regular collaborators, such as Dimitra Bucolo (Aux Assembly), Matt Gleeson (The Stabs), Leith Thomas (Dead Boomers), and vocalist Daisy Buchanan. The four pieces go for around 15 minutes each, which is the average length of our shows, and are quite different to each other in mood and musical approach. 

1. Harsh Shit Reality
2. Angel Smear
3. Cardboard Crown
4. Nest Of Vipers 

Bad Cabin - Low Frequency (2007)




Bad Cabin’s music is an exercise in stark minimalism. Simone Marie and I were inspired by the harsh sounds of New York’s No Wave bands of the late 1970s, the stripped-back approach to songwriting of British post-punk, as well as the intensity of Tasmanian groups like Sea Scouts.

Initially we started writing songs on guitar and a borrowed electric organ, but soon found that this set-up still sounded too conventionally tuneful. I swapped to bass, limiting my playing to two or three notes, repeated ad infinitum. Simone played a stand-up drum kit, consisting of snare, floor tom and one cymbal.

Her lyrics explored the darkness of the subconscious and this darkness became the essence of the group, as Simone developed her distinctive vocal approach. Bad Cabin was deliberately anti-melodic, reduced to splintered, brittle rhythms, low bass frequencies and melancholic cries.

Unfortunately we never got around to playing these songs in front of an audience. These rehearsal room recordings remain the only documentation of the set we had assembled. In a way their lo-fi primitivism suits the music perfectly though, sounding subterranean and forlorn. Music from a bad cabin, somewhere out in the woods.

1. Admire
2. Light Fun
3. Mess
4. Systems And Configurations
5. Silence
6. Low Frequency
7. Face Up In The Water
8. Teeth
9. Tunnel

Hand Hell - 3 Demos (2007)



Following the release of Phonography in 2006, Kirsty and I got the urge to play live again, so we recruited Ricky French to play drums with us. A bit of a multi-instrumentalist, this expatriate kiwi came to us via local outfit Actor/Model.

For the next couple of years, we played heaps of shows in Melbourne, building up a small, but enthusiastic following. We always figured that it was better to have a few people like our music a lot, rather than a lot of people liking it a bit.

During this incarnation of Hand Hell, we didn’t do much writing. I had become more interested in experimental music, despite still loving to play in a pop band. For some reason, our new ideas just didn’t gel that well. Only two new songs made it into the set, but we never got further than recording them as rough demo versions, before the group finally broke up. They’re cool songs though. 

'Scotland' of course is an old favourite, and the version here presents it in its most stripped-back form.

1. Amnesia Hotel
2. Northern Lights
3. Scotland

Hand Hell - Phonography (2006)




When Simon left The Bites in 2005, Kirsty and I were in a bit of a quandary. We had applied for an arts grant from the Australia Council, in order to finish our second album. Now we had no band and no album. The obvious solution was to start another band and write a new batch of tunes, to add to some songs we had been working on with The Bites, such as ‘I’m Unable’ and ‘Fashion’.

Hand Hell was conceived purely as a recording project, with Jen Tait from Go Genre Everything filling in on the kit on the occasion. Engineer Keith Urquhart set up a mobile studio in the Northcote warehouse space where I worked as a mosaic artist at the time.  We then played around with the resulting tracks for an eternity, adding and subtracting bits and pieces, and even constructing a new song, ‘Achtung! Hier Kommt Die USA’, from out-takes and jams.

‘Waste My Time’ remains the only cover version we ever recorded. It’s a song by The Darling Downs, a country music duo made up of Kim Salmon (Scientists, Surrealists etc) and Ron Peno (Died Pretty). It was hilarious trying to make sense of Ron’s lyrics. I don’t think he even knows what they are meant to be.

‘Boys At The Tech’ was built around a keyboard track I had recorded for my Charcoal side project. Zach from Go Genre added some great spooky guitar and Kirsty came up with a lyric and melody that took it somewhere completely different from the original.

‘Indian Summer’ features some super-heavy stoner rock guitar from Kirsty, while Jen pilfered a beat from Spinal Tap. See if you can pick it. Open to the idea of having her drum tracks deconstructed, on ‘Didn’t Even Blink’ we decided to put liberal amounts of distortion on Jen’s beats, while the rhythm track on ‘Scotland’ bears only a passing resemblance to what she actually played.

The latter song was one that Kirsty had been playing solo for years, but never successfully recorded. Listening to this version still gives me goosebumps, with its melancholic feel and percussive build-up. It’s in 5/4 timing, which gives it its strangely lurching rhythm.

As usual with our releases, we constructed the packaging ourselves. This one was particularly lavish, resembling a book cover, complete with cloth spine, origami CD pocket, screen-printed credits and black velvet insert. 

1.   One More Chance
2.   I'm Unable
3.   Smoke And Fire
4.   Rich Kids Know Shit
5.   F-F-Fashion 
6.   Indian Summer
7.   Achtung! Hier Kommt Die USA
8.   Boys At The Tech
9.   Deed
10. Didn't Even Blink
11. Waste My Time
12. Scotland

The Bites - Once Bitten (odds + ends 2002-05)




This compilation, exclusive to this blog, spans pretty much the entire history of The Bites. There are some of our earliest efforts, such as the NZ tour EP …over dusky sound (2002) and the B-sides to our single Fired (2003).

Also included are two duo tracks that Kirsty and I cut with Mike Brasell (of Michael J Hex and Hiss Explosion fame) at his studio upstairs at Arc Café in Dunedin in 2003. We still miss this genius, who sadly passed away a year later from pneumonia.

Then there are several versions of one of our favourite songs, ‘Adelaide’. Not only does Kirsty revisit her former home town, she also gives a mighty shout-out to one of our favourite South Australian bands, Hardy Coxon.

Some demos of songs that we were working on with Simon round out this package. ‘Fashion’ and ‘I’m Unable’ would later resurface in Hand Hell, but for some reason ‘Devious’ never made it out of the rehearsal room. A shame really, as it is a deviously catchy tune. I’d love to know what it might have turned into if we had kept working on it.

Then there are 5 live tracks recorded at our friend Daisy’s birthday party in a Brunswick warehouse. It’s not necessarily the best representation of our live sound, but it sure was a fun gig. 

1.   My Heart, Your Heart
2.   Summer Gnats
3.   Eno
4.   Etwas Neues
5.   Why Oh Why 
6.   Eno (demo)
7.   Mexican Wave (duo)
8.   The Day We Lost Fitzroy (duo)
9.   Adelaide (live-to-air)
10. Adelaide (4-track)
11. Fashion (demo)
12. I'm Unable (demo)
13. Devious (demo)
14. Live at Daisy's Party - 5 songs (2005)

The Bites - This Is A Full Stop (2005)




We were feeling pretty feisty when we wrote these songs. There is a definite punk energy evident in  both content and delivery here. All three of us had grown up with an appreciation of the punk spirit of defiance, and somehow this informed this particular set of songs. The tunes got shorter, faster, tighter and more aggressive. Melody was never far from our hearts though.

‘This Is A False Alarm’ always makes me think of Magic Dirt, who Kirsty had played cello with. ‘Born Dirty’, on the other hand, recalls San Diego’s Hot Snakes, who we were all enamored with at the time. ‘Flavonoid’ and ‘Astronaut’ were examples of the kind of experiments we’d get up to in the rehearsal room, and possibly indicate a desire to move away from straight-ahead pop tunes.  

Sadly, we had all come to the conclusion that The Bites were coming to an end by the time we released this EP, which explains its somewhat fatalistic title. Simon was leaving, and Kirsty and I were ready to move on to new musical endeavours with Hand Hell. As the liner notes said: “it’s been fun, thank you and good night”

1. Heady Heady Heady
2. Born Dirty
3. I'm Not Coming Down 
4. This Is A False Alarm
5. One Million Miles
6. Flavonoid
7. Astronaut

The Bites - I'm Not Coming Down (2005)




2004 was a year of transition for The Bites. We lost Monika to Love Of Diagrams and Gen to Your Wedding Night, but we gained powerhouse drummer Simon Parker. Our first release as a 3-piece was the single I’m Not Coming Down. It was meant to be the taster for a full album on the Unstable Ape record label. ‘Eno’, from White Lines And Runways had been included on UA’s compilation Make Mixtapes Not War, and label head Tim Picone was keen to include us on his roster.

We had recently forked out a fair amount of cash to lay down tracks at Melbourne’s renowned Sing Sing studio (home to the likes of John Farnham, no less). Simon’s mate Jed was working there as an engineer and somehow managed to find time to record us during off-hours. Who were we to decline the offer?

‘I’m Not Coming Down’ is one of my favourite songs ever. Musically it’s deceptively simple. My lead guitar literally consists of two notes in the verses and three notes in the choruses. The genius lies in Kirsty’s lyric, which somehow (yet again) manages to make the personal universal. Kirsty’s writing straddles that fine line between being confessional and addressing greater truths through simple stories, told from a first-person perspective. Only she really knows what is heart-felt emotion and what is generalisation. All I know is that this song is brilliant.

Oh, and our friend Simon Strong shot a genius single-take video for this song at The Tote one night, somehow capturing the very essence of what The Bites were all about.

The funny thing about the 4-track demo version of ‘One Million Miles’ is that it almost sounds identical to the highly polished “proper” recording which was later included on This Is a Full Stop. It’s a testament to Kirsty’s skill in recording with the most lo-fi equipment. The same goes for ‘Helicopter’. This was a tune we kept in our repertoire for years, and even included in the Hand Hell live set later on. Despite being a home recording, this is the definitive version of this song.

1. I'm Not Coming Down
2. One Million Miles
3. Helicopter

The Bites - White Lines And Runways (2003)




This album features the classic four-piece line up of The Bites – Kirsty Stegwazi, René Schaefer, Gen Blackmore and Monika Fikerle. We recorded with Neil Thomason at his house in Reservoir, Melbourne, on reel-to-reel 8-track. It was quite difficult to accommodate all the instruments and vocal tracks on such a minimal set-up, but somehow we managed to get a decent mix.

I recall all three girls singing into the same microphone and everybody lending Neil a hand or two in mixing the resulting cacophony down. I actually loved the primitive technology, as it made us sound more or less like a live band in the studio. 


We’d been playing these songs for a while, and certain numbers, such as ‘Mexican Wave’ and ‘Lovesick Pilot’ got dropped from the repertoire pretty quickly after this recording. Funny, in retrospect those are some of my favourite Bites tunes.

‘Eno’ is a bona fide classic, with its ascending riff and duelling guitar lines. It’s the song that the audience kept calling out for at shows, right up until the end, but we never could make it work after parting with Gen. We revived it only once, when Kirsty and I played a duo reunion show in 2010.

White Lines And Runways came out of an atmosphere of liberation, after Melbourne’s live music scene had been dominated by shoegazey math rock bands for a few years. We deliberately embraced a messy, noisy aesthetic, which privileged fun over the chin-scratching pseudo-intellectualism that had been de rigeur. We rocked so hard that you can actually hear Kirsty breaking a string at the end of 'Masses'.

Kirsty came up with some of her most haunting lyrics on this album though, like the heart-achingly wistful ‘Desert Island’. It’s in waltz time, which makes it even more affecting. Her piano reprise at the close of the album still slays me every time.

The other curiosity is ‘Etwas Neues’, which is sung entirely in German. Having been taught the language by her Swiss grandmother, Kirsty thought that this move might enable us to find a foothold on the European touring circuit. Well, that never happened, but it still stands as a brilliant song. Her pronunciation is faultless, and the lyric references Slovenian post-modern industrial rockers Laibach. That’s pretty cool in my book.

1.   My Heart, Your Heart
2.   Nervous
3.   Etwas Neues
4.   Fired
5.   Summer Gnats
6.   Desert Island
7.   Mountains Call
8.   The Day We Lost Fitzroy
9.   Mexican Wave
10. Masses
11. Lovesick Pilot
12. Eno
13. Desert Island Piano

Friday 25 May 2012

Charcoal - Speechless (undated)








This one is a real curiosity. One day, while Kirsty was off on a NZ tour with Alastair Galbraith and Roy Montgomery, I plugged my guitar straight into her cassette 4-track recorder and pretty much wrote a song per day for the next 2 weeks.

These songs, informed by nostalgia, longing and unutterable sadness, have been festering away in my subconscious for years. Sometimes I can’t even believe that I wrote them. ‘Amongst The Soil’, for example, still kills me with its wistful melody and wonky beats, while the title track is a completely unguarded love song, which is really universal.

The influence of NZ artists like Galbraith, Robert Scott, Peter Jefferies and Australia’s own Chris Smith is pretty obvious on these songs. I hope they don’t come across as too derivative though. This is the only album I’ve ever created on which I played every single note. For this reason alone, Speechless occupies a special place in my heart.

1.   Charcoal
2.   Speechless #1
3.   I'll Set Fire
4.   Speechless #2
5.   On The Moon
6.   Speechless #3
7.   Ghosts
8.   Safe
9.   Turncoat
10. Thousandfold
11. Shortwave
12. Speechless #4
13. Amongst The Soil

Bruna - Lawns And Misfortune (2001)




Bruna’s final release was a bit of a mixed bag. These 5 songs were really nothing alike, mirroring the fragmentation of the group. Individually though, these were some of our best efforts. ‘The Last Time Billy Attacked Me’ was probably Scott’s most upbeat rock number, taking its cues from Guided By Voices, who get referred to in the lyric as “Shit Warmed Over”, following an infamous post-GBV-gig party at my house, that saw the band thoroughly disgrace themselves in many people’s eyes. The less said, the better.

‘Exile’ is probably the most epic song I’ve ever written. In retrospect, I feel that it’s got too many parts. Oh, well. ‘Thumb Index’, on the other hand, is a personal favourite. It’s got a great bent country feel, aided enormously by Savina Hopkins’ drumming. The whole tune doesn’t make sense technically, but it just fits together somehow. I vividly recollect recording this number in the house Scott and I shared opposite West Melbourne train station, wedged between a bikie pub, a brothel and a panel beater’s workshop. It’s the area referred to as “Little Detroit” on Pale Era.

1. Lawns And Misfortune
2. There's Nothing Here That I Can Live On
3. Exile
4. The Last Time Billy Attacked Me
5. The Complete Thumb Index Book Of Your Life; Reprint

Bruna - Pale Era (2000)




For a novice drummer, Gareth Edwards does an amazing job on this album. Scott’s cynicism and disenchantment with the incestuous local indie scene comes to the fore in many of the songs here, but tracks like ‘Palliative Care’, ‘My Kingdom For a Horse’ and ‘Way Behind’ resonate with universal human insights. There are no platitudes though – Scott’s turns of phrase are utterly unique and full of gallows humour. 

The album sounds like a band that is enjoying themselves, and the guitars sparkle in the way that we really wanted them to. It’s lush sounding, but not too “produced”. Neil Thomason adds some lovely slide to ‘Way Behind’, while Gareth’s wife Rachel and Kirsty Stegwazi contribute subtle touches of keyboard and cello.

We were really happy with this album, but our only review, in the local street press, was quite derogatory, accusing the band (quite disengenuously) of ripping off Lou Reed. Scott took this quite badly, and consequently retreated even further from what he saw as a fairly moribund local scene.

1.   The Hardest Working Girl In Rock And Roll
2.   Palliative Care
3.   White Walls
4.   Epilogue
5.   The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion
6.   My Kingdom For A Horse
7.   Doorlist Favourite
8.   Red Card
9.   Footlights
10. The Engine Rooms Are Hot
11. The Island Of Little Detroit Sinks
12. Way Behind


Bruna - Lumber (1999)




This album consists of pretty much every song Scott and I had written up to the point of recording. I remember that both Laura and I were incredibly tired and hung over when we went into Matt Hills’ studio. I had somehow tricked everybody, including engineer Neil Thomason, into believing that these were just going to be demos, so we just plowed through the songs. All of them are first or second takes, with no overdubs, apart from the vocals. I love the rawness of this recording – it pretty much captures our live sound at the time, including the fuck-ups, shonky timing and conflicting styles.

A lot of people really love this album. I can see why, but I keep thinking we could have made it more consistent by leaving out a few songs. I won’t say which ones, though. Scott was in fine form with his writing here. ‘Silver Car’ is an absolute classic and makes the most of an odd time signature. ‘Fallen Arches’ sounds bizarrely prescient now, being concerned with ageing hipsters mourning for long-vanished music venues. With time, the songs predictions nearly all came true, yet at the time it all seemed so remote and impossible. Listen out for the drums, as Laura tries to figure out exactly how to count the beats. I still don’t know how we came up with that bizarre rhythm.

I sang four songs on this album, and I still cringe at every one of them. It’s not that they’re bad… I just hate the sound of my own voice. If nothing else, it makes for a diverse listening experience. 

Oh, and 'Where Did Richard Get That Jacket' is about Richard Hell, just so you know...

1.   TV vs The Turbulence Of Glass
2.   What You Can Bet On
3.   Where Did Richard Get That Jacket
4.   Silver Car
5.   Snow
6.   Paradise
7.   Fallen Arches
8.   High Risk
9.   Gifts From The Dead
10. Dance
11. Down
12. Windows Fill With Glass
13. Secret Bid
14. Ride-on Mower
15. Correct Height
16. Scale Model

ABOUT THIS BLOG

Hello.

I created this blog with the express purpose of documenting a few of the bands that I have played in over the years. All of the recordings I’m making available for free download here are no longer in print. In most cases, I only have one or two actual hard copies in my possession, so there is no point in contacting me about getting hold of Bruna’s Lawns and Misfortune EP, for example. If you actually own any of these recordings – more power to you!

None of the musicians involved in writing and recording these artefacts ever expected to make any money out of their creativity. It was (and remains) a labour of love, and I think it is high time that the fruits of this labour became available again to anyone dedicated enough to have tracked down this obscure blog. I sincerely hope you enjoy what you hear.

Cheers,
René Schaefer




A BIT OF HISTORY

As I said, I’ve been involved in making all of the records to be found here. Usually, that has been as guitarist, writer, and occasionally as singer. My singing sucks, but for some reason that hasn’t stopped me from dabbling. I’ve been very lucky in that I found other musicians, generally more skilled than I am, whose ideas I could feed off, and who were open to collaborations.

When my family arrived in Melbourne, Australia, from Germany in 1982, I was set on becoming a visual artist, but the isolation of the artist, locked away in a garret somewhere, has never appealed. Music provided a more direct form of communication and a way to find a community of like-minded misfits.

Not being naturally musically gifted, my earliest musical efforts were experiments with noise, primitive multi-tracking on modified tape decks, and chaotic improvisation. Back in 1986, my earliest group, The Grots, drew inspiration from the post-hardcore mess of Flipper, Butthole Surfers and No Wave. Distortion, atonality and repetition ruled. As an end in itself, noise was pretty cool, but I kept thinking how much better it would be to actually be able to write tunes.

In the mid-1990s, following a few more or less humiliating gigs with a shambolic instrumental jam band by the name of Driveway (which included my friends Scott Robinson and Michael Foster), I decided to get serious about songwriting, and within a few months I had filled up about 25 cassette tapes with embryonic catchy dumb songs. From messy beginnings, this learning process soon led me to a more minimal and restrained approach to music.

Around 1997, Scott and I started collaborating on the first set of songs for our new band Bruna. Scott’s darkly depressed lyricism instantly appealed to me, and I found it easy to enhance his strumming with skeletal melodies. I roped in Laura MacFarlane, who was playing in Ninetynine, and had previously drummed in US riot grrrl band Sleater Kinney. She stuck around long enough to drum on our debut album Lumber (1999). 

Bruna was quite a prolific live band at the time, carving out a niche in Melbourne’s then-bourgeoning slow-core indie scene. Sharing a house with Scott meant that we had plenty of time to kick around ideas and write songs. When Laura left the band, we immediately drafted in Sandro frontman Gareth Edwards, who shared our morose sensibilities and had recently decided to teach himself how to drum. 



This line-up is documented on the second Bruna album Pale Era (2000), recorded by Nick Carroll in a squalid and claustrophobic house in North Melbourne. It sounds like a million bucks though. Unfortunately, following the Lawns And Misfortune EP in 2001, Bruna began to run out of steam. Maybe the formula we had developed had reached its limit, or maybe Scott and I were moving in different musical directions… who knows?

I guess it didn’t help that I had fallen in love with Kirsty Stegwazi, a wonderful and prolific songwriter, who had not only been a member of Adelaide’s fabled feral pirate punks The Bedridden, and had recorded several astonishing solo releases, but had guested on about a million different indie records throughout the 1990s.

It took us a while to overcome our shyness and start playing music together, both afraid that we might not actually click in the band room. We needn’t have worried though – the magic was palpable instantly. Following on from our first song, ‘Mexican Wave’, we pretty much wrote the bulk of The Bites debut album White Lines And Runways (2003) in a few frenzied weeks.  



With Gen Blackmore (ex-Radius) adding a third guitar, and occasional vocals and song ideas, The Bites quickly turned into a non-stop rock party monster. Monika Fikerle (ex-Sea Scouts) replaced original drummer Ieuan Weinman quite early on and added some serious thump to the Bites sound.

Things weren’t all smooth sailing though, and following a somewhat gruelling (but also amazingly fun) tour of New Zealand, and the recording and release of the album, the band began to fragment. First Monika left to join Love Of Diagrams, to be replaced by equally dexterous sticksman Simon Parker. Soon after, we parted with Gen, which left The Bites to carry on as a trio.

Phase 2 of the Bites was by no means a lesser entity though, as evidenced by recordings from this period. If anything, the sound became tighter and more propulsive, inspiring some spirited dancing and sing-alongs at our shows. The promise of a record deal with legendary local indie label Unstable Ape prompted us to splurge on recording time at the ritzy Sing Sing studio to achieve a more polished sound. Ironically, Australia’s national youth broadcaster TripleJ still rejected our single I’m Not Coming Down (2005) as being too lo-fi.



Ultimately, offers to play with other bands lured Simon away from The Bites, and his departure pretty much spelled the end of the band. We self-released half of the unfinished second album as the This Is A Full Stop. EP (2005), but both Kirsty and I had no desire to re-learn the same old songs with yet another new band member, leaving several new songs un-documented.

Instead, we decided to start from scratch, under the new name of Hand Hell. The idea was not to revisit the past (although we freely pilfered from its vaults). Having already been approved for an Australia Council grant to finish The Bites’ album, we wangled it so that this money could actually finance a whole new record. Songwriting had never been a problem for us, so the material once again came together in record time, old and new songs blending into a seamless whole.

Our friend Jen Tait (Go Genre Everything) became the latest amazing drummer to lend her DNA to one of our projects. The understanding was that she would strictly be a hired hand for the album sessions, which took place at the warehouse/studio where I worked as a mosaic artist at the time. Recording was a breeze, but the process of mixing with engineer Keith Urquhart became quite drawn-out and tiring.

Still, we were thrilled with the results. So much so, in fact, that our little recording project was soon translated into a live band, with the help of expatriate kiwi drummer Ricky French (Actor/Model). Despite a lack of new songs written over the next two years, Hand Hell built up quite a following amongst Melbourne’s indie cognoscenti. An enthusiastic fanbase wasn’t enough to keep us going though. 



Maybe I’d just had my fill of concise 3 minute pop songs for the time being. Instead, I became increasingly engrossed in the experimental noise scene, which seemed to offer a lot more freedom and sonic possibilities. With Dan Lewis, I started Aktion Unit in 2007, which quickly became my main musical outlet.

Aktion Unit never practised, and we never played for longer than 20 minutes. We didn’t even discuss what we were going to do before getting up on stage. This embracing of chance and chaos extended to us inviting guest musicians to perform with us, with no instructions, or indication of what we were going to do. 



In the spirit of spontaneity, our releases were recorded live and subsequently put on our blog. Occasionally, when touring interstate, or in New Zealand, we might burn a handful of CDRs to sell at the merch desk. I guess our most successful release was Harsh Shit Reality (2008), which affectionately parodied The Dead C’s Harsh 70s Reality, in both content and appearance.

With Kirsty now living in rural NSW, I continued to immerse myself in other musical projects, such as the post-punk duo Bad Cabin (with singer/drummer Simone Marie) and the Krautrock band Lamefoot, alongside my old housemate Dannie ‘Bean’ Johnston (Little Ugly Girls, The Dacios, Bulls) on drums, Matt Bailey (ex-Paradise Motel) on bass, and Evan Purdey (Twin Vickers) and Lisa McKinney (Mystic Eyes) taking turns on droney vintage organs. 



All this improvising kept me contented for a while, but a chance encounter with Ross Adam, at a gig in 2010, got me excited about playing fast, jangly power-pop again. I think it was a common appreciation of The Wedding Present, actually, that made us decide to have an informal jam at Ross’s house. Soon we had ideas for a bunch of songs, but seeing that neither of us wanted to write lyrics or sing, I called up Clare Hourigan and posed that age-old question: “Do you want to be in a band?”



Well, she did, and Scale Models was born (the name, of course, comes from an old Bruna song). Drummer Danny Martinov was a long-time fan of The Bites and Hand Hell, so there wasn’t really any doubt as to the stylistic direction of this band. We wrote just enough songs to make up our self-titled album (2012), and then promptly went on hiatus following its release, because Clare moved to Brisbane for work.

Which brings us pretty much up to date (May 2012)…

I’m going to keep adding music, images and information to this blog as I go, so keep your eyes open for new stuff, old stuff, weird stuff and irrelevant stuff.

Bye for now!

René