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

Download Hand Hell - Phonography

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)

Download The Bites - Once Bitten (2002-05)

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

Download The Bites –This Is A Full Stop.

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

Download The Bites - I'm Not Coming Down

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

Download The Bites - White Lines And Runways

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

Download Charcoal - Speechless

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

Download Bruna - Lawns And Misfortune