As important as it is to foreground the Tuareg/Nigerien heritage of Mdou Moctar’s scorching psychedelic rock, it’s just as important to note its connection to the American underground. After all, *Funeral for Justice* isn’t “folk music” in any touristic or anthropological sense, and it’s probably as (if not more) likely to appeal to fans of strictly American weirdos like Ty Segall or Thee Oh Sees as anything out of West Africa. Still, anyone unfamiliar with the stutter-step rhythm of Tuareg music should visit “Imajighen” and the lullaby-like hush of “Modern Slaves” immediately, and it pleases the heart to imagine a borderless future in which moody teenage guitarists might study stuff like “Sousoume Tamacheq” the way Moctar himself studied Eddie Van Halen. As with 2021’s breakthrough *Afrique Victime*, the intensity is astonishing, the sustain hypnotic, and the combination of the two an experience most listeners probably haven’t had before.
Pond’s natural penchant for bombast made the Perth quintet perennial candidates for turning in a double album, and this 10th LP finally makes it happen. *Stung!* plays like a robust showreel of everything the band does so well, from the glam flourishes of “(I’m) Stung” and Day-Glo bluster of “Neon River” to the tight, Prince-ly funk of “So Lo” and Beach Boys-esque harmonies and hues of “Last Elvis.” Sudden scene changes are always a given with Pond: Observe how the dank drum-fills and Sabbath-style vocal effects of “Black Lung” lead right to the understated quietude of “Sunrise for the Lonely.” Through it all, singer/guitarist Nick Allbrook leads the chameleonic efforts of multi-instrumentalists Jay Watson, Jamie Terry, Joe Ryan, and James Ireland on an extended roller coaster of contrasts. Packing the most disparate elements into a single sitting is “Edge of the World Pt. 3,” an eight-minute odyssey featuring dreamy flute and sax from guest Thea Woodward and a monster guitar solo by Dungen’s Reine Fiske. And yet Allbrook’s coolly charismatic stewardship keeps the album feeling more coherent than chaotic, right up until the well-earned comedown of the closing ballad, “Fell From Grace With the Sea.”
++++ Please Note ++++ This is for digital purchase only, physical copies are available via Rocket Recordings website: rocketrecordings.com ________________________________________________________ The Ouroboros - the icon of the snake or dragon eating its own tail - appears to some a statement of the brutality of nature. To others of a Gnostic disposition it symbolises the duality of the divine and earthly in mankind. But most commonly, it’s taken simply to mean the endless cycles of death and rebirth that characterise life on this planet. As such, it’s an image that looms large in the world of Goat, the ever-mysterious and endlessly revivifying collective whose latest album marks another adventure above and beyond this particular plane of reality. This may be a band that has named albums both Requiem and Oh Death, yet this eponymous salvo proves yet again that transcendence and metamorphosis are their watchwords. Following on from the uncharted territory of the soul-searching and folk-tinged Medicine and the dark, atmospheric soundtrack to Shane Meadows’ The Gallows Pole, Goat sees this ever-unpredictable outfit summoning rhythmically-driven rituals in unmistakable, uplifting and scintillating style, equally adept at igniting dancefloors and expanding minds. Whilst this particular mercurial incarnation summons the party dimensions from which we were first introduced to this band well over a decade ago, it also possesses no shortage of curveballs and curiosity. ‘One More Death’ and ‘Goatbrain’ are spectacular curtain-raisers, embodying a hedonistic spirit driven by incisive funk and possessed by merciless fuzz/wah-drenched guitar. Yet if these and the filthy, swaggering groove of ‘Dollar Bill’ mark familiar territory for Goat devotees of old, ‘Fools Journey’ is just the first of several journeys into the beyond - a blissful drifting meditation infused with free jazz and shamanic overtones which bears the hallmarks of their concurrent project Djinn. True to the notion of this band effortlessly straddling past, present and future, ‘Frisco Beaver’ - another irresistible party-starter powered by insistent guitar filigree and percussion-driven trance-states - is a literal sequel to ‘Disco Fever’ from 2012’s World Music. Yet elsewhere Goat can happily look towards new horizons and come back with some of the most righteous vibrations they’ve yet delivered. The band’s love of hip hop is the fuel for both the rollicking ceremonial throwdown ‘Zombie’ and the end-credits-epic album closer ‘Ouroboros’ which marries infectious chant to breathless Lalo Schifrin-style breakbeat action. And which also means ultimately, like the titular oldest allegorical symbol in alchemy, we’re right back where we started. As Brad Dourif’s character Hazel Moates intones in the 1979 movie Wiseblood “Where you come from is gone; where you thought you were going weren’t never there. And where you are ain’t no good unless you can get away from it”; in Goat’s eternal now of renewal and revelation, there’s never been a more potent means of escape.
“We made this album in probably the busiest time in our lives,” King Stingray guitarist Roy Kellaway tells Apple Music. Indeed, the relentless touring the band embarked on following the success of their 2022 self-titled debut impacted its follow-up in several ways. Logistically, it meant they were having to seize studio time between gigs, booking local studios in whatever part of Australia they happened to find themselves in. Thematically, its influence was also profound. “A lot of the songs have a philosophical sentiment about life,” says Kellaway. “There are some introspective themes where we’re thinking about what’s passing by and what’s happening around us in this busy time, trying to process that.” The rush of the past few years, and appreciation of simple living during such a hectic period, is invoked in “Soon As” and “What’s the Hurry?” while “Southerly” harks nostalgically back to their roots in the Northern Territory, “when we were just a couple of kids, with a couple of big ideas.” As with King Stingray’s debut, the lyrics are split between English and the ancestral Yolŋu language of vocalist Yirrŋa Yunupiŋu and guitarist Dimathaya Burarrwanga, only this time the choruses are sung entirely in English to make them more inclusive, particularly in the live space. The band also continues to incorporate the ancient Indigenous tradition of manikay (song/songlines) into their spirited indie rock, lending each track myriad thematic nuances. “A lot of our songs have a sentiment that extends in more than one meaning, and that’s pretty characteristic of Yolŋu culture and the many layers of meaning behind Yolŋu Matha,” says Kellaway, referring to the collection of languages spoken by the Yolŋu people of northeast Arnhem Land. Here, the guitarist, songwriter, and producer unravels some of those layers, track by track. **“Light Up the Path”** “We were like, ‘Let’s start this new album with a song that feels King Sting-like, but then it has some newer moments that maybe people haven’t heard before.’ The sentiment for ‘Light Up’ is about seizing the moment, so that’s why we wanted to crack in with a bit of a belter to begin with. It felt like a nice one to start with.” **“Best Bits”** “It’s about all the best bits of life poured into one moment, and it’s inspired by a particular moment in time where we had a day that just had all the right ingredients: friends, family, good weather, sunshine, and you’re with your loved ones and you’re in a beautiful place where Mother Earth is turning it on. I guess it’s about simple living in a complex digital world; sometimes all the best bits are already around us, we just need to recognize them.” **“Southerly”** “We’ve been musos for years, but it was quite a quick turnaround from putting out our first song to having fans. We just found ourselves thinking about how nothing’s changed—we’re still the same people, we’re still mates having fun playing music. The only thing that’s different is that there’s lots more people listening to us. We come from pretty humble beginnings and we’d never forget our roots and who we are. Integrity is really important for us.” **“Lookin’ Out”** “It’s easy as humans to put a lot of pressure on making the right decision and navigating things in life. That song’s about being at peace with making the best decision you can. We love big things—the big sky and the big blue ocean—so we’re always marveling at the vastness of the world, and looking out into the big ocean creates a lot of feeling for us. Simple living is something we love.” **“Scoreboard”** “We hit the ground running with the record and wanted a bit of a breather. There’s some wonderful pedal steel guitar on there. We often play that live as an atmospheric part leading into ‘Lookin’ Out,’ but we decided to put it after ‘Lookin’ Out,’ this time as a breather.” **“Nostalgic”** “This was inspired by when we were in the US for South by Southwest in 2023. We had this beautiful home and we were staying up late because we were excited, telling stories. It’s that concept of reminiscing, but at the same time you’re making new memories.” **“Day Off”** “It’s about taking the day off. We’re calling in sick, we’re all going to have some fun and take the day off, and I’ve called your boss and got you one too, so let’s hang out together. Then the chorus opens up—‘picking up the keys to a better life’ is the line, and it’s just about perspective and having your priorities right, because there’s lots of distractions in life and it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important. We always want to be mindful that joy and happiness is really important for us as individuals.” **“Through the Trees”** “It’s inspired by a particular place in Arnhem Land—you come up this big sand dune and you get to the top and you can see this big canopy of trees, almost like a tunnel, and through the trees the deep blue sea is straight in front of you. It’s about not wasting time and seizing the moment. The traditional songline sung in the bridge is an ancient melody, and that humming sound is the sound of a bee, where an old man’s walking through the bush, and he’s following the sound of a bee and it’s guiding him towards the light, towards people and community. ‘Through the Trees’ has got that multilayered meaning.” **“Soon As”** “It’s about coming back home. It’s a big relief. This album is explaining our journey over the last few years. We’ve covered lots of places, and this one’s about getting both feet on the ground, back on Country, wherever that may be for you.” **“What’s the Hurry?”** “It’s about slowing down. We all come from small towns throughout Australia, and you come to the city and everyone’s in a rush, and we find ourselves in a rush as well. It’s also got a sustainability wink. ‘Can we tread light to sustain?’ is one of the lines in the chorus, and it’s talking about, can we tread a bit lighter on Earth to sustain our beautiful Mother Earth? It’s definitely on our mind because Yolŋu people see firsthand a lot of really bad environmental effects on the northeast coast.” **“Come to the Surface”** “It’s a bit ethereal. It’s about popping out from underneath the water and getting that fresh air hit you in the face. You’ve got that big sort of relieving moment.” **“Cat 5 (Cyclone)”** “This one’s got a multi meaning. On the surface, it’s a love song—life might feel a bit chaotic sometimes, it can feel a bit like a cyclone, but when you’re with that special person, you look into their eyes and you see a blue sky up ahead. We grew up in the tropics, so we’re used to cyclones, and we used to always get the cyclone warnings show up on the TV. In the chorus where it says, ‘you know I’m trying/To pick up the signs,’ that’s the warning signs of the cyclone coming. We never got frightened of them as kids, we’d surf in the cyclone. It’s part of living in the Top End.”
“The last four months of his life there, when we just had the room just about finished and he came in, it was like a rocket ship,” fabled producer and recording engineer Eddie Kramer tells Apple Music. “The speed at which he was working was incredible.” Before it was a New York City landmark (and a reliable place for paparazzi to stake out glimpses of Taylor Swift coming in to record or attend weddings), Electric Lady Studios on Eighth Street in Manhattan was Jimi Hendrix’s dream. At the height of his fame, the guitarist envisioned a home base in his adopted city that could also be a club, then pivoted to making it a studio—designed by and for him and suited to his insatiable need to create at all hours. “The goal,” Kramer says, “was to make this wonderful place for him where he could relax and not feel pressured about the time that was being spent there, and knowing that we got his back.” The tragedy was that Hendrix only had a few months to enjoy the fruits of his work: The studio became operational in late April 1970 and he died on September 18, 1970. But the time he did spend there was productive, yielding material that wound up on the posthumously released 1971 albums *The Cry of Love* and *Rainbow Bridge*. The 39-track box set *Electric Lady Studios: A Jimi Hendrix Vision*, released in October 2024, gives a unique perspective on that short but critical time. Kramer, who was at Hendrix’s side for all these recordings, considers this to be a document not only of Hendrix’s boundless energy, but the special place that captured it. “We\'d get those phone calls: ‘Hey, man, those doors, can you give me some round holes in the door? I\'d like more round windows, man,\'” Kramer recalls. “We came up with this idea that all the carpet around the perimeter of the room was white, and that spaceship ceiling was filled with multiple lights. Jimi would say to me, ‘Hey, man, give me some purple. Make some green. Yeah, maybe some red,’ and we would just play with the colors. This affected your brain and your ability to create and get in the mood. I don\'t know any studio that had a theater lighting system; it just never had been done before.” Kramer was among the few trusted confidants tasked with building the studio while Hendrix was busy touring the world and funneling the proceeds into the project. “’69 was a crazy year, not only for Jimi, but for me and a lot of people,” he recalls. “He was going from studio to studio because he wanted to jam. In the few months leading up to the opening, he\'d call me up, ‘Hey, man, is it ready? Can I come in yet?’ ‘No, Jimi, we\'re this close.’” The first thing Hendrix and Kramer did once the studio was finally up and running was dig into the tapes Hendrix had in storage. “We spent the first couple of weeks going through every one of those tapes and compiling and putting aside what we were going to work on,” Kramer says. “Most of that is the 39 songs that you hear. Some of them are duplicates, of course, but the idea here was to show his music that was going to be *The Cry of Love*, which was supposed to be a double album, to show the growth of that material. You hear the looseness and you hear the tightness, you hear the music shifting left and right and finally making it up to that penultimate take where it\'s like, ‘Oh, my god, that\'s so cool,’ and you can\'t help but being swept up in this enormous hurricane of creativity.” After Hendrix’s untimely passing at just 27, Kramer and the rest of the people at Electric Lady decided that he would have wanted the studio to continue, and it quickly became a destination for artists. But this collection—not the last of what’s in the vaults, to hear Kramer tell it—can only hint at the bigger and broader directions Hendrix was heading in. “Jimi wanted to put horns on,” he says. “He wanted strings, he wanted bigger orchestras, more percussion, et cetera. So he was thinking of music on a larger scale. Unfortunately, he didn\'t get to do that, but those tracks, I think, can show the joy that was in the room at the time.”
