Slipstream

Gonna put out the washing in a minute...

Gonna put out the washing in a minute...

We're leaving. Again. Thought I would have mastered the art by now. But no.

Had lunch yesterday with Sallie B. and just felt like I was a whirlwind. Came in the door, threw the furniture about a bit in a torrent of quick catch up, and bustled out again within 30 minutes. Had tea yesterday with Maddy, Mindy and Hol's. Again, did feel a bit like the quick in-and-out, take-no-prisoners, bank-robber-type interaction rather than visitor. Everything turns into a swirl of colour and motion, some of it feels kind of stiff.

Gonna put the washing out in a minute...

The last week of being in a place is so hard. You have so much to do, and everyone, and I mean EVERYONE wants to catch up. People you haven't seen since Primary School come out of the wood work, acquaintances, avowed enemies, people you haven't even met, EVERYONE, I mean, EVERYONE. My sister suggested that maybe I should try just skipping town without telling anyone, but that would feel kind of cruel. But then again, catching up with people and being lame, tired and grumpy, is that any better?

Not sure.

OK, gonna put the washing out so I can actually explain how we got from there to here.

Right, washing out, next load on, where was I?

What happened was:

When we got back we said to people: "we don't plan to be here for long. We expect to move to Melbourne by September." Kerry and Dave (our repeat visitors in Japan and now good friends) had offered for us to crash at theirs when we moved over. However, their landlord had decided to start building something monstrous in their yard, so they decided they didn't want to live there anymore. So we suggested that we all go in on a share-house.

[I know, I know, shut up already... I haven't really enjoyed share-housing much in the past, but to get a foothold in a new town, I thought it'd be worth it, and who knows! It might be one of those terribly functional houses, like living with Emma and Adrian or something...]
Anyway, so Kerry and her sister Sarah (who will also be co-habiting with us) went house hunting. Found something they liked up in West Brun-ahs-wick. We popped in an application thinking "first application, probably won't be approved, but hey, you never try, you'll never know."

AND IT WAS APPROVED.

So then we were like: "Fuck! Better get cracking on the move, because otherwise we're paying rent on a house that we're not living in," and that's the kind of expense I can not afford.

So we called the removalist.

And the removalist took our stuff.

And we quit our jobs (effective tomorrow).

And we packed our car.

And on Monday we get on the boat.

While all of this has been going on, we've played a fairly big show with Psycroptic, Astriaal and Lacerta. It was a pretty good gig. I didn't feel that great about my performance. I was a bit sloppy, kinda overwhelmed by it all. We didn't get to sound-check (why is it always us that gets skipped in the soundcheck?) I mean, we brought the evil, but I would have liked to feel like I planted both of my feet in the landing a bit more, if you get my drift. Anyway, more people got to see us than at the gigs that we played before (metal shows are awesome) and there were quite a few people who came up and said "nice drums" so to all those people, hey, thanks... but I'm usually actually better than that!

Everything has a momentum about it at the moment. We're about to take off again (and after everyone was saying that the Hobart-gravity would catch us and we'd get stuck here again), the band has got some cool shows coming up (managed to wrangle that Zeni Geva support I've been angling for), and signed to Moribund (oh, yeah!), and we're finishing up these stupid jobs we've been stuck in Hobart (don't want to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I think I might be a touch overqualified for Admin Assistant/Reception roles). So over it. Ready for the next adventure. Cock the hammer, and... FIRE!

And so, here we are. Might vacuum the house now.

You can build so much momentum in your life, and you can feel so much inertia at times, and there was a moment there where maybe we might have not just packed up and left again. I mean, I love living in the bush, and I love the air down here. But I don't think I'm ready to admit defeat yet, and coming back to Tassie always feels a bit like back to square one. I didn't go all that way just to come back here! At least, not yet I haven't! Right now I feel like I'm being pulled out of here on the tide, caught in the slipstream of my own life. It's kinda cool, and kinda scary, but definitely feels like I'm getting some kind of direction happening here...

No Routine

It’s quite hard when you have no routine to find time to do things like update your blog. I apologise. It really has been a huge upheaval. We both have had our moments where we have struggled with our Return to Oz. Much like the “Journey of the Magi” - everything was as we remembered it, but somehow ineffably not. Part of going overseas and living abroad is that you end up with a set of experiences. These experiences are valuable, but cannot have a dollar value assigned to them. The more that you see, the less content one feels at home. Tom said to me once, “I wish I’d never gone away at all sometimes.” As we watch people in their twenties locked into permanent jobs paying off mortgages, whilst we are admin temping and living in the houses of our relatives and friends, I have questioned why we have ended up here. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I was never going to be one of those people who comfortably slips into a public service job straight after uni. I chose my destiny because that destiny was not mine. When life serves you lemons, export them to Japan for a handsome profit.

So, since arriving back in Australia in late April, we visited Jonathan and Denise in Sydney. Sydney is an amazing city. I love the surf beaches. The actual city itself has lovely historic quarters, and a recently rejuvenated rail network. So my overall affection for the place has increased in recent visits. I also had the pleasure of spending a night with my Aunt Mary and Uncle Rodney, both of whom are always fun to hang out with. Like most cities, money is required if one expects to enjoy one’s self, and being newly broke after living it up in our last three weeks in Japan, it felt a little like standing on the outside looking in.



From Sydney we flew to Hobart, into the waiting arms of our families. My mother put us up for the first couple of weeks. My brother put us in his shed for a couple. Then we came into this housesit at Pete and Shirley’s house in Kaoota. Two springy spaniels and wide-open spaces. Staying here really made us question whether we would like to stay in Tasmania. In Tasmania, we could have a bush house. We could make a racket and be outside of earshot of the nearest neighbours. But as always, in Tasmania, we could be stuck in temporary and contract jobs forever, and be paid half as much for the same work in Melbourne. In the end, the employment situation forced our hand. We have to leave again.

When I said I have had no routine, it’s not entirely true. I have had a routine that doesn’t involve being on the computer quite so much. Monday to Friday I’ve been working at the Public Trustee as an admin/shit-kicker. It’s a fine job, not challenging, but I do feel like I’m making a difference. It does require early starts and commuting. But I’m home by 6pm most nights, and still able to assemble dinner. On Saturdays I take the dogs for a big run down the hill. Then we water the plants. I do the shopping for the week. I take Tom for a drive. Do the washing. Play some drums. I like this life. I could definitely handle it being mine…

On the musical side of things, slowly but surely, a little bit of buzz is starting to pick up around the Away from the Haunts of Men release. I don’t expect that it will be an overnight success, but I do think it will sell out its run of 500. We had our first interview the other day in a blog called “Lurker.” The questions were mostly of a philosophical bent, which was an interesting challenge. I don’t really have a philosophical outlook that is set in stone, and it definitely doesn’t come from my university studies or sit neatly in some kind of “ism”. It sits somewhere between “try your best” and “don’t be an arsehole.” On a personal level, I am totally into the idea of progress, and bettering yourself, but on a political angle, I think the modernist project was an abject failure, and we are stranded here in a world governed in the “least worst” way possible. As a species, on our current trajectory, I don’t see any possible future beyond total annihilation on a planetary level at some point in the future. I despise the “green gestures of a dying planet – an endless debate only to be too late!” (Jaz Coleman) We talk the talk, but to actually curb our population and find some kind of balance to allow us to live in harmony with nature is beyond our ability. I find it deeply ironic that the first world might wipe itself out with its gluttony and over-abundance before the third world is wiped out by disease and famine. With medical science we cling to our lives for longer and longer. Be at one with nature! Surrender your resources! Compost! Go laughing into the abyss… don’t be an arsehole.

Easy to say. Harder to live.

We’ve played a couple of shows. First show home was really good. Tom and I were focused and fierce. The second show we recruited our old and good friend Leigh Ritson to play bass. The show was with KKNull, which is the name that Kazuyuki Kishino from Zeni Geva uses for his solo work. We picked Kazuyuki up from the airport, took him for a sandwich at Pete and Shirl’s house (I thought he’d like the opportunity to play with the dogs – turned out he’d been staying with a Jack Russell terrier in Melbourne!) and then got told off by the venue for picking him up. Apparently it is in a written contract that the venue owner picks up the talent from the airport. The venue-owner went to the airport (late, mind you) and of course, couldn’t find Kazuyuki. He knew that we were friends/fans of Kazuyuki’s, and could have let us know, but the same could be said that we could have let him know that we were going to get him from the airport too. I don’t expect Kazuyuki to pour though an English language contract and understand it all. Either way, we played the show on Friday, were asleep by 5am Saturday, we dropped Kazuyuki back to the airport at 9am and loaded out at 4pm. Bloody knackered, I was. And I wasn’t quite so convinced of our performance. Kazuyuki’s set was really interesting. He’s moved beyond solo guitar improvisation (which is what he was doing the last couple of times he came to Hobart) and has now moved into a sample based exploration of found organic sounds and inorganic post-production. The result is extremely cerebral, a rush of rhythm and squalls of insect calls, bird sounds, water sounds. Perhaps it was a bit too cerebral for the punters at the Brisbane. Most of them didn’t seem to get it. Off the back of this experience though, Zeni Geva have been booked to play at the Brisbane on the 30th of September, and we’re currently pestering everyone to make sure we get the support.



The tracking for the second album Vermin to the Earth has now been finished. The raw tracks just sound massive. The arrangements and instrumentation sit somewhere between ABBA and Avsky. Words that spring to my mind are “virulent,” “misanthropic,” “catchy,” “hypnotic,” “abrasive,” and “listenable.” It’s a very strange combination of adjectives, but that’s where we’ve ended up. Like fish-hooks in the mind, riffs get stuck in your head like a Lady Gaga song, but with a much darker, scarier aesthetic. I think Vermin to the Earth will be an awesome album. But for now, it will have to wait to be mixed and mastered, and after the almost three fucking years of waiting for Away from the Haunts of Men to be finished, I know that for now, some patience is going to be required.

1. Vermin to the Earth
2. Plague of Man
3. Oblivion
4. Disease’s Maiming Caress
5. Mass Extinction
6. Ecstacy not of the Flesh
7. Vita Vacuous Voluntas
8. Meius Quietus Nex

It will probably take us another couple of years to write the next album. We’ve got a couple of very rough ideas for the Aokigahara Jukai EP that we’ve been planning. I’ve written some lyrics, started playing with some artwork ideas. We’re thinking that EP would be a nice piece to record ourselves, using our own equipment, and release on one of the smaller labels that showed interest in Away From the Haunts of Men but missed out.

Killmister’s getting those final vocals that it needed from Rachel, and so we should have the album finished before the end of August, when the recording deadline will suddenly be upon us. Arrgh! Am I about to embark on another journey into oblivion? Seems I am.

Funnily enough, I have amassed about 2/3rds of the Fryktelig Støy album about 8 years before I said I’d be finished. I think I will self-press a limited run at some point. Listening to it, it really has those feelings of desolation/oblivion that I’ve been wanting to capture. It’s a very personal project, that’s constantly been relegated to my second, third, forth priority, and so to have the end in sight is quite exciting.

1. Black Mass
2. Sutra
3. Horsemen
4. I’m Happy in this Cave, Thanks
5. Somnambulist
6. Awaiting a Public Hanging

Well, at least I’ve not been idle. Ha ha, like that’s ever going to happen. It’s funny. The busier I get, the more I manage to cram in, the more I’ve got going on, the more I get going on. I used to think I was busy when I was at Uni. Now I know I wasn’t even 2% busy!

That’s my Sunday lie in accounted for. Can’t even relax in bed without being a busy bee! I’d best put on the onions for the French onion soup I had planned for lunch with Sam and Jess, wash the car, that kind of malarkey. We’ve made some plans for moving in with Kerry and Dave in Melbourne. If that works out, it will be awesome sauce for all involved. Dave’s need for a house where we can make noise is as pressing as ours, and that should ensure that we all get a house that doesn’t suck. The future is always popping up in these blog posts, because we’re such compulsive planners. I’m always happiest when I’m booking in the next bunch of plans, making things happen.