The Rectifiers and The Sun Blindness

Sensory Projects, the excellent independent Melbourne label, has been busy releasing two of the most interesting and satisfying local releases of the year so far. The Rectifiers new long-player Playtime for John Mountain finds the band at their most confident and articulate, shedding most of the alt-country baggage (much like Wilco before them) and further embracing the more experimental and widescreen-pop vision started with their prevoius effort Wear The Weight of the Resting Sky.

The record, like the most recent by Clue to Kalo, can be thought of as a 'concept' album, as the band told Mess and Noise:

“We wanted it to be kind of pastoral,” says Jo, “it’s sort of about nature and we also wanted to find new topics and things to write songs about, lyrically. So we ended up creating a really bizarre little set of characters and fed that into the album so there’s recurring themes and characters and stuff like that, and none of it really makes sense.” Says Nick, “We were trying to sort of, almost do a children’s album, just happy, not about ourselves. We didn’t want to say, ‘I’m so sad’ or whatever. Taking it completely out of that singer-songwriter kind of confessional. So the way that we approached was just by creating scenarios and little stories and that’s why it was fun because we’d just sit here drinking beers and just going, this song, what’s this song about – well obviously it’s about a dog with a blue nose. And none of that ever gets to the final kind of cut, but just the process was like you know just completely surreal and ridiculous.” full article

Playtime for John Mountain is being launched by The Rectifiers tomorrow night (Friday 19th September) at The Northcote Social Club. More details on shows and links to tunes on their myspace.



Also coming out on Sensory Projects is the debut for local duo The Sun Blindness, which is a more psychadelic, shoegazery affair. Think Spacemen 3 or the woozy, acid tones of early Stone Roses. The guys launch their record at the Northcote Social Club on September 26. Check out some of their great tunes on myspace.