Who said 13 is an unlucky number? Whoever it was has not taken the liberty of listening to The Hollerin’ Sluggers latest release, GYPSY MOJO. Unlike the Kardashians, there’s no filler here whatsoever, just good ol’ blues infused rock.
Train to Nowhere is somewhat reminiscent of a Bad Company number that they never got around to either record or write! The Hollerin’ Sluggers know how to construct a song and deliver it powerfully without going overboard; no false economies here and there is no sight of a synth (fortunately) anywhere. This is ballsy music made for all to enjoy. True music as the maestros of this genre performed back in the heady days of the 70’s.
‘Shut Up And Dance’ is a song for our times with powerful lyrics and revivalist rock that sets The Hollerin’ Sluggers apart from others; take in that percussion and listen to those guitars inter-weaving with the vocals, outstanding!
That harp on ‘Hush Hoggies’ would not be amiss on an early Yardbirds’ track, but the guys have, again, made this their very own and the guitar work that follows would easily please the likes of Mick Taylor. Harp The Hollerin’ Sloggers Sing!
The other tracks are of the same high standard, so listen out for that acoustic guitar playing and you’ll know that this is a band that has no bounds.
Many might aspire to such a recording, but they would have had to be highly disciplined and dedicated musos to come out with anything like this. This is an album of musical intuitiveness and not one of contrivance.
Grab this album while you can and in years to come you can tell your grandchildren how real music sounded!
 
Tony Bates
Uncut and Unsigned
3MDR.com 97.1 FM

Scotty Mac is not a brand of raincoat but is a relatively new brand in the world of Australian Music and I have witnessed his work progress over the years.
I can sit back now and feel amazed at the way Scott has mastered so many different instruments and the way he has taken to song writing; he is one of those people who totally immerses himself in his work-plays hard and gigs hard too.
Complicated Generation has some very mature lyrics and is a dissertation upon current ‘youth’, almost article like but the music carries it through to make it a song of our times. Scott’s music has that uncanny ability to include a retro feel but is totally modern; a sound many others might well aspire too.
On listening to Out In The Rain one could almost imagine that this could have been an early Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam song as it has that same continuing story within it and the bass line plays along beautifully adding an additional dimension to a song that deserves wider attention and appreciation.
Scott’s music is also very visual and conjures up images of his lyrical content and there are not many up and coming or even established musos who have that ability. I forecast a bright future for Scott and wish him well on his journey-one that is only just starting but he is already well ahead of many of his contemporaries.
Song writing is not easy these days for independent musos, as there is so much competition and one needs that certain edge to get ahead of the crowd. Scott’s music has the ability to do this and when one considers that these are home recordings imagine how a full studio production could alter these numbers. So if there are any producers out there looking for some hit material, go knocking on Scott’s door before others beat you there!
Tony Bates
Uncut and Unsigned
www.3MDR.com

I LEFT MY HEART IN AFRICA is Seraya Young’s latest musical journey which started with THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER and the intervening years have seen more releases and more musical inventiveness.
I Left My Heart in Africa is not a diary of a time lost nor of regret, but it does have an inner message not only for Seraya, but for us the listeners too.
‘Peace, Love and Understanding’ starts off with some haunting chords and then goes electro with a lyrical visit to the past; a very personal visit but one that is relevant to us all and if you have (still) the inner hippy in you, this track will resonate, especially in these current troubled times. Words and lyrics have a power of their own and by taking in songs such as this we could all become better people…..but then that is, perhaps, the inner hippy in me.
‘Let’s Go Retro’ starts off with both the music and Seraya singing straight at you from the moment the track starts. We all, at times, tend to look back and whilst this track relates to that it brings the present very much into context too. There’s a great musical mix going on in the background and the groove is there to get you moving, perhaps involuntarily so!
By bringing C-FO Bailey onto ‘Sista Earth’, Seraya adds a different dimension to her song writing and performance. He endorses the message within the song, but the song, whilst being totally apolitical pleads with us all to respect our only planet. There is no preaching or threat here, purely common sense : ‘We CAN turn this ship around’ sings Seraya and if it fails to move you I suggest you take a few moments out and listen to the track again later on. This could be the ‘protest’ song that our times need and I hope that Seraya’s lyrics catch on and make one think.
Having read all of the above, do not fall into the trap of thinking that this is hippy clap-trap or leftist propaganda; this is music with a message at its best and we can enjoy it all the more so for being brutally honest as well as it being open to one’s own interpretation.
Seraya started off as a Singer/Songwriter in the alt folk genre and despite the use of technology on these tracks, this EP is still a measurable form of folk music as it carries a tale with it. The bards of yesteryear would be proud to see that their means of carrying messages to distant people and villages is alive and well in the hands of Seraya.
 
 
Tony Bates
Uncut and Unsigned
3MDR.com

DUSKEN LIGHTS
IN THE SERVICE OF SPRING

Phoenix like, Dusken Lights have arisen from the ashes of two well remembered (for all the right reasons) bands, being The Cannanes and Rabbits Wedding.
Paul O Watling has gathered his cohorts together and Francesca Bussey, Philip Rawlinson and Alex Salter are now Dusken Lights, a band full of lush harmonies, rich production and sometimes dark meanderings.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, there are no fillers on this album – not a cavity in sight!
Opening with Superman, Wondergirl the band have performed a track that Simon and Garfunkle would have been proud to have recorded back in those heady days of folk, folk rock and all of its sideshoots. To place the band in the indie/alternative folk genre is a bit of a misnomer as this band are purely expanding folk as many have done before, except they are taking it further; folk, like the English language, is an ever evolving entity and Dusken Lights are proving to be maestros within this field.
Immerse yourself in the lyrical content of IN THE SERVICE OF SPRING and let the melody flow around you; Sun Above might seem dark, but it is not bleak, a mistake often made by other composers. It is musically tight and full of sound phraseology.
Mother Nature Wants Him Dead is, in its own way, a protest song but does not immediately hit you as one; ‘Now the wind carries a message-mother nature wants him dead’; beautifully phrased, immaculately sung and played with a message for us all. Minstrels of olden days often carried songs around the country with them, full of stories such as this and more; these are tales we should all listen to, but will we?
Dusken Lights traverse the folk field and follow in the steps of Guthrie, Seeger, Baez, Pentangle, Dylan and Donovan gradually moving and nudging the genre into new areas; areas that we might seem familiar with but which upon listening are new, exciting and poignantly relevant.
There’s more, but you need to purchase this album now and it does not matter if you are not a folk aficionado as Dusken Lights will aurally accompany you into realms anew.
Tony Bates
Uncut and Unsigned
Wwww.3MDR.com

Oh…the youth of today. They hang around in shopping malls, in city squares, they’re disrespectful and what’s more……..

So, let me start by saying what this band does not represent :

Indie-Landfill

Bubblegum

Elevator muzak

Washing Machine Gludge.

When I first received an EP from these guys, I took no notice of anything related to their age, at that time, and just listened. I took me a further two takes to really get into the music as I could not believe what I had initially heard, which is somewhat unusual for me.

On the band’s Facebook page the description is given as follows:  ‘Just an Australian teenage rock grunge band...’ 

Not so – please remove, re-phrase that.  Pour quoi? The answer is that this band has talent, tightness and teenage years on their side. The lyrical writings/musings of Harry Wall are outstanding and show a deep understanding of a craft that has been in the making for far more years than he has been on this planet. Add to this his own vocals and guitar playing and interlace that with the vox and drumming of Connor, the bass playing of AJ and the finely tuned guitar playing of Angus and one has a band that is tighter than a fully pieced together jigsaw.

Am I being ageist in this review, just because they are young? No

Take a listen to tracks such as ALIBI and look back to the angst years of one Kurt Cobain, drift into LIGHTHOUSE (the title track) and hear the tightness of that rhythm section and take in the lyrics, next visit SO YOUNG, breath in that intro guitar, await the opening vocal and then try to imagine how The Doors and Jim Morrison could well have taken this track and made it one of their own.

The Brandy Project is a bunch of young guys who have found one another at the right time and place; their interpretations of Harry’s musical abilities are amazing and these guys should really be out there.

Due to some ridiculous legislation, The Brandy Project cannot play at over 18s only gigs as their average age is solely 15. Wake up, take this band on, give them a little bit of grooming, some specialised production and reap the rewards. There has to be a PR Agent out there who can see the not so latent talent that is there and who can get the band the gigs they truly deserve; they’d blow the arse off many an older established band anytime and under any circumstances!

https://www.facebook.com/TheBrandyProject

https://www.triplejunearthed.com/artist/brandy-project

Tony Bates-Uncut and Unsigned- www.3MDR.com

Review by Tony Bates
Under the name of ‘Samsara Sun’, Dan Licht is about to release an album aptly titled: White Soul, Black Hearts.

Samsara Sun is not out to compromise ideals or to comfort you and the poetry used throughout is meaningful, cinematic and straight in your face. If you could imagine the writings of Jim Morrison, James Taylor and Nick Cave being poured into a mixing bowl with extra emotion and a lesson for all added gently and not subtly,  this is that album. It has been gently stirred by a tsunami of thought.

It is a tale of deeds mis-done, adventures mistakenly undertaken, people overcome, rituals questioned and beliefs hammered into the ground.

Whilst the album is, undoubtedly, dark and moody it is neither disingenuous nor disengaging; to an extent it is a modern take on the ‘dreamtime’.

Musically the bass flows mellifluously throughout and is beautifully played giving extra depth to the rhythm section, with meaningful almost pleading vocals adding angst all of its own.

This is not an easy album but it is challenging, well produced and something to listen to over and over again to gain different perspectives. 

The first track (Fire On Water) is, to me, the most radio friendly and an excellent opener to the album as a whole; it sets the pace, colour, thrust and direction for the tracks to follow which could only have been written by someone with true insight into Australia at large.

There is a deep conscience at play here, one not normally found on many albums these days; in fact, there is a ‘concept’ behind this album which the listener interprets at his/her own discretion and timing.

The balance of all instruments is well managed throughout, whether it is keyboards, guitars, drums or other instrumentation and the background harmonies/vocals are placed exactly where they should be.

This is, to an extent, a musician’s album in which inner thoughts are shared openly and not randomly. Do not expect toe tapping rhythms but do expect to be challenged and pleased and left, hopefully, with a slight feeling of unease at man’s ineptitude on this planet.

Tony Bates. Uncut & Unsigned. www.3MDR.com 
______________________________________________________________
Dale Blair interviews musician Dan Licht
Dale Blair: I'm here with Dan Licht in the studios of 3MDR, and Dan has just produced a new album called White Soul Black Hearts under your pseudonym Samsara Sun. So tell us a bit about Samsara Sun, is it a collective, is it an individual? 

Dan Licht: It’s something in between, an umbrella that I can write and record under. Whether it's me or whether I get other people involved, but it's not a band with a fixed line-up. 

DB: I know the lyrics are integral to your story as part of the album and as an artist, but even if you take away the lyrics you’re left with this wonderful aural quality, a soundscape of music. This I think comes also from the other players on the album, they've added really nice tones and depth. 

A philosophy of mine, is that an album has to have a consistency, a feel about them, to resonate. This album really does have that. 

DL: I was definitely going for that, like the idea of the 1970's concept album. It’s a collection of songs where the themes, sounds and the styles overlap. 

DB: In regard to In The Final Hour, this really has a prog rock ballad feel about it in the latter part of that song as you get into the guitar solo. I was reminded of Kate Bush’s James and the Cold Gun, 

DL: That's interesting, I really love Kate Bush, I'm not actually familiar with that song. A lot of her best music is also very layered and textured.

DB: James and the Cold Gun was going to be the first single, but she insisted that it be Wuthering Heights.

And the other thing that comes through is your work with Dogma Free Gospel, your old gang. It’s got a little bit of that flavour, a bit of reggae and R'n'B.

DL: Yes, but it’s different too, as the DFG was a conventional band, with a conventional line up and instrumentation, but because of events that transpired, the band folded shortly after the release of the album. 

DB: I feel this comes through very strongly. The tragic death of your friend Darren Jones, who was in The DFG with you. 

DL: That is integral to the story. For a long time it was very difficult to talk about, not just for me but for others as well. 

DB: Certainly there's a wistfulness to some of these songs, a sadness about events, Fire On Water speaks about cultural insensitivity, which is a reoccurring theme, it comes up again in Two Worlds Two Hands. 

DL: And The Boat That We Built, which is a kind of elaborate metaphor, is drenched in loss. But I also tried to get a balance, for example the last verse of If I Only Could is very positive and affirming. 

DB: I described If I Only Could as gorgeous affirmation. 

DL: It's the last verse of the album, Don't be afraid of the storm, for it brings rain to the fields at dawn, and we will reap what we have sown, in the sun. I was fully aware of the emotionally charged and heavy nature of a lot of the songs, so at the same time, out of this tragedy and all the change that has come with that, I wanted it to acknowledge there is good. This, and The Boat That We Built allude to rebirth. 

DB: The Boat That We Built has a certain bleakness about it, you set off with your hopes and dreams, become marooned out on the ocean and you can't get back to shore, you don't know whats going on. It's a ship of lost dreams.

DL: I had a couple of ideas overlapping there. I was dealing with my own personal grief and the changes in my life, so on one level The Boat That We Built was a metaphor for my identity and the music I created with Darren, but there was also another element which I was thinking about concurrently. My Aunty Penny lived in a place in Newcastle, in the north of England called Walls End, named as such because when the Roman's built Hadrian's Wall, that is where the wall ended. It was a premier ship building city for many years. When I was 9 years old we stayed there, and out of the window in the room my brother & I shared you could see a few of the cranes, but 20 years earlier it had been very much more industrious and now it doesn't exist at all. Grief can have a strange effect on your thinking, and for whatever reason, during that period I did reflect back to being a boy and regressed to things that might be quite vague, relating to your childhood or whatever. So I suppose The Boat That We Built was an amalgam of that, drawing an analogy between my personal story with the demise of the ship building industry in the north of England. 

DB: It works on all those levels, so it can be quite concrete in some ways but it can be abstract as well. Following this song, which is great choice to finish the album, is If I Only Could.

DL: It was an afterthought actually, I had the other nine songs, and I went away to Gembrook Retreat with my partner Emma, where there's no electricity and we cooked on the fire. I was just sitting there playing my mandolin, singing some songs and I thought it might be nice to finish the record with a little mandolin song. I remembered an old song I'd written, If I Only Could. The original demo had quite a dirge like piano, but I picked up the tempo just a little and adapted it to mandolin, then sang the song in duet with my old singing partner from The DFG, Neesy Smith, and also added additional harmonies. Then my brother, Josh Licht, added the evocative Irish low whistle. It’s like the rest of the album takes you on a journey because it’s very layered and textured, but If I Only Could, being a simple folky, gospel type song, it has this rural bucolic feeling, that brings you back into your body. 

DB: That comes up in some other the other songs on the album, Natural World and In The Final Hour, both of which talk about the idea that modernity has made us lose our way a little bit. Then with the reference to passing through the storm, and coming out the other end with hope and we reap what we sow, so the songs on the album hang together really well.

DL: I’ve put a lot of time and thought into the songs that I eventually chose for the album as well as the running order. I wrote and recorded a whole bunch of other stuff concurrently and since, but sonically and thematically, the songs had to fit a certain mold to make it onto this record. 

DB: From inception to here, how long has it taken to put the album together? 

DL: It’s taken nearly 7 years to write and record, although not consecutively, there were two years in the middle when I didn’t even listen to it. Some crazy shit happened, and I just wasn’t in the frame of mind to keep working on it at that point. So it’s had a long and somewhat difficult gestation period. 

DB: Part of that difficulty would be losing friends like Darren Jones and Heath King, both of whom you’ve played music with, and Heath King actually features on this album.

DL: That’s exactly right, these things are sent to test us. For a while I just didn’t want to be reminded of it, I needed to let go. 

DB: Do you feel, in those personal terms, that the album was cathartic and allows you to move on? 

DL: Yeah, I think so now. 

DB:  Music For A Film Part 1, track 6 on the album, is an instrumental song with voice used as an instrument. What would the film be?   

DL: That’s a good question! To me it sounds like it could be preceding a battle scene or something, it’s a mixture of the cinematic and bombastic.  

DB: Two Worlds Two Hands spoke to me as a progression of Fire on Water, which is only 4 songs before it, although it’s also open in terms of how you would interpret that song. What is it actually about? 

DL:  Fire on Water alluded to a few different things and was perhaps more general, which I thought was more befitting of the opening track. Two Worlds Two Hands zooms in. It is the story of Jandamarra. He was a Bunuba man from the Kimberley in Western Australia. Paul Kelly also wrote a song about Jandamarra, and in his book How To Make Gravy he talks about how even though The Bunuba Resistance and The Kelly Gang were historically almost contemporaneous, everyone knows the story of Ned Kelly, but hardly anyone knows the story of Jandamarra and the Bunuba people. He was an aboriginal resistance fighter who'd moved between two worlds, he was a brilliant marksman and horseman, and had lived and assimilated into the white mans world. But events transpired where he  turned back to his people. He had a road to Damascus moment. So it's basically his story. Although in the end the lyrics came out much more ambiguous. 

DB: You don't even mention his name in the song, so the story is inferred.

DL: In the end I was happier with that ambiguity, as there are issues of cultural sensitivity. Being a white fella, I could allude to it, without being specific about it. It can also become broader in its meaning, but that was what it's about.

DB: Let's finish by talking about the title track, White Soul Black Heart, it bespeaks of a very personal battle with finding oneself and place after trauma. 

DL: Very much so, and I didn't so much as write it rather spewed it out. I put the music together with the view of putting a melody and lyrics over it. It was sitting round for a couple of months, so I just had the backing music, and nothing had really grabbed me and then one night, I think it was a New Year's Eve actually, and I was feeling quite lonely and something earlier in the week had upset me, and I really wan't travelling very well, as you can probably tell from the mood of the song, and I just had this idea, I wanted to get the spontaneity and urgency like a Pentecostal preacher, devoid of any religious connotations, but that really strident vocal. I thought if I wrote something down that would probably ruin it, so I had this backing track and I literally just plugged a microphone into the four track recorder and gave it a little bit of reverb, which was originally going to be a guide vocal and i pretty much didn't change it. This might be the only song where I've never written down any of the lyrics. I only wrote them out the other night to put on the website, after listening to it. It just came off the top of my head. 

3MDR Performer Subscriber Dan Licht is giving away 2 signed copies of his fantastic album, 'Samsara Sun - White Soul Black Hearts’ with limited edition, original lino-print artwork by local hills artist Jenny Mai Hall. To win yourself a copy, sign up to his mailing list by July 30th. Just follow this link
http://eepurl.com/bn0AqX   
www.danlicht.net

Dale Blair is an Australian author & broadcaster. 
www.openlibrary.com.au