THE EXPLODING UNIVERSE OF ED KUEPPER

Ladies and Gentlemen it’s time; introducing The Exploding Universe of Ed Kuepper, the first live band experience of Ed Kuepper’s solo material since 2009.

Featuring Ed’s legendary sparring partner Mark Dawson on drums, Sunnyboys bassist Peter Oxley plus celebrated pianist Alister Spence and brass maestro Eamon Dilworth, The Exploding Universe will tackle the best of Kuepper’s recent vinyl reissues Electrical Storm and the classic Honey Steel’s Gold this September. Tickets all shows on-sale June1st.

The reissues are the result of a deal Kuepper has struck with Melbourne based Remote Control records who have licensed the rights to all his post-Saints catalogue; Laughing Clowns, The Aints, 15 + studio solo albums and more which will see a select run of limited edition vinyl plus Kuepper’s long overdue catalogue addition to the digital realm.

“Friends, as you know, I’ve been full of happy announcements recently but announcing the shows I’ll be doing with this bunch of nifty musical dudes is one of my happiest. We’re going to be delving [as they say in rehearsals] into both the Honey Steel’s Gold and Electrical Storm albums, including some of the deeper cuts hardly heard since back in the day.  We’re also going to be hammering thru a fine selection of the many chart topping hits that have become associated with me.” – Ed Kuepper

Electrical Storm of course, was Kuepper’s first solo outing having spent the previous ten years spearheading two of Australia’s most pioneering and productive bands; The Saints and Laughing Clowns.

But with success largely eluding both those outfits Kuepper was resigned to retirement. Recently married though, and on his honeymoon he took an acoustic guitar and surprised even himself writing an album’s worth of material including some of his most enduring tracks Electrical Storm, Car Headlights and Master Of Twin Servants.

It was the beginning of a whole new phase for Kuepper that saw him become a leading drawcard across Australia’s burgeoning pub-scene of the 1980s and taking him ultimately to 1992’s ARIA-award winning Honey Steel’s Gold, an album that peaked at no.28 on the mainstream charts and which features his most well-known solo tracks Everything I’ve Got (Belongs to You) and The Way I Made You Feel. In 2010 Honey Steel’s Gold was even listed at no.50 in the book 100 Best Australian Albums joining an earlier work (I’m) Stranded by The Saints.

But the time of the Exploding Universe of Ed Kuepper is now. Joined by some of Australia’s most creative musicians the Exploding Universe aims to both recreate and expand on the original forms and presents something totally unique.

XYLOURIS WHITE

After recent appearances at the Tomorrow Festival in Shenzhen China and Big Ears in Knoxville USA, Melbourne-born duo Xylouris White tackle Australia next with a debut appearance at the Queenscliff Music Festival and a run of east coast dates. The dynamic duo; lute player George Xylouris and drummer Jim White, will also include Meeniyan, Hepburn Springs, Hobart, Wollongong and Canberra alongside big city plays in Sydney and Melbourne.

The tour comes off the back of 2023’s release The Forest in Me an instrumental album drawn from multiple sessions spawned across two continents; Jim in New York City and George in Crete and pulled together by non-performing band member Guy Picciotto. If previous albums drew critical appraise the response for this, their fifth album, has been exultant.

“I absolutely love The Forest in Me; it smacks of confidence and creativity and is happy to shift expectations and deliver a sound so different to previous albums while keeping its core structure of lute and drums present. Each song surprises and leaves you wanting more, and at thirty minutes long, it is just too tempting to spin the thing again. I’ve enjoyed this duo (trio?) since Goats came along in 2014, but this short, sharp and dynamic project is the one I’ve been waiting for.” – Folk Radio UK

“When locked in to Xylouris and White’s deeply connected sound, it can feel like great secrets are being offered up to the listener, but heard in passing it’s barely anything at all. What magic.” – The Wire

Live Xylouris White are an even more compelling entity. White; with a style that can sound like a full band one minute and something stark and beautiful the next and Xylouris; a self-taught master of the lute with a background in traditional Greek folk and weddings, parties, anything – master musicians both with a supernatural power to express themselves as one.

“Two seemingly unconnected musical traditions could appear, on paper at least, as somewhat contrived, but Xylouris and White’s never less than compelling chemistry was as symbiotic as calm and storm, and rang as true as the dawn chorus. As timeless too.” – The Thin Air

Don’t miss Xylouris White live this summer. Tickets for all shows on-sale now.

PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS


“Our touch points are Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Stooges – those sort of acts. And maybe Melvins. Bits of grunge thrown in there as well. Little shades of Nirvana here and there”.

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne band Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs will make their present felt this December with an appearance at the iconic Meredith Music Festival, as special guests of The Mark Of Cain and for headline shows of their own.

Formed in 2014 and with four albums to their name Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs have been slowing building their brand via those albums but more aggressively via a reputation for intense live shows. A pulsating blend of heavy riffs, swirling psychedelia and crushing volume that has seen them land festival spots on Levitation and SXSW (US), End Of the Road, Future Days, Raw Power and more while this October Pigs… will headline their biggest London show to date at the 2300 capacity Kentish Town Forum.

“When they started playing, the entire room shook and I felt my organs slowly making their way up to my esophagus. It was mesmerizing, violently loud, and so much fun. There was something so spellbinding about it, something that could only come from them and the genuine passion they played with.” – wnsradio.org

“in all honestly, I don’t think the smile left my face throughout the whole set, and although we’re only two months into the year, I’m already wondering who could possibly outdo this performance in 2023.” – re-sound.co.uk

Written in a week, their latest album 2023’s Land Of Sleeper has Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs finding a balance between the trademark Sabbath-like intensity of the live show and their experimental, free-form approach to songwriting – their 2017 debut album Feed the Rats featuring just three tracks over 37 mins  – and in the process, very much sounding like a band who are comfortable in their skin. It’s their most complete sounding album yet.

“They often embed their songs with the kind of efficiency you hear in the best pop music: Gaps between vocal lines are filled with mini-riffs, melodic hooks overlap to save space, and the immaculate production submerges nothing. This is an H. R. Giger painting of an album: all muscular, misshapen forms that look all the more strange—and perhaps even a little beautiful—the closer you look.” – Pitchfork

And the name? “it just came from a list of really preposterous band names, and we stuck with that one (laughs). We never thought we’d be where we are now, touring the States and things. We just thought we’d play a couple of daft shows in Newcastle and that would be that. But it kind of has really snowballed.”

Don’t miss the sound of your summer Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs live this December. All shows on-sale now.

THE MARK OF CAIN

“The record is UN-BELIEVABLE. It’s just one of the best things I have ever heard. I’m so proud to be involved.” – Henry Rollins

In 1995, The Mark Of Cain released their breakthrough album Ill At Ease. 28 years later and 20 years since its last physical release, Cooking Vinyl Australia are proud to announce the first-ever vinyl release for this seminal album.

Produced by Henry Rollins, a fan since his own band played with TMOC in 1992, and featuring the singles First Time. LMA & Tell Me plus crowd favourites Interloper, The Contender and Pointman Ill At Ease took the bands trademark brutal bass-heavy sound and lyrical themes of isolation to new terrain as they made the leap from relative obscurity in hometown Adelaide to the main stages of legendary festivals including the Big Day Out, Brisbane’s Livid Festival and Homebake.

“Ill At Ease was the qualitative statement for The Mark of Cain, describing the exigencies of life based on personal and also vicarious experience. Some called it a great “break-up” album, others “A low budget Gone with the Wind” (Rollins). There’s a little truth in both those statements, but mainly it was also a way to wrap my own interests in outsider and anti-hero literature into an aural landscape.” – John Scott

“What’s good about them is their precision, the real stripped-down ferocity. It’s a pared down, stripped back, gleaming EVIL MACHINE!” – Henry Rollins

And where previously the band had found their musical output at odds with prevailing trends Ill At Ease suddenly found them in sync, finding parallel and sympathy with bands like Fugazi, The Jesus Lizard and Helmet leading to radio support from national broadcaster Triple J and TV appearances via Recovery, Channel V and Rage.

The follow-up release, an inspired album of remixes entitled Rock ’n Roll captured another element of The Mark Of Cain, their endless groove, which led to reworkings of album tracks from dance-pioneer Paul Mac, dub warriors Biftek, industrial champions Franz Treichler (The Young Gods) & Justin Broadrick (Godflesh) and more. Paul Mac’s reworked The Contender was even issued as 12” white label and featured regularly on the Big Brother TV show as the exit music

A cover of the track Degenerate Boy from Australian band X produced by Nick Launay (Nick Cave, PiL) for the Australian film Idiot Box rounded out two years of intense recording and touring activity for the band which by the time of the digital take-over saw Ill At Ease racking up sales just shy of 30,000

All these and more are included in the remastered 2023 vinyl edition Ill At Ease. Available on gun-metal vinyl in a limited-edition gatefold sleeve complete with lyric insert and five bonus tracks.

And to celebrate the release The Mark Of Cain will tour, playing the album in its entirety for the first time, across all states this November-January.

But wait! That’s not all; a companion piece Livid Live ’96, the complete thirty-minute set from Brisbane’s 1996 Livid Festival, has been remixed by ABC engineer Phil McKellar and will be made available as a stand-alone album on blood red vinyl.

Ill At Ease and Livid Live ‘96 are to be released October 27th through Cooking Vinyl Australia and available for pre-order now from tmoc.com.au

ILL AT EASE – Deluxe Edition

Limited Edition – Full Remastered – Deluxe 2LP
Embossed Gatefold Sleeve, Gun Metal Grey Vinyl.
Cat# CVLP138

Side 1.
1. Interloper
2. Hindsight
3. First Time
4. Remember Me

Side 2.
1. Pointman
2. Details *
3. Walk Away

Side 3.
1. You Let Me Down
2. Tell Me
3. The Contender
4. LMA

Side 4.
1. Degenerate Boy *
2. Hindsight (alt. version) *
3. The Contender (Mac mix) *
4. Interloper (Who Made Who mix) *

* Bonus tracks.

LIVID LIVE ‘96
Limited Edition – Blood Red Vinyl
Cat# CVLP142

Side 1.
1. Interloper
2. You Are Alone
3. Tell Me

Side 2.
1. LMA
2. The Contender
3. First Time

ASTEROID EKOSYSTEM

Back from the realms of deepest, darkest outer-space Asteroid Ekosystem, Australia’s most dynamic improv-group, return with their only Australian show for 2023 and a brand new live album.

Recorded during a 4-week Sydney residency Nov-Dec 2022 Live at The Great Club, highlights the wondrous interplay between four amazing musicians; pianist Alister Spence, bassist Lloyd Swanton, drummer Toby Hall and guitarist Ed Kuepper as they weave their way around live highlights from 2020’s eponymous debut and two brand new originals.

“Forget the sky; the cosmos is the limit!”

“Set the controls for the heart of the Sun!”

To celebrate the release Asteroid Ekosystem return to Sydney’s The Great Club on October 21st for their only Australian appearance this year playing two sets in a show that is not to be missed. Tickets on-sale now!

Live at The Great Club will be made available in a limited vinyl and is available immediately via https://alisterspence.bandcamp.com/ and select stores.

BUILT TO SPILL

Seven years on from their glorious Golden Plains debut Built to Spill return to Australia as special guests for Melbourne’s inaugural Eighty-Six Festival.

The ever evolving line-up of BTS will this time feature founding member, principal songwriter, singer and guitarist Doug Martsch plus Melanie Radford (bass) and drummer Teresa Esguerra, the same line-up as featured on the band’s new album When the Wind Forgets Your Name, their first for indie-giant Subpop.

“With When the Wind Forgets Your Name Martsch and Built to Spill have delivered a late career stunner that easily equals their best work.” – All Music

“Whether it was the Brazilian inspiration, Covid isolation, or just plain time for another solid BtS record, Martsch and company deliver.” – Glide

“One of the States’ great indie rock institutions” – Mojo

“As Martsch would perform his wizardry on any given song, Radford and Esguerra would look across the stage at one another and, in a symbol of organic musical bliss, they’d let out screams or hysterics, and Doug every so often would glance a warm expression of his own, a sign of approval for these two outstanding musicians.” – Park Lifedc

“Not many bands sound as good live as they do on their album. However, Built to spill is that rare jewel that sounds amazing in album and in concert.” – Amazon

Live at Golden Plains 2016
Live in 2022

Tickets on-sale May 18th.