The go-to man would be Mark Groves, who I'm sure is a member of this forum under some name or other. He helps run
Sabbatical, which puts on lots of gigs in Melbourne, including a lot of inter-state artists, and does a lot of travelling himself. He would have the best view of what's happening here. Last year Sabbatical put out a great double-cd box set compilation of Melbourne projects called "Knife Culture" which would be an excellent start for anyone interested, really nice packaging and everything.
I know little, I hardly ever go out and have few contacts, although I'm lucky to be living in the Melbourne area as there's always been a lot of activity here for Noise and related. The thing is, there isn't really a Noise/PE "scene", such as there seems to be in places in the US and Europe. Things are very mixed. There's always been a great deal of experimental, sound-art, improvisational material here. The
Make It Up Club, for example, has regular gigs every Tuesday night, for over a decade now, and everyone who's ever farted into a microphone has played there. It's an institution.
For some reason, we have a dearth of actual Power Electronics. I'm not sure why. Just about every other musical genre is pretty much ripped off and imitated here - Australians can be the most deplorable copy cats when it comes to music, and any other kind of culture really. Fortunately, what little PE there is here - basically Dead Boomers, Von Einem (both Groves projects, and I hope more people get a copy of Dead Boomers "The Pig In The Python" lp which came out this year, it's a pinnacle) and Ebola Disco who aren't playing much these days anyway - is pretty damn good. There seem to be a few Noise projects but not a lot of truly agro Harsh Noise, apart from Fuck, The Retarded Girl who plays traditional, cock-out, pedal-and-metal Noise. I also love the material that comes from
Magik Crowbar tapes, which is usually Tommy Gunn and whomever he's gotten stoned with and jammed with (don't worry, no hippy shit). Tommy's in touch with a few other local, small tape labels too.
Shame File released two excellent compilations called Artifacts which documents Australian experimental music from 1930 onwards, from academic composers to post-punk pub stuff. Clinton Green is definitely another contact one would want if you want to know more about abstract sound from here.
I think most people have heard of
Smell The Stench. Personally, I've fallen out with Leigh but admit he's still pretty active putting out shitty cdrs and tapes of pretty much everything he can get his hands on, particularly if it's Raw Black Metal/Black Noise related. Much of it is from overseas, though. The online section is handled in the US. The
interview I did with Leigh is still online, along with interviews of a few other locals. The information will be a little out-dated by now, but it might interest some - there's also a fair bit of live material as well.
Mostly, in Melbourne it's usually pretty smooth, abstracted material. Nothing wrong with that but unless there's been a big shift recently, not a great deal of rough stuff. I hope Mark can prove me wrong, though. One of the biggest issues is that because of geographics, it's very difficult for o.s. projects to come and play here. You'd think we'd be inundated with Japanoise due to the proximity but it's expensive for people to get here. We've hosted KKNull, Merzbow, Astro, Masonna and one or two others but to the best of my knowledge never The Incapacitants which is a crime. And of course it's near impossible for other nations to send their representatives for the most part. There was the International Noise Convention here last year (I think it was), Whitehouse played the What Is Music? festival a few years ago, Wolf Eyes have been here (of course), but a lot of the big names just can't get out here due to cost.
Yea, razorback pigs where introduced here along with a lot of other non-native animals and they've been wrecking havoc ever since, like the cain toads who will eventually become the master race and overthrow humanity - the US will have to negotiate having their military bases here with a bunch of poisonous frogs, which wouldn't be a great deal different from the politicians we have now. Although we're much prouder of our sharks, crocodiles, snakes and spiders. And alcoholism. We love drinking. The further north you go the higher the blood-alcohol content reading gets. In North Queensland they don't know that you can drink water at all.
