Innholdsfortegnelse for Vol. 125 i Australian Guitar

Not only is Dumb Days a fantastic slab of rock tunes in its own right, but the debut album from Perth quartet Tired Lion is also one of those paradoxical gems that feel delightfully familiar – it’s slathered in the kind of ‘90s grunge vibes we’d spend our childhoods foaming at the mouth over – whilst remaining stupendously fresh and exciting. It’s the huge, chantable choruses that find themselves stuck in your head for weeks on end; the ripping guitar lines and that tiiiiiny bit of Violent Soho-ish edge that comes courtesy of the album being produced by their frontman, Luke Boerdam. The band are currently gearing up to take Dumb Days on its second full run across the country: a regional stint taking them from Bunbury to Launceston and…

“IN A WORLD OF DECADENT ROCK‘N’ROLL SUPERSTARS JUMPING FROM THE STAGE TO THE COVERS OF MAGAZINES, HE WAS SUCH A NON-ROCKSTAR” The statement came through in the early hours of the morning of Sunday, November 19th 2017: “It is with deepest sorrow that we inform you of the death of Malcolm Young, beloved husband, father, grandfather and brother. Malcolm had been suffering from dementia for several years and passed away peacefully on Saturday with his family by his bedside.” The rock solid anchor of AC/DC from the get go – the man who co-wrote those indelible hits and created the AC/DC sound – had passed away aged 64, mere weeks after his big brother George. His death, though tragic, was no surprise: in April 2014, it was announced that Malcolm…

When The Easybeats were changing the face of Australian music, two people were paying especially close attention: George Young’s little brothers Malcolm and Angus. They witnessed the attention their sibling enjoyed from uniquely close quarters, since their house was occasionally under siege from fans – on one occasion, Angus even had to climb over the back fence to get into his own home after police assumed he was a fan and shooed him away – and presumably reached the same conclusion as generations of homely men before and since: “If I play the guitar, I will get attention from girls.” And it turned out they were good at playing guitar – very good, in fact. It came as a lovely surprise to George when he returned from the UK in…

A lot of folks don’t seem to know that the iconic Jackson Kelly shape has its roots in Australia. Long before Marty Friedman hoisted this formidable axe during his tenure in Megadeth, the Kelly was designed and named by guitarist Bradford Kelly, from Sydney metal band Heaven. You may have caught a snippet of them on ABC’s Countdown, and Bradford also used to play with Swanee. Heaven were influenced by AC/DC and Judas Priest, and recorded three albums. Bradford passed away in 2004 after a long illness. He was a great player, and his design tastes were obviously right on the money, because the Kelly has been one of those quintessential metal guitars for three decades. Far pointier and more aggressive than the Explorer that clearly influenced it, the Kelly…

It’s been really great to see the rise of Two-Notes Audio Engineering over the past few years. Their products are designed to help you get a great tone on recordings or through a PA system in a controllable, repeatable, easily transportable, low-weight format, whether it’s with their pedals like the Le Lead, or their active digital load boxes with cabinet impulse responses like the Torpedo Studio rack unit. The Torpedo Captor falls into its own little micro-category, functioning as a reactive load box like the Torpedo Studio, but without all the onboard digital stuff. It’s more like a little brother to the award-winning Torpedo Reload, which is a power attenuator, a multi-impedance loadbox, a DI and a re-amping box. SPEAKER DELUSIONS (IN A GOOD WAY) The idea is simple: plug…

As you listen to Canadian singer-songwriter Lindi Ortega’s discography, somewhat of a story arc appears. As a confessional songwriter, much of her music dwells very much on where her head is at during any particular era. On her recent EP, ‘Til The Going Gets Gone, Ortega wrestles with existential feelings – “Where do I belong in this industry? Do I belong in this industry?” Taken sequentially after the 2015 album Faded Gloryville – which features a title track about living on past achievements – the EP paints a picture of an artist struggling to balance her love of music with the realities of the music industry and the often painful experience of songwriting. And yet in the recording of that EP, a creative rebirth was happening. “A lot of change…

Look, this shouldn’t have worked. Midnight Oil’s reputation is based on the live energy of young, angry men with the power of decades of seven-nights-a-week gigging under their belts, mixing righteous passion with endless road miles and a sincere belief in the power of music to change the world. In 2017, however, all of the members are nearing retirement age. They haven’t played together in years and last toured almost two decades ago. Their music, as it turns out, has yet to have a transformative effect on Australia, much less the planet. Frontman Peter Garrett was the great towering hope of principled progress before becoming the much-compromised Environment Minister in the disappointing government of Kevin Rudd. And as the Australian leg of the Great Circle tour wound to a close,…

It’s September 2016, somewhere in a dim-lit Brisbane dive bar where an eight-piece iteration of West Thebarton Brothel Party are absolutely tearing the place to shreds. They’re spilling off a stage built to house acoustic acts, and while as tight as they can be with four guitarists in the mix, they breeze through their BIGSOUND showcase with a youthful, notably carefree stroke of looseness. Flash forward a year and some, and the Adelaidian garage-punks have made some considerable changes. The default septet have ushered in a new drummer (the unethically talented Caitlin Thomas), lopped the bottom half of their name and found a home in Domestic La La, the upstart record label from Violent Soho axeman and acclaimed tin-sinker James Tidswell. “There’s something really humbling about seeing a guy you…

Now is the perfect time for Machine Head. Their politically and socially aware lyricism, their never-say-die attitude, their crushing heaviness – it’s all there on new album Catharsis (out January 26th via Nuclear Blast), and it’s all informed by the upheaval in Washington and across the USA since the election of a certain orange-haired president. Frontman Robb Flynn has said that this album could “really infiltrate the mainstream” with its more direct song structures and simpler hooks. It’s true that this is one of the more accessible Machine Head albums, even though it stays very true to their trademark aggression. And if this album does break through in the way Flynn hopes, it’ll be an important landmark in the history of metal. To tap into the spontaneous and heartfelt power…

“ FEATURE THE INSIDE WORD WAS THAT MALCOM AND ANGUS HAD THEIR “REAL” AMPS HIDDEN UNDER THE STAGE” AXE: First up, you’re obviously going to need a 1963 Gretsch Firebird. That’s obvious: it was Young’s signature axe from day one to the very end, and he rarely strayed from its embrace. There is a signature reissue if you can’t get your mitts on an authentic model, but it’s important to remember that he doesn’t gussy up the sound any. The tone is also clean, relying on volume and amp breakup rather than heavy gain – although you’ll want to turn your volume pots up all the way. Speaking of which… AMPS: That sound is coming from Marshall JTM45 heads. The inside word of the time was that Malcolm and Angus…

ST. VINCENT MASSEDUCTION LOMA VISTA It’s ironic that Annie Clark’s most accessible album to date can feel so anti-pop. Clark is as popular as she’s ever been, and there’s an element of MASSEDUCTIONthat accepts this transition into the spotlight with broad appeal. But beneath the alluring pastel Technicolour sheen are stories and sounds brimming with nuanced genre critique, that shows where pop can go if we’re willing to bend the walls. Her trademark future-tone-infused art-pop swirls worm their way into the status quo, drawing you in and then challenging expectations by being constantly at odds with themselves. But the record settles in that intriguing point between strange and familiar throughout – dark and vulnerable, yet musically and emotionally relatable. Clark plucks styles from a selection of pop staples and injects…

Amps have come a long way since Line 6 appeared on the scene with the Flextone, which packaged the POD’s digital modelling in a standalone amp. There was also the flagship AxSys 212 amp, which was an altogether more complicated product, but the idea behind the Flextone was to keep the flexibility of the POD while making it performance-friendly. That’s an ethos that has carried throughout Line 6’s amp range ever since. Even now, there’s the flagship Firehawk 1500, a 1500-watt beast with a full-range flat-response speaker system, and the Spider series, which is a long-running line of amps for everyday players. But the Spider line has continued to evolve and become more and more stage-friendly. Case in point: the Spider V series, which includes not just over 200 amps,…

Kiesel Guitars – the new incarnation of Carvin, a company with a long history – has established itself as the place to go for custom guitars in the last few years. That’s always been Carvin’s speciality, but since Jeff Kiesel took over management of the company a few years ago, a whole bunch of new models have been introduced, like the headless Vader. I fell in love with this design after playing a few different Vaders at NAMM this year, so this review is of my personal Vader. Being a custom guitar company, you can order all sorts of specific features and even supply your own pickups from any brand. CHOICES, CHOICES, CHOICES Let’s run through the basic specs first. This is a neck-through seven-string guitar with a 25-inch scale.…

Two years on from their last Australian tour, celebrated Mexican instrumental virtuosos Rodrigo Y Gabriela return to Australia in March. They’ll be hitting out shores to play theatre shows in Melbourne, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane, and to make their debut appearance at WOMADelaide. The duo has performed in Australia a number of times in the past, but these will be among their biggest headline shows yet. Four years on from their last album, 9 Dead Alive, we’re likely to be among the first to hear music from its follow-up. We caught up with Rodrigo to talk about it. So you’re playing WOMADelaide! Yeah! This is our first time playing the festival, and it’s always good as a musician to play something new. You begin to feel like you’ve played everywhere…

You’re smack bang in the middle your first European tour – what are your current touring rigs over there? Have you had to make any compromises from your usual Aussie gear? RICK: Fortunately, we were able to bring both of our rack case heads over here, so we didn’t have to make any changes to how our rigs usually operate in Australia, aside from packing a few travel adapters for the power plugs. With that said, we’ve both been using Axe-Fx IIs with Matrix GT1000FX power amps on this tour, and we’re controlling it all with the Fractal Audio MFC-101 pedalboard. RYAN: For the past few tours now, we’ve been running our tones direct to the front-of-house systems (FOH) using some custom IRs that a friend made and sent to…

“WE’VE TRIED 50 GUITARS AND 100 AMPS ON EVERY RECORD, BUT WE’VE ALWAYS COME BACK TO SOME KIND OF 5150-STYLE AMP AND OVERDRIVE PEDAL COMBO” Trivium fans are hailing The Sin And The Sentence as one of the band’s best releases to date, which is saying something when you consider how crazy loyal Trivium fans can be. We’re talking about a band who released their first album in their teens and practically grew up alongside their fans, but also a band who never went the easy route in just rehashing the same sound over and over. Every Trivium album sounds like Trivium, sure, but each one has its own particular vantage point from which it observes what Trivium is. For instance, Vengeance Falls was produced by Disturbed frontman David…

Some musicians revel in complexity – piles of amps, intricate effect changes and rack after rack of finely tuned guitars that get dragged around the world for six bars in a single song – but not Eric Gales. Despite the detail, texture and varied tones in his funk, gospel and hip-hop infused take on blues-rock, the six-string virtuoso likes to keep things simple. “I just don’t have a lot of patience with all of that technical stuff,” he says. “If I can find what works for me in the simple form, then that’s always going to be the route that I go down.” He’s nothing if not honest. Gales refers to his touring rig as “general stuff – distortion, delay and whammy, not too much,” and he kind of mumbles…

“HE WAS THE CONDUCTOR FOR THE WHOLE BAND, BECAUSE GUITARS WERE OBVIOUSLY THE MOST IMPORTANT THING” “In a world of decadent rock‘n’roll superstars jumping from the stage to the covers of magazines, he was such a non-rockstar,” McDougall eulogises. “He was always standing there at the back of the stage, next to Phil [Rudd] or whoever was playing drums, just doing his job. There’s something so dignified about that, especially in a world of rock excess. And Malcolm Young achieved so much – I’m talking career-wise, but also for guitar music in general– with so little. He was the absolute master of making a very small, conservative amount say a whole lot.” “HE MANAGED TO HAVE AN AMAZINGLY CLEAN SOUND FOR THE WORLD THEY WERE EXISTING IN, WHEN MOST BANDS…

Soundcraft’s Notepad mixers – of which the 12-FX is the largest and most fully featured – include a fairly extensive array of I/O, routing and processing options. Light and easy enough to transport in a backpack, it comes across like a Leatherman for musicians and studio-dwellers. Let’s deal with channels 1-4 first – these are all XLR combi mic/line inputs. These first four inputs operate like a simple analog mixing desk. A three-band EQ on each channel provides 12 decibels of boost or cut at 80Hz, 2.5kHz and 12kHz. Channels 1 and 3 can be switched to high impedance, and all four have a switchable high-pass filter at 100Hz. There’s also trim, level, panning and aux bus controls. Channels 5/6 and 7/8 are balanced quarter-inch stereo inputs for connecting keyboards…

Firewind guitarist Gus G. has used a lot of cool guitars over the years. His old ESP models were the guitars of choice during his tenure as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist – and if you haven’t checked out the album Scream, you really should. Gus shreds on that thing. One of those models was an Eclipse-based (Les Paul-like) model, and the other a Random Star shape. Recently, Gus switched from ESP to Jackson, and there are now three Gus G. models available: a budget-priced JS Series, a mid-priced X Series with Gus’ signature Seymour Duncan pickups, and this – a USA Custom Shop model which looks pretty similar to the X Series from a distance, but as with anything from the FMIC Custom Shop family, you know you’re getting one beast…

A Sterling by Music Man is a more cost-effective, offshore range of instruments reflecting Music Man’s USA-built product. Finding where they trimmed the budget is pretty hard, though, because the Sterling instruments present only as fully equipped and ready-for-action pro gear. And, like the USA-built guitars, they arrive perfectly setup and superbly finished. Over the last few years, I’ve played many Sterling instruments – lo and behold, each one has lived up to the Music Man promise. LOOKING SNAZZY The JP150 draws on a number of sources for its inspiration: the Gibson twin-humbuckers-in-amahogany-body thing; Fender’s long scale, bolt-on maple neck; Music Man’s own variation of that famous ‘synchronized tremolo’, which actually creates vibrato, not tremolo; the familiar double cutaway first seen in 1951 on Fender’s Precision Bass, then on the…