Grinderman - Grinderman 2

Nick Cave teams up with Warren Ellis from the Dirty Three. Warren Ellis is sensational at making things loud. He plays the violin with the Dirty Three and the mandolin and bouzouki with Cave. I saw them play at Mona maybe ten or so years ago. The loudest instrument I have ever heard live - standing directly in front of a speaker off to the side. It's really interesting how he gets specifically folk instruments or ''organic'' instruments and just injects them with distortion. He is certainly a wild musician.

Yukihiro Takahashi - Neuromantic

Former drummer of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. This is fantastic and full of great songs. The Yellow Magic Orchestra or YMO was a pioneering synth-pop group from Japan, who lay claim to having the first technological concept album. Many believed it to be Kraftwerk's Computer World, but YMO predated it by a number of years.

The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin

The Flaming Lips appear on a major label but release dark and harrowing albums that incite the senses of the most ardent music fans. They effectively bring experimental rock digressions to the mainstream. They have had chart success, made films and explored avant-garde art experiments and been in the music scene, collaborating with many artists for a number of years. Releasing albums to rave reviews. This album actually got the most out of their discography, with many rave reviews on its release. Part of Pitchfork's ten out of ten echelon.

Scott Walker - Scott 4

Scott Walker, tremendous as he may be, veers dangerously close to a mainstream pop act. Maybe that is why he became so experimental, to maintain some dignity in the changing times. The fame must have got to his head because on one of his more experimental endeavours, The Drift he started banging a pig's carcass and used it as a rhythm track supposedly. The track that really stands out here is ''Duchess''. It has always been a personal favourite, thus why I have bought this album. 

Scott Walker - Sings Jacques Brel

Scott Walker, once famous with the Walker Brothers. Great pop icons of the 60s. Then he had forays into slightly darker crooning pop, then finally the fame got to him and he slipped away into Avantgarde. None can doubt his ability to sing, matched perfectly with the poetic ways of Brel. The crooning sounds of Walker are enough to send shivers down the coarsest of spines. Possessed with a superhuman voice, he has no equal. One of the great all-time singers.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring - Rush To Relax

Eddy Current Suppression Ring hark back to punk DIY ethics that dominated the 70s. Not many people know this, but members of Radio Birdman brought Iggy and the Stooges to Australia and there was a blossoming punk scene in Queensland way before punk hit London, with bands like The Saints. Eddy Current's minimalism, sound like psychedelic garage rock, approach to recording is all refreshing punk music out of Melbourne. They have a unique sound.

MGMT - Little Dark Age

This band were big in my college days. Their first album was massive, possibly five or six chart hits on there. They followed it up with their second album, which frankly, had not hit evident. It was amazing. Here was this band who had just headlined Glastonbury and performed their chart-topping hit ''Kids'', to follow it up with an album whose best song ''Siberian Breaks'' was twelve or thirteen minutes. They experiment with synths and get a ''freak-folk'' synth-pop sound. A group of accomplished musicians who make music, not for chart hits evidently, but an art form. Angular. Intriguing. Subversive.

Lee Scratch Perry - Jamaican E.T

Conversing with the owner of my local record store, we discussed why reggae and ska do not sell in Tasmania, as he has a dwindling stock, with only two people buying it in the whole city. He says that it is because of the climate. Tasmania is a cooler climate, whereas it would sell maybe in Queensland and Darwin and abroad like the Pacific, but it does not sell because of this colder climate. There has been a resurgence in Afro-beat recently, with people revisiting Fela Kuti. It shares a similarity with reggae with rhythm and lyrical content. 

Stephen J. Malkmus - Traditional Techniques

The thing about the ''old guard'' of early indie is the fact they struggled for so long to reach any sort of success. They are the ''old guard'', and will continue to release music, quality albums that is for sure, but music is generational, with each generation throwing out the old and starting something afresh. But the peculiarity about the sudden generation today is the fact that was highlighted by Brian Eno, the fact that everything is available. You can listen to music created in the 40s, 50s or 60s and everything is at your fingertips, with the current technology, so there is a nostalgic element that people draw on from music, and the lo-fi style is incredibly nostalgic, drawing upon a 70s and 80s style recording process. Ariel Pink even covers distinctive 70s and 80s music.

Mikey Dread At The Control - Dubwise

Post-punk plays a large homage to reggae and dub, as seen in bands like P.I.L etc. It is basically ''white boy reggae'', there is also a significant influence of Afro-beat on bands like Talking Heads, who carved out entire albums borrowing African grooves and instrumentation. You either get reggae and dub or you don't, as a white man. I scored the one in a thousand copies of this LP, a rare transparent red copy. Mikey Dread is famous for collaborating with The Clash on Sandanista!.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring - S/T

The combination of raw stripped back garage, free of the additional attributes. Lo-fi recording with punchy lyrics and a DIY aesthetic, Eddy Current Suppression emerged on the Melbourne music scene with a bang. Putting garage rock literally back into the fold of Australian rock. They just pack a punch. It is music for youth and absolutely devoid of pretensions. Energetic and loud. Proof that punk has not died. They even got good reviews from abroad. The first two albums pack a minimalist approach.

Pavement- The Secret History

Pavement consisted of the ingredients of a an original sounding rock band, and that is the fact they were counter-cultural. They were not following a trend, and at that time in the 90s bands like Nirvana ruled. Raw shambolic indie rock was not popular. Did it phase Pavement? Absolutely not they were unwilling to abide by the masses and join the movement that was taking place, where hardcore punk had diverged with metal to make grunge. Pavement remained stoic. 

Stephen Malkmus - Groove Denied

This is certainly a curveball from Malkmus. Dropping the Jicks and veering into electronica. It was not really well received by the critics, but it shows that electronica is certainly a prevalent influence on indie music. Basically, because the origins of techno and synth-pop are found in the very underground of music history. Juan Atkins and Patrick Cowley built on the sounds coming out of Europe. Yes, it is extremely popular today, but the origins of electronica are this underground phenomenon and the homage to electronica is, in fact, this harking back to its roots, not celebrating the state of electronica today which is very chart-topping and has lost its edge.

Akira Kurosawa - Seven Samurai

The immense influence Kurosawa had on the modern Westerns is certainly interesting. In Leone's films, the main protagonists are renegades who do not bow down to anybody, nor do they take orders from a master. Eastwood's ''The man with no name'' is a direct homage to Kurosawa's samurai. Not only characters and script there is a great influence on the action scenes. Westerns would not be the same again if it not for Kurosawa and just looking at the state of Asian cinema welcomed by the West, these samurai films were not popular strictly down to the appalling representation of Asian cinema in the world. Times are changing and Korea's Parasite is sparking interest in Asian film.

Rowland S. Howard - Pop Crimes

Howard, the guitarist for The Boys Next Door and the Birthday Party. Spent time in Berlin, later would appear in the Crime & the City Solution and These Immortal Souls. He played a Fender Jaguar and Fender amp that I have seen in a museum in Melbourne some time ago. He is instrumental in the post-punk sound of Nick Cave, both some of the most revered musicians in Australian music. Lived the rock & roll lifestyle so greatly that he died of alcoholism-related live cancer. Doctors stated that in his forties, he had the liver that a seventy-four-year-old alcoholic would have.