The Null Device

I recently heard from a reliable source that Australian 1990s band The Paradise Motel has reformed. Well, not in its entirety; the lineup apparently includes Charles Bickford and BJ Austin, with a new rhythm section and Merida Sussex emailing in her vocals from abroad, and they're several tracks into recording a new album.

The Paradise Motel were, IMHO, one of the great underrated Australian bands of the 1990s; they made noirish pieces like something out of a David Lynch nightmare, with beautifully melancholy vocals, cinematic string arrangements (by Matt Aulich, who was, in all probability, a fan of Angelo Badalamenti), and sudden violent explosions of fierce intensity, when the mainstream market wanted (and the major label they got signed to specialised in) 3-chord grunge-rock. Most of their members came from Tasmania (with the exception of Merida, who was born in England and was discovered whilst working at the St Kilda public library), and brought the desolation, distance and dark, troubled undercurrents of this into their music. In an alternate universe, where they were signed by, say, 4AD, they could perhaps have fared a lot better. Unfortunately, their label was part of the Mushroom empire, then heavily invested into facile, populist JJJ alternative-rock, and didn't really know what to do with them. They released a few EPs (the starkly lovely Left Over Life To Kill and the atmospheric and somewhat experimental remix EP Some Deaths Take Forever), an album (Bad Light), and a few more EPs, before moving to England. Then they released a second album, which was more of a driving rock affair, and, around 2000, disbanded.

Anyway, it will be interesting to hear what their new sound is like; the chiaroscuro of "the violence and the silence" of Bad Light, the sparse atmospheres of the early EPs, the more conventional rock of Flight Paths, or something else altogether?

(via Andy) ¶ bands music the paradise motel 0

I've been looking around AudioGalaxy (with the Linux client) and it's brilliant. For instance, I just found out that there's a lot of Field Mice stuff listed, including long-deleted vinyl-only gems (songs like Humblebee, Song 6 and so on); not to mention live Slowdive tracks (albeit some let down by dodgy MP3 codecs), Lush rarities and even some Paradise Motel (other than their cover of Drive, that is). The range is much wider than on KaZaA, which is mostly widely available things. Which is good if you're a teenage mook wanting to pirate the latest rap-metal hit, but not so good if you're a dedicated trainspotter looking for obscure old singles and mixes.

¶ the field mice the paradise motel 0

It's official: The Paradise Motel are no more. An email from one of the band members to that effect has been forwarded to the paradise-motel mailing list.

¶ music the paradise motel 0