I love 'Only When Asked' from Grey Goose Wing. In fact, the whole first half of that album is gold. I wish Kes came to Sydney more often than once a year.

Appreciation expressed in written format! Mega awesomes.

yes!

i've seen them only once at the afterdark. i liked it a lot. 2 cents spent.

fuck yeah there good.much respect. mum smokes anyone?

here mic

Saw Kes play a solo set at Glitch Bar last night. Very very impressive. I can't wait to hear the new songs on record.

I haven't heard anything but it's on my ''to do'' list.

Educate me?

Some info on Mistletone's website

New album out March 1!

My computer doesn't seem to like that link. I'll look up the mistletone website the long way. Thanks!

man. would've loved to see him solo! it's been a long time

Kestletone.

I spotted Karl tonight but I was too shy to say hello, gentle sort though he be.

i hope a sydney launch happens soon

Mistletone says:

Mid March will see the release of the new self titled Kes Band album and it's absolutely amazing. Recorded by James Cecil of Architecture in Helsinki fame in his Super Melody World studio, Kes Band is a stupendous leap forward from “The Grey Goose Wing”, with the same adventurous spirit but with a more concise and accessible pop sensibility. Kes Band will launch Kes Band in April.

kes, you are amazing and magic. gah

I like his orange shirt. not so fussed on the tan one.

this is this saturday!!

So the Mistletone website reckons the album's release date is Monday, but the KES Band Myspace says it's out ''April 2008''... who's right? Should I bother rushing into the stores? Because I'm so keen I can hardly bottle it.

i suspect it has been pushed back...

This record keeps on growing on me. I think it might be tenderly strangling me with its branches, twigs poking into my heart; ow, but you can't stop a tree that's swallowed your head.

Kes Band cassettes now on mail order

Pwner has control!

Kes Band are touring around with The Drones from next week, and doing about a hundred shows around Melb between now & the end of the year. Check their dates on Kespace

The Kes Band cd has just gone into its second pressing and is now available in digipak glory. It looks real nice. Available on mail order.

Trying to decipher the lyrics to the song View you. This is all I could make out.

All Iw ant to dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo is improve like a building self irht now yin t you all i want to dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo is improveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee you are the self reight up to do yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

This year’s Chapterfest had slightly inauspicious timing – the night before Northcote music carnivale High Vibes – but Melbourne punters are a relentless bunch. Despite the miserable weather, they file in and pack out the Tote’s downstairs band room and upstairs Cobra Bar. Following Chapter Music’s sold-out 18th birthday celebrations in January, this may be no big surprise. The event is also timed to coincide with the release of Crayon Fields’ new album All The Pleasures Of The World, and the merch table – flogging this among other Chapter Music releases – has a flood of buyers.

This being said The Tote – Melbourne’s sticky-carpeted musical Mecca –generates a very different vibe tonight. Punters sit cross-legged and passive in Grade One formation on the ground. People pardon themselves as they brush past. Nobody puking, weeping or arm wrestling in the girls toilets. The smell of patchouli in the air. Then it dawns on me: indie kids, they’re out in force and my, are they a different breed.

Chapterfest features a few highly conceptual, experimental, prog and indie pop-rock bands. The first band Bum Creek kinda skim all these classifications. My expectations are low, as their MySpace page looks like Vice magazine threw up all over it. They also describe themselves as “outsider fart”, which is similarly stomach-turning. And while it might be hard to discern behind the Jim Morrison beards and ’70s hair, they look young and have an unexpectedly dark psychedelic, even tribal, undercurrent. They’re a frenetic live band, with so many pedals and instruments they have to dash off stage and run to the other side to play each other’s gear. Only the drummer, who plays trumpet and beatboxes at one point, stays relatively stationary. Keys with effects, bongos, trumpets, creepy vocals, all create a sound that can only be described as composer Angelo Badalamenti and 1970s prog rockers Lucifer Was munching on LSD. I overhear someone in the crowd say that Bum Creek never sound the same twice and it’s difficult to imagine how they could replicate this wacky, sometimes wonderful and possibly a bit hyper-conscious avant garde sound experiment.

I rush upstairs for Dick Diver, an assured and unpretentious quartet with a strong rhythm section and a few cock-rock licks thrown in for good measure. Reminiscent of Pavement, their songs are dreamily mellow and melodic, but with a backbone. Vocal sharing between guitarists and harmonies with drummer Steph Hughes (Home & Hosed co-presenter) have a distinctly Aussie intonation and are part of this band’s strength. But their incisive and savvy songwriting are what will see them stick around for the long haul.

The Primitive Calculators are playing in the band room. They’re the badass, back-of-the-bus senior class of Chapterfest. The band are a real drawcard given their recent revival and their appearance on the re-released Dogs in Space and its companion documentary We’re Living on Dog Food. The Calculators, while 29 years older and with better gear, have lost none of their menace and appetite for destruction. This is a little pun, as Stuart Grant wears his working class Springvale roots with pride: a Gunners t-shirt underneath a red flanno. Starting with a surprising little spiel about the serendipity and miracle of existence, the Calculators then set out to deride and disassemble their opening salvo with songs like ‘Do That Dance’, ‘Cunt Life’ and ‘Nothing’, which is a sort of chronological cataloguing of nothingness from 1979-2009. The banter between songs seems to fall a bit flat on the crowd, who don’t seem anywhere near as effervescent as they should be. The Calculators are definitely appreciated, but shamefully without the anarchy and enthusiasm a more “rock” crowd would generate.

The evening is admirably well planned, but structured so there’s not much time to make it to the alternate stage – let alone to the toilet or outside for a quick ciggie – without missing a little of each set. I bowl over a few people to make it in time for The Twerps. The reviews I’ve read have made me slightly confused, so I receive a nice surprise when I encounter a pop-laced, ’90s-influenced, indie-rock band with teeth. Nevertheless, vocalist/guitarist M Dot has copped a little bit of flak recently, and I think I get why. His self-effacing manner comes across as manufactured given his on-stage confidence; they have a song called ‘Self Assured’, which I believe is ironically titled; and, yes, he does yelp in a shrill manner at times. It’s an indie affectation that clearly works for him – they get a great reception and have a strong fan base – but frankly I think the band would be better without it.

The promise of faux Hawaiian folk exotica (aka Jeremy Dower Y Las Palmeras de plástico) is a little too scintillating to skip. Dreamy Hawaiian lap slide guitar, what looks like an electric clarinet and a Roland percussion device, create a sweet, ethereal island sound. Birds twitter and an ocean laps gently in the background. The quixotic act is a dreamy, beatnik interlude that nicely complements the Panadeine Forte I’m nibbling.

From 10.30pm-ish onwards, it’s pretty hit and miss, largely due to an inability to actually get anywhere near Minimum Chips, who sound fantastic through the looking glass (crystalline vocals and a great organ sound); and Pikelet, who causes such an indie-kid commotion that I make a personal choice not to lose a limb for her sweet-sounding folk. By the time I battle through the Cobra Bar to catch Adelaide trio Hit the Jackpot, I’m a bit disappointed. Having nabbed the Sonic Youth support in 2004, I’m expecting something similarly early ’90s vintage. An off night perhaps, but it’s a set full of false starts. At one point singer Jess Thomas admits, “We haven’t played this song in a while”, and it tells, with the vocals starting off quite shaky. I’m not sure if the intention was to sound flat and discordant, but it didn’t work for me. Despite this, the band admirably pulls off a sort of musical chairs round robin, swapping instruments and vocals several times. Their talent shines through in the end, leaving my high expectations intact for next time.

By the time special guests Tenniscoats – a husband-and-wife psych-folk duo from Japan – mount the stage before a crowd of cross-legged listeners, I’m tossing up between fight or flight. It’s all very kooky, melodic and cute, but I feel like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation: cankerous and confused. A woman in an apricot jumpsuit joins the band on stage and I choose flight, leaving a spellbound crowd of indie kids, like a mother edging out of her kids bedroom after story time. To get a strong drink.

I'm importing Kes Band's s/t into my itunes and it's coming up as 'Kess and de Band'. That's not supposed to happen is it?

Depends how they set it I do believe. YOU GOT FUUUUCKED

GOOD LORD

Buy the cassette instead goldbuttons!

Kes Band II - Sydney launch!
Saturday 5 December @ Spectrum
with The Icypoles (Melbourne) + Ela Stiles (Songs) + special guests
tickets from moshtix

Excellent!

i think i'll be out of town sadly.

Playing times for Saturday night!

DOORS 8PM
ELA STILES (Ela from Songs solo debut!) 820PM
THE ICYPOLES 910PM
SONGS 10PM
KES BAND 1050PM

tomorrow night!

Spewing I can't go to this. Sydney chats, assemble!

assembles

Kes Band Japanese tour starts this week!

17 Mar @ THE UFO cub, tokyo w/Suisho no Fune, Eiji Mitomi, and more
19 Mar @ UrBANGUILD Kyoto w/MY PAL FOOT FOOT, Maruo Maruko, Suzmenba
20 Mar @Chika-ikkai, Osaka w/MY PAL FOOT FOOT, jenny on the planet, jugz
21 Mar @Helluva Lounge, kobe w/JUG JUG FOOT FOOT (MY PAL FOOT FOOT + jugz), Eddie Marcon, and more
22 Mar @K.D Japon, Nagoya w/MY PAL FOOT FOOT, and more
25 Mar KES solo @Nana Hari, tokyo
27 Mar w/MY PAL FOOT FOOT, PUKA PUKA BRIANS (Ueno of tenniscoats), tokyo

wow!