When I saw AXXONN play at Melbourne’s Bar Open last year, I was blown away by the majestically powerful sound Brisbane’s Tom Hall and Ian Rogers conjured from their laptops. The glitchy electronic bleeps and half-arsed beats usually associated with this kind of set-up is certainly not for them. Instead, they laid down a thick blanket of fuzzed-out distortion over ponderous, thudding rhythms that were minimalist, yet evoked breathtaking mental landscapes.

Below The Dead Ones is an album-length cassette, consisting of four tracks that refine the drone elements of their music, but are saved from self-indulgence by adding tremulous Wagnerian chord progressions to a number like ‘Urine Mote’. Like a darker, starker Fuck Buttons, AXXONN understand the value of anchoring their tunes with structure rather than letting themselves be seduced by all the wayward sounds their chosen technology is capable of producing. They employ subtlety and repetition and subliminal bass pulses to draw listeners into their world.

Still, they always seem to be in complete control. Not a single note or tweak is wasted or gratuitous and there’s a surprising warmth to their material. It might have something to do with the fact that it was recorded at the analog 7hz studio in San Francisco, used by many international drone, noise and experimental artists. Mostly though it’s down to the painstaking production work put in by Hall there, while Rogers was touring as bass player with his other band No Anchor.

The result is a masterpiece of its genre. It’s gratifying to contemplate just how many world-class musicians reside and work in Australia, despite the fact that the kind of music they create is completely marginalised here. When we have artists of the calibre of AXXONN, Default Jamerson, Galactagogue, Heil Spirits, Crab Smasher or Castings, it renders ridiculous the ever-present chorus of complaint that music has become stagnant or bogged down in revisionism. All one needs to do is to scratch beneath the surface and discover a whole world of innovative, powerful, cutting edge music being made right here, right now.

by René Schaefer