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Rave Cave LP

by Sky Needle

/
1.
Rave Cave 03:33
2.
Raft Werk 02:46
3.
Radical Fire 03:37
4.
5.
Lemur 01:43
6.
Two Way Solo 06:19
7.
8.
9.
Cannibal 04:17

about

available on vinyl from a bunch of good stores. just search it
skyneedle.org/site/buy

credits

released April 20, 2012

.
NGL029
Edition of 500 LP's on Negative Guest List

songs performed on self-made instruments

Sarah Byrne (vox, percussion)
Alex Cuffe (speaker box bass, strings)
Ross Manning (string panels)
Joel Stern (leg-horn, electronics)

SIDE A
RAVE CAVE (3:33)
RAFT WERK (2:47)
RADICAL FIRE (3:37)
REST IN A WELL (4:25)
LEMUR (1:43)

SIDE B
TWO WAY SOLO (6:19)
SUNDOWN GENTS (2:27)
BAR TAKE AWAY (2:35)
CANNIBAL (4:17)

RECORDED AND MIXED BY JOEL 2010-2011
AT CYPRUS HILL BRISBANE AUSTRALIA
MASTERED BY MARLY LUSKE

for Brendon Annesley

WWW.SKYNEEDLE.ORG


David Keenan - Volcanic Tongue TIP OF THE TONGUE 29 APRIL 2012
The first couple of broadcasts from this amazing group from Brisbane Australia were some of the most defiantly original sides of outsider rock/pop to reach these ears in many, many years so it was with some excitement that we unpacked this one, the debut full-length from Joel Stern, Sarah Byrne, Alex Cuffe and Ross Manning playing all their own invented instruments. The feel is still of a fantasy Godz-play-Moondog session but given the space to really stretch out the group reveal themselves as equally proficient in radical free improvisation. Byrne’s vocals are particularly boggling, ululating all over the honking, scraping, huffing rhythms and melodies with an elastic a-formal approach that has few parallels but that orbits a similar universe to Meredith Monk and Amy Sheffer. The group’s tonal palette is truly singular odd, with brokedown rhythms illuminated by percussive tones and sawing folk drones in a way that sounds like Tago Mago played with nothing but Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. Indeed, their evisceration of song is every bit as far-reaching as Damo-era Can, building to peaks of nowhere with a hands-on tactile feel that is supremely satisfying while Byrne works mysterious/evocative tongues around every starry shape.

This is atavistic folk music w/a heady hobbyist edge and the kinda sublimely out atmosphere that says ESP-Disk like nothing else. If the newly activated ESP really had an ear to the underground then they would have snapped this group up: Rave Cave is easily the equal of any of the original label’s wildest avant/rock releases. Right now Sky Needle are one of the most radically original and self-sufficient performance units in the world and this is one of the most beautifully skewed releases of the year. Truly, you never heard such sounds. Simply can’t recommend this enough.

Shaun Prescott in Mess and Noise
Sky Needle should’ve sucked. Time Hammer, the Brisbane group’s first 7”, was an instrumental affair performed on homemade instruments. It had its charms, but it was difficult to imagine ever loving the group because the concept was far too cerebral. The group laboured to draw attention to its means, and as great as it sounded, you couldn’t help but imagine three guys playing strange instruments in a room somewhere. Probably with sheet music, as inapplicable as that imagery may be. If music can only conjure visions of it being performed, then it has failed.

Sky Needle is no longer about the instruments. Rave Cave’s liner notes bear no mention of an elastic dust shovel or latex pump horn. With the release of their Neckliner cassette last year, and the introduction of Sarah Byrne on vocals, Sky Needle has become a mood: a set of hazy, amorphous imagery. And while they don’t sound much like their label mates Mad Nanna, the mood conjured here is similarly narcoleptic, like the weird lucidity one experiences just on the edge of sleep. Sarah Byrne seems to (because who knows, really) trade in the kind of nonsense one speaks if awakened sleepwalking. That’s just the way it sounds.

Sonically, it’s reminiscent of the zones Hi God People or Sunburned Hand of the Man explore: it’s ambiguously foreign-sounding music that suggests an affinity with methods and traditions far beyond the group’s ken. There are vaguely Eastern-sounding string drones purring beneath Byrne’s vocals, but there are also brass-reminiscent timbres lurching in the mix, normally in step with the group’s stalking, low-tempo temperament.

The band definitely sound like they have “jams” rather than songs. Each track seems derived from some blank-stare hypnosis, a kind of lumbering inertia wrought by the ensemble’s tendency toward persistent tempos and barely perceptible crescendos. Yet each song has its own set of colours and its own subtly different way of achieving these ends, and the record has a sense of momentum as a result.

Despite the wielding of never-before-wielded instruments, Sky Needle’s actual approach isn’t reinventing the wheel. But there are colours and textures here you’ve never heard the likes of, which makes this record essential listening if you like staring at walls and imagining things. Which you all should, every now and then.

Little Big Chief
"more home made fried greatness. expands upon the sound found in the second 7" greatly. dunno how to place this in the current pantheon of music coming out of the amazing AU. cataclysmic and far reaching? hell bent on individualism, this refuses to be placed correctly. it's got some bangers in the mix for sure, but spaced out enough to connect with the audience that has already been wrapped up in the first two releases. what the fuck do you want? another VU comparison?"

Lee Parker - The Thousands
Rave Cave, Sky Needle’s new longplayer, is a totally organic music experience. If you like to ingest a fairly steady diet of rock/punk/electrically powered music, you will be either delighted or irritated to take part in this reprieve from said rabble. While that good stuff is indisputably, ‘good stuff’, dependency on only the good worries me, and thus, Sky Needle’s LP is a welcome deviation. It was an awakening to hear this while lying on the couch in darkness. But then it didn’t work whilst driving, and maybe I hated it for that particular commute. I wagered that this recording could transform the dullness of grey car interior to Rave Cave; it didn’t. But heard in the right mindset, this music consistently triggers thoughts of tropical landforms, ornithology and a vague image of the ghastly home-made instruments that have produced these sounds. Sky Needle present us with a hypnotic, tonally therapeutic creation, both bizarre and ingenious. A full range of frequencies clanging against pulsing, wobbly bass-like thumps (all created by unidentifiable sources), all mingling with crystalline, haunting vocal incantations. But it’s not avant-garde fluff, like I’ve made it sound. The groups penchant for repetition and relative brevity means there are ‘hooks’, ‘riffs’, and ‘licks’, although they’re in an alien musical language. Good to listen to at high volumes and have your ear drums exfoliated by tones you forgot existed.

Matt O'Neill - The Music / Inpress
Sky Needle beggar belief. The Brisbane quartet define their sound through self-made instruments. Joel Stern plays parping horns made from soft-drink bottles and bike pumps. Alex Cuffe has wrought some kind of bass-related instrument out of a speaker box. Ross Manning is credited solely with ‘string panels’. Rounded out by vocalist/percussionist Sarah Byrne, their rumbling, primitive sound is impossible to ascribe to any specific instrumentation. Forget genre.
It’s fantastic, though. This is why Sky Needle are so unbelievable. A description such as the above fills the mind with images of noise, abstraction and self-indulgence – or, worse still, quirky kitsch. Sky Needle, though, simply rock it. There’s an unpretentious streak of fun and funk that runs through the band’s work that makes it hard not to love everything they do. Rave Cave is arguably their best work yet. Released strictly to vinyl by respected local imprint Negative Guestlist (the label run by the much-missed Brendon Annesley), the band’s latest album finds them condensing their sprawling sound into nine concise nuggets of sound.
The formula is fundamentally the same for the majority of pieces – Sarah Byrne’s washed out vocals echo over noisy, percussive soundscapes – but it’s amazing how many variations in mood Sky Needle can find for their raw, ephemeral sound. Radical Fire rides a rumbling, swampy, primal bass figure into a hypnotic, unwholesome groove; Rest In A Well sounds both jazzy and pastoral in its seesawing horns and plucked string textures; Two Way Solo slithers menacingly by in a six-minute drawl. It’s not music easily described – but it is music easily enjoyed. It’s music that’s as immediately filthy as it is undeniably artistic. Music very much deserving of your time, in other words.

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Sky Needle Brisbane, Australia

Sky Needle perform on self made instruments operated by Alex Cuffe, Joel Stern, Sarah Byrne, Daniel Jenatsch, Alan Nguyen, Michael Donnelly, Ross Manning. Glen Schenau and others.

Sky Needle lived in Brisbane, Australia and now everywhere
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