All posts tagged tom

  • December 22, 2010

    The Vine album review: AXXONN – ‘Let’s Get It Straight’, December 2010

    An album review for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    AXXONN – Let’s Get It Straight

    Once a duo featuring No Anchor (and ex-Iron On) bassist (and sometime TheVine contributor) Ian Rogers, AXXONN now exists solely as an outlet for Brisbane artist Tom Hall, whose spectral sounds are captured on Let’s Get It Straight, Hall’s debut full-length under the AXXONN moniker.

    Stylistically, it’s a surprisingly mixed bag: where past releases consisted almost exclusively of noise and electronica-based compositions, here, Hall displays a willingness to step outside his comfort zone. He experiments with layered acoustic and electric guitars in ‘Golfini’, and a clean piano tone in ’10 Pound Trouble’, which opens with an extended sample of sparrows chirping. It’s unexpected, and almost laughable at first; then, cute. It’s the only moment that could be construed as humourous across nearly 50 minutes of furrowed-brow concentration. This isn’t to say that the album isn’t enjoyable – it is – but while it’s a tough record to hate, it’s even tougher to love. Diverse though the sounds contained within Let’s Get It Straight are, there’s few highlights, in the true sense of the word. Instead, the album works best as just that: a document to be observed in full. If just one track appeared on your iPod Shuffle, you’d probably skip it.

    But if you began with ‘Slave Driver’, the album opener, and let it play through to ‘Nai’, it works. ‘Slave Driver’ opens with less a roar than a glacial synth yawn; it evokes imagery of deep space, or an arctic tundra, or somewhere desolate; somewhere free from mankind’s greasy fingerprints. This feeling of isolation is why I return to the album: gradually, Hall’s soundscapes seem to increase in both density and volume until you find yourself lost in the mix.

    For the full review, visit The Vine. For more AXXONN, visit his website. The music video for his song ‘Let’s Get It Straight‘ is embedded below. Watch it – it’s great.

    No Comments / Music Criticism, Published Writing /

  • October 12, 2010

    The Vine interview: Tom Larkin of Shihad, October 2010

    An interview for The Vine. Excerpt below.

    New Zealand/Melbourne rock act ShihadInterview – Shihad

    After 22 years together, the Melbourne-based, New Zealand-raised rock act Shihad are still kicking. September 24th 2010 marks the release of their eighth studio album, Ignite, which – like its predecessor, 2008’s Beautiful Machine – was self-recorded in drummer Tom Larkin’s studio. Unlike that largely pop-favouring release, though, Ignite marks somewhat of a return to what the band have always done best: huge, riff-heavy guitar rock suitable to be blasted at both clubs and stadiums.

    Shihad have played both kinds of shows, many times. They supported AC/DC on the New Zealand leg of the Black Ice tour earlier this year, and soon after touringIgnite across Australia’s capital cities in November, they’ll play national tours with Guns N’ Roses and now-labelmates Korn (Ignite is the band’s first release with Roadrunner Records). In July and August, Shihad played a handful of exclusive shows in Sydney, Melbourne, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland wherein they performed their classic albums Killjoy (1995) and The General Electric (1999) in full. And so TheVine’s conversation with Tom Larkin begins…

    —

    Before we discuss Ignite, I want to touch on the shows you did last month for Killjoy and The General Electric. Did you enjoy yourself?

    Of course. A lot. It was one of those things we had planned for a long time. We’d left it on the sidelines, and we’d get busy and then go back to the idea and keep coming at it, but it was really, really enjoyable for us to do. And great for us to revisit that stuff and revisit the material we hadn’t played for a long time. It was great.

    Read the full interview on The Vine.

    This interview was a little strange for me, as Shihad are a band I’ve respected for a long time – for a few years, around 2005-2006, I readily named them as my favourite band. My interest their music (especially the lacklustre newer stuff) has since plateaued, but still, they’ve played a large part in my life. It was a pleasure to speak with Tom.

    More Shihad on MySpace; the music video for their Ignite single ‘Lead Or Follow‘ is embedded below.

    No Comments / Music Journalism, Published Writing /