In this episode of the New Weird Australia podcast series, we delve into modular synthesis, off the back of a two-day Sydney festival that both celebrates and explores the concept, titled Moduluxxx.

The organisers described the event as somewhere between "a museum, a lan party and a petting zoo". To get the full meaning behind the analogies, we hear from artist and festival co-director, Pia Van Gelder, who also discusses the ideas and activities behind modular synthesis in more detail - and in particular, why it has undergone something of a renaissance in recent times.

The podcast also features an example of the artform in action with a 20 minute set from Nadir - a collaboration between Sydney artist Alex White and Melbourne’s Ben Byrne - and acting as something of a warm-up for their Moduluxxx experience.

The interview and live set was originally broadcast on 26th April 2012.

In this week's podcast, we feature the first of our irregular new series, NWA Profiles - new stories, interviews and recordings from around the country; filed by contributors from New Weird Australia's volunteer network. In this episode, Matthew O'Shannessy and Michael Prior from Tape Projects talk to Melbourne-based improvisor, installation artist and instrument builder, DALE GORFINKEL.

Dale has previously curated the Now Now Festival in Sydney, and currently coordinates the Out Hear Festival, a Melbourne festival focused on outdoor performances and soundwalks. In this report, we hear about Dale's study of ping pong balls, kinetics and the problem of invisible speakers. We also hear a live performance by Dale for prepared vibraphone recorded at Bouverie Studios in Melbourne.

Originally broadcast on 22nd March 2012.

If you're making eclectic and experimental music here in Australia, and you're looking for a way to be heard, New Weird Australia welcomes and encourages submissions from new bands and producers.  This type of brand new work is regularly released through our netlabel, featured on our weekly radio show and to otherwise distributed through our networks.

Sydney's EMILY GRANTHAM is a young producer who contacted us last year, and after submitting a regular series of off-kilter electronic recordings, will soon be releasing her debut EP through New Weird Australia. In this podcast, she plays a special live set written exclusively for the radio show, and chats about her work and future plans.

In Episode 24 of the NWA Podcast series, we present the debut live radio performance from Haunts, recorded only a few days before their second ever show at Dirty Shirlows in Sydney.  Haunts sees the coming together of two members of Sydney’s Underlapper with producer and musician Peter Hollo (Raven, Fourplay).

Underlapper are a well known fixture of the Sydney underground music scene - with three albums under their belt, ranging from the anticon-esque indie hip hop of their debut ‘What Came Forth From The Sea’ to the epic, post rock vocal of their 2011 release, ‘Softly Harboured’.  With the band on hiatus, Greg and Matt teamed up with Peter Hollo to form Haunts, and in this podcast they tell us how it all came together and play an exclusive live set in the studio.

The interview and live set was originally broadcast on 23rd February 2012.

In Episode 23 of the NWA Podcast series, we talk to Ian Rogers, who performs and records as part of two Brisbane projects, No Anchor and Ambrose Chapel.

Ian was in Sydney as part of a a research project titled 'Popular Music & Cultural Memory', and we talk the opportunity to have him in the studio to discuss his musical output and forthcoming projects.  He also brought along new material from No Anchor as well as an exclusive unreleased track from Ambrose Chapel titled 'A Small Return To A Big Nothing'.

The interview was originally broadcast on 16th February 2012.

On this week’s podcast, we celebrate Australian chiptune with two artists who recently represented the city of Sydney at Australia’s first international chiptune festival, Blipfest which took place mid-February in Melbourne.  Ten Thousand Free Men And Their Families and Abortifacient came into the New Weird Australia studio to have a chat and play a live set ahead of the Festival event, and to give us an insight into how they found their way into chiptune in the first place.

Sean from Abortifacient has taken his work overseas, playing with the likes of Ove-Naxx, and touring to Japan, UK, Spain.  He blends breakcore into his chiptune, and his seemingly relentless schedule of releases recently gave us the succinctly titled ‘my name is Abortifacient’.  Tom from 10K describes himself as “a guy who yells at Game Boys” and - when you hear the live set he plays at the start of this session, you’ll know why.  If you are at all sensitive to strong language, you may want to temporarily plug your ears.

This session originally aired on 9th February 2012.

On this week’s podcast, Thomas William vs Scissor Lock - a unique collaboration between two prolific Sydney producers.

Thomas William is a fixture of Sydney’s experimental music scene, shapeshifting through many guises as a musician, teacher, and director of artist run initiative, Serial Space. His blend of shifting synths, broken percussion and unstable tunings has so far featured on three full-length releases, two as Cleptoclectics, and a third most recently on Melbourne’s ‘This Thing’ imprint.

Marcus Whale’s relentless restlessness has seen him present a unique combination of manipulated voice, feedback and laptop processing under his Scissor Lock pseudonym, as well his much-lauded Collarbones project with Travis Cook (aka Cyst Impaled) and his debauched faux R&B boy band Black Vanilla (formed with Guerre and Marseilles).

The pair gave audiences a first glimpse of their project with a face-to-face match at New Weird Australia’s ‘Unpopular Music’ event in 2010, and then in March 2011 they visited us on New Weird Australia to play a short live live-to-air set and to talk about the genesis of their collaboration.

On this week's podcast, an in-studio live to air set and interview with Yolke.

Formed while field researching sound in 2008, this Melbourne psych ambient four-piece released their debut album 'Poppy Wash' back in 2010, and it quickly drew references to shoe gaze, krautrock and folktronica, with some of the reviews citing the pop quirks of Caribou and Ariel Pink as influences.

Last month, Yolke embarked on an east-coast tour of Australia along with their 'Fallopian Tunes' label-mates Trjaeu, Wild Dog Creek, Document Swell and Red Hymns, which also saw them all and taking in an appearance at the inaugural Wormwoodstock Festival in NSW. The live-to-sir set includes three extended tracks from Yolke, including new and unreleased material - and we’ll also hear a track from the 'Poppy Wash' album and from their road trip buddy, Document Swell.

The live set originally broadcast on FBi Radio on 26th January 2012.

In January 2012, Canberra's Pollen Trio were in Sydney for the Now Now annual festival of 'exploratory music' - a genuine feast for lovers of experimental, spontaneous and downright surprising music. The trio uncomfortably fit the genre of 'avant jazz', instead taking in a broad range of influences - most directly from their 'day jobs' as members of well-known Canberra bands, Spartak and Kasha. With a love of Flying Lotus and Autechre, blended with a reverence for non-trad jazz masters such as Morton Feldman and Ornette Coleman, there's a lot to listen out for in this podcast, when the trio (masquerading as a duo) played a live-to-sir set on New Weird Australia, on Thursday January 19th 2012.

Secret Birds, the Brisbane-bred, ex Tokyobased brainchild of D.Black, takes an astraltinged journey through higher mind synth jams, commune float folk, and boogie-fried psychedelia. Jamming on strung-out tribal zone dirges, and darkened drum-machine trances, calling to mind the likes of NNCK, Sunroof!, or High Wolf.

Starting as a solo project in 2005, SecretBirds has seen more than 30 musicians drafted as members of the experience, adding their contributions, and moving on when the time is right.

Currently residing in Sydney, Secret Birds has gone full circle and once again is operating as a solo effort. As Secret Birds and member of Topping Bottoms (Not Not Fun Records), D.Black has played with bands such as Moon Duo, Woods, Green Flames (Ex-High Rise and Zeni Geva), LSD March, Nonhorse, Ducktails, High Wolf, and Slug Guts.