In this week’s podcast, we feature a live set from a new Sydney three-piece called Gold Model. The members of the band are by no means new to music-making – lead vocalist Zed Female (otherwise known as Christina Harvey) can be found in a number of projects, most notably ‘Und’. Producer Stanislavski operates in the orbit of the renowned Clan Analogue collective, and guitarist Snakes also features in many local improvisational projects. In this live set-up Stanislavski takes a back-seat, allowing Zed and Snakes to perform the set as a duo.

The interview and live set was originally broadcast on 3rd May 2012.

Tracklisting: Morphina / Ondine / Kill Me / Sucker In Love / Beyond Belief / The Squeeze / Monkey / Flirting / Dum Dum

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.

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.

Brain Drain is a Sydney based artist who straddles the divide between structure and improvisation, often revelling in the contrast between the two. His primarily guitar-driven pieces centre around creating both mood and rhythm through loops and using this repetition as a foundation on which to improvise. Since 2010, Brain Drain has released three albums: a self-titled debut cassette, the follow-up Wahine Division, and the collaborative album, Popolice Versus Brain Drain.

This podcast features a full set from Brain Drain, broadcast live to air on New Weird Australia in May 2011, plus an artist interview and tracks from his first two releases.

Official Brain Drain site: braindrain3053.tumblr.com

Live tracks featured in this podcast: Double Chocolate Stout, Black T, No-Hitter, Theme.

(April 2011) Severed Heads are regarded as being one of the most influential experimental and electronic bands in Australia, pioneering the use of tape loops and samples in the late 70s and early 80s, and forging an innovative career that stretched across three decades. Retiring in 2010, Severed Heads nonetheless came together once again in May 2011 to play a series of shows with electro-pioneer Gary Numan, and, prior to the tour, gave their final live to air performance on NEW WEIRD AUSTRALIA.

Over 50 minutes in length, this exclusive Severed Heads set is in two parts - a 'pop' set featuring well-known classic tracks from the back catalogue, and a shorter 'weird' set, with the band recreating early material with Ableton Live. In between, Stu Buchanan discusses the legacy, 'the retrospective era' and upcoming solo activity with Severed Heads frontman, Tom Ellard.

Live tracks featured in this podcast: (Part One) Now, An Explosive New Movie / Pilot In Hell / Harold And Cindy Hospital / Kittenette / Petrol / Pilots Hate You / Choose Evil / Heart Of The Party / Dead Eyes Opened. (Part Two) Ken Burns Effect / Gashing The Old Mae West / Wonder Of All The World

(November 2010) AXXONN is the self-described "pop/synth/doom/electronic music project" from Brisbane's Tom Hall.  Originally exploring territories solely of doom and drone in his earlier EP releases, his recent debut album 'Let's Get It Straight' deploys a barrage of wider influences - from 80s mullet-metal, abstract electronica, hardcore noise, synth-pop and the blackest of black metal.  Stu Buchanan talked to Tom Hall during the album launch tour, shortly before he was due to take to the stage in Hobart and ahead of dates in Sydney, Geelong, Melbourne and Perth, rounded off with a lap of honour in Brisbane.