A Bombazine White Xmas

Jayne and I are holed up in an apartment in Montmartre playing chess and writing songs for the next Bombazine Black album.  Snow is falling as I type and it's almost time to break out the vin chaud.

It's a complete coincidence that in the year we release a song called Montmartre we find ourselves here for Xmas - life moves in mysterious ways doesn't it?  Next year we'll release a song called the Maldives and let's see what happens.

Among other things it seems the perfect time to have a bit of a look back on the year and see if we actually did anything, or am I just tired because I'm suffering from mono.

Thank you to everyone that came to shows, bought records, gave encouragement or even downloaded our songs illegally.  It's just nice to be in your life.


2010: A Re-Cap

January

Matt, Dan and Daryl's 'other' band Gersey begin rehearsals for the Pavement Australian shows in March.


February

Gersey play their first show since 2007 at The Toff in Town, Melbourne.


March

Gersey tour Australia with Pavement and have an absolute blast.  Lots of photos up on Facebook.




April

Matt composes the score and Jayne is a twisted sister in the theatre production Cageling, conceived by the unstoppable force that is The Rabble. It opens to rave reviews and full houses at Melbourne's Forty-Five Downstairs. A "nuanced sound design" said esteemed theatre critic Alison Croggon among other things.




Dan and Daryl's other other band Tall Buildings record their debut album at SoundPark in Northcote.


May

Mixing of second Bombazine Black album Motion Picture completed by Tim Whitten in Sydney.


June

Cageling opens in Sydney to more rave reviews.  Curtain Call say the score is "one of the most engrossing and cohesives aspects of the work."
The Sydney Morning Herald said it was "a ringing score." 


July

Motion Picture is mastered by Roger Siebel at SAE in Arizona.

Matt and Marty from Gaslight Radio start record label/distro house Letters & Tapes.




August

Jayne completes the artwork for Motion Picture, with layout by Iain Downie.




Paris-based Bombazine Black bass player/drummer Taylor Holland releases a book of his photographs, Lignes.




September

Motion Picture is released to universal acclaim.  Wireless Bollinger called it "heartfelt, emotive music that trades in sincerity and timelessness" and The Music Blogs said "I’m a little speechless. This album is incredible."

You can read all the reviews for yourself here.


Bombazine Black perform the album launch show at The Toff in Town in Melbourne with The Marlon Winterbourne Movement and Sirens of Venice. The AU Review review the show and say "there are movies and there are motion pictures and the Melbourne based instrumental band led by Matt Davis of Gersey fame, proved that they are Scorsese."




October

Rehearsals begin in Berlin for theatre/dance piece Soft Landing that features music from both Bombazine Black records.




Letters & Tapes releases The Marlon Winterbourne Movement album Merry Go Round on the Moon.




November

Soft Landing opens in Berlin and sells out the season.

Tall Buildings finish mixing their new record with Sloth at Head Gap.  Expect the release early next year.


December

Matt completes score for Jonathan auf der Heide's new film The Day Before Yesterday.

Jayne publishes a book of her writing and artworks from The Existential Bunny Rabbit.




It snows in Paris.


Merry Xmas all, see you on the other side.

M

Lots of Soft Landing Photos --

up on Facebook!

Motion Picture review - The AU Review

Mellow yet filled with a form of optimistic, surreal ambience, Motion Picture by Bombazine Black is a fitting soundtrack to the beginning of summer.

Filled with melodic, prevailing guitar alongside light percussion and keys undertones, this album coaxes one into a sort of trance, within which I might envision some carefree, naturalistic persons lying around a secluded field or forest. But, away from my romantic imagination, Motion Picture remains a rewarding musical experience.

Motion Picture is a title that perfectly captures the essence of this album. Every track on this album is voxless, supporting the cathartic feel of the music. Despite the similarities between tracks one through to seven, each one serves as an individual piece contributing to the final product. The opening track is an understated, epic introduction to the rest of the album, which seems to travel in waves.

‘The New Ruse’ resonates positivity in its 3:50 length, containing a backing of organ sounds and light keyboard. Next, ‘Montmartre’ features the cello, while ‘Roosevelt’ is short and sweet with a beautiful piano overtone. But, 'The Bel Esprit', which is found towards the end of the album, is my personal favourite. So light, with horns in the background and either xylophone or piano played in a very high key in the forefront.

In general, the second record for the unconventional group formed by guitarist Matt Davis is a musical progression dispersed in to seven mellow tracks, all of which seem to be a level-up progression from Bombazine Black’s last record, Here Their Dreams. Love it, particularly as everyone chills out to inhale the summer air.

Review Score: 8/10

by Josie Smart
www.theaureview.com

Motion Picture review - [sic] Magazine

Guitarist Matt Davis (Gersey) has crafted an understated yet largely rewarding album with Bombazine Black’s second release, Motion Picture. Recorded in Paris, LA and Melbourne, with different musicians in each location, there’s nevertheless a cohesive feel to these patient, evocative instrumentals.

The opening quartet of tunes is certainly the strongest part. ‘Annelets’ sets the scene with its leisurely interweave of vibraphone and organ among the standard guitars-drums-bass set-up. ‘The New Ruse’ shines brightly by virtue of its poppy demeanour, contrasting with the moodier hues demonstrated elsewhere. It’s followed by my personal favourite, ‘Montmartre’, where the glowering slow-burn wouldn’t feel out of place on a Mogwai album. And ‘Dark Kellys’ feels like ‘Montmartre part 2’, akin to the preceding song but angrier.

After the brief, pretty ‘Roosevelt’, the final pair of tunes, for me, sees Bombazine Black come undone. Long and meandering, there’s little point of focus across ‘The Bel Esprit’ and especially the 12-minute ‘Springheel Sunset’. The instruments pile up, including lots more piano, vibraphone and trumpet, but it all feels like its overcompensating for the lack of strong melodies and atmosphere that are found in abundance elsewhere.

In the first half of this Motion Picture there’s plenty to enjoy, but don’t worry too much about sticking around until the credits roll.

by Tim Clarke
[sic] magazine

Soft Landing

Soft Landing opens next week!

Soft Landing is a theatre/dance piece based around the music of both Bombazine Black records and features the band playing live.   It opens next week in Berlin.  Don't miss it!



battleROYAL will present its premiere dance production at Dock 11 – Berlin from the 4th to the 7th November 2010 at 8.30pm.

Having recently returned from two fabulous new teaterkoncert creations in Copenhagen, battleROYAL has now been busy devising an exceptional new dance work with the stirring music of Australian band Bombazine Black.

Soft Landing presents moments of ungraspable pasts and foggy memories, producing an experience of the impotence and redundancy of age. Via human marionette systems and a haunting live sound track, the performance attempts to create a rare empathy for a redundant, elderly character.

“A fascinating soulful piece that perfectly combines emotions with acrobatic performances and clownesque drafts.”
Mia Frick, Volksblatt Liechtenstein.

battleROYAL is a diverse performing arts company working worldwide on event shows, theatre productions and site-specific projects. The company takes pride in delivering exceptional work of beauty and power accompanied by unique twists that separate it from the pack.

Concept, Choreography: Brendan Shelper (Choreography in collaboration with the dancers) - Assistant Choreographer: Susana Beiro - Dancers: Florian Bücking, Jonathan Buckels, Janine Joyner, Susana Beiro - Musicians: Matt Davis, Jayne Tuttle, Malte Weberruss - Music: Bombazine Black - Light: Alesandra Beiro - Costumes: Sophie vom Scheidt - Video: Timm Ringewaldt

www.battleroyalprojects.com                      
www.bombazineblack.com

Supported by:
The Kulturstiftung Liechtenstein, The Karl Mayer Stiftung, Dr. Peter Goop, Vaduz, Stiftung Fürstl. Kommerzienrat Guido Feger and Dock 11.

Dock 11, Kastanienallee 79 - 10435 Berlin
Tickets: 030 – 4481222 / dock11@dock11-berlin.de

Motion Picture review - The Dwarf

The title says it all. With its voxless instrumentation and moody, sombre tonality, Bombazine Black’s sophomore release resembles the soundtrack for some low budget, gritty French art Motion Picture.

There are two flaws with this premise: primarily the lack of dual medium. That is to say, there is no French art film, which by negation necessarily reduces Matt Davis’ baby to mood music. This forms the basis of a second quarrel, without lyrics or a film to anchor itself to, the album lacks cohesion. The mood constructed by the admittedly pretty ‘Annelets’, instantly dashed by the mellow pop stylings of the following ‘The New Ruse’, throwing the record’s flow out of wack.

Later, Davis lays it on heavier, with the slow progressive rock intentions of ‘Dark Kellys’, which takes more from ‘Red’ era King Crimson or Isis than it does from New Wave French cinema. The wilful obscurity of the track titles is almost frustrating, as if Davis is attempting to create a hidden world that only those informed (or bothered) enough to seek out will understand. The replacement of his full name on the record with the indefatigable M, doesn’t help stifle the notion either.

Surprisingly, the textural diversity on the record is kept tight. Every track maintains a key trio of mournful, clean guitar work, bass and spare jazzy, drumming. Layered on top of that is a seemingly omnipresent organ warble (as well as all manner of moogs, pianos, synthesisers and other keyed instruments), vibraphone and even a trumpet make an appearance, all of which add a tasty diversity while not straying too far from the cinematic pretensions Davis has set up.

All in all this is a pleasant record; enjoyable as background music or even as a lullaby. It has its moments of poignancy and even beauty but at the end of the day, there is simply not enough structure or cohesion to hold the thing together as a body of work.

Alex Buckley
thedwarf.com.au

Motion Picture review - MusicFeeds.com.au

It’s not very often in modern music you come across an instrumental band. Bombazine Black, the brainchild of Gersey guitarist Matt Davis, is a guitar based instrumental band that has released their second album Motion Picture; an album that sounds like the soundtrack to a movie that hasn’t been made yet, with smooth, flowing sounds that tell a story without a single word being uttered.

Most of the album was written while Matt lived in Paris with his wife, and the lifestyle and culture of the French city comes through in the music. Opening track Annelets features Parisian Vibraphone whiz Michael Emenau. On The Bel Esprit, Matt’s wife Jayne contributes piano, and the track comes across as a pop song with its repetition of riffs. Springheel Sunset was inspired by his time in America while performing on the back of the group’s debut. The longest track on the album, it has great breath and flow, and its open feel allows the track to ride through its 8+ minutes. Dark Kellys, based on Australia’s bushranger history, captures the essence of rural Victoria in the 1800s and tells a narrative through Matt’s guitar work.

Bombazine Black fuses smooth jazz, folk and blues. Motion Picture is not an album that you will pick up and listen to over and over again. It is a piece that requires a certain mood or certain atmosphere. It sits well as a backdrop to a romantic evening or as an album to listen to while reading on a lazy Sunday afternoon. If you’re looking for something a little different, give this record a spin.

Jason Strange
musicfeeds.com.au

Berlin

Jayne and I are in Berlin to perform with battleROYAL on a show called Soft Landing.  The show features songs from both Bombazine Black records played live and some amazing dance and aerial performance by the battleROYAL crew.  It's going to be quite a show!

From the battleROYAL website:

battleROYAL presents its new production Soft Landing, a gentle research into the future of our rapidly aging society. The piece explores themes of social isolation, independence and loneliness through the world of a generic 75 year-old man and the various interactions he has with himself.

The performance presents moments of ungraspable pasts and foggy memories, producing an experience of the impotence and redundancy of age.

The relentlessly gentle execution of Soft Landing produces an oppressive weight of passivity. Its determined and creepy softness and slowness is the work’s uncomfortable, strange power.

The human marionette systems represent the thin red lines that govern a society both supporting and restricting. They physically suspend the characters on stage, at times giving them a rare sense of freedom.

Soft Landing is set to the live music of ‘Bombazine Black’. The stunning three-piece Melbourne band that blends glockenspiel and delicate overlays of haunting guitars into a cinematic sound-track.

And here's the trailer:



If you're in Berlin buy your tickets now.  If not it's worth a trip!

4, 5, 6 and 7 November 2010 | 20:30 Uhr | Dock 11 - Kastanienallee 79, Berlin

Live review - The Toff in Town - September 23, 2010

Occasionally album titles really hit the mark. Motion Picture, the second release for Bombazine Black, embodies its title so effectively, audience members at the album launch last Thursday night could taste salty butter and corn in their mouths.

There are movies and there are motion pictures and the Melbourne based instrumental band led by Matt Davis of Gersey fame, proved that they are Scorsese. Scorsese who knows how to stir your emotions, how to hold back, and when, at the right time, to relocate your heart to your sleeve with no qualms.

With its old-school presence of Chaplin and Vaudeville, The Toff in Town was the perfect venue. And Bombazine Black’s intriguing and warm onstage energy matched the space. Davis led the group with humility and charm, and at times the band used the stage and interacted as though they were huddled around a Boston street fire-drum in the 1930s; playing as much to each other as they did for their audience.

Not for a second was the absence of vocals felt. Just like the days of the silent movie—before Woody Allen started chewing everyone’s ears off—it was refreshing re connecting with the basics. And Bombazine Black connected. The solid line up of Daryl Bradie on guitar, Dan Tulen on drums, Jayne Tuttle on keys, Miles Browne on bass, and Matt Davis on guitar, was joined by vibraphone virtuoso Laura MacFarlane from Ninety-Nine, and trumpeter-about-town Eugene Ball. The combination was magical, transporting the audience to places far beyond The Toff and the cinema it seemed they were in.

Like a good screenplay, the playlist built well and projected the right degree of light and shade. Act one, if you will, eased everyone in with the emotive yet cruisy Annelets and The New Ruse, while the darker Montmartre set the scene for the more epic Dark Kellys and climactic Springheel Sunset, which almost turned Motion Picture into moonlight cinema, generating such tension it seemed the roof might lift off. All done, paradoxically, with an element of restraint.

At one point, Davis treated the crowd to some narrative, introducing Dark Kellys by asking everyone to visualise being on the run from the Kelly Gang. The song’s inspiration arose from Davis’ reflections on Australia’s lack of fiction based on early white settlement. The crowd embraced it—as well as Davis’ momentary AC/DC breakout—and the atmosphere intensified.

Bombazine Black succeeded in fusing cinema and live music, the gig at times comparable to an iconic tribute montage at The Oscars. The only irony which challenged Bombazine Black’s album title was that they captivated their crowd so tremendously, their feature length playlist whizzed by like a short film.

With such a moving and sincere album on their hands, this is anything but The End for Bombazine Black.

by Michele Davis-Gray
The AU Review

Motion Picture review by Daniel Osmolowski

A little while back I asked Bombazine Black’s Matt Davis whether he worried that the band’s, largely, instrumental guitar music was now unfashionable with an increasingly fickle audience; especially considering it had been over a decade since the zenith of the ‘post-rock’ genre. His response was brief and succinct and it caught me slightly off guard. “No, I don’t worry about that,” he said.

In this day an age of manufactured pop and music as business, Davis’ response could be viewed as arrogant and dismissive; as if to say, ‘I don’t give a toss what the audience think’. On the other hand, if we view making music as an art form then this response makes perfect sense. This is, after all, independent, alternative music and not (with apologies to Bob Geldof) how to compose popular songs that will sell; as Davis goes on to explain: “I really think music should just be made for music’s sake, there’s enough commerciality and phoniness in the world without musicians adding to that. I think it’s far better just to make the record you want to make, hope there’s an audience for it somewhere and then move on to the next one.”

And move on they have. With Motion Picture, Davis’ collective move beyond the relatively closeted sounds demonstrated on debut Here Their Dreams and expand their sonic palette to produce an album similar in spirit but remarkably different in its texture and dynamism. These are clearly band compositions; measured, structured but also sprawling, warm and ‘felt’ as opposed to cold and constructed. The early work of Davis’ hibernating Gersey is a general touchstone here, echoing the melancholy pop of Hope Springs and even harkening back to the metronomic qualities of debut EP Bewilderment Is A Blessing.

Where the album’s predecessor was borne of, and sounded like, Davis’ internal musings, the aptly titled Motion Picture is a widescreen production in comparison. The filmic references are deliberate in this case. The album’s title is baiting to a degree; its self-efficacy is inviting and admirable, almost like a wink and a nod to those that would immediately label Bombazine Black as soundtrack music. Yes, the likes of Mogwai and Explosions In The Sky have walked that road and the misguided would argue that the results were indistinguishable from their ‘regular’ albums but the difference is that the music was written with someone else’s pre-existing images in mind; those of the filmmaker. While Davis was undoubtedly inspired by events, memories and/or dreams when penning these tunes and indeed they are ‘about’ certain things, Motion Picture invites the listener to create their own images to fit these songs, instead of the other way around.

Davis and co. prove with Motion Picture that they are brave enough to produce a record that may not shift gold record numbers but will secure them a following of loyal listeners keen to open themselves up to heartfelt, emotive music that trades in sincerity and timelessness instead of movements and fashion.

First published on Wireless Bollinger..

Beat Interview..

Inpress interview..

Singlets! More T-shirts!

All American Apparel.
Now for sale on the Store page..

Track by Track

Here's a piece I wrote on the songs on the new album for Mess & Noise..

Annelets

In our second year in Paris Jayne and I lived on Rue des Annelets in the 19^th arrondissement, just behind Belleville.  The apartment building on the album cover was across the road from our place, and every morning the Miami Vice guy would go out onto his balcony and smoke cigarettes.  There’s something about Jayne’s photo that reminded me of a Hitchcock film, and once we had decided to call the record Motion Picture I knew that photo would be perfect.  It seems like he could be anywhere.

I had arranged to do some recording with Parisian vibraphone whiz Michael Emenau (MNO).  The plan was that we’d meet at his studio (in the basement of a dodgy building near the Père Lachaise) and just improvise and see if we could come up with some songs, record them and put them out.  Bang - just like that - old-school jazz vibe.

But the night before the session I freaked out and thought I’d better come up with a few bits, a chord progression at least, something to go in with, otherwise we could be in there for hours while I try and figure out something to play.  Grant Green I ain’t.

So I sat on our couch in front of the French news and came up with the parts for Annelets.  On the recording with MNO the ‘change’ was repeated a few times, and the ending was just a middle eight, but I moved it all around when I got in the room with the band in Melbourne.  It seemed more disciplined to keep the change short, and dreamier to let the middle eight be a whole part onto itself, almost its own song.  I really wanted that part to sound like a 70s film score, maybe Midnight Cowboy or something like that.

The Bel Esprit

I wrote The Bel Esprit on the same night as Annelets and it has pretty much remained the same as I wrote it then.  The ending blew out a bit once I started playing it with the guys in Melbourne but it’s still pretty long on the version with MNO.  I have a high tolerance for repetition; I love what happens after you think something surely can’t continue on without a change.  For me it then starts to become meditative and comforting, and sometimes funny and joyful. 

Once I got the band involved I really wanted to keep my part very simple and straight and let the madness of Eugene [Ball]'s trumpet and Jayne’s piano surround it.  I hoped this would help it feel loose and organic while still giving you something in the song to hold onto, even if you couldn’t actually hear that part. 

I worried about the ‘chorus’ part in this song for a while, it’s pretty straight, definitely the straightest part on the record, and in the end it was that aspect that saved it.  I thought, if you’d made it this far into the record you deserved a little breather, a little bit of pop before it opened out again.

Springheel Sunset

When we were in America showcasing the first record we ended up with a day off in LA.  A couple of songs had morphed into these full band numbers and I really wanted to try and get them on tape.  A friend of a friend was an engineer at Sunset Sounds and lo and behold they had a studio free on our day off.  So we went in and recorded Sea-Dark, Springheel and a new song, Roosevelt.

Sea-Dark didn’t make the album in the end - I couldn’t quite get it to sit - but Springheel came out really well.  The song was very live and organic and we really seemed to capture the feeling within the group at the time.  We were having such a great time.  In theory the song should have been quite hard to record - almost 12 minutes and with two distinct parts - but because we had been playing so much and were having so much fun, it was a breeze.  Chris [Reynolds, engineer] pressed the record button and 12 minutes later it was done.

I added a few string parts to the middle verse when we got back to Melbourne, and then Eugene added his trumpet, but apart from that it’s exactly as we played it that day in LA.

Roosevelt

I had come up with the basic progression for Roosevelt while we were on the road in the US and I really wanted to see if we could pull a whole song together completely off-the-cuff while we were in the studio.  And we did!  We came up with the change and the basic arrangement on our lunch break, played it once and then recorded it.  Jayne came up with her fantastic piano line mid-take on the grand old Steinway.  It’s the most pure recording I’ve ever done and listening to it now I still marvel at what we were able to achieve in half an hour.

Montmartre

I wrote Montmartre in a little office I rented above the Workers’ Club in Fitzroy last year.  We had already recorded Springheel Sunset, Roosevelt and a band version of Sea-Dark in LA, and I had Annelets and Bel Esprit from Paris, so I figured I was three songs off a full record.  I like short records, 8 songs, 35 minutes. 

So I rented this little room and I set about writing three songs to finish it off.  I came up with a new tuning - that always seems to spark off new ideas - and almost straight away I had the basic part for Montmartre down.

It somehow reminded me of this story I had heard in Paris about the bars in the red-light district around Montmartre and Pigalle, about the out-of-town guy that goes into one of these bars, for a beer or whatever, chats to a girl at the bar for an hour or so, and then gets presented with a 500 euro bill for her time, and a couple of Russian bouncers should he protest.

I told the story to the band as we were rehearsing it up and we managed to keep that kind of sinister feeling running through it.  Jayne came up with the engaged signal keyboard part, almost like the guy had had his bank account cleaned out and was calling his wife to explain, but he can’t get through.

Dark Kellys

Dark Kellys was the second song I wrote up in the room above the Workers’.  I had been reading Blood Meridian and thinking about Australian history and how we don’t have much fictional stuff written about the early days of white settlement here, the days of the gold rush and the bushrangers and all that - our Wild West.  There’s the Peter Carey book of course and the odd film but nothing like the mountains of stuff the Americans have.  I started imagining what it would have been like to have been living in Beechworth in the late 1800’s and maybe falling on the wrong side of the law, and then maybe having a falling out with the Kelly Gang and what mean bastards they would have been to have chasing you.    

So I wrote Dark Kellys about that.  The basic narrative is that you’re on the run, hiding out in the bush, petrified that the Kellys are coming to get you.  The slow build at the start is the coming storm.  It’s night.  You think you hear them and then the chorus - they come riding over the top of the hill and they’re on top of you.  Guns and knives and war.

The New Ruse

Once I had Montmartre and Dark Kellys I figured I was one song off completing the album, and that we probably needed something a little up-tempo.  Something short.  The New Ruse was one of a few songs that came out.  I thought it was ok but then Danny [Tulen]'s idea to have the stop-start drumming really made it something and I knew we had a song then.  It seemed odd and different and exactly what the record needed.  And then Miles [Browne] came up his bass line in the change which I think is the best part on the record.  We recorded it in one or two takes at HeadGap [Studios in Melbourne]. 

T-shirts!

For sale now on the store page..

Gildan Soft Style, 100% cotton, and they look great! 

Six days till the Launch Show! Get on board!

Motion Picture Launch Thursday 23rd Sep @ The Toff with The Marlon Winterbourne Movement and Sirens of Venice

To celebrate the release of Motion Picture Bombazine Black will be playing a special one-off, never to be repeated album launch show at The Toff in Town, Melbourne.

Along with the wondrous Daryl Bradie on guitar, sparkling Dan Tulen on drums, electric Jayne Tuttle on keys, majestic Miles Browne on bass, and the ever humble M on guitar, the band will be joined on stage by vibraphone virtuoso Laura MacFarlane from Ninety-Nine, and trumpeter-about-town Eugene Ball.

See you there!

Tickets are available online at Moshtix and from Polyester Records (City and Fitzroy stores).

Support on the night from the wonderful The Marlon Winterbourne Movement and Sirens of Venice.

Here's the poster, designed by BB's own Jayne Tuttle:

BMA Review..

Bombazine Black are cut from the same sonic cloth as Mogwai and Tortoise however they steer away from the done to death crescendos in favour of a more delicate dynamic.
Motion Picture is the second album from the Melbourne based instrumental band led by Matt Davis and made up of members from Gersey, Art of Fighting, The Hoodangers and Monroe Mustang. While there is no actual film to accompany this release, it is clear Davis has approached this with the same intent behind his other soundtrack work for Australian film Look Both Ways. Each track is linear, slow building and heavily textured. At the centre of each song is Davis’ shimmering guitar, plucking melodies that float amongst a vast assortment of instruments including cello, vibraphone and trumpet. The strength of this release is the subtle layering of instruments that allow each song to build carefully without ever getting over the top.
Like a true soundtrack it feels as if each track is trying to capture an emotion or moment in time. But sometimes these moments are presented rather obviously, a little too ‘heart on your sleeve’. The harmony and rhythmic ideas are all very smooth and pretty - they offer little ambiguity to these emotions. Though not entirely original Bombazine Black do the post-rock sound well. Motion Picture is a very pretty album that could have been written for a film or a daydream just as well.  JOSH BECKERhttp://www.bmamag.com/articles/cd-reviews/20100916-bombazine-black/

Inpress Review..

Another review in..

from TheMusicBlogs.com.au.
might be the best yet..

Guitars and emotion

Just finished listening to Motion Picture by Bombazine Black.  And loved it. From the very moment I held the CD cover – I just had a feeling I was holding onto something beautiful.

I’m a little speechless. This album is incredible.

It’s emotive, delicate and yet extremely powerful.  If you’re a Sigur Ros fan – then you’ll love it tracks like The Bel Esprit – overall the minimal guitar sounds are contemporary and beautiful.

There’s a lot of heart in this album and I can’t say enough about it. Make sure you get a copy.

Another Motion Picture review..

This one is from Indie30.com. 

Visit their site for a free download of non-album track 'Sea-Dark Sunset'..

...

Melbourne instrumental post rock outfit Bombazine Black released their second album, Motion Picture, to Australian audiences this week just a year after their debut, Here Their Dreams. The band is the brainchild of Gersey member Matt Davis, who together with Marty Cooke (Gaslight Radio) launched the new record label, Letters and Tapes a couple of weeks back and this is its first release. Motion Picture is a contemplative, almost hypnotic journey that, as it title suggests, conjures up widescreen panoramas complete with sweeping landscapes that emanate from a multitude of reference points throughout its seven tracks. There is an intelligent restraint at work which aids in the careful crafting of tonal textures that give off an intensity of mood that constantly ebbs and flows. And the album is better for such insight. 

The first six tracks were recorded in live take in Melbourne at Headgap and the latter two in similar fashion in Los Angeles at Sunset Sounds. Davis and Gersey bandmates Daryl Bradie and Dan Tulen were joined by two bassists, Miles Browne (Art Of Fighting) for the Melbourne leg of the recording and Taylor Holland (Monroe Mustang) in L.A. The fullness of the band's sound was rounded out by Jayne Tuttle on piano and keys, Eugene Ball on trumpet and Michael Emanau on vibraphone. 

Motion Picture is out now in Australia at all good indie record stores on Youthful Chaos with distribution through Letters And Tapes. The link to buy from itunes is below in addition to the non-album track 'Sea-Dark Sunset', which the band have kindly made available as a free download. Bombazine Black launch Motion Picture at The Toff In Town, Melbourne on September 23. For tickets go here. 

Download here

Buy Motion Picture here

Rehearsals

We've started rehearsals for the album launch show at The Toff in Town (have you got your tickets yet?).  Here are some snaps taken by Jayne on the iphone, vibraphone playing by the wonderful Laura MacFarlane from Ninety-Nine.. 

Bombazine Black on Girl Domestic!

check it out!

www.girl-domestic.com

Motion Picture out today!

Digipak CDs featuring artwork by our own Jayne Tuttle are available via mailorder on the store page of this very blog, or at the following stores --

Melbourne:

Basement Discs - basementdiscs.com.au
Greville Records - myspace.com/greville_records
Missing Link - missinglink.net.au
Polyester (City & Fitzroy) - polyesterrecords.com
Pure Pop - purepop.com.au
Readings (Carlton, St Kilda & Port Melbourne) - readings.com.au/music
Title - (Brunswick, Fitzroy and Northcote) - www.titlespace.com

Sydney:

Red Eye Records - www.redeye.com.au
Title (Surry Hills & Crows Nest) - www.titlespace.com

Adelaide:

Title - www.titlespace.com
Funhouse Records - 160 Magill Rd. Norwood SA 5067

Brisbane:

Title - www.titlespace.com
Rockinghorse Records - www.rockinghorse.net

Hobart:

Tommy Gun Records - myspace.com/tommygunrecordshobart

Perth:

78 Records - www.78records.com.au


Or if you prefer you can download on iTunes or Amazon..

cheers!
M

Motion Picture - Review

The first review is in!

From ctrl-x.com.au --

Bombazine Black are an instrumental, Melbourne-based band with a sprawling, atmospheric sound and a boatload of talent. They are set to release their second album, Motion Picture, on September 3rd, and we at Ctrl-x have been lucky enough to snag a copy. The band was founded by Matt Davis, who also created Aussie indie-rock outfit Gersey, and features contributions from Daryl Bradie, Dan Tulen (both from Gersey), Miles Browne (Art of Fighting), Tayalor Holland (Monroe Mustang), Jayne Tuttle, Michael Emenau and Eugene Ball (Allan Browne Quintet).

The opening track is a beautiful, subtly performed number called ‘Annelets’, and sets the tone for the album perfectly. Like the work of comparable bands such as Spiritualized, Sigur Ros and even Radiohead, BB’s music is soft, hypnotic, atmospheric and intricately structured. The chemistry the band clearly possess is put to excellent use, layering and weaving and effortlessly crafting soundscapes that are subtle and smooth and relaxing and amazing.

Davis himself has composed numerous film and theatre scores, and his ability to effectively write extended instrumental pieces which are dynamic and interesting and enjoyable to listen to is put on show here. I mentioned the opening track by name, but there aren’t any truly standout tracks – and that’s a good thing, when they’re all of as excellent quality as the songs on Motion Picture.
This is your soundtrack to a lazy Sunday night with a bottle of red and a stick of incense. This is music to listen to.

5/5

review by Ben Vernel
http://www.ctrl-x.com.au/archives/2105

Cageling - Sydney Morning Herald review

CRUEL, challenging, eerily beautiful, Cageling is derived from Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, the story of a widowed mother's imposition of an eight-year period of mourning on her five sheltered daughters - a rule that attains the level of tyranny.

Lorca's original play is present in fragments only, part of a text made up of passages from Ovid's telling of the Philomena and Procne story, a ringing score by composer Matt Davis, excerpts from the poems of Ana Rossetti, and a physical language that runs the gamut from the balletic to the palsied.

The action is in a sealed room, sparsely furnished, painted white, lit by stuttering fluorescent tubes. We observe them through a window that mother and daughters occasionally peer through. Perhaps they see us, perhaps not.

The opening passage is related in a series of wordless tableaux, with Alba as a kind of monstrous choreographer chivvying her daughters into correct postures and acceptable attitudes. All wear closely fitted black dresses and ballet pumps. Veils are drooped over their faces. A microphone is present though none feels willing or able to use it for 20 minutes or so.

Performance troupe The Rabble play a dangerous game here. There's no doubt the opening gambit builds a level of need in their audience - a need for release echoing the stymied desires on display - but it also sets up a barrier that is never truly broached, even when the repressive culture that Alba enforces explodes into mania and bestial savagery. Though Cageling is fascinating to observe, its remoteness might be off-putting for some.

The shaven headed, somewhat priestly Daniel Schlusser is Alba and he gifts her with the monomaniac - almost comic - intensity of a James Bond villain. Dana Miltins, Jayne Tuttle, Mary Helen Sassman and Pier Carthew are the daughters and all maintain a seething stillness until, one by one, they rebel.

Like their convulsive take on Oscar Wilde's Salome in 2008, Cageling is difficult work. It is also rewarding and likely to haunt the memory.

by Jason Blake

SMH link

Cageling - Bicycle User Goes Out review

Go bring the rabble, / O’er whom I give thee power, here to this place - Prospero (to Ariel), The Tempest, Act IV, scene one

The Rabble have been brought to CarriageWorks to present Cageling. Cageling is a physical exploration of the repression of grief and desire, set in an enclosed box with a perspex wall facing the audience, two seamless white walls on the sides, and a wall with a high window at the rear. When you enter the space, you are met with a cast of five. They are all in the box, wearing floor-length, black, Victorian, gothic dresses and black ballet slippers. They are lit with fluorescent lights, and arranged in an unsettling tableau. They are there as if waiting for the audience, but very little happens for the first fifteen minutes. Cageling is designed to leave you outside, distanced from the action inside this home, and it takes effort on the part of the audience to find a way into this private world. This is almost in complete contrast to the the last thing I saw in Bay 20, Matt Prest and Claire Britton’s Hole in the Wall in which you are literally invited inside the home. But, although you are left outside Cageling’s cage, if you are actively willing to find a way inside, you’ll be rewarded.

THE RABBLE are not controlled by Prospero, or Shakespeare for that matter, but they are controlled by another formidable magician, Fredericio Garcia Lorca. Cageling’s urtext is Lorca’s play The House of Bernada Alba, a drama about a recently widowed mother, who controls her grief by dominating her children. This play is “smashed open” by THE RABBLE, and rearranged through the use of ballet, contemporary dance and hymn, and enhanced by stories from Ovid, thereby exposing the unconscious, affective underbelly of the Lorca’s text. But, we keep the mother and daughters and Dan Schlusser is terrifyingly good as Mother Alba.

Mother’s rules are no weeping and no secrets. A tension is established at the outset of the work between desire and action; if you do not act, you do not desire, and you do not grieve, if you do not cry. The flawed theory, of course, is that grief and desire will disappear if they can’t find expression, therefore as long as order is kept, tears are avoided, hierarchies are respected and instructions are followed everything will be OK. But, everything is clearly not OK. Within this world the only actions Mother allows are carefully choreographed: the poised movements of ballet and the perfectly harmonised hymn. Cageling dramatises the Daughters/sons’ attempts to break free from these rules, and the Mother/father’s attempt to reinstate them. And, I use the word “dramatises” with all its conventional import in spite of the lack of the dramatic text. And I say Daughter/son, Mother/father because gender difference necessarily unclear because the work is about women without men, but who have internalised the patriarchal structure. (Actually, Women without Men by Shirin Neshat that played in the recent Sydney Film Festival, has some interesting affinities with Cageling)

There are so many dimensions to this performance, and this is because THE RABBLE put to use all the tools available to the performing artist–speech, song, silence, movement, tableau, dance, costume, gesture, vocal tone, makeup, properties, set,  lighting, sound–THE RABBLE treat each aspect of the artform with equivalent importance, no element dominates, each device in turn contributing to Cageling’s emotional and physical assault.

Cageling is extraordinary, it deserves much more time that I can give it here to unfold the dark matter that is explored in the white box. Cageling requires your active attention, I think the audience are given many ways in; the sound design, dance lighting and speech all had a refrain. If you miss those clues or willingly resist the offers, you might be literally left out in the cold. But, I love difficult theatre, I like being made to work to find meaning, I love work where meaning keeps emerging for days later and there are too many threads to possibly consolidate in one short review. For example, I didn’t even get mention the headstand and the upside down penis, so, perhaps the upside down penis can be your reward if you are willing to involve yourself in Cageling.

by Jennifer Hamilton

http://bicycleuser.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/upside-down-penis/

Cageling - ABC Arts review

The Rabble's Cageling, a reinvention of Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba, is a sometimes puzzling curiosity which requires diligence to unravel, writes Jenny Blain.

 







‘To be born a woman is the worst punishment’ was the cri-de-coeur uttered by two of the five daughters in Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, first performed in 1945. It is also the catchcry which informs every heartbeat of The Rabble’s stylised reinvention of Lorca’s work called Cageling. As the name suggests, this production cleverly reifies entrapment applied to the female gender by its use of a sealed and claustrophobic cube to contain its message of cruel repression and seething passions. We must watch through a glass frontage at one remove, rather like peering at exotic creatures trapped in amber. 

The inanimate analogy is close to apt for the opening 15 minutes of Cageling. The brightly lit white cube presents us with a tableau of five figures clad in floor-length black and ballet shoes seemingly frozen save for the agitated fluttering of a Spanish fan. The occasion is the solemn observance of a funeral, that of the second husband of the mother Bernarda Alba. The figures – actually Bernarda Alba and her four daughters – could be mistaken for cloistered monks, an idea reinforced by the drawn-out, ringing refrain of temple bells. Two daughters create a sense of mystery as they sit immobilised in a corner, their heads covered with large white kerchiefs like escapees from a Magritte painting (I have discovered that white veils were worn for mourning in the 15th century by the Queens of France). The effect is gothic, meditative, hallucinatory and double-edged: the prolonged stillness and persistent bells create both calm and a tension of expectancy. The intense black and white imagery pits notions of death and oppression against those of freedom and the life-force; it also neatly references Lorca, who saw his play as a photographic documentary. Its graphic starkness signals impending drama, and indeed any illusions of a ‘normal’ grieving process are destined to give way to cruelty and calamity.

As the players begin to move into a choreography of ‘right’ attitudes and postures demanded by a matriarch wielding a cane it becomes abundantly clear that being a daughter in the house of Alba – now an outback Australian property where the burnt body of a fifth daughter Martirio, victim of a terrible bushfire, is on display in a jar – is indeed the worst imaginable punishment. Five trapped souls subjected to a family tradition where mourning is de rigueur for eight years and where, according to Alba’s terms, no grief must be shown – no tears or passion of any kind – is not only the height of absurdity but a perfect recipe for disaster. The tyranny of Alba looms large. Driven by rage and loathing to persecute her offspring, she is a slave to tradition, conformity, class prejudice and a belief that a woman’s place is in the home. Possession of money makes her an impossible snob: to her, money confers social superiority, a convenient excuse for her conviction that no-one measures up as a suitor for her daughters.

Her daughters have other ideas. In The Rabble’s version the unseen suitor Pepe el Romano, despite his betrothal to Angustias, the ugly but rich elder sister – who has inherited her wealth from her father, Alba’s first husband – has allegedly rogered all the daughters behind the chicken shed. The daughters are without exception mildly deranged, in their turn undone by jealousy, resentment, rage and pent-up sexual desire. The sickly Angustias (Mary Helen Sassman) has grown a beard, apparently in protest. Amelia (Jayne Tuttle) is restless, frustrated; she becomes violent when beaten by Alba, grabbing the whip and beating the surfaces of the set. The behaviour of her twin Magdalena (Dana Miltins) suggests repressed sexuality: during a dance routine she appears to commit suicide by wrapping a braid of hair around her throat. The youngest Adela (Pier Carthew) is a rebel who finally breaks her mother’s cane and who is punished for being in love with Pepe el Romano: when Alba contrives to shoot her lover, Adela, believing he is dead, hangs herself.

I think it is at this point that Alba, her authority gone with the broken cane, reasserts it by showing us that she does, after all, have balls. Her character as played by Daniel Schlusser makes this plain with a prolonged headstand to demonstrate what Jennifer Hamilton has dubbed the ‘upside-down penis’. It’s a confronting scene but it does drive home the idea of the controlling woman as having internalised a form of patriarchal power. Recalling Angustias’ manful beard and Adela played as a sweet youth, the bald and frocked Schlusser as Alba is the most spectacular of The Rabble’s playful gender inversions.

Macabre as Cageling may be, and despite a subtext of ghosts and werewolves and dark fairytales, nothing quite prepares us for the final scene, a diabolical homage to Ovid’s tale of Philomela – she whose tongue was sliced off by the sword of Tereus, her sister Procne’s husband. Here it is Alba who, in an act of terrible revenge towards her daughter Angustias – it can only be because she has a ticket to freedom – bites her tongue out. The shock caused by this hideous act finally smashes – in a metaphorical sense – the glass wall of separation. In a strange way it also acts to dissolve much of the nightmarish unreality of the many instances of violence we have already witnessed. Curtain call – in all its seemingly authentic blood and gore – managed to find a sympathetic audience.

The Rabble’s directors Emma Valente and Kate Davis have made of Lorca’s prototype an artwork, a sometimes puzzling curiosity (a Rubik’s cube?) which requires not only diligence to unravel, but some prior familiarity with Lorca’s original. There is much inspired panache invested in this work, a brave revisiting whose novelty, while retaining elements of the visceral and morbid, adds an overlay of challenging surrealism. My only criticism is a set that makes for a certain lack of immediacy. That said, Cageling, like its predecessor, reminds us forcibly of the destructive nature of power in the wrong hands, male or female.

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s2947020.htm