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Song of the day – 526: Psy Ants

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Psy Ants - Bit Tongue Prik

Here’s the pitch:

PSY ANTS – Bit Tongue Prik 12″
Now defunct Brisbane based noise punk rock trio. Akin to the discordant guitar rock of the late 80’s/90’s from both Australia (King Snake Roost) and USA (Cows, Rapeman). Something like a riveting chug. A genuine tour de force. Features members of Per Purpose, Knee Chin, Cured Pink, et al.

Here’s the music:

Think it matches up? Me too.  I believe they even used to cover a Scratch Acid song. And, let’s face it, way better than mentioning the fucking Scientists and Birthday Party again.

Something about the ex-noise punk trio Psy Ants sounds peculiarly Brisbane (and by peculiarly Brisbane, I mean one of the only yardsticks worth measuring Brisbane by – Eternal Soundcheck).

By that I mean:

  • Taut, intense, anguished
  • Oddly unfinished (not an insult… maybe “appetisingly open-ended” is better, but that makes me feel like we’re in the middle of a restaurant review)
  • Spacious, harsh
  • Punk rock filtered through two decades of shit leafy suburbia and print zine subscriptions
  • Groove is the heart
  • Oblique, angular, nasty, distorted, cheap

In the 80s, in the UK, we’d have slapped a Warning Notice on this music and called it ‘grebo’ or ‘shambling’ or something equally as asinine when all we really meant was “this band has pretended to listen to the same two Captain Beefheart albums that we’ve all pretended to listen to”, but this being 2012 and Brisbane and all that, I rather suspect that Rapeman might be Year Zero. So no more pretending, which is to the good. (In the early 90s, in the UK, very briefly, we called this music “the Camden lurch”… when really we just meant that we loved getting fucking wasted down the front of Silverfish and Th’ Faith Healers gigs. This being Australia and everything, I’m certain there are equivalent bands and perhaps an equivalent moniker – “the Melbourne menopause”? God, King Snake Roost, The Moodists, Venom P Stinger and so on.)

In America, it’d have been called AmRep.

All to the good. Former heartland ET territory, for sure.

Let’s call it: The Brisbane bounce.

Mainly because it isn’t.

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