All posts by Marshall Cullen

News and Touring

MrHarvey-New EP-It’s Kool to be Kind

MrHarvey New Ep It’s Kool to Be Kind

Release Date: October 23 (Foghorn/MGM) ALL Digital Platforms

MrHarvey is the stage name of singer-songwriter Nathan Harvey. Having only picked up a guitar in 2015 at 44 years old, his music is as interesting and diverse as his life! A blend of blues, folk, country and rock, Nathan’s music is very lyrics focused as he draws on a myriad of musical and life experiences.

Former Channel V host and media personality in the 90’s, Nathan retreated from the spotlight leaving his hometown of Sydney for the Gold Coast working as a show announcer and FOH mixer at SeaWorld. It was here that he literally learnt the ropes from scratch after befriending the Ski Captain to become a professional water skier.

In 2010 a near fatal water-skiing accident in Canada whilst skiing with old SeaWorld buddies saw Nathan return to Sydney with a titanium plate and 4 screws holding his neck together. Always loving music and being a drummer in his teens, Nathan played in a fun “pisstake” band during his V days called “The Velvet Underpants” alongside Ken Stewart from Mr Blonde and Anthony Ousback former MTV host. His debut single “Brand New Day” was played nationally on the Triple M / Austereo Network and reached No 3 on the overall Triple J Unearthed Charts.

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Arranged and produced by Nathan Harvey with Magnus as co-producer the EP features Nathan on vocals, guitar, some keyboards and various other instruments, Magnus on Clarinet, BVs and lead keyboards along with Catrina Bargwanna, Tara Resch on Violin / BVs, Alex Gresley on lead and bass guitar, Luke Spies on drums and Brett Chapman on Harmonica.

It’s Kool to Be Kind is OUT NOW –  via MGM

 

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News and Touring

Jimmy C’s New Album The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C

Melbourne one-man-band Releases his New Album – The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C

Jamie Coghill is a musician and songwriter based in Melbourne, Australia, who has been recording solo under the moniker of ‘The Jimmy C’ since 2005. A multi-instrumentalist, The Jimmy C is Jamie’s primary creative outlet, in which he writes, records, engineers, produces, mixes and masters everything himself in his home studio, Casa de Kensington. Originally recording to four-track tape, and gradually moving to digital, Jamie’s ability to make his lo-fi gear produce hi-fi quality sound is part of The Jimmy C’s charm.

Playing primarily as a drummer in The Devilrock Four, Fez Perez and Luxedo prior to 2005, The Jimmy C was Jamie’s opportunity to showcase his unique style and abilities, and quickly became his main musical project. While still touring with Devilrock, including a tour of Europe in 2008, Jamie was working on what would end up being 2009’s Glamour and Fame. Recorded over two years “in lunch breaks and on weekends”, Glamour and Fame was a sprawling 20 track loose concept album, which established Jamie’s talent – as well as his penchant for genre hopping and very short songs.

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The Jimmy C has since released three albums: 2014’s Orbital Debris, 2016’s Un Homme Orchestra (released as three EPs but spiritually one record) and 2018’s Songs For The Species; as well as recording original music for two American web series: The Adventures of Superseven and The Sandra West Diaries; and a feature film. He also released several EPs, a Christmas single, and produced a live album with The Jimmy C Group, out of which formed his latest side project: Lava Fangs.

2020 is shaping up to be a huge year for Jamie, with The Jimmy C releasing his latest album, The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C, as well as Lava Fangs releasing their debut, self-titled long player.

Step into “The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C” – a fantasy land of catchy pop songs, self-deprecation, and the struggle for normalcy in a world gone completely bonkers.

The Jimmy C returns with an album that surprised even himself. Despite featuring a few guest contributions from Jamie’s Lava Fangs bandmates: Wesley Fahey and Andrew Horne, and Stu Thomas (The Stu Thomas Paradox, Kim Salmon/Surrealists, Dave Graney), the vast majority of instruments on the record, as always, are performed by Jamie.

As Melbourne headed into lockdown in early 2020, Jamie found himself stuck at home: which conveniently also houses his home studio. With the studio becoming a place of therapy, “The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C” became an album borne out of boredom. Continuing the DIY journey started with “Project E.G.O.” in 2005, “The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C” is The Jimmy C’s most accomplished and fastest finished album to date with Stage 3 Coronavirus restrictions unexpectedly giving Jamie much more time to spend working on new songs.

While The Jimmy C’s previous releases have all spanned genres, “The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C” showcases Jamie’s creativity and musical diversity on another level. No stranger to straight up rock’n’roll, he delivers that on ‘Standing in Doorways’, a track written for and about the Coghill family’s cats and kittens, while ‘Where Was She’ is perhaps the most straightforward pop jangle on any The Jimmy C record to date and melancholy album closer ‘Kings of the Earth’ departs from Jamie’s usual wheelhouse and introduces strings and a trumpet to The Jimmy C’s ever-expanding sound palate.

The Entirely Unremarkable World of The Jimmy C is out now on Foghorn/MGM. 

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News and Touring

Andrew Barnum’s New Album Dear Ancestor

Andrew Barnum’s New Album Dear Ancestor

Andrew Barnum is a singer-songwriter, whose music is a modern take on folk-blues based alt-rock. He has been recording and releasing his own original songs as a solo artist in Australia since the 1990s. With long-time collaborator Boris Hunt, they’ve now produced 8 albums. Their sound is a blend of the acoustic and electronic arcane – forgotten analogue technologies, merging with digital interfaces and an array of musicians. Boris and Andrew call it ‘Homefolktronics.’

The song-writing-performance duo of Andrew & Lissa Barnum, aka Vitabeats, had a national hit with ‘Boom Box’ (Hot/EMI) in 1985. This was followed by singles ‘Audrey’ and ‘Build it Right’ from the album ‘Spot the Spanner.’ YouTube clips: https://bit.ly/2Ctb1qo. The band stopped recording and touring in 1988. Andrew has never stopped writing, recording and performing his own songs since then.

Dear Ancestor is a letter to our past, asking for directions for the future. The songs have a dark smoky quality to them, musically they speak volumes, and have a sense of longing, lingering and meandering that is full of romance. There is a continual dark, menacing feel to the tracks that really captures the zeitgeist of today’s isolation.

The tracks were recorded live at Black Rabbit Big Room in Kanimbla NSW, Australia with Boris, Lucius Culliton (drums), Andy Gordon (bass) and Andrew (vocals guitar). Boris added more bass, keyboards and pedal steel, Andrew recorded the final vocals at home on the South Coast of NSW. 27 tracks were recorded, 11 made the cut, 9 released.

This album is part of a continuum of albums that began between Andrew and Boris starting in 1993. Dear Ancestor is their 8th album. The unique process required recording the initial 27 songs over 2 days. The final version of the album was mixed by Boris and mastered by Nat Love. Recorded before the Australian bushfires and then finalized during the arrival of the Pandemic.

Stream the new album here:
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News and Touring

Grander Things Debut EP MASH

Having played together in various bands since the late eighties, Brent Williams (Pop Mechanix, The Moon), Rhys Lewis-Smith (The Moon, Mr Blonde) and Bruce Thomas (The Moon, Greg Brady Overdrive, Ancient Marinators) reconnected and their weekly jam night recordings were sometimes joined by friend and guitarist Iain Martin.

The collection of tracks quickly grew and they all agreed that some were too good to leave in the vault. Whilst still just a collection of cool ideas, that felt good to play and the thought that this could turn out to be something more than a weekly jam session slowly took hold. The lads agreed it was time to search for a singer/songwriter.
They didn’t have to look far. Longtime friend Liz Clear (The Amazing Woolloomooloosers, Yeah Yeah Yeah, Clear) had vocals with attitude that perfectly matched their brand of epic indie rock.

Checkout the Video for NO Disco

Liz picked up the challenge and was inspired to lay some tracks up with words and melodies. Before they knew it, they had a crackerjack bag of hits.

They formed the band, Grander Things, fine-tuned their set and picked four of their favourites to record with Dave Trumpmanis at his studio in St Peters.

Grander Things wear their influences on their sleeves, but their sound is equally hard to pin down. A combination of all that has lit their fuse; rock, punk, new wave and pop.

Mixed and mastered by Russell Pilling from Damien Gerard Studios, the result is their four-track debut EP, MASH. Short and sharp. It delivers.

Born from the last four decades of rock, punk, new wave and pop all mashed up, these songs are filled with big guitars and soaring melodies that hook you right from the start.

No Disco:

An assault on the senses. This song captures the pain of romance when communication breaks down.

Cold War:
Haunting depiction of a friendship turned sour.

Running:
Classic rock breakup song. You can’t come running to me tells it like it is.

Carry Me:
Not for the faint hearted. This song is all about empowerment.

Streaming:
 

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News and Touring

LA Band Cody & The Blackouts new single Time Stood Still

Cody and The Blackouts (USA)
Time Stood Still

We’ve all had those moments.

That instant when realisation hits. The sudden knowledge destiny is unfolding right before our eyes. It could be meeting a potential soulmate, achieving a lifelong goal, watching your team salvage victory from almost certain defeat.

Moments when time stood still.


The new single from Los Angeles five-piece Cody & The Blackouts captures that lightning in a bottle – not just once, even twice, but thrice. Time Stood Still, penned by the band’s lead singer and songwriter Cody Hudock, references three momentous events in history: the birth of Gutenberg’s printing press, Freud’s breakthrough theories of psychoanalysis, and how the Beatles and their producer George Martin changed the game forever when it comes to writing and recording popular music. Hit, hit, hit.

If anyone could weave these wildly disparate subjects together in the context of a single pop song, it’s Cody Hudock. Born into a family of songwriters, Hudock learned the trade from his father and older brother. “I picked it up quite naturally, in much the same way the son of a baker might understand intrinsically how to make a good loaf of bread from their first go at it,” Hudock says.

After acquiring early performance experience playing keys in older brother Jordan’s popular LA indie bands, Coalinga and Marvelous Toy, Hudock launched his own songwriting vehicle, Cody The Band. The group released three EPs before Hudock embarked on his solo debut, 2016’s ambitiously titled The Great American Album. Released under his own name, it garnered some delirious word of mouth: “If there were an award for ‘greatest living songwriter you’ve never heard of’, then Cody Hudock’s sterling solo effort would place him firmly in the running,” gushed LA blog The 704.


What would become the core of The Blackouts played together on The Great American Album: Cody, his wife and vocalist Joanna Hudock, and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Bennett. Drummer Brent Stranathan and bassist Will Weissman were soon added to the fold, as the band began playing shows across Los Angeles. When Bennett moved to Atlanta a year later, guitarist Jimmy Holman proved a worthy replacement.

Recorded at Hollywood studio Elephant In The Room, produced by Ethan Kaufmann (Avril Lavigne, Wild Party) and Brent Stranathan, and mixed by longstanding Capitol Records engineer Chandler Harrod (John Mayer, Neil Young), Time Stood Still captures the unique studio chemistry of Cody & The Blackouts. That chemistry translates to the song’s accompanying performance video, shot in crisp black and white at The Room Downtown, LA, with Matt Soson as Director of Photography and edited in Australia by Emmy award-winning Jason “JJ” Jamieson. Time Stood Still, from the album Gold, released on Chance MUSIC. Hit, hit, hit.

Video

 

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Released In Australia by Chance Music

For further information, Files, CD and Interview Requests please contact:
Marshall Cullen at Foghorn Media
0416 143 030
marshall@foghornrecords.net
Or
Nick Chance at Chance Music
promotions@chancemusic.com

News and Touring

Mr Blonde New Single In a Faze

MR BLONDE – IN A FAZE

Mr Blonde have come to the airwaves with this power pop epic, reminiscent of their Triple J ruling days. Sugar coated lyrics disguise a super well produced catchy tune, think Blur, Oasis, Brit Pop in general and coming in at 2mins42secs this is a winner.

The track is about the way we humans get caught up in the complicated maze we inhabit.  From social media interaction through to rapid changes in technology. Our cultural norms are bombarded with aggressively targeted consumerism.  That’s the verse, the chorus is a call to arms, to “stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

Complete with the signature Mr Blonde sound: jangly pop guitars, groovy bass, swirling hammond keyboards and a melodic vocal to sing to the stars.  The song wasn’t so much “written” but was an ear worm without guitars.  Ken couldn’t stop singing it, so finished the track to save his sanity.

Recorded at Big Studios in Crows Nest Sydney with tracking and mixing completed at Burning Boat Studios in Melbourne. Mixed by Steve Melville. Mastered by King Willy in Launceston.

Forget all the Mr Blonde “burst onto the scene” rhetoric there is a real story of how this band formed out of a dodgy terrace in Woolloomooloo.  Two true believers in English Indie music decided to have a crack, spending evenings and weekends fine tuning raucous, pop driven riffs with motor-beat drumming, and guitars laden with distortion and reverb.

Songs were written, relentless rehearsals, early gigs at The Sando, The Hoey, Metro then interstate and beyond to touring mayhem, festivals, music videos and TV shows.

Perhaps the infamous line from Spinal Tap: “have a good time all the time” resonated a little too strongly for Mr Blonde. Their first single Sunday swung into high rotation at Triple J and set the band up for what was to follow. Relentless touring and ridiculous surreal moments spaced out between hundreds of amazing gigs and the best time of our lives. Fall off a cliff… fast forward to the first Mr Blonde single for 25 years “In a Faze”.

Video

In A Faze is OUT NOW – September 18th via MGM
All DSP’s
 

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For further information, Files, CD and Interview Requests please contact:
Marshall Cullen at Foghorn Media
0416 143 030
marshall@foghornrecords.net