Dirtier than the Dirty 3

Hey, wow, I've celebrated being back home by catching an awful cold, spent much of yesterday asleep (after idiotically going for a run in the morning and making everything much worse). So, pardon the typos. There may be more than usual. I'm still in a bit of a fog. Meanwhile my Dusted review of Venom P. Stinger went up last week (and it's still up because, apparently, we are on an occasional updating schedule).

I said:

"Venom P. Stinger churned the most corrosive, skuzz-crusted kind of punk, its fervid evocations of various sorts of madness jacked up on unrelenting, speed-maddened marching band beats. It was pure punk in energy, aggression and noisiness, but the band had some unusual elements. Jim White, later of Dirty Three, was already finding eccentric, abstract ways to keep jackhammer time; his drumming is both rigidly on beat and feverishly imaginative. Mick Turner, who also went on to Dirty Three, unspooled a hallucinatory free-formness from his altered rockabilly licks and blues-rock vamps; he is an element of chaos in a boxed-in, one-two punk structure. Both White and Turner added an extra dimension to the clatter that surrounded Dugald McKenzie, and he himself was almost surreally intense, maniacal and unpremeditated."

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Dirty Three feature

My feature on Dirty Three's Towards a Low Sun ran in the summer print issue of Blurt, but it's up online now for the first time. It's one of my favorite pieces of writing (of mine anyway) for the year and also one of my favorite albums, so check it out.

FREE EXPRESSIONS The Dirty Three

The wizards of Oz release their first album in seven years - and a North American tour kicks off this week.

BY JENNIFER KELLY


"We tried to record this album a couple of times, and nothing seemed to fall into place," says Warren Ellis, for 20 years the violinist in one of rock's rawest chamber orchestras, the Dirty Three. "Then we did some shows and we realized that the way in was to kind of try and concentrate on the way we play live. We needed to take some really basic material, really skeletal structures and explore them in a very free way."

"After stagnating, we decided we wanted to capture the spontaneity and energy evident in our live performances on tape," concurs guitarist Mick Turner, another of the band's three founders. "So we tracked all three of us at same time."

The band's latest album Towards the Low Sun (Drag City) is its first in seven years, reconvening the Aussie trio of Ellis, Turner and drummer Jim White in an explosive, restless exploration of possibilities that pushes at the boundaries of rock, post-rock, jazz and classical music.

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They're touring, too.
09-23 Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
09-25 Detroit, MI - 1464 Gratiot
09-26 Chicago, IL - Lincoln Hall
09-28 Minneapolis, MN - Cedar Cultural Center
10-01 Vancouver, British Columbia - The Biltmore Cabaret
10-02 Seattle, WA - Neumos
10-03 Portland, OR - The Mission Theater
10-04 Portland, OR - The Mission Theater
10-08 Los Angeles, CA - Bootleg Theater
11-20 Birmingham, England - The Glee Club
11-21 Manchester, England - Manchester

The great Free Music Archive has their whole set from Primavera Sound 2012 up and available for streaming or downloading. Check it out here.