Media

Rising Adelaide band The Killgirls are set to bring their electro-rock anthems to Adelaide’s biggest football audience, when they perform at the entrance to AAMI Stadium before Saturday’s Round 4 Showdown between Port Adelaide and the Adelaide Crows.

The Killgirls will be performing from 6.15pm in the lead-up to the first bounce just under an hour later.

Their track ‘Set Yourself on Fire’ is Adelaide’s official theme for the 2011 Toyota AFL Premiership Season, and the AFL and SANFL are delighted to invite the band to perform before the game.

“We’re all super excited to be rocking one of SA’s biggest sporting events. It’s really great to see the AFL supporting local music,” The Killgirls band members said.

This is part of a wider initiative from the AFL to build strong alliances and support local music by having bands perform before high profile games.

The Killgirls have been making significant inroads into the Australian music scene, with recent high profile performances at Adelaide’s Clipsal 500, Big Day Out, the Fuse Festival, Parklife and the 2010 Adelaide Fringe Festival’s Opening Night Party in front of 40,000 people, where they collaborated with a 15 piece African Choir!

The Killgirls have also scored support shows for the likes of Art VS Science, Birds Of Tokyo and Crystal and are about to head to Melbourne for the Sounds Loud festival on April 9.

The Fuse Festival 2011 was held in Adelaide over three days from 16th – 18th February, with masterclasses and the conference running during the day and live showcases at night with over 80 bands from interstate and locally at venues across the city. Held annually in Adelaide SA, Fuse is the longest running music industry conference and showcase festival in Australia, drawing over 5000 people each year. The AU review’s own Adam Monkhouse was there.

The Fuse Festival live showcases are an important part of the festival, with three nights of the best live music across Adelaide’s best live venues that allows delegates, attendees and fans alike to see what it is we’re really all talking about.

Fuse East saw bands perform across eight venues in the city’s east. I started my night checking out a band I’ve been meaning to see for a while now, the electronic pop duo Radio Spectacular!!! The duo of Harry Worth and Phebe Rendulic were on early in the night at The Adelaide Uni Bar, which was something I didn’t entirely agree with looking at other bands on their lineup. The band has been around in Adelaide for a couple of years now, but has recently been making waves with the release of their latest EP Sugar Baby, Honey Child and a spot as one of Rip It Up’s Hot 6 for 2011.

Radio Spectacular!!! play pop. Purely delicious, fun pop. And they make no excuses for it. For these two starry eyed lovers, it’s exactly what they want to do. Their music is fun and has that vibe that makes you want to bounce. You can see they have a connection on stage, accented by the way they work off each other with vocal lines and synth and guitar melodies.

There music has a commercial quality to it, and you can hear it being used on adverts or promo spots. Their songs focus heavily on Harry’s simple but catchy guitar riffs, accented largely by Phebe’s vocal lines. Often playing to a backing track can be a cop out, and as a duo with drums and bassy synths on the side I think the band runs this risk. But Radio Spectacular!!! wouldn’t work any other way. Two crazy kids met, fell in love, made delightful pop music together and decided to share it with the world. You can’t really argue with that.

Next up I went down to Arcade Lane, a great little pop up laneway venue for one of my favourite Adelaide bands, Ride Into The Sun.

Ride Into The Sun are that perfect shoegazing, neo-psychedelic rock band. They could easily share the stage with Brian Jonestown Massacre or BRMC anyday. Such is their finely tuned understanding of their genre. After a few lineup changes recently, the band is settling into a groove now that is seeing them play consistent sets with a bunch of new tracks.

The stage was kind of raised above the laneway, and there seemed to be a haziness in the air. This amplified the vision of the band, making them seem more mysterious and their music even more intense. A fantastic act for fans of the genre, the guys play with a commitment and skill that is only seen in artists who’ve worked as hard as they have in the last few years.

After a short walk with some friends of mine down to the newly relaunched Producers’s Bar, I caught a set by another of my favourite Adelaide bands, The Killgirls.

The Killgirls understand their own style. They are five stylish young men, dressed in black and ready to play their hard synth rock to 80,000 people every other weekend. Their understanding of their style and commitment to it comes through when you see this band live. They are a tight unit, well rehearsed and in time with each other. They play a commanding set, owning the stage and pushing their ferocity onto the crowd.

Their music is fresh and timely. It’s a blend of hard electro rock, and wouldn’t be out of place on Triple J. Tony Irish on drums pushes the pace with an assortment of dazzling beats. He drums fast and hard, although there is plenty of room for flair and a nice focus on how he incorporates the hihats into the tracks, giving a disco feel to some beats.

The Killgirls play heavily on the strength of Mario Spate as a frontman. His strong voice carries songs to another level. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not dissing the other guys in the band. To the contrary, they play exactly what they should to make Mario’s voice stand out. His voice has great dynamic and fits with the harsh style of electro madness going on behind him.

I wasn’t particularly stoked by their sound in the venue however. First of all, the venue was full of smoke, like someone had set the smoke machine to fuck you. Secondly, they were loud. Really loud. And usually that’s not a huge problem, but I felt that they didn’t have the clarity of sound that they usually have. Things seemed a bit brickwall, although I spoke to someone else who thought they sounded the best they had ever heard them.

Now as much as I did love everyone that I saw that night, it was the last band of the night that stood out as the absolute highlight performance of the Fuse Festival.

THE KILLGIRLS (*****) facebook ::
Our third band however I have all the time in the world for.. and yes I admit on the surface this may make me a “bit” of a hypocrite after everything obnoxious I’ve said about Mammoth Logic (although if it helps for any of them tuning in just now? maybe it was just a “bad night” for it) because yes The Killgirls DO possess some teeny tiny indie disco qualities to their sound, but like I said before there are ALWAYS grand exceptions to the rule (as they happen to possess a few bloodthirsty industrial influences too). For The Killgirls are not so much an “indie disco” outfit as they love to beat the screaming black and blue shit out of it, barely pausing for breath as the “red mist” settles to the ground, at which point they beat it black and blue some more until there’s nothing left to show for it but a police chalk outline and a gaggle of witnesses all shit grinning in complicit silence. I like to think of them as rage therapy in that respect and tonight they’re holding NOTHING back in delivering it.. OOOOH FUCK NO!! IT’S A FUCKING MASSACRE!! Of course in saying that I AM presented with a few teeny tiny “logistical” hurdles in attempting to give you an accurate and indepth portrayal of just WHY this particular set so rocked the shit out of shit a good portion of Adelaide’s sewerage system is now shooting off into space out of every manhole cover like a high powered aerosol spray (and yes please resist all temptation to light up a cigarette lighter in riotous solidarity or the entire CBD will go off like a “mushroom cloud”) at least short of me making yet more spastically ridiculously hyperbolent claims in describing it (yes I know, sometimes I amaze even myself in writing that shit). For you see when a band like THIS is in full flight: there’s no middle ground, there’s no compromise, it’s do or die, fight or flight, you screaming out of every orifice in an exploding “white hot” fireball flailing on the dancefloor or you’re already dead.. it’s really THAT simple! Again I’m trying not to exaggerate, without due evidence to back me up here, so let’s explain WHY that’s a task and a half in itself. First of all the minute they walk on stage, all the stage lights simply go fucking beserk: we’re talking an epilectic fit, a fullblown alien abduction, and the outbreak of “World War Three” exploding out of the penile tip of a Daft Punk pyramid combined into the ONE giddy explosion of kaleidoscopic excess. Admittedly it was rather pretty to watch but an absolute BITCH to photograph. And so to “compensate” here: I pretty much spent the ENTIRE duration of their live set tonight attempting to get all these shots you see now, rather than concentrate on documenting any intricate details of their performance; and yes this may also explain why some of my live reviews in general are more indepth than others (I’m actually doing at least three things at once to provide all this coverage.. and that’s when I’m NOT drinking!). And yes you’re very much welcome here. No really,LOOK AT HOW SHIT HOT SHINY MY SHOTS ARE!! WOOOO!! Secondly, even if I was too distracted to pay any attention to their sound, it didn’t really matter because you sure as shit FELT IT. Like being stabbed repetitively in the chest with a fist full of adrenaline, like Atari Teenage Riot and Nine Inch Nails joining forces to gang rape a Super Nintendo (and using THAT as your alarm clock), it wasn’t so much FUCK OFF LOUD as Satantically three dimensional.. THAT’S how epic the live sound was. And speaking of such? yes I did finally get over that headache from before, as I’m pretty sure my brain no longer exists in the prime material plane, or in several other astral planes for that matter.. so again you’ll excuse me if I’m not really making much sense here. On the flipside however I did steal their setlist, and amongst all the usual suspects: “Bomb In The Head”, “Disconnected”, new single “I Love You” and “Set Yourself On Fire” (the latter rocking Beastie Boys’ “Fight For Your Right” as a slamming intermissional) they also showcased a host of new songs.. most memorably “Flint And The Steel” (but maybe only because I snagged a video of it) showcasing a more stabbingly electro / dancefloor feel and yet in no way compromising on their full throttle ferocity. Overall it was apocalyptically epic skull fucking from beginning to end, like an entire surround sound stadium rock experience smashed into a blackhole singularity and spat out on stage at Jive; and yet you could totally dance to it. The band totally took it in their stride, totally at ease, like it was a walk in the park; no need for egos as much as they were 10ft tall and shooting laserbeams out of their eyesockets in letting it loose. I mean what more can I say? The Killgirls killed! We didn’t dare stand in their way, we didn’t argue at all, we simply ceded all territory to them to do as they pleased.. WHOAAA!! FUCKING WHOAAA!!