It’s been a while since the last Ned Collette + Wirewalker show at the now defunct NBI but it’s a show always worth waiting for and tonight at Ausland shouldn’t be any different.
Wirewalker drummer Joe Talia arrived from Melbourne recently to join Ned Collette for a series of shows around Europe in support of their recent album 2 which appeared on Fire Records in August.
Ned Collette moved to Berlin from his native Melbourne over two years ago. A well known and respected singer-songwriter in his own country and in underground circles worldwide, he has toured Europe previously with the likes of Joanna Newsom, Akron/Family, Bill Callahan and Nina Nastasia. His early musical output was based mostly in experimental music, before he gravitated towards more traditional song structures, albeit utilising loops, modern orchestration techniques and musique concrete.
His new album “2″ (his fourth album, second with Wirewalker, but his first outside of Australia) was released in August on Fire Records. It is essentially a duo collaboration with Wirewalker drummer Joe Talia, known for his solo experimental work and duos with Oren Ambarchi, James Rushford and Thembi Soddell. Ned Collette & Wirewalker’s “2″ is a mix of experimental pop songwriting, dark folky soundscapes and Talia’s work in musique concrete. Their duo shows are performed with voice, nylon string guitar, drums, samples and tape manipulation. While comparisons have been made to everything from Leonard Cohen to Ghostface Killah, Collette remains tricky to define but instantly identifiable.
Written mostly during Collette’s first year in the German capital, ’2′ explores themes of distance and restarting, fantasies of death and decline, altering cities and forgotten homes as well as a song about taking up arms against the neighbours. The album also features an instrumental tribute to late Chilean writer Roberto Bolao, named simply “For Roberto”.
While this is the second Wirewalker record, the title 2 also refers to the fact that the album is essentially a collaboration between Collette and Joe Talia, with regular Wirewalker member Ben Bourke taking time off to be with his young family in Melbourne. Talia came over from Melbourne to spend six weeks in Berlin between May and June 2011 to work on their recordings. Collette then went to Melbourne in October 2011 to finalise the mixes of nine songs.
Here’s Long You Lie from Collette + Wirewalker:
The rest of the line-up consists of New Trainers, who are Steve Heather (drums) and Thomas Meadowcroft (synth)…with the funniest promo-bio I’ve read in ages I can’t wait to se this:
some say the they’re inventing a whole new music genre for the twenty-first century, a genre for the cool, the poor, the literate, for all those not predisposed to exercise. They call it TECHNO-PROG-FITNESS. Others don’t care. They just wanna lose weight and look good. Whatever you think, all agree the NEW TRAINERS are the most exciting thing happening to fat and sound around.
Anthea Caddy and Felicity Mangan make up the rest of the line-up, their cello and found sound experimentation opening up what it almost an exclusively Australian line-up.
