by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
If music is supposed to take one on a journey, this idea is something that Super-X takes literally. The Melbourne post-punk noise creators - composed of brothers Harrison and George Ottaway and drummer Kaelan Emond (there is no bassist but the record doesn’t really miss it) - take their listeners on a frenetic and buzzing journey around the world on their self-titled debut album (released via Spoilsport Records in Australia and Polaks Records in Europe).
The first song is entitled ‘Mel,’ the code for Melbourne Airport, the band’s home city. Exhausting fuzz opens it, akin to the screeching of a plane taking off in all its anxiety-inducing glory. It then fades, replaced by the ding that usually precedes an important announcement, before their music finally kicks in properly. Perhaps it’s on purpose that Super-X title their second song ‘Terminus’. We are not yet at the end, not yet at the final destination, but the band don’t want their listener to get complacent. On such a track, it’s often hard to decipher the words that the Ottaway brothers are saying, gasping for breath as they are underneath the heavy dissonant racket; when they are heard, though, every word is snarled with a suitably confrontational confidence.
The one-two punch of ‘One Cut’ and ‘Circle Form’ are rollicking and frenzied, proper rock anthems, always on the verge of something huge. Other airport codes are then included. There is ‘Txl,’ shorthand for Berlin’s Tegel Airport, the German city being a common European stop for Melbourne’s musically-minded. The track thrums with an ominous hum, inciting the sense that something is coming, something is happening. It’s immediately followed by ‘Sjj,’ the code for Sarajevo Airport in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a short thirty second interlude containing the sounds of business, including someone playing an accordion. ‘Without Love’ blends seamlessly from that track, its rhythm starting up immediately, propelling into a chaotic swirl of sound.
This is the Super-X way: they constantly teeter on the edge of outright messiness and menace, their industrial punk spilling outwards but, as on ‘Could’ve Been’ and ‘Xx,’ they always somehow manage to rein it in. ‘Turn To Black’ is the strongest song, there being no better encapsulating term for their unsettling punk style. Their audible bombardment propels the listener into a disoriented darkness, where dueling guitars and abrasive drumming engulf the landscape. There’s enough about their brand of punk to fill another air trip around the world.