Magic Mourning

Not only is This Is Nowhere making its debut as a new indie music festival in Perth this October, it's allowing a fair few national and international acts to get their first taste of a Western Australian sunshine-soaked stage. This includes Melbourne-based act HTRK (pronounced: 'hate rock'), who will make their maiden voyage to Perth after nearly six years abroad in Berlin and London, during which time they've supported the likes of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Horrors and Fuck Buttons. Singer Jonnine Standish and guitarist Nigel Yang's return to Australia has been surreal, according to Standish: “We decided it would be nice to write the next album here, spend some time with our families. It's an easier lifestyle than London, to say the least. But it's been weird to come back to Melbourne. The friendliness of the people, the sunshine… it's made this place seem completely exotic.” While the scene is friendly now, it was initially Melbourne's hesitation to embrace HTRK's noise guitar-heavy, distorted experimental sound (back in 2006, garage rock ruled) that prompted the group to leave Aussie soil several years ago. “I think with any single band that's played in Australia for a certain amount of time, you kind of get that 'What's on the other side?' curiosity,” Reflects Standish. “We always had the same three people in the front row at our Melbourne shows! You want to see how your music's going to go down in a new city.”

HTRK's LP Marry Me Tonight saw its official release, under UK label Blast First Petite, some three years after it was originally recorded back in Melbourne (a protracted rights dispute was behind the delay). Marry Me Tonight – with its noise guitar bursts and heavy use of distortion – quickly became a critical success. No doubt in part due to the guidance of iconic musician Roland S. Howard, a close friend and mentor to HTRK (Howard even paid tribute to Standish on his album Pop Crimes vis-à-vis the track (I Know) A Girl Called Jonny).

Second album Work (work, work) was released in 2011 after a trying year for the group; sadly, their bass player took his own life, and Rowland S. Howard lost his battle to cancer. Standish agrees that while there was “the temptation to go under, for sure”, herself and Yang decided to persevere, partly due to Sean's pride in what they had been working towards. “Prior to Sean's death, we had a stalemate period, waiting for Marry Me Tonight to come out officially. We were rehearsing a lot, but we weren't coming up with anything we were really happy with. But then we had a period of creativity where we felt like we had the next album maybe three quarters of the way through, and it was a lovely time. So, after we lost Sean, there was just no way we couldn't not release it…”

Standish and Yang have recently returned from laying down the aforementioned 2013-due new album's tracks in Santa Fe – of all places – where Nathan Corbin (of experimental band Excepter) invited Standish and Yang to record in his studio. Yang shares that Santa Fe is “a pretty magical place. We just hung out for two weeks, did a bit of hiking, some swimming… and managed to get an album down.” “It's just an oasis in the desert, it's so isolated, such an alien looking area,” Yang continues. “We didn't have any Internet, no mobile reception, no showers. The three of us were together in the size of a studio, packed with records, and all the equipment you could imagine.” Standish adds that whilst the isolation was like “a strange social experiment”  herself and Yang initially had Internet withdrawals  after a while “it became so natural and normal, to the point where it was strange coming back to Melbourne. With all this access to the Internet and Facebook updates, we got kind of depressed.”

Sunday 14th October - UWA WA
Saturday 10th November - The Factory Theatre NSW
Saturday 16th Feburary - ATP VIC