The Weirding Module – So Called Australia

The continent of Australia ≠ the country or its government, in fact before colonisation it consisted of more than 200 language groups and with varying similarities and affiliations. The show takes a quick trip around some of the contemporary vocal and oral practices of the continent, beginning as it should with Indigenous contemporary songs these ones in Yindjibarndi, Yolngu and Butchulla languages – contemporary versions of the songs that were the main form of knowledge keeping pre-colonisation. From there we take in some Indigenous poetry in English. The various senses of defiance, anger and grief in these works is contrasted to the the mumbled and muffled sounds from the non-indigenous works in the second half of the show. These seem comparatively awkward in their skins, darkly absurd and oddly appropriate to a continent not yet at peace with itself, a country in need of a treaty. While it might seem an odd thing to do maybe there is something valuable in listening holistically to the diversity of contemporary expression from the various cultures that inhabit the Australian continent. These expressions are in tension, but also in conversation with each other, not necessarily opposition but something unresolved.

Track notes

Marndamarangga – (literally chain-hand, policeman) – song in Yindjibarndi unknown singer possibly collected by Carl von Brandenstein (1970s)

Lyrics – Chainhand is on my track, with a pocket full of summons from 12 mile camp, I dive for cover, north under the river flotsam, head inside the bushes just my face poking out

East Wind – George Rrurrambu (2000)

Dhimurru (Eastern Wind) – George Rrurrambu and Birdwave (2006)

Two version of the same song by Yolngu singer George George Rrurrambu – one of the lead singers of the influential 70s/80s Warumpi Band – the first Australian rock group to have an indigenous-language hit. George wrote teh songs Black Fella, White Fella and my island home which was performed at the opening of the 2000 sydney olympics. The first of the songs played is from his solo album Nerbu Message and has a simple yidaki and voice arrangement while the second features Adelaide band Birdwave from the album Baru recorded shorly before his death in 2007. "When he received news of his incurable cancer, he went back to his birthplace on Elcho Island in the Northern Territory, surrounding himself with friends and relatives who filled his final days with traditional songs of farewell." – quote from The Independent

Rainbow Serpent – Waak Waak Djungi (1997)

"three Yolngu songmen from Northeast Arnhem Land – Bobby Bunnungurr, Jimmy Djamunba and Peter Milaynga (d. 2007) – working in collaboration with Victorian musician Peter Mumme….Mumme explains that “the aim was to produce something that is new, not in the sense of a breakthrough, but what emerges from the combining of existing ideas”. What developed was sonically unique – sprawling vocal/electronic soundscapes and field recordings that reimagine the traditional songs of black crows and white cockatoos, sharing, creation spirits and of leaving and returning home to country. Spacious and patiently durational, the songs resound in a big land with a big story to tell." – Efficient Space

Dhangalim (Fly) – Yirinda

Fred Leone is one of three Butchulla songmen – a song and language custodian for the Butchulla people from the Fraser Coast region of Queensland, including K’gari (formerly known as Fraser Island). He sings the songs on this album in the endangered Butchulla language, now spoken by only a handful of people. Yirinda is his project with contemporary composer Samuel Pankhurst, combining off kilter rhythms and hi-fi, avant arrangements with Leone's breathy traditional singing style.

The Dispossessed – Oodgeroo Noonuccal

A reading from Don Featherstone's biographical short film, Oodgeroo Noonuccal was from North Stradbroke Island and was the first Indigenous Australian to publish a book of verse. She was part of the stolen generation and was a key activist in the constitutional reforms of 1967.

The Mimi – Mudrooroo

From Noongar poet Mudrooroo's last book The Old Fellow Poems. Born Colin Johnson – Mudrooroo grew up in institutions and spent time in Fremantle Prison before becoming a writer.

Unknown (No More Black Bourgeoisie Dances) – Lionel Fogarty

Lionel Fogarty reads, from Youtube – I cant find the title. Aboriginal activist Lionel Fogarty was tried and acquitted of conspiracy against the state in 1975 by the repressive Queensland, Bjelke-Petersen governement and began writing activist texts and poetry after this experience.

Strawberry Juice – Claire G. Coleman

Noongar sci-fi and speculative fiction author Claire Coleman reads from Strawberry Juice, during Covid lockdowns.

The Fly Abstracted Death – Mark Harwood

She Has No Eyelids – Mark Harwood

The Dream (MMXXIII) – Mark Harwood

Three tracks from Penultimate Press label runner and contrarian Mark Harwood. The first two are from his 2025 release Two Actors. An album of weirdly algorithmic, sensual, plural, fractured and unreliable narration, While the last is from "10 Scenes & 1 Dream" (2024) reworked, remixed, remastered audio from the original cassette release on Total Black with one entirely new track.

The Hen Convention – JJ Villiers

"In 1896, [Thomas] Rome read about Edison’s new phonograph in a magazine. Despite the high cost, he was immediately fascinated by the device and determined to have one; he wrote to Edison’s company in America, to place an order. It arrived by ship, a few months later. This was the first phonograph brought to Victoria, if not Australia. And Rome thought his new gadget could be his ticket to success. In November 1896, the Warrnambool Industrial and Art Exhibition opened at the town’s Mechanical Institute. This was a significant event for the area, featuring market stalls, exhibits, concerts, visual art, and sporting contests. The exhibition ran for three months, through the summer, and attracted 70 000 visitors. One of the stall holders was Thomas Rome, who charged people a fee to see his phonograph in operation. To show it off, he had some wax cylinders he had also imported from America, and a small number he had recorded locally. One of his original recordings was a novelty song, titled ‘The Hen’s Convention’. This is Australia’s first sound recording. The Hen’s Convention imagines a meeting of different types of chicken; several species are highlighted, including Malay, Bantam and Chittagong. The verses are humorous riffs on common chicken behaviour, likely well known in a rural area like Warrnambool, interspersed with enthusiastic renditions of clucking and crowing. It is not known who wrote the song, although the concept had already appeared in popular culture. A touring minstrel act had performed a different song, also called ‘The Hen’s Convention’, in Melbourne in 1862, and cartoons with that title, lampooning politicians, had appeared several times in print." – quote from Museum of Lost Things

The Hen Convention is the oldest surviving Australian Recording.

Unknown – Chris Mann

Chris Mann was equal parts poet composer and trouble maker. I first came in to close contact with his work performing in an experimental biography of his work by the artist Hong Kai Wong, who was one of his students. Part of the early Australian experimental group Machine for Making Sense Mann termed his practice "compositional linguistics" and his mumbled, garbled glossolalia have been highly influential.

Unknown – MP Hopkins

This and the Chris Mann track are from a beloved mix I made years ago and lost the track listing apologies.

Beyond distinctive in its indistinction yet still within the lineage of Chris Mann et al. the domestic universe of archivist / artist (Mathew P, MP, Moss) Hopkins is vast, and unattainable functioning largely in the "zone of indistinguishability" – Boris Groys' term for the works of late soviet group Collective Actions whose performance works left audiences not just unsure of what had happened but "if" they had happened at all.

Finding #1 – Double Goocher Shop

Hopkins approach is combined here with that of Italian composer Renato Grieco on Radio Carrion by Double Goocher Shop the duos second record this time on Reading Room. The Bandcamp liner notes read

"The early 1940s. Several people from different places who do not know each other disappear. They have somehow become trapped in a radio interference field. Since then, the inhabitants of this interference space have had to adapt their social behavior, re-evaluate their ethics, find a way to live despite disembodiment. Cultural practices have changed within the magnetic field, including those of burial and commemoration of the dead. During shortwave radio research, Double Goocher Shop inadvertently recorded EVP interactions with these inhabitants. The stereophonic artifact the duo has produced explores, from their perspective, an anthropological hoax about the metaphysical properties of spheres, rotating voltages, static electromagnetism and the hunt for ghost voices."

Aspend Liberals – Dead Boomers

During Covid Mark Groves and Leith Thomas' dueo dead boomers turned their cynical eye to reports of an early outbreak in Australia caused by skiers returning from Aspen in the US, who had links to the the country's conservative Liberal party. The work details all the banalities of 60th brthday parties, country houses, entitlement, irresponsibility and tine deafness of the country's ruling elite.

Not Your Typical Late-Nite Half-Drunk – Absurd Cosmos Late Nite

Utilising the framework of standup comedy, Mark Groves solo act manifests live as him talking to tapes of him talking. Darkly satirising the Australian upper middle class and the empty obsession with the swordid minutiae of purchase, customer service interactions and failures of the built environment. This is capitalist alienation from above.

Back-Breeding: Machine – Tina Stefanou

Miming For Mines: Church Dance – Tina Stefanou

Greek-Australian artist and vocalist Tine Stefanou's soundtracsk to her film works are collected on You Can't See Speed to accompany her exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. "You Can’t See Speed features vocal resonances and spoken descriptions written and recorded in collaboration with participants from Stefanou’s film works, alongside music composed by the artist. A cacophony of lived experience, oral storytelling, and vocality." Bandcamp

Voyce Walkr (theme) – Machine Listening

Artist research trio Machine Listening – Sean Dockray, James Parker and Joel Stern reimagine Russel Hoban's 1980 novel Riddley Walker by AI cloning the voices of their children and having the clones perform the novel's degenerated post-cockney garbled orality for a post-climate post-AI apocalypse.

Dedication – Warren Burt and John Britton

American Australian composer and editor of Computer Music Magazine Warren Burt accompanies readings by John Britton with subtle resonations and sweet tones seemingly processed from the voice. The texts are by the New Zealand poet Rewi Alley who live in China from 1927 until his death on 1987, beginning in workers movements and eventually becoming an activist for peace between China and The West.

Limits to Growth – Clare Cooper

Artist Tom Smith reads The Club of Rome's Limits to Growth over Clare Cooper's harp – a Weirding Module exclusive – (airhorns)

Dear British Museum – Hot Tubs Time Machine

From "food and ruins" a collection of early recordings from Marcus Rechsteiner and Daniel Twomey, an angry letter to the British Museum about the crimes of colonisation.

Withheld from the Cycle – Exek

Autotune has been banned, secret police patrol the redoubts of the wealthy, and world beaches have been cleared of their sand for the construction of enormous urban prisons. As these events turn more fraught and absurd, [frontman Albert] Wolski reveals just how much is gained through EXEK's stripped-down arrangements and dreamlike tones