010 | EXPOSURE FEATURE
Words by: Joel Dear
I AM AUSTIN If bands like The White Stripes have taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need alot of people to make a lot of noise. I Am Austin are Adam Hughes and David Mitchell; their new EP, Blood Lips, is four tracks of hard-hitting, full-throttle chaos. And it rocks. There’re no guitars - just squealing synths, clattering kitwork, and a tremendously menacing bass. And the drummer is also the lead singer. Death From Above 1979, the recently-reformed Canadian noise/rock duo, are the most obvious touchstone, but there’s a bit of everything in this pot. The wonderfully-named ‘Death to the Red Hair’, for example, sounds like something that fell off of an Arctic Monkeys song and had started to rust by the time these two picked it up. Their sound is founded upon a very literal approach to drum ‘n’ bass, but it’s been fleshed out by cool vocoders, evil riffs, bleepy 8-bit sounds...the list goes on. And it’s all coated in a thick layer of fuzz. This doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for mainstream success, but as it turns out they’ve already made a bit of a name for themselves. They’ve caused a succession of radio bods to go weak-kneed with admiration, including Edith Bowman, who enthusiastically proclaimed them
to be “the smallest band with the biggest noise.” One of their songs even appeared on an episode of Hollyoaks. How? Well, the music may be distorted, but peek beneath the racket and you’ll find a wealth of hooky hooks and catchy choruses. ‘L.A.F.S.’ (the one that was on Hollyoaks) goes “You took my breath away/L! A! F! S!” The title stands for ‘love at first sight’ - heck, it’s halfway to being one of those love in the club-type songs. But then that’s kind of what I Am Austin are: two parts moshpit, one part dancefloor. The Blood Lips EP may contain some of the most unhinged riffs this side of the psychobilly, but parts of it – the title track in particular – are just one big raveup. Hi-hats open and close, big builds give way to bigger breakbeats, the singer chants the same handful of lines over and over again, and it’s hard not dance just a little bit. JDE facebook.com/iamaustinmusic
APRIL 2012 | www.themmp.tv