Beach, Michael

Beach, Michael

Big Black Plume

Goner

On his fifth LP, Big Black Plume, Melbourne-based and Californian-born musician Michael Beach reveals the vitalizing power of connection in an often hostile world. Equally informed by the songwriting of Bill Fay and Peter Laughner, the minimalism of Tony Conrad and Terry Riley, and the rock and roll heart of the Goner Records roster, Big Black Plume provides deliberate compositions adorned with genuine madness. The songs on this album range from spare, textural ballads to spiraling psychedelic overtures connected to a propulsive cosmic pulse.Building on Beach’s network from over twenty years of touring, engineering, and production work (in Melbourne, SF, and LA), and employment in independent touring venues, Big Black Plume features contributions from a murderers’ row of talent. Produced by Beach and Gareth Liddiard (Tropical Fuck Storm), the record includes Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner, The Necks bassist Lloyd Swanton, Tropical Fuck Storm members Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin, folk artist Leah Senior, Oren Ambarchi collaborator Joe Talia, and Comets on Fire’s Utrillo Kushner, among others.Big Black Plume was recorded over four different sessions. Phil Manley (Trans Am) engineered the album’s two hardest-rocking songs, “Poison Dart” and “Sick Century”, at El Studio in San Francisco, with Kushner on drums. A second session at Sydney’s Golden Retriever (engineered by Tim Whitten) captured the album’s improv and avant-inflected ballads, “No One Knows Any Better” and “I’m Gonna Need Ya,” creating a special resonance through the interplay of Swanton’s subtly winding acoustic bass and Talia’s abstract but propulsive drums.Beach is a masterful...

Beach, Michael

2022 EP

Goner

Following the highly acclaimed album Dream Violence (2021) and the recent LP re-issue of his modern underground classic Gravity/ Repulsion, Michael Beach has announced a new self-titled 12-inch EP, to be released via Goner and Poison City Records. Recorded during the winter of 2021, the new record is made up of both 8-track tape and full studio recordings, interspersed with experimental, moody interludes, and features Beach’s Australian bandmates Bonnie Mercer (guitar), Peter Warden (drums) and Carla Oliver (bass) throughout. The EP’s stunning closer “Only A Memory” is a collaboration with Lloyd Swanton of renowned Australian minimalist trio The Necks, recorded in NSW’s Blue Mountains. “Out In A Burning Alley,” the EP’s lead single, combines Beach’s soulful abstracted lyrics over two minutes and fifty eight seconds of blazing garage-rock, where the sounds of the Melbourne and Oakland / Bay Area underground collide. In support of the upcoming EP and recent Dream Violence album, Beach will be returning to tour the US in September/ October, headlining dates on the East and West coast and performing at the iconic Gonerfest in Memphis, TN. The touring outfit will also feature Beach’s long time collaborator Utrillo Kushner (Comets On Fire / Personal and The Pizzas) on drums.

Beach, Michael

Gravity / Repulsion

Goner / Poison City

Following the release of Dream Violence earlier in 2021 via Goner & Poison City Records, Melbourne musician Michael Beach has just announced a limited edition vinyl re-issue of his  2017 modern underground classic Gravity/ Repulsion. Originally self-released, the album was recorded just prior to Michael transplanting his life and musical endeavours from Oakland, CA to Melbourne, Australia, Gravity/ Repulsion was the culmination of years collaborating with legendary Bay Area drummer Utrillo Kushner (Comets on Fire) and veteran bass player Muslim Delgado (Meercaz). The 8 tracks are a journey through blistering psych, garage rockers and dark soulful ballads; recorded by Phil Manley (Trans Am), known for his work with Moon Duo and Wooden Shjips, and mastered by Bob Weston (Shellac, Mission of Burma)."I Never Had Enough Time With You" is one of the best songs of 2017" - Noisey/Vice “The blues-infused arrangements show Beach's sharp skills as a writer and musician. He cites inspiration from classics across the history of rock and roll, distilling their spirit into guitar-led gems entirely his own.” - RRR Album Of The Week (Dream Violence) “Existential dread exorcised through heady guitar rockers and intimate ballads.” 4/5 NME “Flare and discord marry and scuttle about in the midst of it all, creating this maniacal rocker  burdened by its desire for pop sensibility. You can’t go wrong turning this one up  real loud!” - Austin Town Hall

Beach, Michael

(Colored) Dream Violence

Goner

Dream Violence, Michael Beach’s fourth full-length, is an epic album that explores the duality of the human condition. Or, as Beach himself puts it, the album is about “human futility, passion, desire, anger, frustration, and the struggle to maintain hope in a somewhat hopeless time.” Dream Violence, then, addresses the existential crisis of being an artist in 2020 (and 2021). Known for his work touring with the Australian guitar pop band Thigh Master and the late, brilliantly eccentric Israeli guitarist Charlie Megira, currently the focus of a number of reissues by the Numero Group, Beach is the architect of a sound that is both well-built and ramshackle, straightforward and indeterminably complex, out of the norm yet familiar in all the best ways. This album unfolds like a revelation, filled with sonic tumbleweeds that reference Neil Young’s On The Beach, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, and the Go Betweens’ Before Hollywood. Influences ranging from the enigmatic outlier Megira to Glenn Branca to the Oblivians are combined to create a new, exhilarating sound, part of the path that Beach has been on since 2008’s Blood Courses. A veteran of year-end indie rock round-ups beginning with Golden Theft in 2013 and continuing with Gravity/Repulsion, released in 2017, Beach distills the best of those early albums and adds sharpened intent.

Beach, Michael

Dream Violence

Goner

Dream Violence, Michael Beach’s fourth full-length, is an epic album that explores the duality of the human condition. Or, as Beach himself puts it, the album is about “human futility, passion, desire, anger, frustration, and the struggle to maintain hope in a somewhat hopeless time.” Dream Violence, then, addresses the existential crisis of being an artist in 2020 (and 2021). Known for his work touring with the Australian guitar pop band Thigh Master and the late, brilliantly eccentric Israeli guitarist Charlie Megira, currently the focus of a number of reissues by the Numero Group, Beach is the architect of a sound that is both well-built and ramshackle, straightforward and indeterminably complex, out of the norm yet familiar in all the best ways. This album unfolds like a revelation, filled with sonic tumbleweeds that reference Neil Young’s On The Beach, Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, the Velvet Underground’s Loaded, and the Go Betweens’ Before Hollywood. Influences ranging from the enigmatic outlier Megira to Glenn Branca to the Oblivians are combined to create a new, exhilarating sound, part of the path that Beach has been on since 2008’s Blood Courses. A veteran of year-end indie rock round-ups beginning with Golden Theft in 2013 and continuing with Gravity/Repulsion, released in 2017, Beach distills the best of those early albums and adds sharpened intent.