BIKER by EXHAUSTION

“Exhaustion’s superb second LP Biker (Aarght), hearkens back to yet another strain of Antipodean undergroundery. We hear tendrils of the early Moodists (Tuff Monks, even) fanned by feathers shaved from the collective ass of Sydney's Black Eye scene. A curiously strong hybridization ̶ as smooth in parts as it is rugged in others.” — Byron Coley, Bull Tongue Review

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Biker picks up where Exhaustion’s debut long player Future Eaters left off, unleashing seven more slabs of freeform guitar, rhythmic thud, and world-weary malaise. While the basic template remains the same – blistering guitar ascension and the occasional laconic vocal over a foundation of pummeling locked grooves – Biker finds the band both further refining their sound and mapping its outer limits. Tracks like ‘Pure Duty’ find the trio funneling their energies into something almost approaching the prosaic pop moves of classic NZ underground groups like the Clean or the Puddle, albeit filtered through No Wave atonality and a giant, churning bass sound that threatens to obscure all melodic intentions. The epic ‘Twin Lights’, on the other hand, is a slice of fried free improvisation that takes off from 60s spiritual free jazz and the wide open landscapes of the Ikuro Takahashi-era Fushitsusha recordings, layering multiple takes of tumbling drums and reverberated string sizzle into a dense, foggy stew. ‘Hard Left’ adds piano to the mix for a long piece that channels the summer twilight ambiance of Future Days-era Can but imbues it with a sinister undertone, spinning an ever wandering web of melody over subtly shifting motorik drums.

Even on the record’s heaviest moments (like opener ‘Blunt Eyes’) which look back to the bass-heavy Oz thug rock of Feedtime and Venom P. Stinger, the rhythm section of bassist Jensen Tjhung and drummer Per Byström displays a mantra-minded devotion to repetition that points beyond rock genre moves into zones of pure intensity. Byström is particularly impressive in this regard, anchoring the band’s blown-out epics with elegant and inventive performances that take off from Jaki Liebezeit and Mani Neumaier while always thundering straight ahead. Duncan Blachford’s guitar playing provides the band’s wild-card element: seldom playing anything approaching a riff, he dispenses riotous, freely improvised counterpoint to the rhythm section’s metronomic riffing in a style that synthesizes classic post-Hendrix psych moves with the ecstatic, reverb/delay clouds of the Mizutani/Haino tradition and the amplified-plank-of-wood rawness of Bruce Russell, while his semi-submerged, somnambulant vocals bring down the mood with the occasional slice of quotidian automatic poetry.

Recorded in gristly no-frills fidelity at the band’s own studio, Biker is a high intensity emission from the deepest reaches of the Melbourne underground. – Francis Plagne

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