Eddy Current Suppression Ring + Quintron

Eddy Current Suppression Ring are the ultimate DIY band. Getting smashed routinely at the Christmas party of the vinyl pressing plant in Melbourne where they worked, jamming while the vocals were adlibbed into a tape recorder is pretty good.

Awesome is when the tape turns into a recording and gives births to one of the better garage/indie/punk/rock bands with a modesty that keeps shows small, clocking the fans in at under 250 people each gig. Without fail, gigs sell out and your ticket turns into something as valuable as a Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and what went down on Friday, March 13 at La Campana in the Spanish Quar ter was about as absurd and awesome as anything you’re likely to find in a Roald Dahl book.

The place is underground, empty and plays Latino dance music, but also has a dirty backroom, which is exactly what you need for an Eddy Current show.

(Editor’s note: I too attended this gig, and it was so rockin’ I felt I needed to add a little extra insight, mainly because I am an attention-seeking print whore. Anyway, as Amy said La Campana is one of the best/worst venues in Sydney. As you enter, you are scanned with a metal detector, presumably to weed out any triad hitmen, before descending the dark stairway with walls rendered in plaster and dotted with Spanish tourism posters from the mid-80s. The main room, bathed in smoke and lasers despite the dancefloor barren of people dancing, looks how a middleage man with no family must feel. It looks like something out of American Psycho and I swear I saw Pat Bateman sitting at a table with Paul Allen attempting to convice him the place is chic by pointing out one of the overweight, over-peroxided tragedies in the corner as Ivana Trump.)

Mainly, a lot of beer was consumed in the time between “Fuck yes, I’m going to Eddy Current” and getting there. We showed up at 10ish, expecting the usual headliner start of 10:30pm, but once more the band had made wanting to love them difficult (although, this is strangely satisfying), deciding 12:20 was more appropriate. More beer was thus needed, so we only saw the end of New Orleans act Quintron and Miss Pussycat (but were impressed with the revolving leslie organ speaker), a bizarre organ-and-percussion one man-one lady show that seemed strangely appropriate for the unfamiliar surrounds.

(I too, having been duped by the late start time arrived even earlier, just in time to catch Miss Pussycat’s puppet show. Performed in a white stage, rigged with black lights, Miss Pussycat took us on a psychedelic and flouro filled journey into the heart of a haunted art gallery. The plot made little to no sense and there were some fairly impressive ‘special effects’ with spinning artworks glowing in the black light, but the whole play came to a head at the end with the two leads engaging in an allfemale feline pash frenzy.

Quintron himself was amazing. Imagine some crazy mix between That One Guy and The Black Keys playing two organs and a hi-hat simultaneously while sweating like a monsoon rain and

screaming for whiskey. – Ed.)

The reasoning for the beer was that the Eddy Current experience is heightened when you’re also loaded on Reschs (kind of the same argument as dropping acid and listening to Magical Mystery Tour or doing heroin and getting on the Lou Reed train). We were right, anyway. After this point, I didn’t see my entourage again unless they were popped back out of the mosh — pink,

sweaty and happy.

Eddy Current played all the ‘hits’, and all the ‘other stuff’, but the ‘other stuff’ is pretty fucking good anyway, plus they played for about an hour, so it was all smiles. The guys played a pristine set, and even though the venue wasn’t the best for sound, it was still pretty good, probably because it was so loud (oh, and we were all drunk). I’d say the high point was when Brendan Suppression crowd-surfed (and the last gig I went to where anyone moshed or crowd surfed was The Living End in 2003 when I was 15), and kicked the venue’s rather pricey projector of f the roof, and all anyone cared about was keeping his mic cord tangle free.

Everyone left sweaty, grazed and as smiley as Charlie Bucket after his visit to the Wonka factory, but we were less well behaved.

Photos By Kurt Davies