The Sea Pigeons: "Hair Collapse"

DNRC41 Format: 7" single Released: 2004 Status: DELETED This, the final DNRC release for 2004, was the song that spelt out the letters of the word "death" for its makers, the somewhat divine and loopy Sea Pigeons. Long-term fans will already own their superb debut album, I Dream of Genius but for new fans, this single is also a must-have, if only for the absence of a b-side, due to the fact that the song was so ferocious it could not be recorded. The Sea Pigeons will be forever remembered as the band that put Ganmain on the musical map but of course folks living in Grong-Grong and Mattong will tell you a different story. They'll try to tell you that The Sea Pigeons were just a Mangoes tribute band; that lead singer C. Pigeon had no musical talent whatsoever, preferring to bellow his asinine vocals down the shafts of rusted orgas; that irrigation, far from increasing salinity, actually improves the quality of the water table; that there's nothing wrong with selling rice to Japan; that anyone who leaves Ganmain-Grong-Grong-Mattong for a better life in Sydney is a dickhead *and* a wanker; that boarding school makes men of boys and arseholes of men; that wool classing is a noble profession; that Khe Sahn is Australia's unofficial national anthem; that they always knew there was something suspect about INXS; that anyone who forms a band in a country town must be some kind of poofter; that ugg bots are the equivalent of formal dress; that roo shooting is not for girls; that Wagga Wagga isn't that bad a place, you know; that eating neenish tarts is a sign of blatant homosexuality; that any kid who wears braces is a tool; in short, that The Sea Pigeons were a bunch of nancy-boy try-hards who wouldn't last ten minutes in a fight in Grong-Grong or Mattong. But anyone who tried to fool you with such a load of cruns would be so far wrong their arse would come out the back end of backwards double wrong too. The Sea Pigeons shat all over any other band from the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. And that, sadly, was the reason why even this superb single was, just like all the others, deleted the moment it appeared, like a rabbit in the myxamatosis of our headlights.

The Small Faeces: "Small Faeces"

DNRC40 Format: 7" single Released: 2004 Status: DELETED Taking both their name and the title of this, their debut single, from a song on the one and only Sea Pigeons opus, The Small Faeces were always going to be living on borrowed time. This god-awful single, released only in Japan, features several Sea Pigeons members; however, responsibility for the song, a pathetic attempt to revive the style of early Rod Stewart) must surely rest with Davey Dreamnation himself, who appears here on lead vocals for the first time in several days. Reportedly recorded in a small shoebox outside the Camberwell markets in Melbourne, this song makes even The Tin Lids look respectable - even they have moved on to bigger and better things. Not so The Small Faeces, whose namesake and sole output to date can be found clogging up all the usual public conveniences: sad, deleted and slightly smelly.

Mead: "The Mists of Thyme"

DNRC39 Format: Long Player Released: 2004 Status: DELETED Dynamic, taut, feisty, and clever as ever, "The Mists of Thyme" is Mead's fourth-best album. At least, that's the word from DNRC founder Davey Dreamnation, who claims to have listened to not only its predecessor, the exquisite Yea, Finery, but also the two scheduled for release later in 2005, despite the fact that they haven't even been recorded yet, not to mention the fact that Mead and DNRC have only signed a two-album deal. Regardless of the contract nit-picking, however, Dreamnation is so far wrong he might as well call himself Wrongnation. "The Mists of Thyme" is a colossal achievement from a man who, only one year previously, was busking in the Bourke Street mall in Melbourne, greatly amusing passers-by with his Drkstixb solos and trying to flog off dodgily-recorded cassettes. On this triumphant release, Mead finally comes into his own - that is, he manages to straddle both the Middle and End Ages, carving a niche in world music it would be wise for Mr Peter Gabriel to pay attention to. Whereas the trademark Drkstixb flourishes on "Yea, Finery" were hidden deep within the mix, on this sprawling odyssey of a landmark, Mead lets it all loose, cannoning into the medieval plainsong tradition with a double-barrelled dose of pure Mead geniosity, mixed with lime. Of course, none of the breathtaking experiments that drench this album would have been possible without his backing band, the Mistaken Incas, whom he found plying their trade in the northern Croatian city of Rijeka, (pan pipes, synths, backing tracks, Native American Indian uniforms), whilst on one of his many voyages into his own moodswings. Impeccable sequencing and amazing sixteen part harmonies dominate this album, sweeping in to scoop up the listener in an enthralling example of the wisdom of that old chestnut 'show, don't tell". There are too many highlights on this album to mention any of them by name. There are also approximately twenty tracks (one can't be sure, as the complete meltdown that is album-closer and nominee for Nosebleeder Of The Year, "Trans-Drkstixb-Express" segues into so many individual components that it could in fact be a car or a peace treaty as opposed to a song). Effortless, devastating, smallpox-ridden and soaked in plague juices, "The Mists of Thyme" might well have been the album to secure DNRC's fortunes for all time had it not been deleted, stupidly, the day before it was released.

The Separation of Powers: "Church & State"

DNRC38 Format: Double Long Player* (released on cassette) Released: 2004 Status: DELETED Sometimes, in this technologically-anal age, it's tempting to think that we've never had it better; that the present moment, or at least the one about to come in just a moment, is superior to all past moments, including the one just one second ago; that we wouldn't ever wish to be alive in the past again, even for an hour or so; that we are always in that enviable position facing forward, near the exit doors, in first class, secure in the knowledge that our baggage has been sent ahead on a future plane, and that when we do arrive in that star-spangled magic moment, an attractive stewardess will be there waiting for us, holding a cocktail in one hand and a tray of Iced Vo-Vos in the other; that all life from now on will be a digital picnic, featuring various mp3 snacks, podcast sandwiches, plates of cold mash-ups and, for dessert, a fully-interactive multimedia presentation of our bandwidth-hungry souls; that all old musical technologies are laughable, though not yet old enough to place in a museum, along with other relics from the rape and pillage days we have all come to know and love; that any band who saw fit to record their debut double album straight to vinyl and then release it on a 120 minute cassette tape would be committing the worst form of faux pas, that is, the kind of faux pas you only hear about long after it has been committed, by someone else, in another century, on another analogue planet; that each copy would be dubbed to cassette individually, complete with the comforting christmas pudding sound of the needle hitting the vinyl, and the pork-fat crackling of the static and dust on the platter itself; that the band, after having named themselves The Separation of Powers, would then commit musical hari-kiri by filling the last few minutes on side two of the tape with individual songs by other, perhaps more famous, bands; that, despite this eccentric hearkening back to a dark fibre age, this record would come to be known as a classic in its time, that is, the period between recess and big lunch when your tummy grumbles loudly and the lunch box has not yet made its slow and lumbering way from the tuckshop to your classroom, and you can only dream of the salad sandwich and small sausage roll you've ordered with the $1.20 your mum gave you, because it's Friday and that means sports day and that means not having to take your own lunch; that the band, far from recording a new album by conventional means, are in fact today still occupied with dubbing copies of said album, due to the amount of time it takes to flip four sides of a double LP, cue the tape deck and run through the exhaustive track listing; in short, that this magnificently barmy statement of intent will never be deleted. Sadly, however, it has, and The Separation of Powers are no more.

The Hippocratic Oats: "Does"

DNRC37 Format: 7" single Released: 2004 Status: DELETED DNRC founder Davey Dreamnation first heard the mighty, mighty sound of the Hippocratic Oats one night in 2003 while out walking his pet llama, Scaramouche. The band, whose two members are both qualified natural therapists, had set up their instruments in front of the llama's cage; in the ensuing scuffle Dreamnation inadvertently set off a cascading synthesiser loop and the rest is their story. Pandemonium broke out in departments of integrative medicine around the world upon the release of "Does", the band's first single. Vocalist Dr. Phil Good claimed, through the band's (now-banned) website that the one minute pop song had special healing properties. The veracity of this claim was later verified in an issue of the NME, after investigators played "Does" to one group of teenagers with cold sores, while subjecting a control group to Enya's "Orinoco Flow". The results clearly proved the group that listened to "Does" fared much better than the control group, whose class action against Enya and her recording company has been held up in the court of petty recording sessions. The publicity generated by this unusual breakthrough in the treatment of herpes simplex led the band to patent its own papaya-based remedy for that unfortunately disfiguring condition, and to give away one tube of the stuff with each single released. Within days the song was at number 2 on some charts; on others, including the recognised industry charts, however, it did not appear. Unfazed, the Hipocratic Oats conducted a tour of emergency rooms across the country, the results of which would be shared with the world on their debut album, "Golden Staf Greats". Copies of the single (which has, unfortunately been deleted) may still be found in the usual places. However fans are advised to exercise caution when handling any second-hand tubes of Hippocratic Oats' Papaya Cold Sore Remedy.

The Prigs: "Some People Are Just Aksing For It"

DNRC36 Format: Long Player Released: 2004 Status: DELETED This disappointing release from Brisbane's Prigs symbolises all that is wrong with that ostensibly beautiful city in Queensland. Boorish, filled with cheap gags (check opening track "Bust a Moove") and otherwise riddled with tired 1970s cultural references, "Some People Are Just Aksing For It" manages to alienate most cultural and racial groups within seconds. Hip-hop fans will wince at the pathetic rhyme schemes utilised on the supposedly satirical title track, while anyone with an ounce of spirituality will abhor the dreadful mish mash of bile, pule and hammer time that is "I Defecate on Christ". Shortly after this album's release Prigs lead singer Prince Prig appeared in th Brisbane magistrates court on charges of inciting hate, charges which were later vamped up to include the alleged torching of the surf life saver's hut at Breaka Beach (denied), the Toowong Hotel beer garden (admitted) and the use of an Australian flag as a bum-wiping implement (forensic testing inconclusive). Despite this litany of plain old acts of stupidity, DNRC founder Davey Dreamnation managed to trump the band entirely by subsequently offering them a two album record deal. The Prigs, however, objected to the condition that at least one of those albums must be a Christmas album (to be recorded with the Guide Ponies) and so the band and label parted ways, some would say thankfully, upon the happy occasion of this woeful album's well-deserved deletion.

The Fashionistas: "Thumble"

DNRC35 Format: Long Player Released: 2004 Status: DELETED While ex-drummer Peachy Keen was busy recording her solo album, the rest of the band known to the world as The Fashionistas were busy extracting themselves from an odious record contract with Pixel Mouse's uber-grrl label Mice. Finally, in late 2004, having released three electrifying singles on the label (ostensibly devoted to fostering youth centre types with a penchant for the fringeline of Kathleen Hanna, but in actual fact a barely disguised front for a campaign to release hate songs about Mouse's former lover Stung) the writing became legible on the wall, and the words read: "Thumble". This difficult and obscure release was deemed unplayable by Pixel Mouse at the time, mostly due to the fact that it was originally recorded in picture disc format. The ensuing court battle leading to the severing of the Fasionistas' contract with Mice would provide ample fodder for later Fashionistas releases but on "Thumble" we hear, as if for the first time, four girls getting their shit together enough to switch off their Bikini Kill compilations and start tuning up. The results, especially opening track "Wha", recall the sunny, blissed out sounds of Sun Ra, and coupled with random sounds of cash registers opening (often between verses), the whole piece offers a seamless document of a day in the life of a modern day urban girl studying interior design at an unspecified polytechnic college. Moody, bitchin' and crawling with abstract ideals, "Thumble" (a reference, apparently, to an obscure Middle German masturbatory tool) delivers on the promise of those early singles, all of which are included here: "Don't Hot", "Save" and "Quick, Un-Pick!" are more than matched by the songs interspersed between them, although things do get a little dirgy on the flip-side, where the atonal grout of "Ham Fist" rubs unpleasantly against the thigh of "Don't Speak When Your Mouth's Full". Still, as far as debut albums go, this one's a rabbit killer and despite her solo success, one imagines Peachy Keen seething upon hearing the ferocity of stand-in drummer Penelope's skins work. A brave album from an even braver bunch playing Mouseketeers with the pulse of their deep-fried generation.

Peachy Keen - "Can of Ham Sandwich"

DNRC34 Format: Long Player Released: 2004 Status: DELETED Singlehandedly reviving the 'verboten' black bubblegum genre, best thought of as what would happen if Ronnie Spector fronted Einstuerzende Neubauten, ex-Fashionistas drummer Madeleine 'Peachy' Kane took advantage of a clause in her record contract and put together eleven bleak, catchy, disturbing musical meditations that launched her screaming and shoo-bee-dooing into the public arena. Deftly interweaving up-tempo backing vocals with industrial grindcore backing and varying tempo from flighty to dirge, "Can of Ham Sandwich" presented Kane as an artist unafraid to look deep into the black holes that skirt the rim of the known universe, to risk obliteration by diving into the heart of those black holes, and to come out the other side with a handful of starlight. From the opening track, "Sexier When You Say It" with its uplifting existential middle eight stripped back to a single minimalist Wurlitzer line, to the aural feast of the penultimate "Don't Make Me Repeat Myself" and the apparent wall of chainsaws, coffee-grinders and jackhammers sprinkled over with the bipping of a pedestrian crossing, COHS defies all reason by lodging itself in the memory in that subliminal way that will, even though on first listen you'd swear it was physically impossible, see you actually whistling along to it as it runs through your mind on the tram on the way to work. Hypermelodic and Uberindustrial, Kane's about-face into the world of black bubblegum is the musical equivalent of Dianne Weist in Bullets Over Broadway when she grabs John Cusack's face in one hand, wrenches his head around to stare her in the eyes and says, "Don't speak, don't speak, don't speak."

Bad Liquorice: "You Give Louvre A Bad Meme"

DNRC33 Format: Long Player Released: 2004 Status: DELETED The ridiculous title of this album, together with its fratboy geek-style cover artwork, disguises the incredible toasting talent of Bad Liquorice, the fastest word-salad artists to burst out of the service lane since Compton stopped being an encyclopedia. The three rappers in Bad Liquorice - Tasty Cheese, Mor-Man and Spiflicator - bring a barrel full of money love to the songs on this album, treating listeners to a strawberry sundae, topped with crushed nuts and just the slightest hint of Chipmunk Punk. Songs with titles like interstate flightpaths, samples from the grim psychedelic bringdown of 1983, Nicole Kidman in Days of Thunder, references to baby teeth, interludes on expressways - they're all here, together with a banshee bible undercutting the stereo simplicity of the Fisher-Price backing tracks. Opening cut "Superb Melody Bootlash" (previously only available via Japanese import) slays all in its path, Tasty Cheese bridging the gap between both sides of Chesapeake Bay with some sublime motion sickness. Spiflicator chants throughout like an Enigma Monk on Chipmunk Punk, while Mor-Man holds the tiller, steady as Rock Hudson in the grave. The next three tracks fly past like missed stations on an express train to Hooty, until we come shuddering to a devastating standstill with "Whips", this album's emotional and spiritual terminus. Rap hasn't sounded this fresh since the last time I penetrated a jar of International Roast Coffee with a hot spoon. Final track "Ferry Cross the Medley" is, as the title suggests, a tour de g force, culminating in three minuets of electric buzz saw chops, interspersed throughout with shreds of rhyme like "interstellar salt and pepper shakers/ King Tut toasted sandwich makers/ Boogie board stash replacers / better find me a new stencil tracer / abs/ ". If this website was into ratings or stars of any kind, this album would deserve a constellation. Orion perhaps. The belt at least. As it is, this killer disc, though sadly deleted, serves as a mere warm-up to Bad Liquorice's later sound experiments. Listen and learn, Fashionistas.

Kentucky Barbie: "Spellbind"

DNRC32 Format: Long Player Released: 2004 Status: DELETED On this, the follow-up to 2003's breathtaking Police Woman LP, Kentucky Barbie managed to break the two dozen or so hearts that hadn't been shattered already by her astonishingly evocative and erotic crooning. Eschewing the farmhouse setting of her debut LP, Barbara Ride chose to return to her native Kentucky for the recording of "Spellbind", setting up an impromptu recording studio on a riverbank in the Purchase area. From opening track "Cumberland Plateau" through to album closer "Along the Western Rim", Babs kicks out tha jambs singing the intricate geography of her homeland, interweaving her sad tales of acid and plantations with observations as to the climate and landscape in which she grew up. Narrow valleys and sharp ridges of the mountain region are noted for forests of giant hardwoods and scented pine and for springtime blooms of laurel, magnolia, rhododendron, and dogwood. Taking up where "Police Woman" left off, second track "To The West" heads in the obvious direction, its beautiful blending of mandolin and history lesson merging seamlessly with "Plateau Breaks" in a series of escarpments, bordering a narrow plains region interrupted by many single conical peaks called knobs. Surrounded by the knobs region on the south, west, and east and extending as far west as Louisville is album centrepiece and possibly the song of the new millenium, "Bluegrass Country", its high-pitched squeals the heart and trademark of Kentucky Barbie's unique wall of plainsong. "Northwest Kentucky" is generally rough, featuring rolling terrain, with scattered but important coal deposits. The isolated instrumental track, referred to as "The Purchase", consists of floodplains and rolling uplands, and is among the largest migratory bird flyways in the United States. Rivers are an important feature of Kentucky Barbie's geography. Many rapid creeks in the Cumberland Mountains feed the Kentucky, the Cumberland, and the Licking rivers, which, together with the Tennessee and the Ohio, are the chief rivers of the album. Kentucky's voice on this album is generally mild, with few extremes of heat and cold. Frankfort is her capital, Louisville and Lexington her largest cities. Bonus track "Fort Knox" is the U.S. Depository.