Imagine it’s the late 90’s and you live in the leafy outer-inner-western suburbs of Sydney. The live music scene here is flooded with mop haired kids in black sweaters doing their best Slint and Tortoise impressions. As they sit with dull, dark eyes fixed on their pedal boards, the audience stands motionless faced with layers and layers of pretentious Post-Rock. As a reactionary movement, a young man with a lot of energy and a few keyboards began making 80’s inspired synth music to shake up live audiences, ushering in some Chevy Chase antics that would become known as SPOD. The electro eccentric spent the best part of a decade playing and promoting his high energy/low fidelity live show around indie venues in Sydney with a posse of dancers and gallons of glitter until in 2003 his debut Taste the Radness was released. Singles Letz Dance!, 2131, and Totally Rad were warmly received by music media and were described as ‘electro-rock-hop power-clash party tunes’.
Next week is the 10 year anniversary of Taste the Radness and to celebrate, SPOD has teamed up with Sydney label Rice is Nice to re-release this early 00’s gem along with 7 previously unheard tracks, which will be available as a separate EP on the 4th of October. More recently, SPOD has turned his sights to film, having directed music videos for The Laurels, Richard In Your Mind and Donny Benet. As such, SPOD has spent 2013 hard at work self-producing a documentary featuring The Presets, The Temper Trap, The Gurge and many other artists he’s worked with over the years. The film trailer is above (full of awesome 00’s nostalgia) and is due to be released in 2014.
SPOD will also be performing his trademark electric live show at The Sailor Jerry Bar in Kings Cross on Friday the 4th of October. Be sure to check it out!
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