- Brisbane experimental drone punks The Currawongs lead on from their self-titled EP with a debut full-length simmering in the experimental and ambient undercurrents of Earth 2, while concurrently injecting structure and healthy notions of melody. The result is a contrasting album between delicate leaps for harmony as in Hold You Back, and divebombs into lo-fi noise thrashes found in Having Fun Harms No One.

Formed in a shroud of member-name mystery, The Currawongs’s mix of drone, experimental, noise and fuzz sits them as distant relatives to local ambient artist Sun Tribes, and possibly as an older brother of guitar experimentalists Danyl Jesu. Cracticidae trades the safety of clarity for the grime of Mudhoney superfuzz for a chance to inject the energy of Dick Nasty into the confines of drone experimentation.

The Currawongs teamed up with local experimental producer Cameron Smith at Incremental Records, whose previous work has included Brisbane’s experimental and drone acts No Anchor, The Rational Academy, Sun Tribes and Danyl Jesu.

The recording, mixing and mastering of Cracticidae captures an experimental artist sitting pretty between the monotonic walls of drone purism and the false credibility associated with experimental paucity. While the album’s notions of structure and variation may not be the elitist ear candy drone and ambient purists yearn for, the lack of pop-like repetition may also leave the album at odds with listeners looking for a gateway to local experimental and drone music.

This album does not aim to startle or surprise. Rather, it carries the listener slowly but surely across vast soundscapes by relying on sonic deviation and the inevitable crash back to status quo. Whether it’s a laughing kookaburra, thundering jumbo jet or delicate melody, these breakaway sounds struggle fundamentally to keep up with the ever-present establishment of Cracticidae’s slowly engulfing walls of fuzz.

And rather than gloriously shoving a message across, Cractidae takes an ontological approach to musical expression whereby the sounds are used to source meaning, as the vocals tend to battle it out for prominence underneath Cractidae’s rumbling arsenal of noise. The album’s gradually changing soundscape is a one-way ticket where repetition is a word easily overlooked, but while the contrasts in structure expand an otherwise monotonous genre, it sacrifices the potential emotional power associated with such sonic consistency, as was done by Low.

As Cracticidae traverses a sonic journey of harmonious leaps and noisy dives, the choice is left with the listener, what to do with its audible omnipresence. Either immerse yourself in the journey or take off the headphones. Either way, Cracticidae will act as a reason to give local drone a go.

- Ryan Pieszko.