- Australia is a formidable continent. Like, it’s really fucking big. Its wide array of ecosystems has nurtured and inspired the likes of the wondrous Dreamtime stories and cheap memes about how everything from redbacks to rednecks will try to kill you. Art duo friendships have managed to encapsulate Australia’s grandiose sense of the surreal and that droll approach to life and death in their album Nullarbor 1988-1989.

The creative company of friendships is the result of the convergence zone between rural Western Australia and urban Victoria. They’re a vortex of sound and vision, embodied by Nic Brown with his music and Misha Grace with her visualisations. They’re a thoroughly captivating experience live and here on Nullarbor… Brown’s compositions are a wavy melange of bass music that is still picturesque enough to enthral without Grace’s hypnotic visuals.

With opener Big Farm In The Sky, the record is set, as it blooms with flurries of arpeggiated synths and the rattles of a drum'n'bass cut. Evoking scenes of watching the sun set in your rear view mirror as you head east onto the dark plain, making your way to Footscray. A lot of the songs are dark and fast, full of acidic and wobbling bass of heightened dramatic intensity - They could easily be set to Wolf Creek or Mad Max and make them better. Seriously, this shit is a haunting rush of hallucination, paranoia and adrenalin that will not only make you want to flail about in self expression but also out of self defence.

The more abstract moments whether in the spoken word tracks or the pieces closer to soundscape than song, contain a deep appreciation of Australiana. The closing track, with its most righteous Australian title, Keep Smiling At Me Like That And You'll Be Picking Your Teeth Up Out Of The Gutter is an expansive reverie of all that is beautiful and dangerous on this lump of salty grit; encouraging you to reflect on everything from seeing a wedge-tail eagle take down a kangaroo through to being antagonised on the street by an undesirable only for them to brush it of with “Nah, you’re awrite. Jus’ joken, ay.” What friendships have created here is a collection of creative works which is distinctly Australian, harsh and exciting.

- NJR.