Remembering five bizarre and beautiful Aussie album launches
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22.10.2021

Remembering five bizarre and beautiful Aussie album launches

Aussie album
Words by Benjamin Lamb

Days of the the average Aussie album rollout are long gone. In this technological day and age, bands and artists alike are adapting and finding new and exciting ways to create buzz about a new release or something else exciting they are working on.

We’ve all become accustomed to monoliths like Kanye releasing his album through listening parties, U2 releasing an album through uploading it to all our iPhones, and artists like Taylor Swift teasing new releases through secret messages on her Instagram.

But today we’re taking a look in our backyard for some of the coolest ways musos have got their music to Aussie fans.

Polish Club

Back in 2019, Aussie rockers Polish Club released their album Iguana in a pretty cool way. Making the most of their fans technological prowess, they brought the best of modern tech, and mixed it with the fun of the early 2000s.

On Facebook, the pair announced that they were intentionally leaking their album 2 weeks early, and it was coming out as ringtones. Taking you back to the day where you’d text a number and get the hottest song from So Fresh, you’d text the number 0436 486 775, and get some tunes in return.

The songs were drip fed as extremely low-fi, 8bit style tracks. Catch an 8-bit version of one of their tracks in the video down below.

The ringtones created a lot of buzz behind their 2019 album, with their next coming earlier this year, titled Now We’re Cooking, where the band went back to the traditional way of dropping their music.

 

Gang of Youths

 After a number of years without music from the beloved group, Aussie rockers Gang of Youths teased music earlier this year in a pretty cool way.

With the group garnering fans across the world, they put up posters with a hotline, where fans could hear a glimpse of some new music. The hotline pushing a snippet of the track ‘The Angel of 8th Ave’, a single they released soon thereafter. A video of fan’s experience with the UK hotline can be seen below.

The album has been teased for over a year, with still no signs of when it’ll be released, but we do now it’ll feature Formula One driver Daniel Riccardo, who will share his percussion and vocal talents on the release

In the meantime, check out the amazing albums they have released, The Positions and Go Farther in Lightness.

Daft Punk

Yes, they’re not Aussie, but legendary French electronic music producers Daft Punk had a pretty cool album drop with some Aussie adjacent elements.

8 years after the release of their album Human After All, Daft Punk released their widely popular, critically acclaimed album Random Access Memories. In one of the most bizarre choices, the pair decided to drop the album at a listening party in the rural NSW town of Waa Wee.

The small, predominately farming town is only populated with around 2,500 people as of 2021, but fans flocked from all corners to hear some new music from the duo. The album actually leaked a few days prior to this massive event, causing many to cancel their trip, the tiny Waa Wee motel facing a lot of cancellations.

The pair didn’t even show up to the event, but thousands of fans bathed in the amazing light show on the massive dance floor, truly making it a memorable event. The album featured such popular tracks as ‘Get Lucky’, ‘Give Life Back To Music’, and ‘Lose Yourself To Dance’.

Check out a more detailed recount of the listening party here

Courtney Barnett

Earlier this year, Aussie indie rocker Courtney Barnett teased her new album, Things Take Time, Take Time, which comes 3 years after her massive second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel.

The Milk! Records artist posted a link to a professionally filmed video of the singer looking out her window (which would soon become the video for her first single ‘Rae Street’) and alongside the video, she shared a playlist titled Tell Me What You’re Listening To, clearly teasing the album name, and getting fans excited for the possibility of new music.

The playlist was full of hidden secrets, it featured a 13 second track from an artist named Oliver Paul, which was the same name as the protagonist featured in one of Barnett’s breakout hits, ‘Elevator Operator’.

The track was called ‘All Eyes on The Pavement’ and was released through a label called A Crabby Mettle Neutron, which is an anagram of Courtney Barnett.

Super sleuths across the world put their thinking caps on and tried to solve this mystery, but soon after, the rocker released the video for the song ‘Rae Street’ and announced the release of her album.

The album is set to drop on the 12th November.

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard

King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard are masters of the album release, a fair amount of their whopping 18 albums were dropped in cool and odd ways.

Their 2017 album Polygondwanaland was shared to the band’s socials as a free album. Fans were encouraged by the band to create their own versions of the album – bootlegs, remixes and lots more.

In classic King Gizz fashion, the entire release of Polygondwanaland was out of the ordinary, with the group choosing not sell the album in any shape of form, rather just uploading the masters of the release online for fans to download.

Many vinyl shops and labels across the globe choosing to press their own versions of the album, with it reported that there was around 50 different versions of the release.

Their 2017 Aussie album Sketches of Brunswick East was the group’s foray into a bluesy / jazzy sound. The album was released through a Facebook live stream, where the entire album was played to fans across the globe. It was then available to purchase an hour after the stream.