CD
There is a scene in the BBC Krautrock documentary that made a great impression on me. Iggy Pop sits spread eagle in some beachside location drilling holes in coconuts and ruminating on the sound of Neu. The clash of the visual spectacle and the subject matter infected my dreams. At one point he describes Neu as "pastoral psychedelicism". I thought of that moment when Buz first played me the demo for the song which would become 'Heat', when first he asked me to play music with him. I heard it, smelled the fresh coconut juice and the sour sweat on Iggy's leathery hide. I knew that we would do it right. I moved to Sydney at the end of 2022. It was toward the end of two years of Melbourne lockdown that started in the immediate wake of the Total Control tour of Japan at the end of 2019 and was the longest time in 20 years that I had not travelled overseas or played music. After moving to Sydney I had an overwhelming need to start a new band and sing again. Total Control and Straightjacket Nation would be difficult to gather any momentum with my living interstate, and also I wanted to settle here and start something new and try and obliterate some of the stasis that entered my veins from the lockdown. Low Life asked me to play a solo show with Iceage at the opera house, but I had no ambitions for solo performance and had no songs, so I formed a band called KX Aminal with Greta, Michael and Micky from Den, and Josh from Diat. KX Aminal are an important part of the Station Model Violence story. When we were writing songs for KX Aminal, Josh and Greta and I were drunk on fine chablis and playing a guitar line that sounded very much like Crisis, and Josh turned to me and looked me in the eye and mumbled "it smells like Kwisis". Later Buz acknowledged this was something he would always want to hear when writing songs with a band, and on this point it was destined. We would write songs together to smell like Kwisis. Anyway, KX Aminal went into stasis and I got the itch again. Buz had written a few demos that didn't work as R.M.F.C. songs and he asked me to have a listen to hear if I could sing something on it, and over the winter of 2024 I visited his home studio and we recorded some vocal ideas with his demos. We released a demo for 'Learn To Hate' "recorded after eating mushrooms on fabulous winter evening" and formed a lineup for a one off show in late 2024 with Micky (Den), Yuta (The Lewers) and Georgia (G2g). This was the final Idiota Civilisaaaztatatanini show, so a nice loop back with Josh who is my spiritual aminal and guide. After this show, Yuta and Georgia left, and Michael (Den), Alan (R.M.F.C.) and Kuceli (Gaud) joined. Seeing as Micky, Michael, Kuceli and I played in KX Aminal and we never got to record those songs, we decided to absorb some of them into Station Model Violence. We combined some of those KX songs with the demos Buz wrote and wrote a couple of new songs together and played a couple of shows, and then recorded an LP with Mikey in Melbourne and Micky in Sydney at the start of 2025. The album was mixed over the course of the year as we had created this incredibly dense beast and much credit is due to the patience and persistence of Mikey Young. This is the first single, 'Heat'. Revisit that image of the coconuts and the drill and pastoral psychedelicism and the smell of KWISIS.
