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I love it when something a little different comes in, this Melbourne act Fire Underground are a two piece, guitar and drums with a clarinet brought in for good measure at times. Playing a mixed style influenced by old school punk acts, swing and dirty rock 'n roll. The opening number 'Chase Scene' is an awesome little rockabilly'esque number, on first listen you get a bit of an old Living End type feel musically and vocally, as the song develops more and more you find it to be an original sound of their own blending so many different sounds and you find yourself tapping and bopping away in no time, this is a killer track, definatly the leader, backed up by three other tracks, all in the same vein but without sounding the same, theres really only so much you can do with two instruments, but these guys manage to avoid repetition and have a pretty damn fine EP on their hands, check them out, theres some mp3's on their website and look out for them touring this release in the coming months.
Highlights : Chase Scene
- Bombshellzine.com, Monday 7th of June 2004
Doyle, on the drums, looks like Animal from The Muppets when he plays, all flying dreads and gleeful madness. They're enormously fun to watch, pulling out the boyishly adorable rock moves and chugging through their set. And when you wake up two days later with the songs still in your head, you just know you’re onto a good thing.
- Beat Magazine, Issue 897
Daniel (guitar/vocals/clarinet) and Doyle (drums) look like they crawled out of a sand dune on Bondi beach but sound like they were bought up on swing, jazz and AC/DC. An appropriate burst of unplanned pyrotechnics causes a piece of equipment at the back of the stage to catch on fire, so the band finishes their set grinning through a wafting cloud of smoke.
- Time Off Magazine
My education for the night came courtesy of the corking two piece Fire Underground. Anyone who compares these guys to the White Stripes is just being unimaginative (akin to comparing The Living End to The Sharp because there's a double bass involved). I was pretty much sold but when he went a little less rock and little more jazz I was almost ready to pawn my grandma. The clincher came when he picked up a clarinet and proved that a drum/woodwind combo can rock.
- Beat Magazine, Issue 893
"It might sound confusing, but smooth arrangements ensure the end result is a style of its own. It’s not rock and it’s not punk, but it’s kind of both. And don’t forget the clarinet."
- Time Off Magazine, Wednesday 7th July, 2004
Discography
Chase Scene EP - 2004
Title track 'Chase Scene' received airplay on Australian national radio broadcaster Triple J.
Amped Recordings Compilation 2005
Fire Underground's song Chase Scene featured on this compilation of Next Wave Australian artists, alongside Evermore, The Exploders and Osterberg.
Get It Free EP - 2005/2006
Received over 1000 downloads from www.fireunderground.com, songs "Don't Know Why", "School's Out" and "Speechless" featured on 15 US podcasts including Accident Hash and Tiny Binary Life, received 4500+ listens on the Fire Underground MySpace page (www.myspace.com/fireunderground)
Photos
Bio
Quite possibly the first rock'n'roll band ever to incorporate a clarinet, Fire Underground from Melbourne, Australia is made up of Daniel who plays guitar, sings, blows a mean clarinet and works the crowd while Doyle bashes the hell out of his drums and sings. Don't be fooled by the two piece image however, with the use of a loop station, an extra amp and Doyle's hard hitting rhythms the band reproduce a full sound on stage.
Drawing influence from two of the biggest and most popular music styles of the last century, rock'n'roll and swing music and combining it with the high energy and intensity of punk bands such as the Stooges, Refused and The Hives, Fire Underground have developed their own style that is highly entertaining to watch live, is powerful but fun, and thoroughly danceable.
In the past two years, FU have been honing their live skills playing more than 130 shows in venues all over Australia. Thanks to their high energy shows and wide ranging musical style appealing to a broad demographic they've been able to play with bands of many genres like recent Epitaph alternative pop signing Youth Group, Capitol Record's newest worlwide signing AC/DC style rockers Airbourne, US goodtime blues band The Black Keys, Canada's hardcore kings Alexisonfire and the pop rock stylyings of Island Records' Starky to name just a few. They've had three of their songs gain airplay on national FM radio broadcaster Triple J, a video aired on (national TV show) 'rage' and had their song "Chase Scene" selected as the theme song for Australian Music TV Show "On The Couch" watched by an estimated 200,000 viewers each week. Earlier this year the band was also featured on Stereogum.com, one of the web's most popular indie blog sites and as a result received 2000 downloads from the US of their song "Chase Scene" within 4 days.
Over the coming months the band plans to use the money saved from gigs to travel to the US and Europe to play showcases and festivals like CMJ and Popkomm to get their music more widely heard and play in front of interested labels.
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