The Hidden Venture

The Hidden Venture - Live At St. Andrews
"Inspired in equal parts by the stoner riffs of Californian desert rock, the guitar wizardry of Hendrix and also every soul singer who had a story to tell" so goes the Bio for the local four-piece. Emerging from the dissolution of the genre-bending A Planet In Space (previously featured on the rant), they've emerged into a much leaner, tougher beast. Channeling Faith No More's lothario-rock on Certified Diamond and Josh Homme histrionics on Worlds Collide. This live EP is available for free from their website for the meagre price of an email, it's such an energetic set you can almost feel the sweat splashing about as the group lash their instruments into submission. - Al's Music Rant

Joshua Tree and the West American desert have been made famous by bands like Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age, Brant Bjork and many more from the Stoner scene. Well, in Australia, there are deserts too but in fact, it is in Melbourne, in the deep concrete of the capital of Victoria, where we can find The Hidden Venture.

Influenced by Joshua Homme, Jimmy Hendrix or even Jeff Buckley, the Melbournian 4-piece develops and offers a strong and powerful Stoner Rock, made in Australia. Dan Fox (Vocals/ Guitar), Alex Hayes (Bass/ Vocals), Dale Brimblecombe (Guitar) and Ben Thomas (Drums) make sure that your all body will be sweaty, that you bend your head down and that you wish you had long hair to be able to make it go with the rhythm flow.

The music of The Hidden Venture is a combination of up and down tempos, playing a lot with the half-beats and in a perfect synergy between bass and drums and creating a heavy power that sticks you to the ground. You barely can get used to a tempo before it jumps to an other one. In the meantime, both guitars and vocals work as the bright side of the musical creation with a touch of psychedelia. Dan Fox' vocals go from a Joshua Homme sound-alike to a Thom Yorke high harmonies sound-alike.

With no pretension despite being made of so many influences, The Hidden Venture manage to create their own sound and their own personality. They bring some sort of Progressive Stoner Rock, complex and solid, to the front scene.

Catch them on the small stages before they get big. - Flo The Frog

Emerging from the dissolution of local collective A Planet In Space, The Hidden Venture shed their genre-hopping ways and complexities to emerge a leaner, taut rock beast - as such they are a band that's hard to predict.

So it proves with their first proper EP. The opening track They Put A Price On Everything would lead you to believe that they wade through a murky hybrid of frenetic blues and ragged rock, but then the muscular riff that opens From The Drip Into My Arm warps their sound into something more inclined to classic rock, be that a groove equally beholden to Hendrix or Tom Morello. It's this back-to-basics passion that fuels the group's raw feats.

As Certified Diamond slithers out of its chugging intro into its brooding verse of clipped guitars, you almost expect Mike Patton to emerge with his trademark lothario-growl. It's a delightful surprise then, that the ears are greeted instead with the smoky croon of Dan Fox. As capable of soulful falsetto as he is hell-bent wailing, his powerful vocal guides the track towards its propellant climax; backed by the punchy rhythm section of bassist/vocalist Alex Hayes and drummer Ben Thomas.

Rise Again is a more straightforward rock track, which is to say that it mines its Faith No More guitar layering for all it's worth and with all the force of a charging bull. The two cuts that follow present their inspiration with more transparency, Give It To Me and Worlds Collide, aren't so much coloured by QOTSA-inspired riffage as they are positively indebted to it. But it's as good a recreation of California desert jamming as one could hope to get, replete with low-slung stoner rock bass and wiry guitar noodling. You can almost feel the sweat splashing about as this four-piece lash their instruments into submission.

The final coda is actually a brief but interesting instrumental, though it could be taken as a musical afterthought, it actually signals at the more atmospheric material the band are no doubt capable of

As an introduction to the group, a live recording better captures the brawny energy that The Hidden Venture spark than a studio recording could. The rough edges merely add to the impression that this ct is well-honed in spirit, not spit and polish - their grungy, psych-rock is all the better for it. - Beat Magazine