Kim Salmon/Surrealists Return w/New LP

Oz mainstay from the Scientists/Beasts of Bourbon revs up his other classic outfit for March album; Scientists will be doing ATP as well.

By Fred Mills

A little over a year ago we sat down with Australian guitar god Kim Salmon, of the legendary Scientists (an influence on Mudhoney, Sonic Youth and scores more) and Beasts of Bourbon. For that "Blurting With..." interview he talked primarily about his then-current project, the Darling Downs, a collaboration with Died Pretty vocalist Ron Peno. However he also brought us up to date on the Scientists, who'd gotten back together briefly in 2007 for a European reunion tour. And he added that the band he formed following the Scientists' initial split, the Surrealists, had a new lease on life as well, following some dates they'd done in 2006. Offered Salmon:

"It has been great revisiting what the Scientists did, and it has rekindled something that I can pursue with the Surrealists, who never actually broke up and are, I believe, able to grow and evolve. For me, Blood Red River [Scientists, 1983], The Human Jukebox [Scientists, 1987] and Hit Me with the Surreal Feel [Surrealists, 1988] follow a natural path that I got diverted from throughout the nineties. Anyway, it put me back in touch with what I was trying to do back then, and a lot of ideas that have been mulling over in my head for a decade and a half have just fallen into place since doing the Scientists tours. I'd never get any of it past some of the Scientists members and they're just not the right people for it now - and I'm not knocking them either, just saying it like it is.

 "The Surrealists, on the other hand, have just picked up all the ideas and run with them. It's amazing. We're definitely going to do another album and it's going to follow on seamlessly from Hit Me With The Surreal Feel, which was so far ahead in time compared with anything I've done subsequently that it won't be a step back in time." 

The Surrealists essentially had picked up the ball from the Scientists, although the Surrealists were a bit jazzier and more freeform than their decidedly skronky, swampy predecessor, and in a very real sense, the Surrealists were able to make greater commercial inroads too, touring Europe and America with bands like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Cramps. Key release: 1993's Sin Factory, which did quite respectably at college radio.

So today news arrive that, indeed, the Surrealists are back on the boards: due March 6 in Australia (early May in the US) is Grand Unifying Theory, on the Low Transit Industries label. According to the Salmon camp:

With the 2006 reunion of the Surrealists, for the Spanish Azkena Festival, Kim was re-acquainted with the free jazz/noise/ fusion bug and resolved to get the band back together for at least long enough to work through what it started back in the late 1980s. Recorded throughout 2008 and 2009 over a series of live sessions, ‘Grand Unifying Theory' has the band given some framework compositions by Kim. The band - Kim, Stu Thomas and Phil Collings - then takes these ideas to the outer limits of punk/jazz/ thrash freakout!. The results are taken by Kim and producer Mike Stranges and assembled into the most far out music Kim Salmon has been responsible for to date! ‘Grand Unifying Theory' with its polyrhythmic beats, its atonal keys, its heavy funk/punk grooves, its spaced out use of equipment buzz and Dictaphone is coming on Low Transit Industries.

The album also will features appearances by Dave Graney and Clare Moore (from the late, great Oz band The Moodists), both of whom had pitched in on Darling Downs records.

 Incidentally, sharp-eyed readers will recall that Salmon and the Scientists will be performing at All Tomorrow's Parties New York series with The Stooges & Mudhoney later this year - and now, apparently, a special U.S. Surrealists show is also in the works, so stay tuned for details on that.

Track listing:

Turn Turn

Order Of Things

RQ1  

Grand Unifying Theory I

Grand Unifying Theory II

Pathological

Predate  

Childhood Living

Kneel Down At The Altar Of Pop