28.2.08 : finally got around to updating this here old founder website. last updated back in august 2006. christ. there are few excuses save for the repeated collapse of my safari browser everytime i tried to get in here... firefox to the rescue. (a week ago that sentence wouldn't have made any sense to me.)
there are founder shows on the horizon!
next friday night (7 march 08) we are thrilled to be supporting the sea & cake from the windy city. it's been a long wait to see this band. they will amaze! the show is at the annandale hotel - you can get tix now from the venue or their website.
later in march we are playing the hoey with the dead sea and (?... sorry, haven't heard yet)
not much else to tell. recordings: still yet to polish the work we did with tony dupe down in kiama nearly 4 years ago. some of it sounds great though, so something must be made of it.
in january 08 the band retreated to a farmhouse in neriga, outside of goulburn and mobile phone coverage and recorded another 8 or so tracks written in the past year or so. they might end up somewhere as well.
all in good time eh?
29.8.06 : i see it's been nearly 6 months since this was updated. 6 months!! there are several reasons for the neglect. poor time management chiefly. the rise and rise of myspace is probably another. now that place is a funny old thing i reckon - i just don't get it somehow - but there exists these days a founder profile at www.myspace.com/foundertheband if you wanna befriend us.
relevance has gotta be another reason. we just don't have it at the moment. you know we're not exactly scoring ads for microsoft or apple. we're not scoring very much of anything.but after all, if you are reading this page, and apparently some of you do, then there is the faintest glimmer of hope...
and so it was that last week founder got back into a studio for the first time in a year. it was a good old time up at beps. it was challenging. we lacked form and precision. enthusiasm we had in spades. volume followed in plagues. the place was empty and the night was dark and it felt pretty good. more action will follow. a show later this year? perhaps... just perhaps...
see we haven't been altogether idle this past year. the founders have spent the past year individually refining their limitations. spaceman and the family fuse recorded launched and continue to support the weather vane woman juggernaut. kurt muse has stepped up demoing and begun recording erskineville's smart alec answer to the black heart procession. jim has spent many many lonely winter months getting intimate with bon's computer, piecing together dusty loops and unsettled beats and mis-timed hand claps, the results of which will become available sometime in the future.
the founder monotremes, on the other hand, gave us very little to cheer about this year, missing the finals altogether and facing relegation to the lower division in next year's pretend rugby league premiership. the finals take place this weekend and without much else to cheer for we find ourselves seated squarely on wes crushers diesel injected bandwagon as they play for division one supremacy between friday and sunday.it has been such a very exciting time.sorry to leave it so long. founder loves you all.x
2.3.06 : no news. absolutely none.
if anyone wants to remix a founder track for no financial benefit but certain notoriety, let us know.
22.11.05 : blip... blip... blip... : there is a heavy records 'showcase' evening happening at chequers (downstairs at the mandarin club) on friday 9 december.
joe leonard and the masters will be playing on the night, along with the woods themselves and kid cornered.
travis (afx jim) will play a short set early on. and although it's not listed on the posters and flyers that are popping up around town, founder will likely be playing a song or two as well...
the other bands on the night have also recorded sweet albums with heavy boss tony dupe over the last year or so: jack ladder, derwent river star & night radio. this evening should be amazing.
see you there.
23.09.05 : with hands like mallets : that's how it felt anyway. what about a name change? we reckon flag&dolphin is a great band name. where do all these online games come from? is someone actually making money from all this www nonsense?
one more thing...
someone needs to build us a proper website. one with superhighways and such. this one stinks.
next business is probably to discuss the football. i can hardly tell if i've got football fever or bird flu anymore. screw it.
i can hardly string thoughts together. the problem was playing that fuse show on a thursday night. jesus i got so lost in that big carpark last night, the lights were out and i drove around the one level after midnight for it seemed about 15 minutes. the same thing happened on the next level. cleverly, they put a bunch of 'exit' signs around in loops, so what you're really doing is lapping the carpark. you actually have to disobey these signs if you want to get out of the place. the whole episode seemed to last for about 35 minutes. i was pretty sure that i would get back to the mandarin club and find the place shut, maybe find some lab in the basement. or a batcave. i have an idea that the carpark staff just sit in the office watching people do circles on the security cameras all night. probably they take a lot of drugs. probably i should have taken less myself since when i finally got out of there and parked, the whole experience had taken only 8 minutes of my life. that is a big difference between reality and perception. seems to be the regular story these days.
flag&dolphin loves u all.x
12.07.05: goodbye soulranch : another overdue update. founder are now back in the same city and playing together. honestly. we had a bash a couple of weeks ago. things sounded alright too, for a bunch of blokes who did nothing over the last year but sit around and wait for sparklehorse to release another album.
actually, that was just me. joeseph leonard fuse has been busy as hell. his new solo record is nearly finished and in the past year he has asserted himself as sydney's principle white soul hero. he barely had time to listen to sparklehorse.
kurt museli was busy learning black and white notes. he's been playing sonic rumble-a-phone for the woods themselves and joe fuse.
so now we look towards some new songs. when we have some, you'll be the first to hear them.
in other news, last week saw the founders move out of the soul ranch, handing the reigns over to tides. she's been a worthy battleship. commerorative plaques have been struck in the hearts of all who knew her and sailed with her.
boy did we wreck the shit outta that joint.
more soon from your founders... xo
24:03:05 : a time and a place : awesome how john wayne was only a slumpy arsed half retard but still so fucking cool.
"that... damn... mule!!"
he looks like your average publican. face that says "i love schooners". spent midlife worrying about which smarmy wise-arse was going to take his daughters cherry. that scowl aint acting. could kick anyone's arse, so long as you were slower than him. he would've been a dominant jedi, born a few years too early, died a few years too early...
an overdue update. things in founderland are progressing, despite the best efforts of tony's cd burner. apparently our best song from the 2004 recordings has been lost. lost? (lost to that special place that butterflies go when it rains. a lair for those earthly creatures drunk on their own beauty. somewhere in paddington i've been told). the other nine or so songs will be edited into perhaps an ep for release.
remember that show we once played with avance from japan? maybe 3 or 4 of you were there, but they were fucking cool. big ac/dc headz, clothes shredded to bits (too much volume), a-e-c, smiles like split watermelon (plural = watermelii??), the green square spitting decibals down the residents throats on a thursday night, topless waitresses with no sense of humour, absolutely none...
"yuuup... things change... gimme that mule! "
john wayne - big jake - 1971
26.11.04 : ...and it goes on... : founder are still out at recess, or little lunch if you prefer. the ground around them is littered with the fallen crusts of devon & tomato sandwiches and torn up pornography. it's almost like a dare to see who can leave it there the longest because the teacher on playground duty is a hard-arse, ex-navy type, and circling dangerously.
across the school yard, the flies are already gathering around a dead magpie, poked with a stick and bombed by blue stones. not far away a group of girls work eagerly through a series of percentages revealing true love compatability, but the names are all spelt wrong so the results of these figures cannot really be trusted. it is a hot day and their giggling stings like the sweat on your scratched neck, like a taunt delivered at a busy bike rack, like a concrete cricket ball on a bare shin.
earlier some boys put one of the girl's bag next to the magpie. this angered the girls and amused the boys. could it be love?
back in the staff room the air is stiff with the smell of cake, reckless and lustful glances and the abstractly rhythmical chang-chang-changing of an ancient photocopier. their minds turn blandly, numbed with obliging decency. the conversation is slow and common.
things to do this week: attend faux-thanksgiving dinners, drink scotch alone in your beds, see shellac play, learn spanish words, drought-breakers ball (weather permitting), write more lists.
goodbye and remember to look after your friends.
with love - the founders - xo
03.08.04 : ...like missing ones... : it's been a good while since this page was updated - sorry about that. it actually looks as though we've received more expressions of interest (they call them 'hits' in the industry - try and keep up) in the last couple of months than in the past couple of years. in a way, we're like that band that was really really awesome, but everyone thought they were shit, and then they broke up, and then everyone realised they were awesome and were sad because they were gone. (umm... the doors? i think maybe the doors) actually, it makes us a little bit like jesus christ as well.
so as you may be aware, founder aren't exactly your active, functioning unit at the moment due to some significant geographical incongruencies. but there is other things to be excited about...
for example, you could go and see joseph leonard & the owls in a (sydney) bar near you. listen to the radio (fbi, ser etc) and you will hear some of his lovely album (soft on the small moon). go to your record store of choice and you can in fact own that album. the owls also feature kurtis museli (founder, brunette men) on sonic vibration, neil love (auto-alley) on low strings, davey cotsios (the woods themselves, sound lizard) on another guitar and bon king (el mopa, cannanes) on a set of drums.
so what you do is go to the shows and you speak to any of the afore-mentioned people and they tell you when you can see some other pretty awesome bands and buy their music. that's how it works, see...
other stuff: well i guess the founder album and comeback show (still expected to go ahead in the domain sometime in november 2009) are still a way off, but watch this space. we miss you all like limbs. (um, like missing ones, i mean)
i won't fill this page with too many details of my bullshit adventures in north america. 'weather is here, wish you were great' and all that. some musical highlights are possibly relevant: the scissor sisters put on a great show of disco heroism here in vancouver a couple of weeks ago... pedro the lion was a super sweet night, i gotta track down that new album... james lavelle was poptastic... saw an amazing band in seattle over the weekend called kinski - most excellent instructors in the ways of sonic excess(ion)/expression - you all have to hear them. the radio stations down there still play a lot - a fucking lot - of nirvana and alice in chains.
i guess that's about it. take care and remember...
founder loves you all.
xo
12.05.04 : farewell : a wise & funny friend once told me that the changing of the seasons was always difficult, about how it was nice to kick the shit out of the pile of leaves raked up on the front lawn and about how it probably wouldn't help in any case. i've seen leaves raked on lawns before. i had to agree with him. i do find the changing of the seasons difficult.
this friday founder plays for possibly the last time. unfortunately tony can't be there but davey and toohey are gonna play some. i am wondering what, if any, nostalgia will attach itself to the occasion. not a lot, i wouldn't think. we've never been too good at taking ourselves seriously. could be the booze.
there's an extreme outside chance that we'll play another show before big jim phelan takes leave. we'd like to do another heavyrecords showcase, maybe with pluto and with the woods themselves and with solo sets by saddleback and toohey and the fuse. that'd be oh! so sweet but oh! my kingdom for a venue and a spare weekend before july. watch this space i guess.
i should also add that there are some nice, only half started songs on some reels and inside a computer in kiama, that we'd eventually like you all to hear. hopefully we'll get our shit back together down the track and put out this record and play some more shows.
anyway, there'll probably be some retrospective posting beyond this friday but let me state immediately that it's been quite a fun ride and that all the kinds words and some nice shows along the way, as brilliant as they've been, have been secondary to the great fucking privilege of doing something we enjoyed as much as this with our mates.
thanks for listening.
founder loves you all. xo
