Naarm/Melbourne’s hypnotic dance-punk sextet GUT HEALTH today announce an East Coast album tour this October, and release the video for Stiletto – a nearly eight-minute epic that epitomises their chaos-meets-melody ethos, and is both the title track and closing song on their forthcoming debut album due out October 11 (Highly Contagious / AWAL). Tickets to Gut Health’s ‘Stiletto’ album tour are ON SALE NOW.
Stiletto is a condemnation of contemporary so-called-Australia, both how it is fabricated and capitalistic, and a call to prioritise Indigenous imagery and voices. It’s a live song at heart, one that is hinged on the band feeding off each other’s energy in an improvisational swirl on stage, and with that came its own challenges in recording. “The recording took a lot of trial and error to feel realised in its recorded form as often these elements are more improvisational in their live form,” Gut Health share, “we just kept layering more and more until the end of the song felt unrecognisable from where it began.” The only constants in its seven-and-a-half-minutes are its snaking bassline and sharp drums, which serve as the tether around which the tension builds, before collapsing into chaos with guitars, synths and saxophone from Yang Chen layered in from every angle. On the song NME said, “it sounds absolutely fucked, like it’s exorcising all the tension and violence it possibly can before tapping out with an exhausted, droning synth.”
The Stiletto video, directed by Renee Kyprotis was filmed between Coburg Velodrome and Cool Studios on Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land, and shows the balance of the natural and man-made against striking, long shots and subtle movements. Kyprotis says, “as the visuals progress, they gradually darken, descending into a liminal space that mirrors the song’s evolving tone.”
‘Stiletto’ is an immersive ten-track foray into dance floor-inducing soundscapes and punchy prowess, and features their recent singles Separate States and Cool Moderator – which have seen support, additions and airplay from BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 6, NME, Double J, triple j, DORK (UK), Wonderland, The Needle Drop, RUSSH, Rolling Stone and many others. Across its ten tracks, Gut Health journey through the “healing qualities of consensual rage” backed by an unparalleled ability to build lingering tension and release in their instrumentation. “Uncertainty plays a lot through the album, we don’t want the listener to know exactly what is going to come next in the album to create excitement, intrigue and unease,” the band shares. It’s a transient commentary on life: the value of listening and sharing, the myths and falsehoods of contemporary so-called Australia, the empowerment of high-femmes and marginalised communities; an “expression of the passing human experience” that they share as an offering of cues and clues for listeners to find their own meaning in.
Each of their six members come from vastly different corners of music – soundscape design, jazz, brash punk, folk, R&B – and with influences spanning Grace Jones, Drinks, 80s post-punk band Ludus and B-grade sci-fi films, they have formed a sound that is at once groove and dance-driven while being thickened by kaleidoscopic soundscapes. ‘Stiletto’ was recorded across different spaces in the band’s world, predominantly with Julian Cue (Screensaver, CIVIC) at Button Pusher on Wurundjeri Land in Preston, with overdubs recorded by Julian and guitarist Dom Wilmott between the band’s homes, rehearsal spaces, and their old warehouse space APAX. Gut Health shares, “We had fun experimenting with the space in the APAX warehouse, we moved mics around the warehouse to get lots of empty space, natural reverb and echoes.” It was engineered and mixed by Portland’s Evan Mersky (Lithics) on a 24-track reel-to-reel tape machine, bringing through the compression and warmth heard across the album.
GUT HEALTH – Athina Uh oh (she/her; vocals), Eloise Murphy-Hill (they/them; guitar), Dom Willmott (he/him; guitar, synth), Angus Fletcher (he/him; percussion, synth), Myka Wallace (they/them; drums) and Adam Markmann (he/him; bass) – have been a force in underground music since they first formed in a sharehouse on Hope St in Naarm/Melbourne’s inner north in 2022 and staked their claim as one of so-called-Australia’s most compelling new acts. Following the release of their debut EP ‘Electric Party Chrome Girl’ (2022), a collection of songs self-recorded in a National Storage facility in the heart of Brunswick, and subsequent singles The Recipe, Juvenile Retention and Uh oh, paired with their visually adventurous and sonically daring live shows that regularly have sweat dripping down the windows – Gut Health have gone on to share stages with Queens of The Stone Age, POND, Otoboke Beaver, The Black Lips, Mudhoney and local icons RVG, Cash Savage and the Last Drinks, and Body Type, showcase at BIGSOUND and SXSW Sydney, and made their debut performance at Meredith Music Festival last year.
TOUR DATES
Tue 17 Sept – The Forum – Naarm/Melbourne*
Fri 20 Sept – The Enmore – Gadigal Land/Sydney*
Sat 19 Oct – The Tote – Naarm/Melbourne
Fri 25 Oct – The Lansdowne – Gadigal Land/Sydney
Sat 26 Oct – Black Bear Lodge – Meanjin/Brisbane
* with Hiatus Kaiyote
With thanks to Super Duper
