Headland

Headland

What Rough Beast

Agitated

Headland is a collective of Australian musicians that compose, record and perform soundtrack music for surf films in various forms. The group leader is Murray Paterson, an old surfer himself, who in between wrangling two red-headed boys, finds time here and there to record bits and pieces of guitar-based music. Mostly he heads to Nashuaville where his longtime colleague from a previous life in arts education, Les Dorahy, has set up a small recording studio in the old Booyong General Store, situated in the Byron Bay Hinterland. Whenever friends visit their part of the world, they drop past and join in.  Most of the music remains instrumental but this new album is a collection of songs. One of Murray’s comrades from his days with Tex Perkins and The Dark Horses is Joel Silbersher. Joel has been a longtime Headland collaborator—playing bass and guitar—but while recording material for the new album, vocal melodies kept finding their way into Murray’s instrumentals. Soon there seemed enough of a coherent lyrical theme to build an album around. There’s still enough of the spacious Australian land and seascapes to satisfy fans of the previous Headland albums, journeys through a sonic architecture centered around the motion of the ocean and it’s meeting with the coastline. But a narrative of loss and longing sits on the surface here: Silbersher’s voicing is an emotive thread that breaches at all the right times. There are references to the likes of Alex Chilton, Nick Drake and Daniel Lanois but...

Headland

True Flowers From This Painted World

Headland Music

Headland began in 2013 as a soundtrack to a gorgeous collection of found super8 film fragments depicting surfing and coastal culture in and around Lennox Head, Australia, in the 1970s. For this album, contemporary, High Definition slow-motion footage by award-winning filmmaker Stephen Jones (El Mar, Mi Alma) overscores each track. The film provides a discrete and personally emotive portrait of the Lennox coastline that builds upon traditional notions of landscape and seascape where each and every frame seems painted by hand. The instrumentation is lyrical, the compositions quaint and heartfelt. The combination is a personal insight into an emotional understanding of place. With an almost distinct Australian fever to its pitch, True Flowers From This Painted World ebbs and flows like the proverbial tide it is soundtracking. The players of this collective have a long history in the underground / mainstream music scene in Australia (includes members of The Scare, Wolf & Cub, Tex Perkin’s band) and with this record create cinematic / avant garde-pop similar to that created by Calexico, Friends of Dean Martinez, Boxhead Ensemble, Lullaby For The Working Class, and even Pink Floyd and Neil Young, so immersive and far-reaching is their sound.

Headland

Cosy Ep

Headland

***In 2013 HEADLAND produced the LP soundtrack to accompany a collection of 1970s surf film fragments site-specific to the northern coast of New South Wales: an album of guitar-based music seemingly poised between the open spaces of the landscape and the stylized rhythm of single-fin surfing. This latest release, Cosy, maintains the essence of that project, providing five easy pieces that reflect on Australian surf-culture of the ‘70s and hint at an upcoming full-length release. Headland’s main contributors are MURRAY PATERSON, known elsewhere for his work with TEX PERKINS & THE DARK HORSES, and JOEL SILBERSHER, founding member of seminal Australian Rock bands GOD and HOSS. Fans of the likes of Giant Sand / early Calexico / Scenic / Sun Kil Moon would be advised to take a dip. Limited edition of 500 copies pressed on clear vinyl with download.