Civil Civic + Culture Club Dj-team

CIVIL CIVIC: The Rules
1. No Vocals. “In an environment where singers increasingly have nothing to say, we don’t see the need to dictate the meaning of our songs.”
2. Brutal, Robotic Drums. “When you decide to have a drum machine instead of a drummer as your third member, there could be a temptation to over¬ programme that shit. But we have a rule that our drummer is really stupid, really strong, and metronomically brutal. The Box isn’t a jazz fan.”
3. The Best Of Guitars: “We think guitars sounded good on early Elvis Costello records, early Midnight Oil records, early Cure records, and on most Sonic Youth records. We want those guitars. The Best Of Guitars.”
4. A Bass That Forgets It’s Place. “A big, distorted melody snake. A total chorus-hogging grandstander. As wide and bright as it is a sub-¬harmonic terrorist. This bass needs to fizz and fuzz and be a big, happy puppy.”
5. It’s Live, Stupid. “If you can’t physically do it live then it’s not in the band. Got three hands? No? Well then. This is a band, not a laptop.”


Like a celestial shaft of aural light beamed from unknown futures or a diamond-cutting laser first illuminating and then slicing to shreds the darkest corners of the subconscious, CIVIL CIVIC create a musical experience that is totally immersive. Like musical synaesthesia, theirs is a visceral experience to be smelled, tasted, explored, survived. They sound like no other.
For their second album the Melbourne-spawned instrumental duo look inwards. THE TEST is a sound mirror held up to the soul, reflecting back both the beauty and ugliness. It is, CIVIL CIVIC say, “an emotional rollercoaster, with all the teeth-grinding joy and unbridled fear that can be experienced by a self-aware lump of meat flying through space.” It is, they elaborate, “systematic dance inquiry into the epicentre of the human psyche.”