Melbourne tape label Redundancy has just released a handful of new tapes, and all are worth an investigation. With the exception of a Cured Pink tape and another that label operator Jarrod Zlatic is personally involved in, these Redundancy releases feel salvaged from the more remote corners of Australia’s urban centers. Stuff that seems pretty detached from anything else happening in our major city’s respective scenes.

First case in point is Krakatoa, a Melbourne trio with a strong ’70s British prog / jazz-rock inclination. The influence is so pronounced that they’ve used their important Redundancy record deal to release a tape comprising two covers of Soft Machine’s ‘Pennyhitch’, as well as two renditions of ‘Wayfaring Stranger’. Zlatic tells me the group have a new LP finished which features all original material. “Dark kraut/progressive stuff and some cold electronic collages,” in Jarrod’s words.

I’m not sure how well known Blanque Cheque is down in Melbourne, but this new (and I suspect only) tape through Redundancy is true visionary material, out-of-nowhere deadbeat mana straight from the gods of sloth. According to Zlatic, the members used to play in a “completely outer-space nu-metal outfit” back in the early ’00s in Melbourne’s outer suburbs.

Nowadays they’re focusing on sedated outer-space improvisational rock strewn with Australian pop culture effluvia (you know, harsh jump cuts to real estate radio advertisements etc), and the result is probably one of the better weirdo rock albums I’ve heard come out of Australia for years. I’m in awe of it. I’m gonna get in touch with these guys for an interview soon, but unfortunately in the meantime there are no sound samples. The band has described the tape as their “magnum opus on the post-humanist landscape of contemporary Australian suburbia and the failure of the ACCC.” So just buy it.

Krakatoa and Blanque Cheque are the standouts from the new Redundancy batch, based solely on my having never heard them before. The other two tapes include releases by Cured Pink and Demyster. The latter teams label operator Zlatic (who also plays in Fabulous Diamonds, unless you hadn’t made the connection) with Tarquin Manek of Bum Creek, resulting in strange early electronic inspired atmospheres that waver between moody and bracing. As for the Cured Pink tape, it’s the only of the new Redundancy batch I haven’t got a hold of yet but there’s a sound sample below. The Cured Pink 7 inch from earlier this year is still sinking in.

You can order the tapes here.