The Mermaids, as we’ve mentioned before, is a Newcastle duo featuring Michael from Cock Safari / the Grog Pappy label, and Nick from Polyfox and the Union of the Most Ghosts. The track above features on a new Grog Pappy compilation cassette entitled Ferret, which also features the likes of Prehistoric Fuckin Moron, Moffarfarrah, Rats With Wings along with eight other artists. Michael sent me a copy on CD-R with the polite message “a CDR because you don’t have a tape deck. Get it together.” In my defense, I do have a tape player, I just hate using it.

Anyway, The Mermaids continues to be one of the more interesting synth-improv units in Australia, mixing as it does the prettier instincts of Nick French’s pre-band Polyfox with the demented / slightly sleazy elements of Michael’s Cock Safari. ‘Greetings in Three Languages II’ will probably come as a surprise to anyone who keeps an eye (and not an ear) on some of the noise stuff coming out of Newcastle at the moment. For a ‘scene’ that often trades in debased pornographic imagery (the Grog Pappy blog is very NSFW) and totally vanquished / vandalised sonic realms, this Mermaids track is actually stunningly beautiful! The more we hear from this duo the better.

You can get the Ferret compilation here. We’ll review it in full one of these days.