International Karate

international-karate.bandcamp.com/ International Karate were a mostly instrumental band from Melbourne, Australia. In 2006 International Karate have completed their third (and final) album. More of What We’ve Heard Before Than We’ve Ever Heard Before. After the somewhat lukewarm reception of their second album, 2004’s A Monster In Soul (we hope you’re refreshed by the honesty of this bio), they had a little bit of a rethink and have come up with a snappy (or relatively snappy - for them) new album. More of What We’ve Heard Before Than We’ve Ever Heard Before is the sound of IK moving on, trimming songs down to more easily digestible lengths but still keeping to the essence of what they’re about. Except now there’s quite a bit of singing; as usual Dan Brownrigg appears and so does the wonderful Laura Jean. But now [da-daa] a member of IK has a crack at singing. Yes, Andrew Polydorou sings on a bunch of tunes in all his triple tracked glory. Feel free to congratulate him via email. I think Aaron is can be found whispering on a song, if you can spot it you will win a warm congratulatory email direct from the band. But who emails these days? The album was recorded over many dates through 2005-2006 by Dan Brownrigg himself at his own home studio with a little help form Ben Hurt at Newmarket on a couple of tunes. This time IK managed to increase the tape width to two-inch tape thereby increasing the ‘warmth,’ which seems to have an alarmingly direct correlation to the ‘cost’. Nonetheless a ‘punchy top-40’ sound was nearly achieved, but we thought that wouldn’t look good for our ‘careers’… What did look good was the cheque for $3000 thanks to Arts Victoria’s Music for the Future grant scheme. IK thank them for having the good taste to help out; yet the band still blew out their modest budget. It may have had something to do with all that standing around talking shit in the studio, and the fact that the first 6 songs recorded all went awry due to a dodgy tuner. All six had to be re-recorded, how professional. Anyone familiar with the history of IK in the studio knows that such mishaps are pretty much de-rigueur. These sessions began in the late winter of ’05 and stretched all the way to the day before mastering in June ’06. Making it perhaps the fastest ever turn-around for IK in the studio, miraculously keeping the whole process down to less than a year. More of What We’ve Heard… is not a reinvention in the ‘superstar-band-who’ve-painted-themselves-into-a-corner-and-are-desperately-seeking-long-gone-critical-approval-again’ sense (best save that for those who’ve had widespread critical approval in the first place), IK simply needed to change. Evidence of this is the fact that songs now exceed the 60bpm pace on this album and there are no tunes much over the six minute mark, now that’s un-post-rock. IK’s inspiration for this album came from much deeper ‘back-catalogue’ sources; anyone familiar with shoegazing and post-punk will be able to pick up the reference points. But the record sounds identifiably like IK, not a skinny tie or an exclamation mark in sight. IK may head back into the studio to do another album, or may not. At the rate the band are currently coming up with new tunes (about 3 a year) the band may have to wait until 2012 to have enough songs for a new record... Update: later in 2009 International Karate called it quits. After eleven years, over 100 shows and three albums it stopped being fun and started to feel like work, so the story goes. The last few songs the band recorded in a pro studio (as demos for the never realised fourth album) can be heard on the group's Bandcamp page (link above). There never were enough songs for a new album anyway. The band remains inactive. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.