Party Dozen: Pray For Party Dozen | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Does doom exist only under disparity? Does the absence of clarity equal a dystopic environment? Are artists labelled as genre-defying when music critics lack the ability to categorise them? (Ed.: yes.) Do categories even matter? (Ed.: but I spent so long learning them!) Party Dozen has been branded ‘a noise-rock duo’. Originally met in Berlin, travelled from Brisbane to currently abide in Sydney. What of their recent product Pray for Party Dozen? Hot, thought-provoking, and extremely fondly, DIY.

Out on self-owned label Grupo Records, Pray for Party Dozen, similar to their previous works, features traditional musical elements (loops, drums, saxophone, vocals) forced into the package that is, Kirsty Tickle (of Little Scout and Exhibitionist) and Jonathan Boulet (of Parades and ARSE) screeching out of the box. World Prayer, the initial doom-ish track overlaps into itself sustaining uneasiness for forty seconds. Distortion, like the soundscape of a highway, is a fantastic outcome of experimentation; assuming you're into that kind of thing.

Tracks The Great Ape, Party Dozen, Play The Truth and The PDD are like an encore to the previous thrashing Party Dozen listeners fell for, be that at Bigsound or DarkMofo or on Bandcamp. If you haven't picked up on it already, listen closely now and you'll hear what makes these two work brilliantly together. Any student aspires to further their skills but only the great practitioner understands when to temper what they can do with a little artistic restraint. You can hear this at moments throughout the record, where saxophone solos stay as solos and low-velocity, out-of-time drum kicks sit still. These confirm it: there may be an abundance of pushing the boundaries, but it's undewritten by a sensibility that does so much more.

There's the '80’s techno-popped Auto Loser, the somber Dead Friends, Gun Control, Sheisse Kunst and Shit Fucked each adding new conventions to the duo’s discography. However, in consideration of the Party Dozen formula -loops, repetitive sections, a disfigured whirlwind of instrumental possibilities- paradoxically, really nothing has changed. Tickle and Boulet have always tested the algorithmic limits of ‘a good song’. Sure, there are Boy Harsher / post-punk vocals throughout the second half of the album, albeit all unfathomable and later-to-be ripped apart; they’re not the focus. Instead, Party Dozen replace a classic chorus with a static loop. We’re in the same avant-garde house, only the walls are painted differently, and the air is sound engineered? Similar to Ian Mackaye’s use of feedback, it's completely textured. Given space enough to breathe, listeners have the opportunity to hear the grain of the sound found throughout the album. It couldn't be anyone else, but I'm still afraid of classifying anything as ‘the Party Dozen sound’.

If anything Party Dozen’s genre appears to be complete, abrupt, boundary-less self-expression. Animalistic and unmarketable to the music industry but for the DIY community it's a part of the family. As for Pray for Party Dozen? It's a nice title but also, how utterly useless. Where have thoughts and prayers gotten us up to now? To join the cult or not, or in this case, screw the cult. Become them. Start your own label, learn how to produce, follow the emotions. To categorize Party Dozen as anything beyond DIY is to place walls around them - which they will eventually break out of. In an era of Pitchfork and Spotify controlled media, musicians so pleasantly stubborn and loyal to the act of self-expression are needed. Thankyou Party Dozen.

- Tara Garman.
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