45rpm mini album from Sydney post-punk group!
“The Timeless Threat of…” may sound like a weary existential contemplation, but for Sydney’s Reality Instructors, it’s the contemplation that vocalist, guitarist and the band’s songwriter, Dan Pash’s hearing was vanishing due to a genetic degenerative condition.
“The Timeless Threat of...” is the new EP from Reality Instructors which serves as a document of the final stages of Dan’s hearing loss, and offers an inspiring example of what is possible in the realm of songwriting and recording when faced with profound deafness. Lyrically, the songs deal with themes of encroaching isolation (“Bleeding Out”), missed connections (“Finished In My Head”) and a rejection of the standard forms of consolation on offer (“Negative Magic”). At the same time, despite the difficult circumstances surrounding its creation, the record amounts to a kind of celebration – a stripping away of inessentials and extraneous noise, together with an embrace of the finite and the limited.
Stylistically, Reality Instructors hit an imagined sonic sweet spot existing at the precise point of cross-pollination between the tight, hypnotic drums and relentlessly churning guitars of Wipers, the flatly passionate post-punk basslines and emotionally distant delivery of Mission of Burma and Marine Girls, all wrapped up in the classic power trio package of the Nerves, the Jam and San Diego’s kings of ‘biker pop’ the Sultans.
Following their debut album, Ritual Ignorant, the band dove into recording “The Timeless Threat of…” as they knew Dan’s hearing was declining fast. They worked with Liam Judson (Rolling Blackouts C.F., Cloud Control, Palms) to record and mix the EP, while Dan passed notes on to Nick and Eve based on his memory of the songs and influences rather than the ability to hear what had been recorded.