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6.00pm | Doors open + Album/ Ticket collection

7.00pm | Live on-stage

7.45pm | Album signing

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Tropical Fuck Storm formed in 2017 along Australia’s south-eastern coast in Melbourne, Victoria, and each of the band’s four members bring considerable experience to the group: Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin were part of the long-running and well-loved act The Drones, while Erica Dunn and Lauren Hammel have performed in a variety of popular projects. Perhaps it’s that wealth of experience that allows Tropical Fuck Storm to so expertly deconstruct and distort the genre’s norms.

Tropical Fuck Storm have achieved a uniquely off-kilter sound on their second LP, Braindrops, which follows 2018’s critically-acclaimed A Laughing Death In Meatspace. Liddiard partly credits this to the group’s use of unconventional equipment, “We use lots of techno gear to make rock and roll because rock and roll gear is boring, and all sounds like Led Zeppelin.”

Liddiard’s own description of Tropical Fuck Storm’s sound is nearly as interesting and evocative as the music itself. He describes the LP’s title track as “Fela Kuti in a car crash,” and talks of creating a sonic atmosphere that “sounds like chloroform smells” for “Maria 63”.

A recurring theme on Braindrops concerns the various ways the human brain can be manipulated and controlled for exploitative gain. The bracing “The Planet of Straw Men” is a study of human behavior inside the social media comments section, a place where otherwise reasonable people are seen gleefully engaging in psychotic chest-thumping rhetoric. And Erica Dunn’s “Who’s My Eugene?” contemplates a more personal example of predatory mind control. “It's about Eugene Landy, the doctor that drugged the shit out of Brian Wilson and emptied his bank account,” Liddiard explains.

Braindrops is an unrelenting work, from an unrelenting musical ensemble. “Tropical Fuck Storm is a full on thing,” Liddiard offers. “Everything we do, we do it to the death.”