California-raised, Melbourne-based musician, producer, and musical curator Michael Beach has unveiled his fifth LP, Big Black Plume, out now via Poison City and Goner Records.
Described by Bandcamp as an album replete with “crunchy riffs dissolving into brainy experimental passages, blousy love songs brushed with resonant electronic elements, spare piano melodies undercut with thin currents of drone, and rousing hard rock ballads with a zillion guitar overdubs melting into shimmering puddles of sunbaked psychedelia“, Big Black Plume provides deliberate compositions adorned with genuine madness.
Equally informed by the songwriting of Bill Fay and Peter Laughner, the minimalism of Tony Conrad and Terry Riley, and the rock and roll heart of the Goner Records roster, songs ranging from spare, textural ballads to spiralling psychedelic overtures connected to a propulsive cosmic pulse.
Big Black Plume was produced by Beach and Gareth Liddiard (Tropical Fuck Storm, The Drones), and features a murderer’s row of talent, including Dirty Three guitarist Mick Turner, The Necks bassist Lloyd Swanton, Tropical Fuck Storm members Gareth Liddiard and Fiona Kitschin, folk artist Leah Senior, Oren Ambarchi collaborator Joe Talia, and Comets on Fire’s Utrillo Kushner.
An album that revels in the vitalising power of connection in an often hostile world, Big Black Plume is a mercurially curated body of work, where individual contributions are transformed into something strikingly communal.
Release: July 25, 2025, Poison City Records / Goner Records