On the occasion of Magritte’s birthday, Melbourne via New York four-piece Clairaudience are launching their first new music since their acclaimed 2016 self-titled album. Inspired by the 60’s underground and new wave rock, the new Clairaudience single and video, Magritte, is a tribute to the Belgian surrealist and the first missive from their second album. Since returning to Australia in 2017, Clairaudience have been busy writing new material and honing a new live set which is a blend of raw new wave and melodic post punk. The new album, recorded with Rohan Sforcina at Headgap Studios, is due early 2025. The new single – a tribute to the Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte – features Clairaudience’s first music video, directed by Gabriella Disspain (freezedried).

Joining Clairaudience at The Bergy is Brad Stafford – launching his ambient shoegaze album ‘The Imperfect City’ – and Melbourne slo-core masters My Imaginary Friend. 

Hailing from Sydney, Stafford was a founding member of the lo-fi / post-rock duo The Longest Day and more recently drummer with Sydney’s Funeral Tango. Inspired by the likes of Galaxie 500, Low, Mogwai and Boards Of Canada, Brad recently released the first instalment of The Imperfect City. Accompanying the live music on the big screen is a compilation of urban-themed Super 8mm clips shot by Brad over the last 20 years. It includes footage taken in Sydney, Melbourne and New York.

Once known to Australian music fans as Catnip, My Imaginary Friend employ expansive, layered guitars, close, intimate vocals and scattered percussion evoking late sixties psychedelia and early nineties shoegaze. 

Six years after relocating from New York City, indie four-piece Clairaudience is ready to relaunch. Based in Melbourne, the core members, Danny and Caroline Jumpertz, recruited Danny’s brother Mick Jumpertz (bass) and Danny’s long-time musical partner-in-crime, Chris Smales (guitar) into the lineup, which began rehearsals in a dank North Melbourne basement in the gaps between the 2020-21 lockdowns.

Clairaudience’s 2016 self-titled album yielded the viral hit ‘Being Bad’. This full-length release followed on from their mini-album Sun Damage (2015), described by Atwood Magazine as “a psychedelic dream full of jangling guitars and a Phil Spector-like Wall of Sound”. Both were recorded with Abe Seiferth (DFA Yeasayer, Eleanor Friedberger) between 2014 and 2016 at Transmitter Park Studios in Brooklyn. Caroline and Danny had emigrated to New York City in 2010 after gaining US residency via the Green Card lottery. But let’s backtrack a little…

Clairaudience formed in Sydney’s inner-west in 2006 as an improv–focused four piece and the house band at Danny and Caroline’s Feral Media record label and studio headquarters. A track from their 2007 debut, POWWOW 3, was described by critic Anwyn Crawford as “Joy Division on AutoSummarise: ominous, whiplash drums and dirty guitar form an instrumental loop so audacious in its imitation that it’s kind of great.”