May I introduce to you: FUNGAS’ Intelligence 1 aka the perfect and driving soundtrack to crawl straight through the globe to as they do it in the comics! A sci-fi comic that is, no question.
Starting in the Awabakal lands of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, entering rock pools, crawling through granulate, digging past dinosaur skeletons and rocks, rocks, rocks, round Mother Earth’s core, digging past rocks, rocks, rocks and dinosaur skeletons again, crawling through granulate once more just to emerge somewhere around Mannheim, Germany, where – at least as far as I know – there are no literal rock pools. But there is a metaphorical one, for it is the home of independent label Erste Theke Tonträger (ETT). In just thirty solid minutes FUNGAS, the Australian three-piece, becomes part of the core collection of the ETT-roster of infamous do it yourself punk bands from all over the world. And rightly so!
Why is that, you might ask? Well, once more a gem was excavated for a first-time euro-release, the squishy gem that is FUNGAS! And well-chosen squishy is their self-description as “avant-garage art-punk sci-fi thingy”. Let me elaborate on that based on Intelligence 1: Spinning this record you will listen to solid rock tunes with psychedelic elements that alternate with wide and krauty flats that mix up with cacophonic layers that then again are accompanied by rather inviting and dreamy melodies.
Dizzy yet? All of that urging goodness is joined by phantasmal voices that by no means take themselves too seriously and would probably do the voiceover for your favorite cartoon anytime gladly. Source of these experimental ingredients are samples, a mellotron, a vibraslap and maybe a knife 2 you. Everything is spread across the record as solid as fungus underneath the ground which makes Intelligence 1 so unpredictable and exciting even when you listen to it for the second and third time – or on the 4th level.
Erste Theke Tonträger has teamed up with the DIY-pals of New Brain Communications in Australia to press Intelligence 1 on vinyl.
This is Charlie Ross’, Kevin Flegg’s and Frazer McDonald’s third full-length LP as FUNGAS, following their debut-LP Locate 0 and their 2024 release What Will Be Will Be. These tunes were made for friends of earth transition, early King Gizzard, experimental garage tunes and the eggy end of punk.
