Writings belong of David Finnigan

Finnigan and Brother

July 29, 2009 on 7:00 pm | In Uncategorized |

Finnigan and Brother is the duo of siblings Chris (guitar/FX) and David Finnigan (words/radio/visuals). Living in close quarters all their lives, they have written together, created theatre together and cooked together, but only in 2007 did they start recording together. This is how it works:

Their recordings combines Chris’ fast-flowing and bony song-structures (Meddle-era Pink Floyd via Underworld and Stars of the Lid) with David’s scattered story-poems, contributions lovingly coaxed from the FM/AM airwaves, and lo-fi psychedelic visuals, feverishly captured by the in-built recording devices in tape dictaphones, Sony Walkmen and cheap mp3 players.

In 2007, David and Chris were two parts of the music/performance/visual art/cooking experiment that was Fight Fire With Knives, and in 2008 they joined forces with laptop artist Paul Heslin to form Diplodocus. As a duo, Finnigan and Brother first performed live at the 2009 Multicultural Fringe Festival in the Cancers. Their work featured in the launch edition of digital zine Goofbang, and their music has been featured on Sydney’s FBI Radio by New Weird Australia and Sunday Night at the Movies.

The following is a selection of Finnigan and Brother’s output from the last three years, downloadable for free as mp3. If any of this takes your fancy, please feel free to drop a line and invite us to your city to play.

Finnigan and Brother - FBI Radio live set (Aug 2010)

In August 2010, Chris and David were invited to perform live on Sunday Night at the Movies, a weekly sound-art show on Sydney’s FBI Radio. The set consisted of two pieces: a 90 second version of The Goddamn Kings of Leon, and the premiere performance of an extended piece entitled Solar System.

finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon / interview (FBI radio 2010).mp3 (6.1mb)
The extended psych-epic boiled back to a minute and a half of bare bones and gristle. Followed by Chris and David in discussion with host Brooke Olsen about their partnership as Finnigan and Brother - how does this creative collaboration work?

finnigan and brother - solar system (live FBI radio 2010).mp3 (12.6mb)
A prison-break story in which the earth escapes from its orbit and runs from the sun out into the dark. This 20 minute multi-part epic combines natural history lessons, religious propaganda pop, deconstructed sound poetry and high-octane action sequences (breaking into the aquarium and punching the fish!).

Finnigan and Brother - Golden Globe (Dec 2009)

At the end of 2009, Chris and David assembled in a North Sydney apartment for two days to record a new selection of material. By superb coincidence, those two days saw the city gripped by the most severe heatwave in a number of years. The end result is that in all the footage and stills from the Golden Globe sessions, Chris and David are shirtless and look like a pair of skinny Aussie hip-hop fans.

finnigan and brother - you can’t all be right.mp3 (3mb)
A 105 second slice of philosophical discource floating on the back of a sharp riff. A commentator on the Youtube clip for the song remarked, ‘There was not suggestion on Mormons at all save for the end general application of all religions.’ A wise and inciteful review.

finnigan and brother - golden globe.mp3 (24.4mb)
The title track for the December 09 sessions is an oozing psychedelic jam trading off between Chris’ crawling acid-rock and David’s slow-spinning liquid circles on the overhead projector. The tune is cool, but you have to check the video for the proper magic-mushrooms-effect.

finnigan and brother - medical drama.mp3 (15mb)
Music for a tense medical drama. The climax of an episode. Long panning shots of the hospital. The patient is wheeled into the surgery. The doctor is sweating - he hasn’t performed surgery in five years - and he’s drunk. But there’s no-one else. The nurse offers him a tray full of fresh instruments. The doctor refuses. From his back pocket he produces a scalpel. Blunt. Dirty. Rust spots. Leaning in, he makes the first incision… Check out the video for this song.

finnigan and brother - choir in a nightclub.mp3 (4.9mb)
The ethereal delights of a radio station broadcasting disco somewhere on the FM band, mixed with jagged guitar and meditation balls.

finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon.mp3 (25mb)
Opening with a re-enactment of the Kings of Leon’s loveable onstage meltdown at the 2009 Reading Festival, then expanding and evolving into a gentle but unstoppable psychedelic epic. Check out the video for this song.

finnigan and brother - deeper than the deepest ocean.mp3 (19mb)
An eerie analogue soundscape and the surgical dismemberment of clear water on the overhead projector. This one really benefits from being seen as well as heard - check out the video here.

finnigan and brother - two tracks in the snow.mp3 (4mb)
A stumbling tour of the fragments left over on the face of the earth.

finnigan and brother - the network performed very well.mp3 (9.9mb)
The radio is a fickle instrument, depending on what’s flooding the airwaves. Sometimes you strike gold first time. Check out the Youtube video for a good example of how David’s radio and Chris’ guitar work together in a live jam.

Finnigan and Brother - Golden Globe videos
One of the key instruments in the Golden Globe sessions was the overhead projector, responding to and influencing the music through the vivid images emerging and evolving organically from David’s lo-fi VJ/shadow-puppetry. Check out clips for the following tracks on Youtube:

finnigan and brother - medical drama
finnigan and brother - golden globe pt 1
finnigan and brother - golden globe pt 2
finnigan and brother - mr crab
finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon pt 1
finnigan and brother - the goddamn kings of leon pt 2
finnigan and brother - the network performed very well
finnigan and brother - deeper than the deepest ocean pt 1
finnigan and brother - deeper than the deepest ocean pt 2
finnigan and brother - you can’t all be right

Finnigan and Brother - Sampled Works 20009

A collection of pieces from across ‘09, recorded in snatches when both Chris and David were in the same city.

finnigan and brother - definitely drop to that.mp3 (5.3mb)
Bleak and melancholy guitar melody winds a trail through a tangled forest, accompanied by flickering meditation balls and dry-twig percussion, at last turns into a story sampled from Hans Baumann’s I Marched With Hannibal about the sacking of the city of Sarantum by the Carthaginians and their war elephants.

finnigan and brother - robespierre.mp3 (3mb)
Text by Chris, taken from The Proxies, the Mappalujo co-written by David and Chris in 2003. You can read the full text of the work here, but the important thing to know is that this chapter details the daily business of a newly installed revolutionary government, set to warped and fragmented guitar.

finnigan and brother - people who’ve never surfed.mp3 (2mb)
High-octane white-water euphoria, boiled down into an adrenaline-charged 2 minutes of words lifted from some anonymous surfing manual and music lifted from the smooth face of a left-hander rising out of a 3 metre swell. Fuck yeah.

finnigan and brother - one of the primary reasons god permits pain in our life.mp3 (0.6mb)
This always seemed like a complicated issue, but this guitar/christian radio jam unravels the mystery in less than a minute.

Finnigan and Brother - Not Face (July 2008)

Absolutely the finest one-take only Finnigan and Brother jam there has ever been. In winter 2008, crouched in our older brother’s garage, the ebbing waves of static and elegant drifts of music and conversation captured by David’s FM/AM radio synch uncannily with Chris’ clicking beat-driven guitar loops and minimal solos. The whole piece runs for 32 minutes, broken into four 8 minute slices here for your convenience. If you’re going to listen to any extended Finnigan and Brother piece, this should be it, but if you only want a sample, start with pt 2.

finnigan and brother - not face 01.mp3 (7.4mb)
finnigan and brother - not face 02.mp3 (7.4mb)
finnigan and brother - not face 03.mp3 (7.2mb)
finnigan and brother - not face 04.mp3 (8.8mb)

Finnigan and Brother - Sampled Works 20007-08

This is a collection of highlights gleaned from Chris and David’s first 24 months as a duo.

finnigan and brother - i saw myself.wav (1mb)
One of the earliest and still most effective (according to us) Finnigan and Brother recordings was made before Chris possessed a loop station, FX pedal or electric guitar, and before David owned a computer with an inbuilt microphone. Featuring an old acoustic, a pair of meditation balls and a poem by Beat Poet Lew Welch, I saw myself was recorded using the dictaphone function on a cheap mp3 player, and sounds all the better for it. Dig.

finnigan and brother - guitar lead and finger with headphones.mp3 (3.8mb)
Chris plays a live guitar lead with the tip of his finger, David muffles and distorts the sound from a pair of earbud headphones using his hands.

finnigan and brother - three tigers in a swamp.mp3 (5.8mb)
A poem drawn from the vivd depths of stoned paranoia, soundtracked by a rising tide of icy guitar drone.

finnigan and brother - headphones and meditation balls.mp3 (2.1mb)
Radio playing through a tiny pair of headphones and two small metal balls with bells inside. Sometimes the simple experiments are the most successful.