Electric Mourning Blues

The Scrapes, formed in Brisbane early in 2009, are an unusual duo of feedback drenched guitar and scraping, epic violin. Their music is rooted firmly in the traditions of western classical music while representing an attempt to break the chains of these traditions. It is music that evokes landscapes and acts of nature as well as cerebral landscapes. Inspired equally by composers such as Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and La Monte Young, sound artists and pioneers of the drone such as Tony Conrad and Spacemen 3, and the dark, demented sounds of the underground of rock music, The Scrapes can be at once immersive and chaotic in a live setting where wild improvisation and high volume come into the fold. Having notably received acclaim from UK rock musician and writer Julian Cope for their hand-made CDr, The Scrapes have recently released their debut album Electric Mourning Blues. The Scrapes toured the East Coast of Australia in April 2010 funded by Sound Travellers, an initiative of the Australia Council for the Arts. They visited Melbourne, Newcastle, Canberra, Sydney (alongside Mick Turner and Jeffery Wegner) and Lismore (Sound Crucible Festival)."Also hugely enjoyable, highly original AND psychically useful is the music of Australian duo The Scrapes, whose fiery epic guitar and abandoned Mithraic fiddle pieces evoke images of lost Keltic lands inundated by the oceans, lost Iberian & Armorican sea peoples and lost times from beyond the beyond. Mostly, violinist Adam Cadell conjures up a fabulous and heathen see-sawing from his machine, kicking up a down home/back porch Henry Flyntian dust that guitarist/axe wielder Ryan Potter orchestrates with apocalyptic power chords and huge crunching rhythms.” - Julian Cope (www.headheritage.co.uk)