PADDY HAID & CAROLINE WAKE OF KEY OUT

Sydney band Key Out release their second album, “Anthropomorphia”, on Half A Cow Records and share with Musicology some technical insights in the latest On The Level series. Anthropomorhia is a bedroom recording featuring acoustic guitars and ageing synthesizers, toy percussion and drums, sequencers and vocal harmonies.

It has the intimacy of a home recording, but the polish of Wayne Connolly’s mixing and mastering (Amy Shark, Matt Corby). The home ‘studio’ gave the band the freedom to chop, edit and rearrange original demos and the songs changed. Electronics were swapped out for acoustics, and analog drums for sequencers.

Rock songs became electroishpost punk (Chorus), filtered summery pop (Buildings) and close mic’d folk (Dog). The first single Chorus has been called "dark, melancholic and moody synth-rock… bringing to mind acts such as Underground Lovers, Ride and New Order” by Doubtful Sounds.

Second single, Stray is a change of pace - a wash of attacking guitar, unexpected cross-cutting drums and a contemplation of suburban life, anchored by an insistent post-punk bassline. It finds a place on the sonic spectrum between My Bloody Valentine and Shellac, was recorded by the band and mixed and mastered by Wayne Connolly.

The video is a study of small details, finding interest in minutiae. The album’s ten tracks clock in at just over 20 minutes. The longer tracks on Anthropomorphia would have been short on 2019’s What (Do) You See. “We’ve always liked the complete sounding two-minute pop songs of Joyce Manor or Sneeze or The Magnetic Fields or Guided by Voices, but they weren’t our template” says Paddy Haid (ex-Sarah Blasko, Ides of Space) “we just built songs around the important parts, and let them run their course”. Key Out is Paddy Haid, Rohan Geddes and Caroline Wake. The album will be available on limited edition marbled vinyl and via digital platforms through Half A Cow