CHAMPION MOTORIST - Slight Return

Champion Motorist is a post-rock band from Melbourne Australia. Andrew McLaughlin plays guitar and Paul Shea plays drums. They go about their business crafting sprawling post-rock infused soundscapes all while working within the confines of a duo - not that it’s overly obvious. It’s a sonic bombardment of textural guitar drones woven between intricate layers of melodic fuzz and pummelling drum grooves. There’s also some old-school rock riffage and floating synth lines thrown in for good measure.

McLaughlin & Shea go back a long way. They met as teenagers living in the outer western suburbs of Melbourne Australia. Both began playing music early on and came to play in several local bands before University degrees and work-life sent them in separate directions. McLaughlin eventually went on to form Radiant City with Brad Marshall while studying at RMIT in 1999 while Shea focused on family, career and moonlighted in various prog-rock outfits in and around Melbourne. 

Radiant City toured Australia extensively for over 10 years until an indefinite hiatus eventually stalled the remainder of their plans. Fortunately both members continued with other projects, one of which was an early incarnation of Champion Motorist. In early 2018 McLaughlin & Shea reconnected, almost 20 years after they last played music together and immediately began writing and recording. It only took two rehearsals to write 5 new songs, three of which appear on their debut Mini-EP.

Divided was self-recorded by the band in their regular rehearsal space and McLaughlin’s home studio. There was no significant planning or overthinking undertaken heading into the session, the band simply set out to document the music they had come upon during the previous weeks of jamming and improvising. Afterwards, to finish things off a little, the mastering duties were handed over to long-time co-conspirator and Melbourne based noiser Nao Anzai. 

Slight Return is Champion Motorist’s second release and is a thematic follow-up to their debut. It was also self-recorded by the band however this time the band relocated to a cavenous orchestra/ensemble room at The Melbourne Conservatorium of Music to experiment and expand their sound - literally! The music began as it always does for Champion Motorist - long improvised jams that are completely deconstructed and rebuilt as complete ‘songs.’ It’s the basic less-is-more/keep it simple approach of guitar + drums and volume, lots of volume. For two short days in December 2019 the band tracked the drums then over the next few months McLaughlin tinkered with the guitar tracks and mixing until it was ready to pass on to Nao Anzai for mastering once again.

“Undeniably powerful, spacious, textural, melodic and laden with understated riffs & rhythms” Slight Return is the next chapter in Champion Motorist’s evolution. There’s plenty more to come with another release scheduled for late 2020/early 2021, three more songs to round out a three track EP trilogy.

Slight Return was released on September 25 2020 on Machines Survive and is available to purchase via Bandcamp and stream from Spotify / Apple Music / Soundcloud...

In one word: Excellent !!! 

Other Links:

http://championmotorist.bandcamp.com/ 

https://www.instagram.com/championmotorist/