Introducing Rhizome and The Flavonoids, taking synthpunk to strange new places: “We explore alien soundscapes”
One listen to Rhizome and The Flavonoids’ molten synth gunk grooves does beg the question: What’s in the waters of South Australia?
Across the last eight-odd years, eggy lo-fi miscreants like Billiam, Tombeau, and Sydney’s Warttmann Inc label have all coated garage punk attacks with a sticky electronic residue that injected deliriously cartoon urgency to their smattering of lo-fi EPs while also vibrating with fizzy, original vitality. Orbiting the same ground zero of weird is Victoria’s Rhizome and The Flavonoids, brewing an artfully idiosyncratic chemical reaction of tropical surf rock and sci-fi retro-futurism that pings and pops with new wave tanginess amid their chromatic broth.
Sci-fi beats at the heart of Rhizome and The Flavonoids, with equal parts affection and lampoon. Fronted by the hyper-animated Western Smith, the brains behind the space comedy YouTube series Exonauts, he and his Flavonoids indeed feel beamed down to Earth with Gerry Anderson’s ‘Supermarionation’ energy, replete with Star Trek clobber serving as their eye-popping uniform de rigueur. Yet, while Wes and his comic gang are reaching for the stars, there’s a pulpy kitsch that keeps them squarely planted on a surreal plastic beach with gaudy Hawaiian shirts, rubber palm trees, and artificial light.
“Rhizome and The Flavonoids tap into modern absurdity and disorder to hatch a new mutation–no-wave sci-fi dance punk,” he tells us, “The perfect antidote. Outlandish and satirical, we explore alien soundscapes with a beat you can set your atomic clock to.”
Strange times call for a band like Rhizome and The Flavonoids. Following 2023’s debut Synthetic Soup, new album Superimposer retains their gelatinous electricity yet whittles a sharper grapple of hooky infection and subsumes an even wider expanse of tastes and flavours. Floating in its post-punk goo are the mangled teases of a disco lick, a degraded hardcore blast, inside-out elevator muzak, or even a little cosmic prog crumpled and squashed into bubbling new lifeforms.
It’s an alien record, scooped and sampled by Rhizome and The Flavonoids along their many Exonaut interstellar travels. While satire and parody are indeed detected amid Superimposer’s synthjunk flotsam, there’s never a lapse into lo-fi scratch that typifies their eggy peers. Each sonic debris flash with radiant sheen and resonant bounce.
The synths warble with rubbery charge, the drum machines tick with metallic hue, the guitars jab with visceral snap. All buzzing elements react with electrolyte reaction conjuring a record that never stops amorphously shifting, even at the most minute detail.
Taking from Units and Devo’s heritage but liquifying their angular edges, Rhizome and The Flavonoids have managed to wrestle their own unique take on a crowded synthpunk scene and materialise a chaotic but gripping sound entirely their own. Straddling a weird realm between the edges of the galaxy and our collective mutoid reality, Superimposer sees them present another reason why all eyeballs should be firmly affixed to Australia’s vibrant and essential punk scene.
For fans of: Suggesting a Space: 1999 viewing marathon on a first date.
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