There are few voices of meaningful dissent left in rock music. Even fewer play with the savagery, subtlety and melody of Gold Class. Armed with only a handful of songs, Gold Class quickly drew heads to their live shows when they appeared mid-2014, just a couple of months after getting together. Characterised by attacking rhythms, bristling garage guitar lines and the deep vibrato of singer Adam Curley, the band were soon mixing art-space and basement gigs for their debut seven-inch ‘Michael’, which appears onIt’s You, a recent PBS feature record.
Gold Class formed quickly. Guitarist Evan James Purdey recruited fellow creative-writing students Mark Hewitt (drums) and Adam Curley (vocals) to elaborate on guitar ideas he’d recorded to a Dictaphone over the course of a summer. Jon Shub, who worked late-night bar shifts with Purdey and Curley and who builds and fixes guitars out of a workshop in northern Melbourne, made an instrument for himself and joined on bass. The initial philosophy was simple: each member would write his own parts with reverence given to the whole.
Originally recorded during Mixing Up The Medicine in October, this Studio 5 Live session will be re-broadcast on Homebrew with Bethany Atkinson Quinton (filling in for Maddy Mac).
