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Music

Listen to Snake’s Ode to the Suckiness of the Holiday Retail Season

Al Montfort (Total Control, UV Race, Eastlink) goes solo on a punk piece of anti-consumerism.

We’ve said it before and I guess we’ll keep saying it. Al Montfort is a busy guy.

As a member of Total Control, Dick Diver, UV Race, Straightjacket Nation, Eastlink, and Russell Street Bombings, Montfort doesn’t seem to rest when it comes to producing quality music.

His latest piece of musical cool is under the guise of Snake, a solo affair that sometimes has him playing the sarangi. For the track “Forever New”, the Melbourne musician has hooked up with Amy Hill (Constant Mongrel, Backstabbers, School of Radiant Living) to produce a contemplative video on the annual day Boxing Day sales and post Christmas retail frenzy.

Part video travelogue of downtown Melbourne and part anti-consumerism commentary, the nine-minute video voices a refreshing discontent at the hypocrisies and ugliness of the silly season.

“Thanks starvation, thanks sickness, thanks suffocation. The gift that keeps giving,” he says in a laconic and very Aussie drawl. After a slower saxophone segue the songs transforms with drum machines as he sings, “Festive season is for waste, Festive season is for fuckwits”.

Released by Chart Collective, the video is the fifth installment of a multi-disciplinary project, the Longer Light Series that plots the arc of an Australian summer published online by 12 contributors through a 12 week series.