I “Kinesis is an overused word,” says Gut Health guitarist and synthesist Dom Wilmot. “I'm always thinking about how we create energy and then release it.”
It's hard to think of a more appropriate question for this band: the Australian sextet's frenetic dance-punk of an entirely physical nature has propelled them into a thrilling forward momentum in the little less than three years since they formed.
Half of the band, Wilmot, singer Athena Wu and bassist Adam Markman, NME The concert took place over video call from a hotel room in France. That night they'll close their second European tour of 2024 with a show at Paris club Supersonic alongside fellow Melbourne DIY garage rock band The Judges. The two-week tour includes a festival hosted by German left-wing football club St. Pauli at their home stadium in Hamburg.
“It's been a really special experience,” Wu says. “This year's tour is our first time touring overseas, something we never thought we'd be able to do.”
The last six months have been particularly active for Gut Health, and in February they toured Australia with Queens of the Stone Age, alongside Perth psychedelic rock band Pond. For a band cut their teeth playing to packed, sweaty dance floors in local pubs, it was a tough challenge, but one they thoroughly enjoyed.
“It was our first time playing such a big venue,” Wu Oh says, “and it was a really good way to start our act.”
In October, Gut Health's ascent will reach new heights with the release of their debut album, Stiletto, a tense yet ecstatic amalgamation of ferocious noise sizzling over supremely danceable bones.
“We can do whatever we want. it is It's a genre we've stuck to.” – Dom Wilmot
The foundations of this hectic, frenetic record, and the band that made it, were laid in stillness: Uh oh and Markmann began writing together while holed up in one of Melbourne's many pandemic lockdowns in late 2021.
Wilmot, guitarist Eloise Murphy-Hill, drummer Micah Wallace and percussionist and synthesist Angus Fletcher soon joined, and the musicians, whose repertoire ranged from noise to folk, punk to jazz and soul, blended together with a spirited, free-spirited promise.
“A lot of great musicians came to play with us because all their other projects had stopped,” Markman says. “We were really lucky to be able to respond to everyone's enthusiasm.”
They began rehearsing in a warehouse in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick to capture the energy of the “ADHD, genre-bending” music they were trying to make, and there they recorded their 2022 debut EP, Electric Chrome Party Girl, which showcases a glimpse of the electric, frenetic sound they'd debuted on Stiletto.
Gut Health's emergence came as part of a particularly fertile moment for post-punk in Australia, home to some of the most exciting and inventive bands flipping rock conventions on its head.
Since forming, they've worked alongside established community figures like RVG and Body Type, as well as up-and-coming artists like Screensaver and Loose Fit.
For Wilmot, the bands that embody post-punk seem to “reflect not so much a genre as an era in which everyone was trying to subvert and redefine everything.”
“What we do means is that we can do whatever we want. it is It's a genre we've been focusing on.”
At their best, Gut Health fuses the groove of ESG, the rawness of Kleenex/LiLiPUT, and the thrilling weirdness of Pere Ubu, but the sound is also all theirs, full of life and instability.
On “Stiletto,” Markman's thin bassline meshes with Wallace's powerful yet loose drumming, providing a solid framework for Murphy-Hill and Wilmott's clashing guitars, and aggressive electronics crackle and bang like a malfunctioning junk machine.
“It always starts with the bass and drums,” Markman says, “and then everyone else does crazy stuff on top of it.”
There's an egalitarianism, egos sacrificed for the energy of the group, each part feeding off the other. “It's not all about what the guitar melody is doing,” says Wu-Oh.
“The goal is for people to dance freely and feel free” – Athina Hmm
Her frenetic, theatrical voice cuts through the chaos and mayhem beneath, and the album's epic, nearly eight-minute title track emphasizes a hypnotic, rolling bass line and drums, each syllable jagged and dramatic as the song intensifies, surging through a jumble of synth and guitar noise.
The final few minutes erupt into a glorious cacophony, with friend of the band Yang Chen adding saxophone. ViolatedIt's as if the song exorcises as much tension and violence as it can before ending on exhausting, monotonous synthesizers.
This emotional rise and release is central to the concept of what Uh oh describes as “the healing power of consensual anger” – harnessing anger in a collective, creative and nourishing way.
“Being able to feel a release and cathartic feeling… is healing and healthy. It's okay to channel anger and violence in a way that leads to something positive,” she explains.
“We just want people to dance, feel free and feel angry. That always comes back as part of our intention.”
It's not always realized how much the most intense hardcore show and the most euphoric rave dance floor have in common, and Gut Health channels the spirit of both.
“If you think about the role of live music as an emotional release, there may be other feelings people want to get out of that experience besides bliss or ecstasy,” says Wilmot. After all, rage is an energy.
“We've done a few shows [on this European tour] “Before this it was all pretty small rooms, DIY spaces,” Uh oh recalls. “To be in a room with people dancing and feel that energy is just amazing. The goal is for people to dance freely and feel free.”
It's no surprise that a band so conscious of the flow of energy in live performance would be thinking seriously about their current momentum and how to sustain it.
“At first, I thought, 'The best rehearsal is to play live,'” says Wu Oh. “We were in lockdown and just wanted to get moving, so we were playing shows pretty nonstop.”
Now, Willmott said, Gut Health is “starting to think about longevity” — “preserving energy and passion, not letting it go to waste, and redirecting it to things that matter.”
“Here we have six people who are all pulling in the same direction and are united. I always feel like we have to acknowledge and respect this opportunity. We don't want to waste it.”
Wu says she should have tread more carefully: “We've definitely turned down a lot of things and tried to think about people's mental space and what's valuable,” she says.
“It's hard because we're just starting out and we're trying not to burn out. We're a six-piece band and I think we all communicate really well about this. We're like family as well as bandmates.”
After a while, Markman looked at his cell phone. There was only one minute left until the hotel check-out time. It was time for Gut Health to take action.
Gut Health's album, Stiletto, will be released on October 11th via Highly Contagious/AWAL.
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