Drawings by Great Earthquake

Noah Symons aka Great Earthquake is a real renaissance man. Most days he can be found writing playing and performing music as Great Earthquake or as a member of art-folk outfit Timothy and Wilderness or post-punk band Flag And Forget, drawing and painting, or working as a barista in the lush green outer suburbs of Melbourne.

Noah is a veritable one-man-band live, playing, often all at one time, guitar, bass, drums, percussion and accordion. His energetic performances have found him play in cafes, pubs, shopping centres, art spaces, warehouses and backyards across the country. He has played with a myriad of amazing bands and musicians including Love Connection, Otoutu, The Rectifiers, White Woods, The Ancients, Parking Lots Experiments, Panoptique Electrical and Woollen Kits to name but a small few.

‘Drawings’ is the first Great Earthquake album to be released by Sensory Projects. The album began life as an EP, when back in mid 2009, Symons completed 4 tracks with engineer and producer Joshua Bach at the RMIT sound design studios. The tunes were incredible; Bach assisting Great Earthquake to realize a bolder and more robust fidelity and sensibility of sound. Subsequent to finishing the EP, Symons returned to recommence work with Bach on an album proper, and following conversations with Bach and Sensory Projects’ Steve Phillips, Noah determined that his momentum was in fact ripe for a full album and he immediately set to work: writing and recording additional tracks and eventually integrating the original 4 songs into the mix.

On ‘Drawings’, Noah really experimented as never before and enlisted Melbourne lass Maudita to sing on the album. Maudita provided voice and lyrics on ‘Words and images’ and ‘Fully formed’ which encompass the centre space of ‘Drawings’. These two tracks take ‘Drawings’ to a whole new level of colour and complexity.
Elsewhere ‘Drawings’ is nuanced by small aesthetic additions to pieces like ‘Create’ where the unlisted piece ‘Bells’ adds texture to the tail end. But it’s the bold dexterity of opener ‘clap! clap!’ and ‘1step. 2step. stop!’ that truly represent Noah’s inner voice to date.

The result is ‘Drawings’: a buoyant set of wonderfully rhythmic, vigorous and playful tunes.

"Noah Symons is one talented guy. Watching him do his one-man show, as Great Earthquake, is pretty cool. Sitting at a drum kit, surrounded by a myriad of instruments and noise makers, he builds these awesome soundscapes that are impeccably timed, focusing on rhythm". Tonedeaf

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