SubTerFUge

Nik Rieth, Scott Saunders and myself, May 2026, Marrickville NSW

What happens when you put two rock musicians together with a keyboard boffin/university professor/music-theory-assassin? A small amount of capricious cognitive confusion? What happens when the 12 string pedal steel I scored a couple of years back ends up being foisted on me as the primary tool in a new group? What happens when one of the country’s best rock ‘n’ roll drummers picks up the brushes and mentions disco? What happens when said keys-ninja explains jazz harmony with a degree of clarity that even a jaded rock soldier can make use of? Diminished, half diminished, minor-major seventh, minor 7 flat 9, parallel 3rds, 6ths and ninths…. descending and rising chords with one note left static - what if I finally learn to use these? How long will these strings last if I keep this up and why am I scared to change them? How am I ever going to remember the pedal knee/lever combinations required to play complex jazz harmony and progressions? What on earth is going on? > > > > I’m actually referring a new musical venture that was initiated late last year, and as has happened twice before in my life, it was a concept put forward by my dear friend Nik Rieth (drummer with the Hoodoo Gurus and Radio Birdman, also ex a host of others requiring the sound of the human freight train). He was of the opinion that grafting the two of us to one of his newer accomplices, Scott Saunders, would make for an interesting combo. Scott is something of a luminary himself, having been a member of two of Australia’s seminal progressive pop outfits, the Reels and also D.I.G (Directions In Groove). > > > > We held a meeting at Fahim’s restaurant in Enmore the day after I returned from Germany in September 2025. Though somewhat jetlagged, my gut feeling on this proposal was positive from the outset - I saw in Scott an absolute musical mind, brimming with curiosity. A lecturer at the ANU places Scott as a master of music theory and conceptual know-how. I realised he might be the person to help me unlock the potential held within the complex and bewildering instrument I had signed up for. He is mercurial, clever and storied. He has his hand in a cauldren around which I’ve tip-toed for decades, (four letters, starts with a J and ends in a pair of zeds). Nik of course I have shared a few pub stages with and has always been the proverbial rocket up the rear-end every time - The Biggins (circa 1992) and The Thermals (circa 1998 to 2001) were both fun and turbocharged rock ‘n’ roll affairs. Yet as we’ve grown older and supposedly wiser, it would appear a hint of sophistication has crept into our noggins and started looking for a way back out. I know for certain I’d been thinking along “progressive” lines for several years, dersiring to be musically challenged in form, style and subtance. Nik, having heard what I’d been doing with the Re-mains and in session work for others over time, believed my steel guitar approach was the key. And I agreed. Straight away a challenge had been set - my role in the band would be defined by that Universal 12 string. > > > > Setting to it, with some initial jams, things came together quickly. Like any worthwhile group, the members bring their inner muse, but something else arrived with this venture from the beginning, that being a curious element of Kraut-Rock. Now, I don’t know whether it’s my burgeoning Deutsche Konnections, or Nik’s Swiss/Austrian heritage, or Scotts euro-snazzy inteligencia, but sonically, and in the nomancleture, we seem to be expousing Germanic sensibility - kosmische Musik - threads of the avant-garde and old fashioned prog-rock angles. It’s all part of a new existence that’s building itself around me and I swear I’ll do not one thing to prevent it. We’re aiming towards some tentative performances, an album and also what looks to be a residency at the ANU, working into their programs of musical academia. > > > > All this feels great, but the world is mad. This is a time where the muntscape is spreading unchecked and people openly champion the fascistic and perpetually dull to dangerous ideologies that so many of us had perhaps naively presumed dead. I don’t know what else I’m meant to do. I’m lucky to have this muse. So resolutely lucky. With SubTerFUge, the Re-mains, The Big Fuss and a few other threads of künstlerisches Streben, I have an outlet.