King Curly’s proposed new project is to record an album featuring a collection of strange hand wrought Australian instruments and in collaboration with my good friend and writer Mr Dan Creighton.

The instruments will include a suitcase bass, a corrugated iron guitar, Celtic harp, a driftwood coronet and a bush drumkit made from kero cans and tea chests – all tied together with wire and bits of string.

A new batch of songs will be recorded with the King Curly band, an ensemble of highly trained and respected young jazz musicians : comprising: Ben Hauptmann on stringed things, James Hauptmann on percussion, Zoe Hauptmann on bass and John Hibbard on brass. Of course Elmo Reed will also be lending some of his legendary guitar licks. The idea is to hobble these highly proficient musicians with unfamiliar instruments and little rehearsal time. This will ensure that we are free of any of the lazy musicality by numbers that can sometimes afflict even the most virtuoso of recordings.

It may be timely – to assure the reader that there is no intention of dispensing entirely with traditional instruments and creating some nasty ‘soundscape’ type album. We have no intention of inflicting the listening public with a double LP composed of children banging hat-boxes with slippers (though a market might be there?). The piano, nylon string guitar, ukulele and accordion will always have a happy home in King Curly. To render in précis the approach intended: Wherever possible, the boring old snare will be replaced with someone who means business belting a chook-shed with a hammer. The timbre and texture of this album will be jury-rigged corrugated-iron Australian sounds.

King Curly plans to tour this new album in August 2006.