Like a celestial shaft of aural light beamed from unknown futures or a diamond-cutting laser first illuminating and then slicing to shreds the darkest corners of the subconscious, CIVIL CIVIC create a musical experience that is totally immersive. Like musical synaesthesia, theirs is a visceral experience to be smelled, tasted, explored, survived. They sound like no other. For their second album the Melbourne-spawned instrumental duo look inwards. THE TEST is a sound mirror held up to the soul, reflecting back both the beauty and ugliness. It is, CIVIL CIVIC say, “an emotional rollercoaster, with all the teeth-grinding joy and unbridled fear that can be experienced by a self-aware lump of meat flying through space.” It is, they elaborate, “systematic dance inquiry into the epicentre of the human psyche.”  Australians in European exile, Aaron Cupples and Benjamin Green’s debut album Rules was a cerebral soundtrack to the best party on the planet. Not just the party itself either, but the shared rituals that surround the social experience: getting dressed up to feel invincible, the interaction, evolving in-jokes and shared language with friends, while always adhering to “the inner belief that life is deeply, wonderfully absurd - and doing whatever combination of drugs turn the volume of that feeling up to 11.” CIVIL CIVIC are a soundtrack band, but instead of scoring films, it is the human experience for which they are creating music. We could bandy certain genre-tags around at this point - majestic futurist prog, epic math-rock, electro-goth, post-rock, glacier-sized chillwave – but none squarely hit the mark. Let’s just note that CIVIL CIVIC’s architecture is comprised of serotonin-drenched soundscapes, synth arpeggios, digital crescendos and deep bass troughs. It is post-punk rendered with a classicist’s touch; perhaps ‘post-everything’ might be a better description. And while in their sound surely lies the spirit of artists such as The Cure, Goblin, My Bloody Valentine, Battles, Bauhaus, Lightning Bolt, Swervedriver and Fuck Buttons, CIVIL CIVIC are on their own journey. On THE TEST that journey begins with ‘THE ISLAND’, which hits like a big breaking wave of sound. Rightfully it’ll leave any listener coughing up seawater, eyes full of sand, bathing suit gone, holiday ruined. Disorientated. Then comes the melodic perfection of ‘THE CRUSH’, which recalls The Cure’s ‘A Forest’ had Robert Smith and co. formed in the age of laptops. “Infatuation can happen at any time,” explains Aaron of the shimmering song’s obsession with the inanimate. “I once fell in love with an air vent in a Parisian metro station. It's warm, stale air cradled my skin and entranced me. It was a fleeting flash of real honest tenderness.” Tenderness is a key word here - as is tactile - for at the centre of CIVIL CIVIC is a strong emotional core. Devoid of words, their music offers total sensation. Pure feeling. With its contrasting stabbing synth breaks, incandescent melodies that sooth like  a warm whisper in the ear and itchy-scratchy guitar break, ‘THE HUNT’, for example, replicates the sensation of the day after a night of sensory (and chemically) overloaded hedonism. “You wake up late afternoon, your hair a mess,” offers Aaron of its origins. “You smell like a bin. Breakfast is the rest of the falafel from the night before. You're volatile, energised, funny as fuck. You don’t give a single shit what others think of you.” The extended outro meanwhile is intended to mock both good taste and the laws of physics. If you feel tumble-dried after this tune then it’s entirely deliberate. It’s supposed to be exhausting.  Elsewhere follows ‘THE SLIDE’, where this breathless musical voyage takes a darker turn as you’re dropped slip-sliding down a wormhole into a strange netherworld where Wagner and EDM do shots beneath anxiety-inducing neon strip-lights. It’s a big biblical blockbuster that ends in an eternal purgatory of the senses. Or there’s ‘THE SHIFT’, which display CIVIL CIVIC’s No Wave and New Wave influences on an angst anthem mainlining straight into postpunk’s amphetamine-injected heart. CIVIL CIVIC have a rich and illustrious past. Back in Melbourne Ben spent his twenties with one foot in the underground rock scene, one foot in the noise/improv scene, and “a miraculous third foot” in the world of hip hop/electronica. His dub band toured with Fugazi, another band supported White Stripes and Queens of the Stone Age. He was also a turntablist and had a Grindcore band called Slug. It was while playing a solo show that Ben was spotted by Aaron, who was “impressed by how I put so much talent and energy into alienating people and fucking up,” says the former. Ben was nearly through with music and selling all his gear to work in a call centre when Aaron, who had a drive full of demos, made contact. “I had pissed all my efforts away trying to be a renaissance man,” says Ben. “It’s partially because of this that nothing I was ever involved in made it past second base. That’s why CIVIL CIVIC saved me. It has an agenda, focus, concepts.” Aaron, who has produced, mixed and engineered an array of artists including The Vaccines, The Drones, Miles Kane, Broken Social Scene, Dominique Young Unique, Blanck Mass and Spiritualized, began sending music to Ben until the prospect of a collaboration became an offer the latter couldn’t refuse. At this point Ben was living in Barcelona and though they had never previously met, the pair embarked on a period that has passed into legend – the infamous Winter Boot-camp of 2009. “Aaron brought half his studio to Barcelona and lived in my flat for almost six weeks,” says Ben. “It was the worst timing in the world. A couple of weeks before he turned up I fell in love, major fireworks style. So I was working, coming home and begrudgingly spending an hour or two working on the tunes with Aaron and then - zap! - I was across town to my lover. Aaron was seething...but we hit our target, which was to create a live set and play it. I was so happy I glowed in the dark.” Like all great bands, CIVIL CIVIC began with a manifesto, a set of arbitrary rules from day one. Instead of being limiting, they explain, The Rules continue to give the band purpose. The Rules sit at the centre of the CC universe, and are listed below for your perusal. They could be heard on the 100 copies of their cassette-only 2010 debut EP1, whose lead track ‘Less Unless’ shocked the blogosphere with its heady combination of compositional sophistication and brutality, and became an underground hit that soon saw CIVIL CIVIC playing on hundreds of stages. Armed with a guitar and a bass, then, as now, their set features a third member – albeit a non-human one: a battered yellow road-case fitted with flashing disco lights that goes by the name The Box, which occupies centre stage at live shows and sits at the molten core of both albums. “It is borderline creepy how much we personalise The Box,” admits Aaron. “We actually call it Boxy. You’d think we put saucers of milk out for it at night.” “It’s appropriate for us to have a cuboid robot as a mascot, as far as I’m concerned,” adds Ben. “I think what we’re trying to be is a two man band squared, so the box motif can stay.” In 2011 came the aforementioned album Rules, followed by several years of touring chaos and sonic brutality. CIVIL CIVIC broke their own rules in 2014 when lo-fi legend R. Stevie Moore provided guest vocals on the single ‘When You Gonna Find Me A Wife?’ Currently split between London and Barcelona, the duo maintain that distance is an intrinsic part of what they do. “If we’d actually had regular access to each other the whole time, would it still work?” wonders Aaron. “I love having Ben in the studio, he’s critical and imaginative and we usually move fast. But CIVIL CIVIC isn’t just a band, it’s an idea I have in my head. I need a lot of space to keep track of that idea, so it doesn’t get lost.” “Also detachment is not what we’re going for,” counters Ben. “Musically we’re direct and present; we’re in the room with you. We’re getting excited about exactly what you’re getting excited about. We want to be in your head with you, hyping the experience.”

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