Local feature: 80’s Perth post-punk band The Plants release landmark demo tape
The Plants, one of Perth’s first genuinely weird electro-punk bands, have released a selection of long-lost demos, remastered recordings and reworked musical sketches. The Demos 1979-1980 is a local feature at RTRFM.
In 1979 the group formed, born out of post-psychedlic ramblings and art school beginnings. Starting out as a seven-piece, The Plants drew influences from bands like The Cure, CAN and Kraftwerk and creating songs with a singular for the time and location. The septet recorded an eight-track demo at ABC studios that was promptly locked away. The band’s original line-up shifted and a different version of The Plants re-recorded and released a different self-titled record in 1980.
Years on, the original demo sessions, recorded on an old Fuji Cassette, have been cleaned up and digitised, with a handful of the more scuffed originals receiving gentle working over by band members. The result is a time capsule of new-wave Perth punk indicative of the isolation and alienation felt by The Plants and Perth’s countercultural scene in 1979.
RTRFM’s Matt Perrett joins Rob Baxter—one of the band’s original members—to chat about the group’s formation, first gigs and the new release.
