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Photo – Lighthouse Studios
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SHOEB (SIA) AHMAD
announces
DOUBLE CHECKS
AGAINST THE CORNER
Album Tour
Out Now via No Gold
STREAM ‘double checks against the corner’
Dates In Naarm/Melbourne, Ngunnawal/Canberra & Nipaluna/Hobart
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Photo – Jordan Kirk
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“[double checks against the corner] marries sounds as disparate as thudding industrial layers, programmed harp and hazy electronica with Ahmad’s dreamlike vocals…. [the tour] will also be a collaborative affair, bringing this intimate sonic world into a new dimension.” – The Big Issue
“…the kind of understand, bedroom-spun vocal that slips down a treat – and a knack for delicately wrought, sampladelic soundscapes to compliment it” – FACT Magazine
“If it’s raining where you are, it’s about to getting more beautiful with the sounds of [Sia] Ahmad” – Lauren Laverne, BBC 6Music
“Delightful smoked-out pop music, distilled into a romantic, original vision” – Bleep.com
“one of Canberra’s most prolific experimental artists, curators and producers, and relentless advocate for the local independent, DIY and underground music scenes” – New Weird Australia
“…Ahmad’s soft vocals are interspersed with melodic, dreamy harmonies, evoking a feeling of deep introspection” – Swampland Magazine
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Following appearances at SXSW and MONA FOMA this year, APRA AMCOS Art Music Award-winning Canberra-based experimentalist Sia Ahmad (she/her) – who makes music as Shoeb Ahmad – announces her national tour for her incredibly intimate “song cycle” of a record double checks against the corner, released via No Gold last month, the new label launched by Angus Andrew of Liars. Ahmad will be bringing their enthralling live show to Naarm/Melbourne, Ngunnawal/Canberra, and Nipaluna/Hobart.
With a 5-piece band featuring members of The Jezabels, Screamfeeder and Tangents, on this tour Sia reimagines the new record for the first time alongside never-before performed songs from previous albums A Body Full Of Tears and Facade as an electro-acoustic experience, leaning into a post-punk techno and noise rock aesthetic that pushes and pulls at the studio construction in real time onstage.
Bucking the traditional record structure, double checks against the corner is a five-part tome weaving a delicately balanced narrative around relationship breakdown, reconciliation and parenthood. Encapsulating what is seen as a hyper-domestic experience, the record digs deep into the nuances that are left behind closed doors or in text threads, bringing together Sia’s experimental sound art practice with the purity of honest pop songwriting and deep, beat-heavy production.
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Co-produced by Ahmad and Angus Andrew (Liars), the record is a seamless merging of the characteristically emotive songcraft and hypnotic production aesthetic that makes her last two albums stand alone in the world, with Ahmad’s melancholic lyrical observations placed front and centre of warm, tender arrangements, constructed in the home with sounds from her most trusted collaborators, including Kelli
With a rich and extensive background in so-called-Australian music, Sia Ahmad has been creating idiosyncratic sounds for over a decade. Using guitar, keyboard, voice and electronics, she works both as singer/composer and improviser, performing as Shoeb Ahmad. Her previous albums, the beautifully chaotic A Body Full Of Tears (2020) and the explorative, introspective “quiver” (2018), stand in a wholly immersive, inarguably singular catalogue that also includes collaborations with Gwenno, Schneider Kacirek, the Australian Art Orchestra and more, drawing praise from critics internationally and at home and airplay everywhere from local community radio, to ABC Radio National, to BBC Radio 6 and beyond.
One of acclaimed electronic jazz outfit Tangents, Sia has performed and released a diverse range of original music throughout Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Europe and South Eastern Asia while also working as a visual artist and on sound design for dance/theatre, installation pieces and contemporary chamber composition. Released in May this year, double checks against the corner found support with The Big Issue, The Canberra Times, Tone Deaf, Beehive Candy, Limelight Magazine, ABC Radio National, Triple R, RTRFM, 4ZZZ, 3CR and more including rotation adds to FBi Radio, 2SER, Edge Radio, and 2XX.
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TOUR DATES
July 15 – Drama Theatre at Kambri w/ Genie for Uncharted Territory
Ngunnawal/Canberra | Tickets | FB Event
July 22 – MONA (daytime performance)
Nipaluna/Hobart | Info | FB Event
July 22 – ALTAR (nighttime performance) w/ Troth, Tasha Zappala + Tiff Norchick
Nipaluna/Hobart | Tickets | FB Event
August 26 – Nighthawk w/ Aphir + Maria Moles
Naarm/Melbourne | Tickets | FB Event
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Shoeb Ahmad – double checks against the corner
Out Now via No Gold
1. ‘double checks against the corner (a)’
2. ‘double checks against the corner (b)’
3. ‘double checks against the corner (c)’
4. ‘double checks against the corner (d)’
5. ‘double checks against the corner (e)’
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Follow SHOEB AHMAD
Website – Bandcamp – Instagram – Facebook – Spotify
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Photo – Lighthouse Studios
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