Naarm/Melbourne sextet Shock Corridor announce a national tour in support of their self-titled debut album, due August 12. The run opens August 28 at Melbourne’s Thornbury Theatre and winds through Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory, Canberra, Adelaide, Wonder Mountain Festival in Beechworth, Castlemaine and Brisbane through late September with a one-off Sydney show at Phoenix Central Park on June 24 to preview the record in full.

The album was tracked over seven days at Soundpark Studios with producer Dan Luscombe, a name synonymous with the last decade of Australian guitar music for his work with the Drones, Amyl and the Sniffers, Courtney Barnett and Floodlights, and mixed by Aaron Cupples (Spiritualized, Tropical Fuck Storm, Kirin J Callinan).

Formed in 2019 by six friends with backgrounds in classical strings, jazz, hip-hop and DIY electronics, the band, George (vocals, guitar), Saskia (violin, vocals), Joe (synth, drum machine, trumpet), Henry (bass, trumpet), Ari (guitar) and Paddy (drums), refined a startlingly singular palette through long lockdown rehearsals before emerging onto the Naarm circuit in 2023. Their music borrows the spectral patience of the Dirty Three, the trip-hop weight of Massive Attack and the pent-up theatricality that Australian post-punk seems to manufacture in unusual quantities. Songs build slowly; eruptions, when they come, feel earned.

Earlier singles “Buster” and “Sheet Metal” pulled support from BBC 6 Music, METAL, ASBO and the Line of Best Fit, while FBi Radio recently named the group their Independent Artist of the Week. In December the band sold out The Night Cat (650 capacity) at home and have shared stages with Bleak Squad at the Melbourne Recital Centre and Floodlights on the road.

“We kept the record self-titled because it felt like the widest possible foundation of what Shock Corridor is. A lot of it was written while the world felt increasingly unstable — there was this constant feeling of helplessness, but also a desire to stay connected to the people around you. The album lives in that tension.”

Shock Corridor - Album Tour