The Only Objects Releases Access Will Be Retained (Feat. Jack Degenhart), a Low-End Drop with Free-Jazz Saxophone
Who the Adelaide Trio’s Bass-Heavy Art-Rock Single Is Actually Built For
The Only Objects released Access Will Be Retained (feat. Jack Degenhart) on 7 November 2024. The Adelaide trio built the cut around a low-end drop, jagged guitars and a free-jazz saxophone line from collaborator Jack Degenhart. It is the least settled thing in their catalogue, and it sits on their second record, An Excess of Hauntings.
You can listen to our full playlist which contains the artist’s music, and know more about the artist’s work by scrolling down the page.
Who The Only Objects Made This Record For
To start with the obvious, this is a track for people who like a rhythm section that refuses to sit still. The bass carries the song rather than supporting it. The drums move through odd time signatures without announcing them. The guitars stay jagged where a rock single would usually smooth out. Still, if that arrangement sounds like work, it is not. Even so, the hooks are there. They just arrive from unexpected places.
The band point at their own reference points on Bandcamp, naming Black Country, New Road and Glass Beach as the company they keep. In practice, both are useful. Black Country, New Road built a following out of long-form art rock that lets a saxophone lead a section rather than decorate one, which is close to what happens here in the last third. Glass Beach is the other half of it, a group that moves between prog structures and pop instincts inside a single song and expects the listener to keep up.
Meanwhile, genre labels do not settle it. The project moves between alternative rock, post-punk, prog, electronics, trip-hop and noise depending on the track, and this one lands at the noisier end. The audience for it is not a genre so much as a habit. These are listeners who want a record to change shape while they are inside it.
The Early Response to Access Will Be Retained
The reviews from the original release are useful because they mostly agree on the same two things. Writing for Music Arena GH, the reviewer built the whole piece around the horn, describing Jack Degenhart’s saxophone as sounding “like a frenzied, bird-like question mark crashing into tall buildings made of shattered memories”, with playing “brushed with an almost free jazz meltdown”. That same review reached for Laurie Anderson as a reference, which tells you the kind of listener it found.
Thoughts Words Action, by contrast, came at it from the playing. It described the song moving from calm to “complex, technically demanding instrumentations”, and picked out drums delivering “various beats, breaks, fills, and other percussive acrobatics, performed in regular and odd-time signatures”. Its verdict on audience was broader than experimental rock: anyone into progressive, cleverly assembled music.
Little Chief Music made the point that matters most to a listener deciding whether to press play. It called the track “as catchy as it is experimental”, and singled out a saxophone solo that is “simply irresistible, making the song unpredictable and engaging”. Overall, three outlets, three angles, one shared conclusion. The strangeness is not a barrier to entry.
The Community Around the Band
The project is a trio out of Adelaide, on Kaurna land. Patrick Lang writes the lyrics and sings, Zacc Breheny plays bass and Sam Menzel plays drums. Tim Whitt produced the track, and Little Chief Music credited that production directly for holding the arrangement together.
The collaborators, meanwhile, say something about how the group works. Jack Degenhart did not simply add a horn over a finished mix. His saxophone is a structural part of the song, and the track carries his name in its title. On the wider album the guest list runs as far as former Kraftwerk member Wolfgang Flür, an unusual name to find on a self-released Australian art-rock record and a fair indication of who returns the band’s calls.
The IndieMusic.News curator team: “The reason this one travels is that the experiment is load-bearing but the song is not hostage to it. A trio that can play in odd time and still land a chorus has a much bigger room to fill than the noise tag suggests. Start here, then take the album.”
An Excess of Hauntings is where the track finally sits, a record that circles memory, lost futures and hauntology. That is a heavy brief for an album, and Access Will Be Retained is the point where it gets loud rather than contemplative. For a new listener it is the right door into the catalogue.
Where to Hear The Only Objects and Follow the Band
Stream the single and the rest of the catalogue on Spotify, where *An Excess of Hauntings* sits in full. Alternatively, buy the record directly from Bandcamp.
Follow The Only Objects across platforms: Instagram, Facebook, and their YouTube channel.
