The Doomed Bird of Providence

“Sometimes cussedness is an essential virtue for musicians. The Doomed Bird Of Providence’s Mark Kluzek oozes cussedness like sweat. He’s an Australian in exile, assembling a group of Brit players to realise his singleminded vision, which involves Kluzek barking out blacker than black tales of horror and misery from Australia’s early history. Blind Mouths Eat is his second bulletin from the festering underbelly of 19th century Oz.” – The Wire

ABOUT

The Doomed Bird of Providence started out in London in 2009 as a means for Mark Kluzek to write songs about early colonial times in Australia. Kluzek, who had moved from Australia and been living in the UK for some years had read The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes, a history of convict Australia. His first couple of songs were loosely based on characters in the aforementioned book. Over a period of years a variety of musicians joined Kluzek to perform and record these and other songs.

Early support for the band was provided by the Ex Gratia label who released a song on the Ex Gratia compilation Specialisation is for Insects.

The first release was a four track ep on Laily Recordings. Contributors to this ep were also performing live with The Doomed Bird of Providence; Drew Barker (SOUP, Croft), Stafford Glover (Extreme Noise Terror, Plantman) and Daniel Merrill (Dead Rat Orchestra).

It received some polite press but most importantly sparked the interest of Justin and Helen Watson of the label Front and Follow. Front and Follow offered to release the debut album by The Doomed Bird of Providence. Called Will Ever Pray, the album received high praise from reviewers as well as considerable airplay on BBC6 thanks to the support of Tom Ravenscroft. Richard Acton (ex Limn) and Rachel Laurence made significant contributions to the album and were regularly playing live with the band. Other contributors included Tom Knight and Autumn Ferment artist Flake Brown. The album was mastered by ex-Rothko and current Trace Recordings head Mark Beazley.

The Doomed Bird of Providence by this stage were a nebulous live act that performed with anything from 2 to 7 members. After the album’s release Barney Monger started playing percussion with the band.

The band released a single in December 2011 and recorded a few Christmas themed songs for Tom Ravenscroft’s BBC6 show. 2012 saw the band working on the Front & Follow project Long Division with Remainders (released early 2013), developing songs for a new album and playing live.  It has also seen the addition of Katie English (Isnaj Dui) performing flute live with the band.

Katie, along with Richard, Drew, Stafford, Rachel, Mark and violinist Angela Chan all contributed to the second album entitled Blind Mouths Eat.  The album was released on 11 November 2013 and received an excellent reception from Wire Magazine (with a full page review from Clive Bell), Americana-UK, Clash Magazine, Sounds-XP, Freq, ATTN:Magazine, whisperinandhollerin, Norman Records amongst others.  Bryan Styles (Plantman) joined the band on percussion for a number of shows to support the album release through out 2014.

An EP was released on 13th July 2015.  Called You Brought the Knife, it was a string heavy affair. Along with regular contributors, Joolie Wood (violin) and Ian Hothersall (percussion) also play on the release.  More details about the release can be found here.

2016 was spent planning and recording the third album.  Burrowed Into the Soft Sky was made up of two twenty minute instrumentals.  Recorded in Colchester, London and  Halifax it included contributions from the same musicians that worked on You Brought the Knife.  The result though is a radical shift in style for the band. Released in September 2017, it received praise from The Quietus, Wire Magazine, Aural Aggravation, Narc Magazine, Echoes and Dust, Freq, Americana UK, A Closer Listen, Ears for Eyes, Norman Records, fRoots and others.

2020 marked the release of Rumbling Clouds of War Hover over Us.  This EP was a thematic departure for the band. It moved away from early colonial Australian history and instead examined the story of Mark Kluzek’s grandfather, a Polish soldier, who made a difficult journey across Europe during WWII.  This EP was released in mid-April on 10 to 1 Records (home of Simon Finn, Joolie Woods and Maja Elliott).

In 2022, 10 to 1 Records released the fourth album, A Flight Across Arnhm Land.  The album featured 16 songs with lyrics based on Australian news stories of the 1920s/30s.  The artwork for this was produced by Australian artist, Judi Dransfield Kuepper. It featured contributions from, amongst others, Simon Finn, Flake Brown and Rachel Lawrence.

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