Messed!Up
Tropical Fuck Storm was started by Gareth Liddiard and rounded out by fellow Drones member Fiona Kitschin, High Tension’s Lauren Hammel, and Mod Con’s Erica Dunn. The group got together in 2017 when Liddiard and Kitschin were looking to recruit new members for their previous band. Just a few months later, TFS played their first show and wasted no time in writing a raft of material.
Recording at Liddiard and Kitschin’s studio in Nagambie, Victoria, the group put together their debut album, A Laughing Death in Meatspace. It was released in May 2018, and the four-piece headed out on a national tour that same month. With a newfound momentum, the band returned to the studio to record their second album, 2019’s Braindrops, which incorporated even weirder instrumentation, including a Soviet space organ. That momentum was slightly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but they used the time to write and record their third album, 2021’s Deep States.
The next year, the band teamed up with King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard for three-song EP Satanic Slumber Party as well as releasing their own EP, Moonburn. Moonburn featured a new original song and covers of the Stooges, Jimi Hendrix, and Talking Heads tunes. In January of 2023, TFS shared that Kitschin had been diagnosed with stage three breast cancer and that they’d be canceling all touring outside of Australia. In February, the band released another EP, Submersive Behavior, collecting their previously shared Hendrix and Stooges covers and filling out the five-song offering with covers of lesser-known artists.
By 2024, Kitschin had undergone successful treatment programs for their cancer, and TFS had resumed touring and recording, and today, they released their fourth studio LP, Fairyland Codex. The album was their first with the Fire Records label.
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Tropical Fuck Storm pages
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Tropical Fuck Storm: “Fairyland Codex”