Sunday, April 7, 2024

Anarchoi

ORIGINS: Penrith, NSW
GENRE: Street Punk, Crust
YEARS ACTIVE: 2002-2007
 
MEMBERS:
RELEASES: 
 
  • The First Incitement (2003) - Download Here.
    • 1. Freedom
    • 2. On the Beat
    • 3. Fight the Rich
    • 4. War Games
    • 5. No W.T.O. 

  • You Don't Have to Steal This CD - It's Free (2004) - Download Here.
    • 1. The Time to Test Their Power is Now
    • 2. Ode to Duncan Mckenzie Fletcher
    • 3. War Games Version 2
    • 4. No W.T.O.
    • 5. The Protest
    • 6. Your Mother and Father

  • Unreleased (2005)
    • 1. Pigs in Their Troughs
    • 2. Industry Standards
    • 3. How Else Do You Think They Make Glue?
    • 4. Cavite
SUMMARY: Anarchoi started as a three piece band with Jordan Renouf doing drums and vocals at the same time. After the addition of Nathan White on drums, Renouf focused on just singing and the band started playing shows. In 2003, White left and the band had other drummers (John from Iron Sausage/Pure Evil Trio, and Ged/Baker from the Titan Outfits) fill in until they could find a permanent replacement in James. The band embraced DIY punk culture, playing support for the R.A.M.B.O. Sydney tour and organising their own tours of Melbourne. In 2007, while facing a few different pressures, the band came to an end.
 
SHOWS: 
  • Punx Picnic, Sydney Park, St Peters - 6th September, 2003
  • Maggotsville, Marrickville - 5th March, 2004
  • Black Rose Benefit, Black Rose Bookshop, Enmore - 20th March, 2004
  • PCYC, Penrith - 16th April, 2004
  • Shepparton Hall, Shepparton - 1st October, 2004 
  • Melbourne University, Melbourne - 2nd October, 2004
  • Awesomefest, Pink Palace, Melbourne - 2nd October, 2004
  • PCYC, Penrith - 12th November, 2004
  • Harp Hotel, Tempe - 28th May, 2005
  • Masonic Hall, Blacktown - 9th July, 2005
  • Too Wrong for Radio, Canberra - 8th October, 2005
  • Territory Clampdown, The Church Bar, Canberra - 11th November, 2005
  • The Arthouse, Melbourne - 16th November, 2005
  • Church Bar, Canberra - 17th November, 2005
  • Gaelic Club, Surry Hills - 18th November, 2005
  • Penrith PCYC, Penrith - 19th November, 2005
  • Ahimsa House, West End, Brisbane - 20th November, 2005
  • Belladonna Fest, Wollongong Youth Centre and Project Art Space, Wollongong - 10th December, 2005
  • TrisElies Nightclub, Katoomba - 30th December, 2005
  • PCYC, Penrith - 30th June, 2006
  • Sandringham Hotel, Newtown - 13th August, 2006

 
ORAL HISTORY:
RYAN: I had spotted Jordan and David at a few different shows in Western Sydney. It wasn't until I saw Jordan doing guest vocals for The Shambles at Castle Hill that I reached out to him. We started hanging out regularly and it took us some time to sort out where we could practice regularly. At some point a drummer, Nathan, reached out to us and we would jam in his garage every chance we could.
Ryan Hoesterei (Bass), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

JORDAN: Anarchoi was kind of a vague idea I had. I knew kind of what I wanted to play and a little bit about what I wanted to say, because I'd really started to get into the activist movement at the time and I figured I had some things to say - but how do you get people to listen? There was a gig at Blacktown Youth Centre and there was this guy who was freakishly tall who'd just broken his skateboard, and he just had this kinda vibe to him and we hit it off. He played guitar, so that was that really. That was Dave. Ryan was already kinda wanting to be in a band, and we'd met before at some Shambles shows.
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

JORDAN: When we first started off we were jamming at my house and I was on drums, playing very badly on an exceptional Premier kit from the '70s, and singing. That was always going to be a temporary thing, but I think we put together 7 or 8 completed songs with that original trio of myself, Ryan, and Dave. 
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024


RYAN: Our first show was Penrith PCYC in late 2002. We played the second half of a set for another band, the Undersided. We got banned from playing at the PCYC on our first gig. A few people rushed the stage and a senior board members was really disappointed. She only let us perform again because I had been going there for years with the Judo Club. 
Ryan Hoesterei (Bass), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024
 
JORDAN: Somehow we got onto this pop punk lineup at Penrith PCYC. It was super last minute, with All in Favour, who I think were headlining maybe. We didn't belong there, and we made it out mission to make it uncomfortable for them I guess. I remember going up on to the stage and the crowd literally took a few steps back from us. They kinda looked at us, like - "what the fuck is this about to be". Their reaction throughout the set was kinda the same, like confused. Was a pretty packed crowd though, decent night from memory, so was a mixed crowd as usual. We did an okay set... local lout Brad got up on stage, bashed the mic into his head, etc. I did whatever shit a 15 year old kid thinks is punk and shocking on stage. It was not the band any of those kids were expecting to see.  
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024
 

JORDAN: Nathan (drums) was probably at the time a short term position. His style and speed probably wasn't what I was after... he was kinda more into oi kinda punk and we were going somewhere else. We ended up recruiting John Sausage for a while but that was also just a fill in to play the gigs we had lined up and the Fowl Air festival, which we'd agreed to. Butters kinda reached out, we had some mutual friends, and he knew we were looking for a drummer. He was a great fit - a pretty decent drummer but not really rooted down to one style, and was pretty open to suggestion. As a 'band Nazi' that was kinda perfect for me haha. Also, he was available, and until joining ROFL, he was only in one band - so even rarer amongst drummers. 
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

JAMES: I met Jordan, Ryan and Dave at a Punx Picnic in St Peters, and began talking band stuff as per usual. Jordan mentioned they needed a drummer. I was keen to start playing some shows. I had a crappy old drum kit, and a spare room in my house on Gordon Street in Burwood, which became the jam room - so it was a relatively organic start to it all. I'm pretty sure my first Anarchoi show was at the Penrith PCYC, and because Jordan was always a good hype man, we may have even headlined!
James Giddins (Drums), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

RYAN: I wore a gas mask nearly every show we played. We used to talk about stage presence and the band image. It seemed to all make sense at the time. While wearing the gas mask, it not only got hot and hard to see, it also changed the way I heard the songs. I think having the mask on interfered with the way we interpret sound frequencies.
Ryan Hoesterei (Bass), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024
 
 
JAMES: We sounded pretty unique... a mix of crust, thrash, oi and hardcore, with that politico punk edge.  
James Giddins (Drums), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

JORDAN: Recording was always a bit of a bugbear for me. The only one I ended up liking was the one at Smokin' and Jokin' with Adam Barnes. Tim Walters did the others, which were great considering the $0 budget - one done at his house, one at my house. They always kinda felt like a warm up to an album that never got finish sadly.
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024
 
JAMES: It was a studio either in Artarmon or St Marys... it was a big room, kind old and crappy - perfect. We played together rather than tracking separately. It worked out well because we were so tight at that point. We rehearsed religiously anyway, so that helped, but I do remember our recording only took a few takes.  
James Giddins (Drums), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

JORDAN: We wanted to go to Melbourne. We had little resources and money, but we'd done train travel to gigs plenty of times int he past with shopping trolleys and the like, so we figured to go to Melbourne by train. During this planning phase some young girls, around our age, so like 17 or 18, from Shepparton contacted us and wanted us to come and play a show in Sheppo. So we planned our train journey around that, with a CountryLink stop in Shepparton. We didn't know these girls at all, never met, didn't know if we'd been scammed or what. We jumped on the train and just hoped they'd pick us up at the other end. Luckily when we got off the train they were there to meet us! We stayed at their house as well, or their parents' house or whatever. I think I was pretty keen on one of the girls as well from memory. Show was a blast, heaps of kids turned out, community was real supportive considering a bunch of dudes with mohawks just came into their little country town. Then we went on to Melbourne - touring on trams with guitars and bits of a drum kit and guitar heads makes for an interesting time. We played a couple of shows in a day or two, just bouncing around on trams and crashing here and there at people's places or squats. Then we got back on the train and came home.
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

REVIEW: Anarchoi, good Aussie punk with great heights. Really good songs, with some interesting topics. These guys are really passionate about animal rights and other issues. I saw them play twice in one day. They gave out some free CDs, it's pretty good. 
Review of shows played at Melbourne Uni and Pink Palace (Melbourne), Ampallang Issue 2, 2nd October, 2004 

JORDAN: The PCYC album launch show was wild. Over capacity, brawls, we got banned for playing two songs we were told not to play. 
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024
 


JAMES: It's hard to pick one show as a favourite, there were heaps of good ones. A standout was the tour we did with Vitamin X and New Justice Team. All of those shows pretty much blur into one memory, with a lot of time in the tour van. It was an eventful tour, and so much fun! Vitamin X had so much energy playing live, and that helped set the tone for everyone else. 
James Giddins (Drums), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

JORDAN: We hired our van for the Vitamin X tour from Entrans. Don't use them, ever. Just fucking steer clear, if you have to walk with your gear on your shoulders to fucking Broken Hill, just do it, it's better than hiring one of these vehicles.
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Cane Toad Warrior Issue 13, February 2006

JORDAN: Lyrically I'm influenced by whatever is happening around me. If I see or hear about something that I think people need to hear about then I will write a song about it. Musically our influences include bits of anarcho-punk, crust, thrash, Scandinavian hardcore and lots of other little elements. We pretty much write music solely from how it feels. If we get a good vibe and feel out a riff then we just keep going from there. I don't think our sound has changed too much - just a bit faster and a bit heavier, and a bit more technical. But I just see that as a sign of maturity, it hasn't been a conscious change, it's not something we talked about, it just happened. We were all pretty young when the band started, and Anarchoi was pretty much the first band all of us were in, so as time has gone on I suppose we've all grown a bit musically... We're definitely considering having a second vocalist but we really have to find the right person. I'm sure that will take time, so we're not really rushing anything, we're just going to see what happens.
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Cane Toad Warrior Issue 13, February 2006

RYAN: We finished around 2007. We were on hiatus to focus on writing new music for our debut album. With life pulling us all in different directions, it's hard to feel comfortable when we had no set date for going into the studio or any shows booked. One of the members rang me up saying he was quitting. It destroyed me. I called up the rest of the members and just said it's over. It haunted me for many years until I saw that there were other things in our lives that were more in need of our attention.
Ryan Hoesterei (Bass), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024
 
JORDAN: It didn't end the way any of us would've liked or what anyone had expected, and truthfully I wished it had happened differently and we'd gone out properly or just on hiatus for a bit and had a personnel change or something. The short of it is that there was a lot going on in people's personal lives at the time and it just became too hard. Dave was having to make some big life choices, Dyl was a bit preoccupied and wanted to do something a little different as well. I was facing terrorism charges and a health scare... it was just really bad timing on a number of fronts. The sad thing for me was that we'd probably just written the best song we ever had, it was an absolute cracking song. Then there was the rest of the album we'd planned... even the artwork had been commissioned from this awesome artist in the UK. So it was weird to end when we did because all the pieces were coming together.  
Jordan Renouf (Vocals), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

JAMES: Finishing up was exactly that - we were just kind of finished with the journey. We were all still great friends, but a couple of us were heading in different directions, starting families and whatever... so even simply getting together to jam was proving difficult. So we all just agreed, reluctantly, to call it a day. 
James Giddins (Drums), Noise Levels Correspondence, 2024

RELATED BANDS: Persist, ROFL, The Shambles, Smash 'N' Grab, Crime Spree, Hooray for Hate

LIVE CLIPS:

Anarchoi - The State (Sandringham Hotel, 2006)


 Anarchoi - Holy Fetus (Sandringham Hotel, 2006)

Anarchoi - Always Watching (Sandringham Hotel, 2006)


PHOTOS:





 















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