Liam Andrews, the bassist from Melbourne band My Disco and Eros, has a new solo album on the way under his Aicher moniker.
The pseudonym comes, he told tQ, from an old Irish poem and translates to “a sharp, bitter wind”. The original text reads “Is aicher in gaíth innocht fu fuasna fairggæ findḟolt ni ágor réimm mora minn dond láechraid lainn ua Lothlind”, which means: “Bitter is the wind tonight, it tosses the ocean’s white hair. I fear not the coursing of a clear sea from the fierce warriors of Scandinavia.”
This feels very apt for the the seven tracks on Andrews’ forthcoming album, Defence Acoustics, which deploy similar sonics to his other work – an understanding of the potential of exactly when to release deep bass noise, non-musical rattling as propulsion, discreet humming, a sensibility all about the joy of restraining power to create unease.
You can hear all that on new track ‘An Exhausted Image’, streaming exclusively via tQ below. Andrews tells us that he’d always wanted to release music on his own but hadn’t had the opportunity until he was offered a slot supporting BIG|BRAVE on their 2023 European tour (he’s recently joined the band as a permanent member). “What I learnt night after night on that tour was a blessing, some 30-plus shows of experimenting and listening,” he told tQ. “The reception, and the self-reflection. Aicher was birthed on the road, a place I’m familiar with.”
Expanding on the groups and solo work he’s involved in, Andrews said: “It’s the solitude to the working condition that differentiates the creative process of Aicher from the other projects. I am responsible for the complete sound environment and all decisions fall upon me. This internal discussion can become obsessive and feed procrastination. I miss the to-and-fro with others, another’s expression. The encouragement and the disapproval. That being said, I’ve benefited from removing the comfort of others. A self-trust is emerging, and this is boundless.”
Defence Acoustics is in part a collaboration between Andrews and Rohan Rebeiro, who has played drums in My Disco. The pair have worked together since Andrews was 16, and he enthused that Rebeiro’s “importance to how I approach music is unrivalled, and our evolution as musicians is so entwined”. The pair toured Japan in 2024 as Aicher and R. Rebeiro, a trip that “fuelled” the new Aicher release.
“We performed in a deteriorating basement of an age-old and abandoned pharmaceutical store in Kanazawa,” Andrews remembered. “The intent was to capture the essence of that night – the cavernous reverberation, structural collapse and the overall pressure of sound at the brink. It was a constant return for the inspiration to Defensive Acoustics and so incorporating his percussive work on this record was a given, a no-brainer.”
The album was produced by Boris Wilsdorf, fellow Eros member and engineer for the great Einstürzende Neubauten, with the producer’s infamous andereBaustelle studio providing some of the sounds that give the album its richness and depth. “I have been building an archive of sounds from all the sessions we’ve done together there,” Andrews explained. “Repurposing the incidentals – the static, the spatial hum, the detail in feedback – within all these recordings was at the centre to which I built around, and the focus when piecing this collection of tracks together. So, in short, the sounds came first, the compositions followed. Boris is an artist in the studio, he’s been pivotal in capturing and sculpting the sounds I’m searching for. His studio is his instrument. When I listen back to this record, I hear Boris.”
Downwards will release Defensive Acoustics on October 10, 2025.
