Welcome to thetriffids.com, a site dedicated to the Australian band from the eighties with the John Wyndham inspired name and a collection of songs of peerless quality courtesy of the late, very great David McComb. Your webmaster is Graham (formerly Evil) Lee, pedal and lap steel guitarist for the band.

2006 was the start of a busy time for this site that continues to this day. The main reason for this - the complete Triffids' catalogue began rolling out in its shiny new remastered and repackaged form in 2006 and is very nearly complete from the point of view of official releases. This site has only ever existed to keep the memory and music of David McComb alive and, to this end, we've been very fortunate to find great homes for the catalogue - Liberation for Australia and New Zealand and Domino for the rest of the world.

Most Recent News:

April 10th, 2008:
A huge slab of widely varying material has just been released in the UK and Europe and will shortly follow in the US and Aus/NZ. It does all make some sense in the context of the re-release programme as a whole and almost brings to an end the roll out of the official Triffids releases. Here's what has just been made available.

• Treeless Plain - remixed by the original engineer Nick Mainsbridge
• The Black Swan - "restored to the sprawling, messy masterpiece it promised to be."
• Beautiful Waste - a collection containg Raining Pleasure, Field Of Glass, Lawson Square Infirmary.

Beginning with the most recent - The Black Swan has always been the album that divided Triffids fans - it was an eclectic mix of styles at the time and, though this seems a little less unusual these days, it's still mighty eclectic. Restored to the album Dave and the band had hoped against hope for in 1989 by the addition of 5 songs left out back then - and an encore. Accompanied by a bonus disc of demos and unreleased material.

Treeless Plain was recorded in a dozen midnight to dawn sessions with a talented but green engineer, Nick Mainsbridge some 25 years ago. Legend has it that the time left to mix all tracks was 2 hours. Fortunately the 24 track masters were retained and we were able to commission a brand new mix from the now considerably less green Mr Mainsbridge. Wow springs to mind.

The Triffids recorded a number of works that were less than full length but far from fully formed. We've grouped a number of these under the title Beautiful Waste - mini-masterpieces from The Triffids 1982 to 1985. Most of the material is heard here for the first time on CD. Included are Raining Pleasure, Lawson Square Infirmary and the Field Of Glass EP. To round off the set we've included the title track and a smash hit single that never was - Dear Miss Lonelyhearts and Native Bride.

A lot to digest and it was a massive task to assemble - so thanks to all who helped me along the way. We hope there is something in this that you find inspiring. Thanks most of all to our friend Dave for the songs.

Older News:

Domino commissioned NY artist Steve Keene to play a large part in the making of a new video clip for the song Save What You Can from Calenture. This clip will be soon sent to all those movers and shakers out there so they can inform thier viewers, readers, listeners, friends etc what a great song it is and what an inspired visual pairing Keene and SWYC make. Thanks to Braden King at Truckstop Media for actually making the clip. To view the clip for yourself on Steve's site click the promo CD face below.

The remastered Born Sandy Devotional was received very warmly and we're now hard at work with phase two. The end of January 2007 will see In The Pines and Calenture on the shelves, two very different releases from The Triffids but more connected to each other than you might realise.

 

In The Pines was recorded in April 1986 not long after Born Sandy Devotional was finally released in Australia. We went to a shearing shed in WA and spent five days recording on an 8 track machine. We stayed in the shearers' quarters, consumed shearers' rations of beer and sheep and made an album that surprised us all by becoming a favourite of many fans. While it represents our equivalent of Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes, it also served as a sketch book for our first major label release, Calenture.

The two have been paired in this re-issue series because, while they represent opposite ends of the spectrum as far as time and money spent goes, they also have much in common, not the least of which is a few songs. Jerdacuttup Man was originally slated for release on ITP rather than Calenture, an early version of A Trick Of The Light was recorded during the woolshed sessions - the list goes on, and all will become clear when both remastered (and in the case of ITP, remixed) albums are released next year.

 

:: David McComb died on February 2nd 1999 and is sadly missed by fans and friends around the world ::