Roused At’s annual “Year‑Killer” functions as a Brisbane music ritual — a way for the city’s underground to mark the passing of time on its own terms. The 2025 edition, held tonight, January 3rd, 2026, at Mirrorball Ministries in West End, carries that sense of continuity more strongly than usual.
A Hall with History: West End’s Long Musical Lineage
This year, the gathering takes place at AHEPA Hall. The building carries its own musical lineage. My father, Brian, remembers attending late‑1970s punk shows here. We are talking about the era of the Young Identities, The Saints, and the earliest stirrings of The Go‑Betweens. This new venue doesn’t foreground that history. But knowing this story helps you appreciate how buildings like these shape the ideas people have and the way they gather.
Brisbane’s alternative culture survives by finding its own corners. The audience reflects that continuity. Tonight I see a rich cross‑section of the city’s musicians and creative workers fill the room. I spot Jim from The Goon Sax, Bobby from the Wonderfuls, Callum and Pam from Guppy, Luke from Devotions, and Marley Lüske from West End’s Alchemix Studios. (I’ve recently been told Alchemix has expanded after contributing to the critically recognised music for the hit children’s television show Bluey.) These are people who make things, who show up for each other’s projects, who keep the city’s culture alive.
Pure Gratis and the Next Movement in Brisbane Music
Kitchen’s Floor headline the night. Matt Kennedy is one of Brisbane’s most enduring contemporary punk figures. And his work deserves wider analysis and recognition. But I’m here to see the opener, Pure Gratis. The new group centres on Bruce and Tristan Murray, both from Manners, with Tristan also known for Cannon, a project he formed with his brother Callum Murray. Tristan and Bruce’s along with vocalist Andrew Boyd began jamming informally a couple of years ago. Andrew is a friend of mine and has told me these early sessions carried no expectations — just chemistry and the sense that something might be forming.
Before Pure Gratis, Andrew had already shown that spark. At a previous New Year’s show, he joined Manners for a guest performance (documented on Blend 42 From Outer Space’s YouTube channel). He and the band delivered a cover of Australian Crawl’s “Reckless.” It’s an interesting take on the nuance of Australian masculinity. The song’s lyrical plea to “throw down your guns, don’t be so reckless” lands differently when voiced in a D.I.Y. space, an environment built to prioritise safety and inclusion. A space where the usual hierarchies of Australian masculinity fall away. Even then, the chemistry was intriguing.
The Sound: Synth Pulse, Lo‑Fi Edges, and Emerging Identity
John Morris organises Year‑Killer, drawing on the DIY lineage of Brisbane shows in the 2010s, the kind Matt Ford, known for his work in Thigh Master and indie label Tenth Court, used to run. That ethos shapes the night. New acts don’t parachute in. They emerge through trust, shared stages, and relationships built over time. Andrew, for example, played in a madcap noise‑pop group Old Growth Cola in the 2010s after studying music, including opera singing. Pure Gratis grows naturally from that background. Andrew’s expressive, open‑voiced singing, Bruce’s electronic drums, bass, and synths and Tristan’s focused guitar work.
Pure Gratis perform an entirely new set. The audience listens closely — intrigued, leaning forward, not yet fervent. The sound pulls from several directions: the pulse of Giorgio Moroder‑style synth pop, the looseness of DIY lo‑fi, and flashes of the same 90s industrial‑grunge textures I heard recently from Guppy when they supported June Jones at another gig John had put on in late 2026. Something is forming here, something not yet fully named. I’m still deciding where to place it, which is part of the appeal.
What Persists in Meanjin: Culture, Place, and Continuity
Pure Gratis sit inside a broader story of Brisbane music. Meanjin’s sound grows from its geography. What today is a modern city grew from a former convict outpost built in the middle of a tropical state. One larger than many nations. This is a place that survived by absorbing — and often appropriating — the resilient cultural forms around it. Including the lives and knowledge systems of the Aboriginal nations whose presence here stretches back tens of thousands of years. West End’s long history as a camp and gathering place for Traditional Owners echoes — however faintly — in the way people continue to gather here for cultural exchange. Brisbane’s outsider culture persists not because anyone celebrates it loudly, but because people sustain it quietly.
Conclusion: Year‑Killer, Brisbane Music, and Ritual as Renewal
Seen in that light, Pure Gratis become more than an opening act. They offer a focal point for understanding how cultural production continues here. It happens slowly, collaboratively, without fanfare.
In recent months I’ve been learning more about the deeper history of this place — through researching and writing an updated Discogs biography of Turrbal songwoman Maroochy Barambah, reading Dr Ray Kerkhove’s Aboriginal Camp Sites of Greater Brisbane, and through time spent in the 4ZZZ radio archives for my work as shop owner of Glitter Records — and that knowledge sharpens the sense of connection and continuity running through nights like this. That continuity stretches across more widely and further back than most people realise. Year‑Killer frames itself as the symbolic death of the previous year, but gatherings like this affirm something ongoing. This is a rich music scene and a unique culture that renews itself not through spectacle, but through steady participation. The work of people who keep living here, caring, and showing up.
