Artist

Pond

Perth, Australia • Formed 2008

Pond is a music group from Perth, Australia, active since 2008. Their discography on Gatefold includes 11 records.

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Albums tracked

In collections

2008

Since

Biography

There is more than one artist with this name, including: 1) Pond is an Australian rock band from Fremantle, Australia. 2) Pond was an American alternative rock band from Portland, Oregon, active from 1991 to 1998. 3) POND was a German electronic band founded in East Berlin in 1978. 4) Pond is an instrumental hip-hop artist. 1) Pond is an Australian psychedelic rock band from Fremantle, Western Australia, formed in 2008. Initially featuring a revolving line-up, since 2016 the band has comprised

The Arc of Pond

The pivots — what forced Pond to reinvent.

The Farmhouse Fuzz Years
Between 2009 and 2013, Pond was basically an open-door communal jam session for the Perth psych scene. They recorded Beard, Wives, Denim on a farm in Sullivan Rock and knocked out Hobo Rocket as a dirty, spontaneous heavy rock record. Everything ran on blown-out guitar amps, Kevin Parker on the kit, and Nick Allbrook screaming over blown preamps. It was raw, unpolished, and completely allergic to commercial gloss.
The Technicolor Space Pivot
By 2015's Man It Feels Like Space Again, the band stopped treating themselves like an off-the-cuff garage band and leaned hard into widescreen glam and prog. They stretched arrangements into multi-part suites and started layering synths with the same muscle they used to reserve for fuzz pedals. Allbrook's theatrical vocals moved front and center, moving the group away from basement jams and into ambitious, maximalist psych-pop.
The Synth-Funk Dystopia
The Weather and Tasmania saw the guitars take a back seat to vintage drum machines, sequenced synth lines, and Prince-style falsettos. Working closely with Parker behind the mixing board in Fremantle, they turned apocalyptic climate anxieties into slick, danceable art-pop. The fuzz was replaced by laser-focused bass grooves from Jay Watson and sharp, jagged rhythms. It cemented their identity as a distinct, studio-smart powerhouse rather than a psych-rock footnote.

Influences

Prince — Allbrook and Watson have routinely cited Prince as their baseline for rhythm and vocal swagger. You hear it explode on tracks like '30000 Megatons' and 'Sweep Me Off My Feet' through the gated LinnDrum hits and falsetto flourishes. It took their songwriting out of the garage and onto the dance floor.
David Bowie — The band has explicitly pointed to Bowie's Berlin trilogy and Diamond Dogs era as the blueprint for theatrical art-rock. Allbrook’s melodramatic vocal delivery and androgynous stage persona borrow heavily from Ziggy-era grit. It gave them permission to be weird without sacrificing giant pop hooks.
T. Rex — Marc Bolan's boogie rhythms and fuzzy, saturated guitar licks are all over early cuts like 'Moth Wings' and 'Fantastic Explosion of Time.' They lifted the swaggering, three-chord glam stomp and drenched it in tape delay. It kept their early records loose, greasy, and fun.
Talking Heads — The neurotic, jittery funk of Remain in Light directly informed the rhythm section on Tasmania and 9. Watson’s bass lines shifted toward tight, interlocking grooves under paranoid lyrical themes. It provided the architectural skeleton for their modern synth-driven sound.
Can — Pond has consistently name-checked the Krautrock legends for teaching them how to build hypnotic, repetitive grooves out of live group improvisation. The motorik drive and extended instrumental freakouts on tracks like 'Man It Feels Like Space Again' trace straight back to Jaki Liebezeit's pocket. It gave their sprawling jams actual discipline.