In late 1983, Hugo Race joined ex-The Birthday Party Nick Cave in his new venture Nick Cave: Man or Myth?, a band that would become known as The Bad Seeds. He would later form The Wreckery with Edward Clayton-Jones. Then there is Hugo Race and The True Spirit, a “freewheeling fraternity of like-minded free spirits with a shared love of psychedelic rock and roots music” since 1989. At the end of last month the band released their first album in seven years, The Spirit. From the band: “We built a studio in a house out on the city’s edge to slowly develop the songs at our own speed with no pressure. We’d never had the luxury before of playing new songs live before recording them. When we felt the time was right, we taped a lot of the final album with Idge at his Soundpark Studio, capturing our sound with ambient mics and vintage processors. But the vibe of that house and the all-night recording sessions with the background buzz of cicadas and the homemade instruments in the tool shed, it’s all still there. We wanted to create a definitive album for The True Spirit and took our sweet time about it. This record is it.” The Eastern, Ballarat – August 14 & The Bridge, Castlemaine – August 15