2007’s Seven Seven is a highwater mark in Machine Translations’ discography. Combining pop elements with uneasy folk and electronic edgings, the album consolidated the band’s standing with listeners and live audiences and continued to explore the rich seams unearthed on 2002’s Triple J favourite “Happy”. Containing the single “You’ll Change” which made an impact internationally, the album also features key MT tracks “Oh Ma The Sea Is Rising” and “Need A Miracle”.

To celebrate the re-release the vaults have been unlocked and a side and a half of previously unreleased material includes the hypnotic ‘Hiding Like The Moon’ and the small-folk masterpiece ‘Sun Goes Down’. Also included is stand-alone single ‘Telepathic Head’. The album is being released in Australia by Half A Cow and in the US by Happiness.

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Machine Translations started off as a bunch of Greg J. Walker’s 4-track home recordings and gradually grew into a band that fearlessly explored the far corners of indie pop, folk and electronica while maintaining a strong singer-songwriter core. Known for bringing an eclectic range of instruments and experimental sounds into an indie pop context, the band has toured and released edgy pop tunes, lush ballads and skewed folk/electronica wig-outs over a long and productive period from the 90s through to the present day.

During this time Greg J. Walker has become a sought after producer with credits including Jess Ribiero, Paul Kelly, Darren Hanlon, Sodastream, Jen Cloher, C.W. Stoneking and many more, as well as composing soundtracks for film and TV.

Machine Translations has released 9 critically acclaimed albums and has an extensive live CV including shows with international artists such as Bonnie Prince Billy, P.J. Harvey, Cat Power and Steven Malkmus. In 2024 Machine Translations perform with a new expanded 7-piece line-up and continue to blur genre boundaries and explore new musical terrain.

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First released in 2002 by Machine translations on their seminal Happy album, She Wears A Mask is being re-released in 2020 by Half A Cow to give solace to all those struggling with their Covid masks during this difficult time. Written and recorded in a building site shed on a bush block south of Sydney, the song came together quickly and became one of the band’s most successful tracks.

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The first album re-released on Half A Cow is Holiday in Spain which first came out in 1999. Walker co-produced the album with Kimmo Vennon and the album features Kirsty Stegwazi, Andy Lewis (RIP) and Jonathan Nix amongst the revolving band of musicians who appear on Machine translations albums. Reviews of the album at the time included Kelsey Munro (Sydney Morning Herald): “a criminally ignored underground classic” and Comes with a Smile‘s Matt Dornan, who poetically wrote: “no disguising the homemade feel of both music and sparse packaging, but there’s certainly a twisted core to this antipodean walkabout through sonic pastures new”.

Happy was Machine translations fifth album and their second on Spunk Records, following 2001’s Bad Shapes. It includes the song “She Wears A Mask” which received a lot of airplay around Australia, and, as a reviewer wrote, “one that everybody loved; a wistful track that’s beautiful, simple and catchy.”

If you could sum up Happy in two words, they would be weird and wonderful. The New York Times described it as a “precious mix of light orchestration, inward-gazing songwriting and post-rock experimentation”.

In mid-2019 Spunk Records released the album on vinyl for the first time and the cd is also available from them as well. Half A Cow has been put in charge of getting Happy up there in the digital age. Follow the links!

Melbourne launch of Happy vinyl release!