COMBAT WOMBAT - Political Hip-Hop from Australia Armed with only samplers, mics and turntables, powered by solar energy and an uncompromising belief in Truth over Spin, these desert nomads delve into issues of national identity, the government’s treatment of refugees, creative resistance and alternative energy with a sense of urgency that is balanced by their ability to turn words into action. They’ve traveled and toured Australia constantly, lending their expertise to a wide range of causes; working with traditional owners in the Western Desert to oppose uranium mining on Aboriginal land; providing sound systems for Reclaim the Streets parties and blockades across the country; running workshops in isolated desert communities in Central Australia; assisting with the setup of the Warumpi Studio in Papunya, Central Australia; and showing farmers how to convert their vehicles to vegetable oil. BIO COMBAT WOMBAT The band's name came about because they used to drive around in a camouflage painted van that looked like a giant wombat. ...one day whilst we were touring around the desert with our solar powered sound system (Labrats) my mate Rufus said why don't you call your band Combat Wombat... so we did. —Monkey Marc Monkey Marc met Izzy in Darwin in 1998 where they started up a solar powered party political sound system. She had this whole solar-powered sound system that she had hooked-up to this old quad-bike, a four-wheeled pedal bicycle. It was basically pedal and solar-powered. I arrived with my decks and my mixer, a sampler and an 808 drum machine, and that was kind of the start of Lab Rats and Combat Wombat. —Monkey Marc Elf joined the band in 2000 after they all met whilst living together in a squat in the heart of Sydney. The squat lasted two-and-a-half years. It was the venue of many benefit parties for the forests, land rights and Lake Cowal. It had alternative movie nights, dumpster picnics and many thriving underground and grass-roots gatherings. —MC Izzy We had this warehouse out the back that became known as the Pigeon Poo Palace, and that's where we started jamming with Elf Tranzporter. We were doing heaps of free parties and Reclaim The Streets parties at the time. So he'd just rock up and start doing some rhymes, and we just started up this friendship. —Monky Marc DJ Wasabi joined the band in 2002. Their first real performance as Combat Wombat was on a Channel Seven music programme. Of course, it was heavily censored. The song was about four-and-a-half minutes long, but by the time Channel Seven got hold of it and cut up the footage of us performing live, they chopped it down to about a minute-and-a-half. They'd taken everything out of it, you know, there were lines about Nike exploitation of workers, Shell drilling hell and none of that was in there. But they left in the stuff about cops selling smack and stuff). It seemed fairly obvious who the program sponsors were. —Monkey Marc This led to the release of the band's debut album, Labrats Solar Powered Sound System, and their subsequent signing to Elefant Traks. The band released its second album, Unsound $ystem, in March, 2005. Unsound $ystem features a number of guests artists such as The Herd's Ozi Batla and TZU's Seed MC, but the most confronting cameos are from MCG and SMS: two Afghan refugees who had escaped from Woomera detention centre. http://www.myspace.com/combatwombatforpresident