Hailing from Adelaide, South Australia, J & The Rippers were an experimental rock group active from 2004 to 2011, after an experimental jam between Jake Ripp, Nick Drift, and Bill Terhym was recorded and became the first in what was originally believed to be a trilogy of albums called 'The Extra Tension Chord'.

There were always rumours of there being a fourth instalment of these Extra Tension Chord albums, and the band would often add fuel to the rumours by saying that it was "both the best and worst Rippers album but no one will ever get to hear it because the masters were lost."
It was long assumed that this "lost" album was just an in-joke between the band members and that it never really existed. Others believed this mythical album's master was "lost" because it contained embarrassing audio of one of the many times the band broke up due to "growing tensions".

Fast forward to 2020, when I found a badly scratched CD in a lot of random music gear that I won at auction. The CD had "J & The Rippers - Extra Tension Chord 4" scrawled all over the top. I put it in my computer to see if it would read it, and lo and behold, it worked!
After doing a little research on the band, I ended up getting in contact with them.

This is what I found out:

The Extra Tension Chord 4 was recorded sometime between 2006 and 2009, but exact dates could not be given because each member gave me conflicting dates as to when the album was recorded. The only thing they could agree on was that it was recorded before 'The Extra Tension Chord 3' and that it was never released because they lost the master. They also explained to me the evolution of the band, and how members were being added to the group so frequently that it was starting to become more of a community than a band.
They mentioned some notable "community" members like: The Taipan Man, Iggy McJigger, Zebede West, and Rick Reichs aka. Fish Stix, who was their drummer for a good part of their existence.
At one point, they had over 48 active members in the band, and broke up officially in 2011 after several attempts to get everybody in the same room at once failed.

J & The Rippers self-released 10 albums during their six-and-a-half year reign as Adelaide's most unknown band, all of which are now pretty hard to find, and as if in some cruel twist of fate, have all had their masters lost due to hardware failures and the likes.

Jake, Bill and Nick have given AFR the honour of releasing their lost album, "The Extra Tension Chord 4: A Dissent Into Madness", for the first time ever, and we are glad to have it in our catalogue.

Please enjoy this once-lost experimental rock gem from Adelaide's most unknown band, J & The Rippers.

- Maton Slivelgrist.