Newcastle, Australia (2004 - present) Alps is the solo project of Chris Hearn, from Tamworth, New South Wales, Australia and now living in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Alps plays a mixture of pop and experimental music, using electronic, electric and acoustic instruments, drawing inspiration from Australia and New Zealand's rich history of pop, folk and noise via labels like M Squared, Xpressway, Terse Tapes, Flying Nun, Spanish Magic.
There are two bands with this name: 1) The Coolies were an Atlanta-based band that put together two off-beat records on DB records. The first, 1986's dig . . .?, was a set of Simon & Garfunkel songs with weird styles (surf, psychedelia, funk, etc). In 1988 they released Doug (and thus having their two albums naming out a 1980s video game fave, Dig Doug), a rock opera that tells the story of a skinhead who murders a transvestite short-order cook, sells the victim's recipes to gain fame and fortune only to subsequently develop paranoia and substance abuse and end up in the gutter.