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PREMIERE: Head Clouds – ‘New Light of the Equinox’

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Head Clouds

There’s a place for articulate, indie pop music and the best-of is filed somewhere between the Decemberists and whatever happened during the blow-organ resurgence that was 2005.

If there’s one decent deed you do today to bring it back, give Head Clouds’ earlier EP, Up On Hellfire Ridge, a listen. It’s a sample of the band’s dreamy lyricsm that’s a bit early Augie March and akin to what Midlake might have penned after a weekend bender.

The first track from their new EP, ‘New Light of the Equinox’ is about “new perspectives”, which the band comparatively strings up against guitar flourishes and Jayke Maddison’s pastoral croon: “You rode me into the dust, I was a bull in the new light of the equinox”. 

All the machinations in the first part of the track are comfy, plodding on as you would with the ebb and flow of Satisfactory Indie Rock Song. The guitar syncs with the vocal; the vocal marries the guitar in the verse. This is until the bridge where the track scatters out into an instrumental waltz and the guys start waxing lyrical about telecomms et al. Head Clouds’ sound is incredibly polished for a band who’ve been releasing stuff independently. You get the feeling that the slight cowbell might be abandoned for some crash symbols, Win Butler style at any moment. Lucky, the band are good at showing restraint in song and form – and it’s working in their favour.

Head Clouds are releasing their new EP very, very soon. More info below:

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LISTEN: Angie – ‘Out of Age’

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Angie

It’s always kind of bugged me that not being able to really sing has never stopped dude musicians from giving it a crack, and being liked. Most of female-fronted bands, even the most underground, that get any attention have a ‘pretty’ voice front and centre. There’s nothing pretty about the vocal on Sydney artist and musician Angie’s newest single ‘Out of Age’. It’s monotone, almost tuneless and rubs up against the guitar line like steel wool. It’s attitude that’s important here – a stretched kind of desperation that keeps you on edge for the whole song, an uneasy balance between drone and hook.

‘Power Pop’ were never words I thought I’d be ascribing to Angie after her excellently dark and dogged first EP Turning, but she herself calls this a track “a pop tribute”, With a guitar line as huge as the one here, the shoe fits. But that guitar just repeats over and over – never breaking into the big sunny chorus that you’d expect from someone other than Angie. It drills itself into your head and stays there.

‘Out of Age’ is the first single off Angie’s forthcoming record Free Agent, due out later via Rice Is Nice this year. And an exciting one, because it tells us that anything could happen – throw your expectations in the trash.

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INTRODUCING: Low Lux

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Low Lux

Low Lux are an assortment of five Sydney musicians, including the vocals of Daisy Dowd whose string skills were honed in the now disbanded Bridezilla.

Their debut single is ‘Rivers Roll’. Aside from their neat use of alliteration, the track is the a brooding melodic statement that turns relationship goofs into smooth indie rock.

The dark undertones of ‘Rivers Roll’ are reminiscent of Warpaint, with Dowd’s sweet staccato voice flitting across the verses before agitating their way into the chorus where the band is allowed to lush-out. There is plenty of bass and guitar licks throughout the track, with layered instrumentation thrown in for good measure. 

The single is accompanied by a lovely clip which is great if you’d ever wondered what pretty musicians would look like under red and blue cellophane-wrapped light. Spoiler alert: they’re still pretty.

Low Lux are releasing their debut EP on the 21st June at Newtown Social Club in Sydney.

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PREMIERE: Love Migrate – ‘Pippa’s In The Highlands’

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Love-Migrate

This is the first we’ve heard from Love Migrate in over a year – and the newest track from their upcoming EP, Shimmer Through the Night.

According to the band, the song is “devoted to the loss of love”. As Love Migrate usually do, melancholia and old flames are poured all over the lyric sheet. The band always seem to piece the parts back together with earnest though. They do it again here.

In ‘Pippa’s In The Highlands’, there’s a vacant space between Eddie Alexander’s lyrical lines where those stark 4/4 drums become so apparent. It exists only for a fraction of a moment, but feels suspended for much longer. Eddie’s bleak, but tender disposition makes this emptiness seem all more defined. This track is like being slowly coaxed into someone’s bedroom; steered around memory stakes, peering at stuff other’s ex-lovers forgot to collect – and then taking it.

‘Pippa’ seems nice. Wonder what she’s doing now. Catching the last train home. Doing groceries on a Tuesday. Hanging out with someone else in the same bars.
For all star-crossed anxieties, life just goes on (one Kurt Vile riff at a time).

The band have been kept busy in holed up in warehouses, bedrooms and other music making spaces around Melbourne’s northern suburbs recording their new EP. Shimmer Through The Night is out through Flightless/Remote Control on Friday May 22nd.

Love Migrate are launching the EP at the Gasometer Hotel on Thursday the 28th of May with Sunbeam Sound Machine & Crepes.

PREMIERE: Jarrow – ‘Last Monday’

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jarrow

The name of Dan Oke’s first EP is Legitimate; a credible slice of reassurance every musician needs to know that their music is Out There and in the ears and hearts of the people Dan Oke makes music under the guise of Jarrow. He recorded the EP between his home in Footscray and a beach house in Anglesea. Oke sent us an email last week with this tune, and I’ve spent the rest of the week over his excellent older material flavouring the best-of scuzzy drum machines and Connan Mockasin’s Caramel.

Here’s the internet debut of ‘Last Monday’, so feel spesh everyone. It’s a lo-fi, upbeat strummer, with the treble switch turned up somewhere between Snowy Nasdaq and the dust balls gathering at Fergus Miller’s feet.

According to Oke, the track is about routine consequences of routine drinking on a school night, presumably penned around the Bermuda Triangle of venues (Tote, Gaso, Old Bar).

Support Jarrow by purchasing his debut EP, Legitimate, available on Bandcamp from the 14th of May.

 

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LABEL PROFILE: Breathlessness

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Breathlessness is a tiny, close-knit label formed in Hoppers Crossing, a suburb on Melbourne’s outer edges, where the label’s founders and current signees grew up. (A number of them even lived on the same street). The first Breathlessness releases appeared last year – Vulpix’s debut EP, Swarms, and Finx by Splendidid – and the label’s third outing, the self-titled EP from psychedelic duo Sun Bazel, came out in March.

The collective consists of only five or six core players: Jordan Barrow of Vulpix moonlights as a guitarist in Zac Terry’s band, Splendidid. Daniel Prieto, who plays bass in both oufits, is releasing his debut EP as DPDP (titled Afterglow) through Breathlessness in June. And last summer two members of the Splendidid live band, Jack Foy and Harry Hayes, wrote the material that became Sun Bazel’s first release.

Both Vulpix and Splendidid make sweet-sounding dream pop that could have come from a four-track abandoned circa 2008 and unearthed in someone’s basement like forgotten treasure. Built from rippling arpeggios and close, fuzzy drums, these tunes are heavy on the reverb and not afraid to enter the red. Sun Bazel’s psych-pop, meanwhile, circles woozily, composed of deceptively simple lines of detuned synths and phasered guitar.

Breathlessness is hosting a label party at the Shadow Electric Bandroom this Sunday, 26 April. (Stay calm – they’ve explained everything you need to know in this easy-to-follow tutorial). Splendidid and Vulpix will be performing live, and there’ll be DJ sets from Sun Bazel and DPDP. Erik Scerba, who mixed and mastered most of the label’s releases, will also be DJing. Scerba makes Tumblr-fied hip hop beats as Yoshimitsu, his sounds skipping from cloud rap to glo-fi and warped muzak. Don’t miss it.

Tickets to Sunday’s show are available through the Shadow Electric website.

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INTRODUCING: Groeni

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Groeni

Wellington’s Al Green has been making music as Groeni for a little while now but has started grabbing some international attention with the recent release of his new EP, Hewn. The sophomore release is five songs of beautifully down-beat electronica, which fits somewhere nicely in the continuum between Vacation-era Shlohmo and the more recent Caribou stuff.

I first saw Groeni at Chronophonium festival back in January and  was taken aback by how developed the sound was for something that began life as a bedroom recording project. Reverbed 808’s rang out across the fern-covered Tapu Valley and I swear I’ve never heard a more perfect match of sound and environment in my life.

Labels like ‘post-dubstep’ or ‘bass-music’ get thrown around a lot these days and are enough to make you want to lose your lunch. Groeni, however, distills the best of those sounds into a warped, yet graceful whole which will have you day-dreaming in no time.

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