Donnie Sloan – ‘Call You Up’ (mp3)
Don’t really know much about this guy, there’s no bios on his myspace. Tried to get him to give me a bit of a story but he never really got back to me. I hear this song get dropped quite often in clubs here and it has that 1980s Miami Horror feel to it. Should be handy for your next party.
KIM – ‘Wet n Wild (Riot In Belgium Mix)’ (mp3)
La decadanse had blogged this early in February and if you’re an overseas club dj deeply interested in the Australian electro scene then this type of incestuous remixing is probably your dream mix that you’d drop in the next Ipod battle night or whatever. This track was taken off KIM‘s oh-so exclusive Japan only released album System Breakdown. Not entirely sure why he didn’t release this in Australia, must be some marketing strategy of some sort. I’ve just listened to the track a few times and I think I like the original version better, or at least the one that I hear in clubs here anyway. For all I know it could be some sort of Bang Gang Van She Tech dub mix or whatever.
Stature:Statue – ‘Make Haste Roman’
I used to live in a house of 6 people, 3 of which are big fans the prog rock/metal genre who think Omar from Mars Volta could be the second coming of the Christ. Of course I quickly got tired of it and just like the 1970s reaction to overbloated and self indulged ‘progressive’ music I turned to punk. It’s been a few years since I’ve given a serious listen to anything that can be roughly described as ‘prog’ but a few weeks ago I saw a band from Queensland called Stature:Statue. They’re definitely worth catching at least once even if you hate this kind of music as I did when I saw them. Very impressive live, I am only going to describe their sound as a cross between At The Drive-In and Blood Brothers. Anymore than that I’d be using overused and oft misunderstood adjectives that shouldn’t be used in music reviews, but common in bad label press releases. Anyway these recordings don’t do them justice, catch them live when they’re touring next in your town.
Belles Will Ring – ‘Mad Love’ (Adam Baby! remix)
I like this remix even though it reminds me a lot of those INXS club remixes very common in the early 2000s (what are they calling this decade, noughties?). Adam Inglis’ been making music since 80s in various bands before switching to DJing and club remixes under the moniker adambaby, did plenty of bootleg type remixes of old artists one of which earned him a play with BBC Radio One’s Pete Tong. He seems to have a big catalog of music work on his website. For me these kind of remixes are real hit or miss, but if you find something you enjoy from his repertoire do link me up.
Soft Tigers – ‘Mr. Ice Cream’
This song came out more than a year ago as a demo rotated on FBi Radio and managed to get some spot plays on national broadcaster Triple J. Even though they got the attention then, it took Soft Tigers a long time before coming out with a finished album. They’ve signed to Below Par Records/OK!Relax an unlikely label to be interested more known for their punkish leaning roster of Kisschasy, Something With Numbers, Die!Die!Die! and The Scare. This song has a classic ageless summer anthem to it, that if it were to gain the favour of mainstream radio it probably will be played for years to come in classic fm stations. Wait out for the hilarious line in the bridge that suggests the Soft Tigers guys weren’t really thinking about ice cream when they wrote this song.
Rand and Holland – ‘Night is Only Young’
Last week Rand and Holland’s manager Eliza emailed me about their new stuff and warned me that this was more folk oriented than the kind of music I usually blog about. She’s kinda right, but I was a big fan of acoustic music and can still appreciate good songwriting over the now dominant beat in modern songs that’s oh-so-now. I’ve heard of these guys before and I have their previous recording. I wasn’t so impressed and I guess it’s very easy to be ageists when it comes to evaluating music – listening to hundreds of demos a week gets the ear tired pretty quick.
But Night is Only Young is a true gem of a find. Although the subject matter is about late night hanging out, somehow I get the feel that if I were to listen to this song on Sunday afternoon nursing a hangover, I would just feel better. It’s soothing. It makes things slightly easier. It would remind me why I drank so much the night before.
I don’t know much else about the duo, except that their record will be coming out on the prestigious Spunk label who is also home to locals Clue to Kalo and Holly Throsby. I’ve yet to hear this track on the radio, so hopefully someone will pick it up soon.
Love Of Diagrams – ‘The Pyramid’
After four months living in Melbourne I’ve identified a few qualities that to me define a subset of the Melbourne sound: the Fitzroy bands. Big bottom end, statement-type lyrics and a clear disregard for pop songwriting structures. Fitzroy is a self declared chic suburb of Melbourne akin to Sydney’s King St side of Newtown, but which still has a fertile music scene thanks to the multiple small venues that are allowed to operate under Melbourne’s more sensible entertainment laws. Going for an excursion into this scene every second person I meet is in a band and they all more or less follow the same values when it comes to songwriting, or even performance. It’s not big on punk, and has idealised notions of cool, inner city independence and don’t give a fuck attitude.
Numerous bands play in the scene, some of which has been covered here (have a guess at which ones). But the most famous and successful export has got to be Love of Diagrams. Signed to Matador and getting critical live reviews overseas LOD looks the most equiped and is in the best position to take this sound out to the world. I have to admit after seeing so many bands in this scene, if I didn’t know LOD beforehand I probably will not be able to pick them out from the rest. But they got lucky, their song or the first few bars of the catchy ‘No Way Out’ was played in the OC, and good breaks came after that. This song is the first single out taken from their upcoming album ‘Mosaic’, recorded by Bob Weston (Shellac) in Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio Studios.
Latest Comments
V
Still trying to purchase!!!ANTHONY J LANGFORD
Cool track. Congrats Joshua. Hope the release is a success.Tristan
Man I love these guys. I can't believe they are not releasing any new music. I've been to so many…sophie
^^ I love Grimes! Banoffee is one of my new favorite music artists! :) I love With Her, Reign Down,…Ace
Read your review then listened to the EP. Fantastic ! Different to most hardcore punk I listen to. Somewhat more…