Snob Scrilla – ‘Heartbreak Scorsese’

You’ve no doubt heard the original Snob Scrilla track getting thrashed on Triple J lately. ‘Heartbreak Scorsese’ is another taste off his forthcoming debut album Day One, which I can confirm is fantastic. When I get the green light I’ll be giving you guys more of a taste of the diverse hip hop/electronica/indie stuff that Scrilla pulls from and nails. Here’s a Groove Terminator interpretation of the aforementioned latest single, which adds a distinct French house flavour replete with chiptune flourishes.

“I’ll never change” he shouts in the chorus. After listening to Day One a few times, I hope he’s telling truth.

http://www.myspace.com/snobscrilla

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Spoonbill -‘Feather Leather’

Spoonbill – ‘Finger Food’

Spoonbill is an electronic artist from Melbourne whose stylistically disparate samples and synths combine to form scattershot but unexpectedly cohesve pieces. While undoubtedly an electronic record, he regularly uses the tools of digital production to explore other genres like jazz, country and hip hop to great effect.

‘Finger Food’ is a short track from his latest album, Zoomorphic, and  is built around a beat of sampled mouth percussion and potato chips that resembles the incidental music on old-school Nickelodeon – that is, until the sinister synth line kicks in. ‘Feather Leather,’ on the other hand, is the de facto centrepiece of the album and combines squelching synths with a clap-happy disco beat and, oddly enough, a jazz trumpet. It’s a much more fleshed out piece and, while repetitive in structure, its arrangement is intricate and evolving enough to entertain and excite.

www.myspace.com/spoonbillsound

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Pikelet – ‘A Bunch’

For several years now, Pikelet has been releasing music that transposes elements of experimental music into a pop framework . Far from dissolving the intellectual ambition in the process, the accessibility this introduces only increases the potency of her production trickery and hypnotic song structures.

‘A Bunch’ is actually a couple of years old but is posted here in celebration of Pikelet’s recently released EP Not So Still. It’s also the only Pikelet song I had access to but is nonetheless a great slice of Australian pop music that strives to be more than the sum of its parts. Built upon sparse but near-tribal rhythm, the song consists of little more than a chorus of backing vocals, a harpsichord/zither-like instrument and the multi-tracked vocal line. I’m not necessarily one for less-is-more but ‘A Bunch’ provides a pretty strong argument for it.

If you like it, check out her eponymous debut from which this track is pulled as well as the afforementioned latest EP.

http://www.myspace.com/ovalyn

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The Pet Rocks – ‘Easy Tiger’

Wayward Ways is the brilliant second album from The Pet Rocks. Apparently recorded as far back as 2006 and released a decade after their debut, it thankfully saw the light of day toward the end of last year.

Sounding like something of Beck’s last album with added slacker-rock nonchalance, Easy Tiger is one of the best Australian songs I’ve heard all year. The verse kicks along with a funky strut before the glorious chorus, which contrasts the rush of the eight-note instrumentation with singer Nick Kriesler’s warm croon begging the title character to “take it easy.”

The album as a whole stands up incredibly well and often enters less immediate, funky musical spaces than the pop offering above. Through varying passages of bassline grooves, walls of distortion, jaunty piano, and falsett, the album is bound together through an unwavering quality of compositions and the tight performances. I just hope it’s not another decade until we hear more from these guys.

www.myspace.com/thepetrocksband

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Goodnight Owl – ‘Maps & Compasses’

My second post in a row on a folktronic artist – is it the latest trend for Australian bands? Who knows, but if you’re a folk artist then consider adding some beats and laptop kids should maybe sample an acoustic guitar? It could work.

Regardless of how questionably ubiquitous I claim this genre is becoming, Goodnight Owl would likely still stand out of the pack. Again, there is nothing terribly “out there” in terms of the combination of the analogue and digital elements and the songs sound roughly like Josh Pyke if he used an MPC instead of a drummer with brushes. The beats fizz along rapidly beneath subtle, oscillating synth sounds while the acoustic guitar/voice play out  a solid although standard folk-pop tune, making neither element too far left of centre and generally accessible.

Perhaps a good point of reference is that Goodnight Owls share a producer (in Nick Huggins) with Whitley and Seagull. It exists in the same space of music that doesn’t necessarily challenge but has an endearingly sweet pop sensibility.

www.myspace.com/goodnightowl

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Jackson Jackson – ‘Devil In Me’ (Feat. Phrase)

I’m going to confess that I’d never really listened to Jackson Jackson until this one landed in my inbox. I knew they were somehow related to The Cat Empire and assumed they had a similar roots-pop meets jam-band  output. Turns out I was completely wrong.

Apparently Jackson Jackson are some sort of electro/folk band – and not in the same vein as, say, The Books. Though they try their hand at dissolving organic/digital boundaries, they don’t aim for high art so much as much as the dance floor. Though it might be too deliberately plodding to really shake up a club, this still sounds like The Presets remixing a quirky folk-pop song. The beats are sparse and not too polished and are just as potent when they drop out and leave the catchy vocal hook to shine.

You can get it for free here: http://www.jacksonjacksonmusic.com/freedownload/

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The Scare – ‘No Money’

If the press release is to believed then the title ‘No Money’ is an apt summation of the past two years for The Scare. After only a few listens I can’t quite make out all the words of the verses but I assume they large spin tales reflecting the band’s (if not the world’s) financial woes that they shout about in the song’s refrain. ‘No Money’ continues the band’s pursuit of producing songs that make sense within both a pop and and post-punk context, again managing to balance each element equally and cleanly and with an energy that practically bleeds through the speakers.

The song is driven by a metallic, distorted bass groove and a thumping floor tom/back beat combination. Singer Kiss Reid shrieks like Jack White fronting a punk band while the guitars add fuzzy punctuation to the verses and wirey 8-note lines throughout the chorus. It’s not all bleak though – if anything, the song sounds like a party designed to distract from the titular economic woes, an attitude accentuated in the ‘woo’-ing backing vocals and Reids percussive ‘ha ha ha!’ vocal turns.

‘No Money’ is from The Scare’s forthcoming sophomore album, ‘oozevoodoo,’ which I’m now officially really excited about.

www.myspace.com/thescare

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