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WATCH: friendships – ‘P2M//DSK’

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friendships

Yoda said it best when he observed, “Do or do not, there is no try”. When it comes to friendships, that little green pile of wrinkles has never been more right. Either you commit to the electronic assault, or it owns you. No one dips a toe into their pool of jagged sound and emerges without a few scrapes.

Their latest track ‘P2M//DSK’ raises the bar for the Melbourne-via-WA duo, its stomping beats locking horns with eye-popping samples. There’s a sinister atmosphere hanging around, a plague to be flung at anyone within hearing distance. It’s an inescapable, twisted chant that puts friendships in contention for the insidious dance floor throne, vying with the likes of Black Vanilla, Dro Carey and CORIN.

friendships – formed by producer Nic and visual artist Misha – have dropped a new video for their scorched brand of jungle, and it’s just as intense as you’d hope. There is no way to easily explain what happens in this clip; I’d like to say it’s like David Lynch directed Tron, but that wouldn’t even be scraping the surface of the absurd Deep-Web-meets-mescaline nightmare on display here.

As iterated before, no one can afford to go through a friendships track without total dedication and focus, or they risk being spat out as a PTSD victim triggered by the slightest electronic tremor. Now, armed with a video that defies explanation and has the ability to rob the unsuspecting customer of their sanity, friendships have basically become the deadliest act in Australia.

friendships are currently at CMJ, where they’ve most likely been melting faces and stealing souls. Nic will be playing the remainder of their US dates solo, after Misha took a nasty tumble from a roof in Bushwick.

The duo is also booked to play Golden Plains next year, along with Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Royal Headache, and Sleater-Kinney. In the meantime, let’s hope Misha makes a swift and full recovery.

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FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Slum Sociable – ‘Paradigm’

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slumsociabel

Melbourne-via-Mordialloc duo Slum Sociable are flexing some serious electro-noir muscle on new track ‘Paradigm’, the second single off their debut EP, TQ. Slum Sociable’s sound summons montages of shady dudes in trench coats skulking around alleyways, and ‘Paradigm’ does everything to consolidate that feeling.

The track has the compressed beats of Ruban Nielson’s self-styled “depression funk”. It drags you over the coals at first, opening with a jagged drum loop that cuts in and out, while the boys layer it with licks from pretty much anything that will create sound. Though big on atmosphere, it’s not as melodically catchy as ‘All Night’, the first single from TQ, with its menacing vocals and sinister harmonies gliding over a slick swathe of samples.

Tom Iansek features on TQ‘s production credits, but I don’t think the talent and vision of the guys driving the project should be overshadowed by Iansek’s contributions. With every track they expand on the atmospheric jazz-hop that has had everyone with ears drooling for more since debut single ‘Anyway’ dropped almost a year ago.

Slum Sociable are heading to the US for a bunch of dates in New York for CMJ before returning for an Australia/NZ tour.

TQ is out now via Liberation.

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PREMIERE: Tourist Dollars – ‘End of Times’

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Tourist Dollars 3 - Hannah Hawkins

Tourist Dollars is the project of Jesse McCormack, enlisting brothers Dave and Aiden McMillen (Redspencer) to bring to life some tight, sweet guitar pop. The band have been silent since putting out a few tracks last year, emerging from their hibernation with ‘End of Times’, the first single off their forthcoming EP. It’s a sharp and confident track, with just enough grit in the vocals to knock the twee barber shop out of it.

The vocal melody is catchy as hell, almost totally bypassing my ears to nestle itself under my skin after just a few plays. The morose guitars borrow from the pedal boards of Mac Demarco and Kurt Vile, and the vocals are powerfully ghostlike, with an echoey, James Mercer-like quality.

‘End of Times’ is confidently produced. You can pick the influences on Tourist Dollars’ sound, but it’s so well put together they have avoided being overly derivative. They’re good in the same way as chunky steak pies – never going out of fashion.

‘End of Times’ is the first look into their debut EP, due out early 2016.

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LABEL PROFILE: LISTEN Records

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LISTEN

Amidst the footy finals madness plaguing pretty much the whole bloody country this weekend something EVEN MORE EXCITING AND IMPORTANT is happening in Melbourne. A record label focussed on supporting female and non binary musicians, LISTEN Records, is launching.

It is news to no one that sometimes it can be a bit rough not being a dude. Despite music generally being a great equaliser of gender, colour and background, a bunch of ladies grew tired of the dismissive attitudes towards women and the LGTBQIA community in the music industry. This led to Evelyn Morris (Pikelet, True Radical Miracle, Baseball) airing her dissatisfaction with the “male back-patting” permeating the Melbourne music scene, which didn’t so much hit a nerve as it did trigger a groundswell of agreement from people across the country, culminating in LISTEN.

In just over a year, the LISTEN Project has grown from being a forum for women and members of the LGBTQIA community to share their experiences in the industry, to launching an official record label. They have even teed up a conference for the end of October; a roundtable of sorts for female and gender queer artists to talk about the reason we’re all here: music.

As for where LISTEN is going, Morris is pretty happy for the project to shape itself: “Listen has been growing really fast and will continue to grow and develop into whatever it needs to be. I’m very excited by what the community can create together.”

For the label’s first foray into the public sphere, LISTEN has produced a 15-track compilation from some of Australia’s most-talented musicians. It’s a genre-spanning spread of stratospherically talented female and non binary musicians, with KT Spit, Philippa Omega, Soft Rubbish and Julia Why? all contributing tracks. LISTEN has a few releases lined up in the coming months, with Claws & Organs in November and Stina and Cinta early next year.

Because gender identities are complex and are continually glossed over by writers who reckon they can nail a definition in one blog post, I’m going to forego that whole exercise and let the women who have shared their firsthand experiences for LISTEN do the talking.

Get down to the Old Bar on Saturday, 3 October, to catch a handful of the compilation artists and show your support for some of Australia’s finest.

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PREMIERE: Zone Out – ‘Inside’

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Zone Out - Press Shot - Matthew Cribb

Melbournites Zone Out are back – albeit in a slimmed down and re-imagined form since their 2013 debut, with Ashley Bundang (Totally Mild, Ciggie Witch) and Dove Bailey (ScotDrakula) at the helm. Where they once relied on jangly riffs and Bundang’s soft vocals, their new track ‘Inside’ transposes the latter over plush, clean synths and dreamy guitars. It’s bright and sharp, like they’ve scrubbed up their earlier lo fi sound and found some melodic gems hidden underneath.

Zone Out’s new direction is a nice time capsule of how indie-pop has changed over the last few years, with Bailey and Bundang moving from the garage-centric sounds of their other aliases to sunny synths and programmed drum beats.

Prior to today, the lone track on Zone Out’s Soundcloud was a cover of ‘7 years’ by mid-noughties post-hardcore band Saosin. In addition to being my favourite song ages 14-present, it is also the last track I would have imagined Zone Out wrapping their understated synth pop around – but they bloody nailed it. Those beautiful French admirers of everything Australian at Beko Disques were pretty keen on it too, chucking it on their blush-worthy oz do it better vol2 compilation earlier this year.

As for the future, Zone Out are ploughing ahead with a full-length release slated for early next year. They’re also playing a string of support dates with The Ocean Party in October and with Sui Zhen in November.

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LOOK: Small World Festival 2015

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Small World Festival Sydney -WTH-3511

There’s a whole lot of you who read this blog outside of Sydney – and that means you probably take small scale music festivals for granted. Here in Sydney there’s a tendency towards cramming people into inconvenient spaces, charging them a buttload of money then telling them to fuck off once the show is over. That would be fine, as long as the festival was dickhead free, which mostly isn’t the case.

Along comes Small World Festival, set in suburban semi-industrial Alexandria, close enough to everywhere you want to be on the weekend & far enough from the CBD to avoid transportation anxiety. The food in the words of Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction was “some serious gourmet shit”, the crowd was chilled, booze supplied by Young Henry’s and the bands well…we all know these guys are great: Palms, DZ Deathrays, Jack Ladder & The Dreamlanders etc.

Small World Festival proved that you can go to see bunch of bands out in a park and still have a damn good time. 

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VIRTUAL MIXTAPE: Kučka

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Virtual-Mixtape_Lucy-Roleff

Perth artist Kučka aka Laura Jane Lowther first appeared on the scene with her self-titled debut EP for New Weird Australia imprint Wood & Wire. Throughout its brief but fertile life the label was responsible for releasing challenging, forward thinking music across a broad spectrum of genres making it a perfect fit for Kučka’s unconventional brand of electronica. The EPs mix of post dubstep beats, whimsical ambience and off-kilter songwriting revealed an irrefutable pop heart which caught the attention of French label Nuun Records, who quickly set about repackaging the EP to include her much lauded single ‘Phantasy’ and re-releasing it in 2014. 

After a number of highly successful singles, a chance but nonetheless high-profile collaboration with A$AP Rocky, and a slew of accolades Kučka now returns with her Unconditional EP released via new Inertia imprint Midnight Feature. The EP shows a refined, mature sound smoothing out some of Kučka’s sharper edges but leaving her eccentricities intact which should appeal to old and new fans alike.

For the fourth instalment in our Virtual Mixtape series Kučka focuses on the fertile music scene of her hometown WA, compiling her five favourite tunes from Perth.

Kucka

Illustration by Lucy Roleff

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Lower Spectrum – ‘Levity’

Opening with a repeated harp melody, Lower Spectrum gradually adds pads and a swelling bass synth into the mix and the result is an incredibly beautiful soundscape with cinematic and flowing textures. When the beats eventually drop they are accompanied by an arpeggiated synth creating a frenetic contrast to the track’s beginnings.

Methyl Ethel – ‘Depth Perception’

This track is taken from Methyl Ethyl’s incredible debut album Oh Inhuman Spectacle. Though not a single, this is my favourite track from the release. It begins with warped guitar sounds and hazy samples and gradually builds up with ‘Air’ like chords until the vocals come in towards the end of the track.

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