Leroy Lee – ‘Drawing Smoke’ (mp3)

Missy Higgins recently teamed up with the radio station Triple J and their website triplejunearthed.com to help choose unsigned artists to open for her on her latest national tour.  Sydney boy Leroy Lee was chosen by Missy for her Sydney show.  A couple of years ago, especially in Australia, there was an explosion of roots/folk artists when guys like John Butler and Xavier Rudd took off, and a lot of it started to sound the same – at the end of the day, there’s only a finite number of options when it comes to a voice and an acoustic guitar.

But there’s something about Leroy’s music that stands out.  Maybe its because he moves away from blues influences like so many others and instead embraces more pop-esque melodies of acts like The Beatles and Elliott Smith (and you can hear a lot of Elliott Smith in the layered vocal harmonies).

http://www.myspace.com/leroyleemusic

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Something about this clip is so mesmerising.

http://www.jakob.co.nz
http://www.myspace.com/jakobmusic

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Kit Pop – ‘Less Focus’ (mp3)

Whilst attempting to begin my remix career via the Triple J Unearthed website, I came across the electronic works of Kit Pop, an artist based in Perth.  I’ve always harboured a love for glitchy electronica, and his track ‘Less Focus’ takes the cake.

It’s a cut-and-paste-and-fuck affair, influenced by hip-hop and abstract electronica.  Make of it what you will, but it’s a pretty sweet tune if you dig this kinda sonic manipulation.

http://www.kit-pop.com
http://www.myspace.com/kitpop

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The Seabellies – ‘Our Ghosts Don’t Disappear’

Six piece placid pop group The Seabellies begin this track from their Wave Your Fingers EP with a quiet play of boy sweetness and an acoustic guitar, the innocent loveliness of Trent Grenell’s voice slowly drowned in strings and distant drums. Billowing around in fragile gusts, the song takes flight half way through in the classic strike of an early period Elton John piano part before collapsing into the Autumn leaves again, drifting aimlessly with the ghosts of lost love. Eventually it builds up again, into a storm of sounds and strings and sweet, fervent, fragile dreams that crumble away with the end of the song, leaving you transported but melancholy.

www.myspace.com/theseabellies

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Mr. Percival – ‘All Of The People’

It seems like every week I’m falling in love with some new Aussie release, and I guess that’s the benefit of working at a music mag and a radio station – you get a flood of new CDs crossing your desk every day.

So my new musical infatuation comes in the form of Out of the Loop, the sophomore release from the truly amazing Bondi-based singer Mr. Percival (or Darren Percival as he’s otherwise known).  There’s not enough space to say how much I’m loving this album at the moment.  It’s such a positive, uplifting record and Darren’s voice is just phenomenal.  I mean, this guy trained under Bobby McFerrin – the same guy who sung ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’!!

Influenced strongly by gospel music, Out of the Loop is created solely by Darren’s voice – every drum beat, shaker, vocal backing and double bass is mimicked and created by Darren.  By utilising a variety of loop pedals, he records the backings and then has the ability to stop and start them whenever he wants.  Check out his MySpace page for videos, because it’s a hard one to understand if you’re not up with the workings of loop pedals. 

So everything you hear on Out of the Loop is created live, and that fact alone is mindblowing, and that’s before you even hear his heaven-sent voice.  He’s toured with some of Australia’s biggest acts, as well as graced the recordings of many a fantastic artist, including trumpeter extraordinaire James Morrison (not the UK bloke). 

He’s playing heaps of dates around Sydney, so go see him if you live there – expand your musical horizons, break free of your indie safety net and… just listen to this album!

http://www.mrpercival.com
http://www.myspace.com/mrpercival

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