Monthly Archives For May 2016

Free Time Announce Australia-wide Tour

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free time

Melbourne-based guitar pop dudes Free Time have announced dates for a couple of shows across Australia, kicking off in June. Their second album In Search of Free Time came out in April and it’s a riotous little gem of loose guitars and meandering vocals that sounds damn fine live, so you should really head on down to your local designated Free Time outlet on one of these dates to catch them. Check out all the info below, and RSVP on Facebook. You can also check out the new video for the song ‘All Four Seasons’.

Thursday, 2 June – The Bird, Perth with the Spunloves & Silver Hills

Saturday, 4 June – Mojo’s, Fremantle with Peter Bibby, Kitchen People & Regular Boys

Saturday, 25 June – The Union, Sydney with Straight Arrows and Tim & the Boys

Friday, 15 July – The Tote, Melbourne with Beaches

Saturday, 16 July – Trainspotters, Brisbane with Cannon

 

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LISTEN: Tralala Blip – ‘Oceans of Love’

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tralala blip

With all the kind of dark-leaning, ‘go the fuck off’ electronic music we’ve all enjoyed listening/ getting trashed to lately, it’s sometimes a relief to just bloody relax. ‘Oceans of Love’, the title track from the new (…ish) EP by Tralala Blip is about as chill and pretty as it gets.

Tralala Blip are from Lismore in northern New South Wales, where cashed-up sea changers and real-deal hippies collide in beautiful mountainous bushland. This might be why they sound like not much else around at the moment – they’re isolated enough to do their own thing, but close enough to Brisbane to catch some ears (this latest LP is out on Bris label Tenth Court). They’ve been around since 2007, releasing albums of super intriguing experimental pop at a relaxed pace.

‘Oceans of Love’ is pure escapism – pools of water and light and all that nice stuff. The bass grooves along at the perfect head-bobbing pace, never deviating from its mission to make you feel real good. The video features a turtle swimming around looking at stuff, which is exactly what you feel like watching when you listen to this song.

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There’s a lot of hypnotic, out-there sounds on the record to love, with many of the songs mining more unsettling territory than this one, if that’s your vibe. You can hear and buy ‘Oceans of Love’ via Tenth Court.

Tralala Blip are playing the Opera House on 25 May as part of TEDxSydney.

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LISTEN: Carla Dal Forno – ‘Fast Moving Cars’ / ‘Better Yet’

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carla dal forno

Carla Dal Forno has previously released stuff as part of Melbourne/Berlin experimental acts Tarcar and F ingers, who’ve got those  ‘bleak’ ‘dark’ ‘cold’ ‘difficult’ tags stuck on so tight, mostly only weird dudes can really be bothered to get into them.

But I reckon you could get pretty into this track, weird dude or no. In ‘Fast Moving Cars’ Dal Forno is having one of those calm ‘this is how I feel, take it or leave it’ conversations that you have in your head but which never come out right in real life. But somehow Dal Forno’s made it come out perfect; you know exactly what she means when she’s telling whoever to ‘do something exciting’ and ‘yeah, come on, be reckless’. The song’s all subterranean bass and vocals, with an undercurrent of spacey buzz. Taunting vocal melodies delivering lines like ‘I get turned on by fast racing cars’ bring a bit of attitude – if not exactly ‘personality’ to her hypnotically monotone delivery.

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The video is simple and cool, too – for a song that’s about the desire for new experiences and the exotic and exciting, it has this typically Australian bush setting, recognisable from school trips and family trips and friend trips. It’s nostalgic but kind of spooky, following a girl as she walks down a path through the trees, into the river and swims away. Probably just to the other side but ~who knows~?

The B side, ‘Better Yet’, is maybe a little more typical of the cold electronic stuff we’ve been hearing a bit of lately, but it’s even more spookily beautiful – hooded robes/ candles/ ‘trying to find your way out of windowless rooms’ shit. It give me an intense feeling of unease.

 

Dal Forna lives in Berlin these days, ‘Fast Moving Cars’ is out on London label Blackest Ever Black and it has about 11,000 views on YouTube by now, so she’s already doing better than me or you. Still, have a listen.

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WATCH: Chelsea Bleach – ‘Public Safety’

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chelsea bleach

“What’s mine is mine” states lead vocalist Emily Gayfer on the long drawn wailing choruses of Chelsea Bleach’s latest single ‘Public Safety’. Chelsea Bleach have been working their feminist riot grrrl punk stylings in a ‘legit’ sense since late 2014 (unless of course you count the various impromptu gigs and house party performances), and they’ve carved out a beautiful little niche for themselves making punk music for anyone who isn’t a straight white male.

You can watch the brand spankin’ new video for ‘Public Safety’ below, produced by Sorcha Mackenzie; but if you really want to get a taste of beautiful 90s punk nostalgia, you ought to head along to the tune’s official launch at the Old Bar on May 20th (where you can also enjoy the wonderful talents of Wet Lips, Two Steps on the Water, and HABITS going off at the DJ booth).

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LISTEN: Tim Richmond – ‘Come to Papa’

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Tim Richmond Come to Papa cover 300

A chef and a publican (he co-owns the lovely Longplay in North Fitzroy), Tim Richmond has been composing songs, slowly and steadily, since 2008, using a guitar he first bought as a teenager. His last record, Dot, consisted of stark, skewed guitar pop, as idiosyncratic as you might expect from a businessman with the freedom to experiment, tinkering determinedly after hours.

Richmond’s first two solo records were made with local stalwarts like Declan Kelly, Nick Huggins, Kishore Ryan and James Cecil. For the latest Tim Richmond Group release, What’s in the Middle?, he’s convened another all-star team, with Mark Monnone of the Lucksmiths, Monnone Alone and Lost & Lonesome Recording Co. on bass and Joe Alexander of Terrible Truths and Bedroom Suck Records on drums.

Lead single ‘Come to Papa’ sounds slick and dense compared to Richmond’s earlier work. In place of Dot‘s spidery riffs, he’s opted for bright chords and effects pedals, and a characteristically agile bass line from Monnone is well paired with Alexander’s featherlight drumming. Cheerful, wry and just a little creepy, the track’s basically a football anthem for cool dads – with a sneaky change of time signature to underscore the strangeness of this chorus: ‘Come to papa / Bada bing bada boom … Booya!’

What’s in the Middle? is out on 1 July via Lost & Lonesome. You can catch Tim Richmond Group supporting Cool Sounds at Hugs & Kisses on Saturday night, and at Lost & Lonesome’s Gasometer residency on Tuesday, 17 May.

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LISTEN: Kane Ikin – Modern Pressure

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Kane Ikin

Melbourne-based producer Kane Ikin has been crafting his brand of brooding, slow burn electronica for a number of years. After a run of solid releases for the likes of 12K and This Thing, he finds a suitable home for his latest album on experimental UK label Type Recordings.

His new album, Modern Pressure, follows on from EPs Warehouses and Circular Tip, both of which saw Ikin’s sound emerge from the delightfully swampy murk of his earlier work, juxtaposing crisp sonic details with his hazy signature style.

As the title suggests, the album was created during a difficult period for Ikin. Pressures both financial and otherwise inspired a condensed period of creativity, with majority of the album written in quick succession. These struggles permeate the sound of the album, an unsettling twinge of anxiety underpinning each track.

Like Warehouses, Modern Pressure sounds like music for large concrete spaces, the cold sheen and ghostly echoes evoking stark industrial areas where programmed machinery replicates object after object with flawless precision. From the techno pulse of opener ‘Partial’ and ‘Tap Tap Collapse’ to the lumbering stumble of ‘Pulp’, the rhythmic elements play a more prominent role on the album, propelling the buried melodies along as if caught in their slipstream.

Modern Pressure is another impressive entry in Kane Ikin’s stellar catalogue, his sound growing and evolving in all the right ways.

Watch the stunning clip for ‘Tap Tap Collapse’ below and be sure to grab a copy of Modern Pressure pronto.

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