Tagged By Sydney

PREMIERE: S M Jenkins – ‘Mikrowave’

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SM Jenkins B+W

Forget cohabiting and childbirth. When all the records you once revelled in start reaching their milestone second and third reissues, that’s when it’s appropriate to start mourning your age. In just a few months, it’ll be almost 21 years since Pavement released their third record, Wowee Zowee –  an opus full of stoner oddities, and songs about castration, brazil nuts and other stuff only Stephen Malkmus could apply his half-baked, poetic genius to.

It’s a decent milestone to reference – as Steve Bourke has done. S M Jenkins (Malkmus’ alias on Wowee Zowee) is the new name of the Step-Panther frontman’s solo project. ‘Mikrowave’ is the first track off his upcoming EP, Out There In The Zone.

Bourke wrote and recorded the EP when he was living in “relative isolation” in Mittagong, in the NSW Highlands located 110KM out of Sydney. Bourke is on his lonesome here, so Step-Panther fans shouldn’t be expect the Superchunk anthems (cc: ‘User Friendly’, ‘Zombie Summer’) the band stirred up on Strange But Nice.

‘Mikrowave’ rolls on at a steady pace with the kind of breakfast positivity Kurt Vile rallied when he brought out ‘Walkin’ on A Pretty Day’. Try as you may – it’s hard to hate this song. Bourke’s nuances are affected with that self-effacing slacker drawl, here ironically singing about “saving time” instead of wasting it. Bourke notes that the track was about “trying to make the best out of whatever you’ve got going on”. And he does – as he murmurs some perspective over ‘Mikrowave’s melodic mid-tempo guitar line, assuring us that it’s alright to be just where you are. 

 

Out There In The Zone is set for release in late February.

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PREMIERE: Anatole – Surrounds EP

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anatole surrounds

Surrounds, the second EP from Anatole (Jonathan Baker), landed today via Tommy Faith’s impeccable TEEF Records. A graduate of the Sydney Conservatorium, Baker wrangled a bunch of his former classmates to perform on the release, which features strings, piano and clarinet alongside his trumpet and laptop creations. Sophisticated and soft-hued, these organic elements are subtly propelled by light-handed production and gentle beats that skew towards handclaps, woodblocks and jazzy snares. There are vocals from Melbourne-based singers Rosebud Leach and Tash Parker, too, but Anatole’s pristine music is just as compelling without the added human element.

The Surrounds EP is officially out on 18 December. For now you can stream it on Spotify, and preorder here.

Anatole launches the EP this Friday at Sydney’s Red Rattler.

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INTRODUCING: Pills

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Pills make some great trip-hop. Pretty basic sentence, gets the job done. But do you have any idea of how rare that is in Sydney, let alone done well? We’ve got an overdose of incredible electronic stuff, a small army of fantastic hip-hop artists, but the melding of the two? You might as well be asking for the Knights to take out a premiership.

After a few promising singles, Pills have hit their stride with ‘Slugger’, a scowling grimace twisted into a syrupy spellbinder. A taunting mantra twirls around clipped production that wouldn’t feel out of place as the soundtrack to a snake charming session. It’s friendly – but you just know that if you let your guard down, it will bite you.

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Pills also have an awesome video to boot, featuring unsettling strobes, bottle-sipping bedroom boogying, and a general atmosphere that David Lynch wishes he could call his own. It’s disconcerting, weird and beautiful; a perfect match to the song itself.

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PREMIERE: Mope City – ‘W.O.Y (Wave of Youth)’ Video

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mope city

There’s a huge list of obvious reasons as to why record stores are still vital, but my personal favourite has to go to the art of the ‘recommendation’. It’s a lot harder than it sounds; trying to get the right balance between something that matches what the customer is interested in, but not too strange that it will alienate them. For example, you wouldn’t give a Cannibal Corpse record to someone who’s recently discovered The Living End, just because both involve guitars. I would, but I’m a bad person, and that’s why I don’t work in a record store.

The people behind the counters of Australia’s finest and longest lasting record stores have got the ‘recommendation’ down to an art. A few years back, in Sydney’s Red Eye Records, the clerk saw me perusing through Unity Floors and Day Ravies‘ albums, and suggested I look into a band called Mope City. BAM! Like that, a simple, “…check this out…” has turned an awkward ginger kid into an awkward ginger kid that has a new favourite band.

Fast forward to 2015, and the Sydney trio have surpassed their scratchy lo-fi beginnings of their first two EPs, and kept the adoration of that same weird child who’s now kind of an adult. Releasing a 7″ earlier this year of tight, post-punk inflections, Mope City have already followed up with a full-length album. Released on Tenth Court (Wireheads, Sewers, Thigh Master), Petri Dish features stand out, ‘Wave of Youth’, a track which echoes the band’s love of Slint, whilst maintaining the morbid pop aspects that made Mope City so great to begin with.

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Melancholic as a finding yourself 10 cents short of a coffee on a hungover Monday, ‘Wave of Youth’ packs salad day nostalgia with plodding bass, call and response guitars, and dishevelled drums. The accompanying video, directed by the band’s own Matt Neville, throws together a pastiche of stop motion, silhouttes, and knick knacks sourced from the back of cupboards for a swirling pastiche of the youth Mope City sing about.

Petri Dish is out now on Tenth Court. Buy it here, or better yet, head to your local record store to grab it and cop a few new recommendations while you’re there.

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LISTEN: Lily & the Bellows – ‘White Lies’

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white lies

Two things happened on 21 October 2015. First of all, every dodgy news outlet in the world scrambled over itself to find an original way to tell everyone that this was the day Doc Brown and Marty McFly travelled to in Back to the Future Part II. The result was a flood of increasingly depressing memes that sucked out the entire spirit of the film.

The second thing that happened was Sydney soul-poppers Lily & the Bellows released their latest track, ‘White Lies’. Now, at first, these two events don’t seem related at all. How could the degradation of a beloved 80s film and a swinging pop number from a group of Sydneysiders be connected?

Well, here’s a theory for you – Lily & the Bellows actually travelled through time with Doc and Marty. Their sound rings clear as a dance floor ditty from the 1950s of George McFly. Lily & the Bellows were meant to be playing a support slot for Bill Haley and His Comets. Just as they were about to step onstage, the troublesome duo whisked them off in that bloody Delorean of theirs. Now they’re stuck in 2015 with nothing to do but release that fantastic song they’d been working on moments before.

The signs are all there – organ, plucky guitar, serene melodies: Lily & the Bellows were destined to be the hitmakers of their time. Luckily for us millennials, we get to claim them as our own. Suck it, Baby Boomers – this golden oldie belongs to us!

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LISTEN: Twelve Point Buck – ‘As Warm as Toast’

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Twelve Point Buck are some quiet achievers, slowly plodding away, developing their sound and consistently putting out releases every few months. The drip feed (although almost certainly unintentional) has the effect of building anticipation for future efforts and providing a neat moment to take stock of how they’re slowly but surely exploring every fuzzy-nook and garage-centric cranny of their sound.

As Warm as Toast, the second EP from the Sydney-based four-piece, sees them cultivate the heavier elements of their grunge sound, but always with a point of difference. The lead single, ‘Happy Djong’, is spliced with foreign-language samples that preface distorted licks and drum breaks. The four tracks succinctly summarise their ability to make blithe uptempo tunes and nihilistic slowburners with equal skill. 

What really attracts me to their sound is their refusal to pander to indie rock conventions, taking pride in their brooding structures (see, for example, ‘Forte Piano‘, which is essentially a succession of verses seamlessly running into one another). Twelve Point Buck are good in a way that I can’t typecast, because they really just sound like they’re doing their own thing.

You can download As Warm as Toast for $0, and keep an eye on what they’re doing because it’s probably going to be something you won’t want to miss.

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PREMIERE: Milkk – ‘ADSL Blues’

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milkk

Three words – a band name and a song title – and you’re hooked. What kind of freak can suppress their joy over seeing misspelt milk and a song that seems to bemoan the plight of those who just want high-speed broadband at a decent price?

The perceived product and what’s actually delivered, however, are totally different beasts. Instead of some slacker rock moping about the Internet, Milkk provide a beautiful instrumental piece, cold and subdued. Spreadeagled over nearly five minutes, ‘ADSL Blues’ has almost nothing in common with the buffering signal that comes when setting up your wireless network. There’s no pain, no stress – you can just sit there, suspended by Milkk’s slowly intertwining noise.

The newest signing to Wollongong-based record label No Safe Place, Milkk prove that the label is entirely impossible to pin down. The instrumental trio join noise-poppers Solid Effort, earnest rockers Beast & Flood and ambient folk artist Obscura Hail, to name but a few. However, the difference between Milkk and the label’s other bands is that these guys are doing something that feels relatively untouched – in Sydney, at least. Solid Effort, Beast & Flood, and Obscura Hail are all unique in their own distinctive and incredible ways, but Milkk sounds like nothing else out there at the moment. ‘ADSL Blues’ takes you on a slow, meandering journey that all good Internet providers should aim to supply.

Milkk will be launching their EP, Open Signals Cast, on 31 October at Black Wire Records in Sydney. They’ll be joining Cull, who are launching their own debut album. In the meantime, Milkk will play a set at Lots of Bands V at the Croat in Newcastle this Friday, 2 October, and are supporting Miners at their EP launch on Saturday the 3rd at the Record Crate in Glebe.

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