Ali Jef: Trouble In Paradise | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- So here’s a washy ambient opening. Dub-wise stereo delays drift above. A sharp indie guitar lick cuts through everything, then a drum’n’bass beat drops, then shouty distorted punk vocals. So (straight up) I count five styles in thirty seconds, and Trouble In Paradise from mysterious newcomer Ali Jef is just getting started.

Now here’s lo-fi tape-warble drum textures, wobbly detuned guitar, pounding electronic tom-drums in straight sixteenths like a detroit-tech breakdown. Pulsing basslines, synth-textures with the detune cranked and the pitch envelopes ramping in and out of the melody, all somehow still weaving in abrasive vox and jangly choppy guitar.

There’s a relentless drive to the programming style, and they seem to be great at setting up a rhythmically energetic texture and then stretching it all the way back into an ambient zone with spacious reverbed-out melodies on guitar and synth.

Mid-album cut The Order is all robotic driven drum-programming subverted by washed out close-harmony chords and guitars that alternate between scratchy and clean. This is smartly constructed stuff, with an equally cleverly cultivated sense of roughness, messy edges and colouring outside the lines, as if Ariel Pink had happened fifteen years later, in iso in a basement with a 606, a Zoom sampler and beat up DX7.

Eat Veggies might really be a 606, bouncing post-punk bassline with a near atonal phased guitar lead to match. However it breaks down into a pre-chorus that is typical of this record’s sound: shiny-dull synth wash, driving rhythm parts made of unapologetically straight, near-brutal drum-machine and busy (if ungenerously mixed) bass.

Fans of The Books will love closing cut Last Chance, as will anyone who was feeling short-changed by the predeliction for quick and punchy song-lengths. It’s a relaxing, expansive vibe to round out the album, and also the only single moment listening to Ali Jef where there’s even the slightest chance of getting bored. The record is super promiscuous style-wise, but it also totally hangs together, retaining a real a unity with its soundprint.

Bonus track Tomorrow blasts orchestrally hi-fi big sounding ideas that are choked down to tape compressed dustiness, tinny beats and cymbal-hiss cranked up too high: one-hundred-percent on purpose- this is someone who def. plugged their grandma’s organ with the bossa-nova beat presets into a guitar amp with the verb and drive cranked all the way up. So fans of Briz/Hobart indie icon SCRAPS will probably have a pretty good time with this record.

There’s definitely something intentionally retro here, something from electronica’s earlier, edgier days; when owning a synth in the first place made you more likely to be in a punk or experimental outfit than trying to get spun by a New York disco DJ. A more open and democratic producer culture where a four-track and a couple machines could unleash wildly imaginative songwriting and escape past the usual gatekeepers into open air.

This is the kind of album your cool friend just got on a cassette mailed from Portlandia, a sought after '70’s gem uncovered in the estate of a reclusive summer-of-love acid cook. Except the bio says Naarm, and with scant detail beyond claiming a long affiliation with ‘the antipodes music scene’ we’re looking much closer to Gerling than to Ween. If you like your electro waaay over at the indie end of the street, with vocals that choose gritty over pretty every time, if you’re up for some artfully executed lo-fi production feels, and a compositional style that reflects a lot of thought and even more hard work, this is a record you need to check.

- Kieran Ruffles.
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