L-Fresh The Lion: South West

Submitted by chrisc on Thu, 06/08/2020 - 12:02

<p><span><span>- Hip hop, as any good student of music history can tell you, started in The Bronx. The more nerdy history students, in fact, could pinpoint the exact block where Kool Herc started spinning breakbeats. From that point on, the history of hip hop is often the history of localities. Compton, Brooklyn; East Coast and West; the Dirty South. Often new developments in the genre are traced back to one location - trap from Atlanta, grime from East London.</span></span></p>

Radium Dolls: Bel-Haven

Submitted by chrisc on Thu, 06/08/2020 - 11:35

- Does the nervous energy of Radium Dolls leak out from the seams of their debut EP Bel-Haven despite having been shut up with the rest of us, for six months, or because of it? Probably both? There’s an uncomfortable, frenetic quality to the Brisbane band that dances off-kilter and up in your face, like a conversation with someone speeding off their dial. It’s difficult to know whether you’re being entertained or about to be headbutted.

Ali Jef: Trouble In Paradise

Submitted by chrisc on Tue, 04/08/2020 - 10:07

<p><span><span>- 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 <em>Trouble In Paradise</em> from mysterious newcomer Ali Jef is just getting started.</span></span></p>

River Yarra x Ausecuma Beats: River Yarra x Ausecuma Beats

Submitted by chrisc on Tue, 04/08/2020 - 09:50

<p><span><span>- Melbourne label <strong>Music In Exile</strong> has recently released a new EP in their REMIXED series. On the 12” we see <strong>Ausecuma Beats</strong> reworked by <strong>River Yarra</strong>. Ausecuma Beats are a nine-piece group led by djembe player <strong>Boubacar Gaye</strong>, with its members originating from Australia, Cuba, Mali, and the Senegambian region of West Africa.

Katie Dey - 'mydata'

Submitted by charlottec on Mon, 03/08/2020 - 12:04
It is hard to imagine a more timely album than ‘mydata,’ the fourth solo release from the Melbourne-based pop artist Katie Dey. Her unique sound, which blends noisy synths with art-pop poetics, has felt ahead of the curve, but in this moment of quarantine-strained relationships and touch-starved isolation, ‘mydata’ feels even more prescient than ever. Dey’s crackling synths and pining vocals aren’t satisfied with the mundane question of whether love is possible over the internet. Instead, ‘mydata’ wonders whether love is a solution at all or if it’s just another wonderful, painful complication. “It's pretty explicitly about an internet relationship, which can be precisely as meaningful as a relationship that’s physical,” Dey says. “Because a long distance relationship is obviously physical too, in a sense. It's physically felt in the body.” In other words, whether a relationship is sexual, romantic, or totally platonic in nature, distance doesn’t erase physicality, it changes it. One pang exchanged for another. Dey didn’t set out to write an album about long distance affection, though. Like past projects, the soul of the album revealed it to herself in the middle of her songwriting process. “You usually learn so much in the process of starting a thing that it morphs along the way,” Dey explains, noting that this is in line with her normal process. Like past her albums, ‘mydata’ started out very scattershot and formless, but came together in pieces over a long period of time. “Old songs became relevant again, and things started to click into place.” For all of her record’s timeliness, Dey emphasizes that she didn’t write ‘mydata’ as a response to COVID-19, but as a testament to the truth of her life and the lives of many others. “I mean it’s just how I’ve always lived. It’s how a lot of marginalized people have always lived,” she says. Even before quarantine, more people than ever build their lives together online. And when so much of our relationships exist through corporate owned social media, video calls of questionable privacy, and chat logs backed up on some distant server, love gets even more complicated. “So much of my life is just on the internet. So many private, intimate moments. You can download this enormous chat log you have with someone, and it will be like 20MB. But that’s not where the relationship is. That’s not where it’s contained.” - Katie Dey.

4ZZZ Top 20

1. Tia Gostelow - Always (Feat. Holy Holy) (Single)

2. Full Power Happy Hour - Old Mind Of Mine (Single)

3. Sycco - Dribble (Single)

4. Cub Sport - Like Nirvana

5. loulou - It Spills Out EP

6. Black Parasol - Chermside (Single)

7. FeelsClub - b) sober (Single)

8. Holiday Party - Holiday Party

9. Pool Shop - Kiss The Sky (Single)

10. Leanne Tennant - Happiness is.....

11. First Beige - Not Gonna Feel The Way You Asked For (Single)

12. CNT EVN - Tryna EP

13. IDLES - A Hymn (Single)

Jay & Yuta: Condemned Compilations

Submitted by chrisc on Fri, 31/07/2020 - 10:05

- Music should be understood as a historical exercise just as much as it is considered a creative one. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” as the saying goes. Those who remember the past today seem similarly condemned to repeat it despite their best efforts. But that’s more likely the fault of the rest of their peers who fail to remember and condemn others to simply repeating past victories ad infinitum. “No man is an island” as another saying goes.

Fontaines D.C.: A Hero's Death

Submitted by chrisc on Fri, 31/07/2020 - 09:51

<p><span><span><span><span><span><span>- Growing up in public does not seem easy. From the array of youth plucked into the X Factor universe to pop stars whose careers begin as children, we observers have seen mixed fortunes for these performers. The effect seems particularly jarring on those who rocket suddenly to success at a youthful age. And while it would be absurd to place young Irish punks Fontaines D.C.

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