Autechre: AE_Live 2016/2018

<p><span><span><span>- What was best concert you've ever been to? How much of it do you actually remember? The human brain has a tendency to squash experiences down into bite-sized sensory snippets and emphasise emotional impact, leaving us with heartening yet endlessly fallible recollections of past events. Now if you could hear that gig again, exactly as it sounded, what would that do to the memory? </span></span></span></p>

Coalfalls: Stephenson Street / Coalfalls

<p><span><span>- Right under our noses, the city of Ipswich has been harbouring some serious musical talent in the last few years, with all manner of punk and underground sounds emerging from the town. The instrumental trio Coalfalls are indicative of the diversity that emanates from the area, specialising in a particularly liquid form of jangling post-rock shoegaze. </span></span></p>

The Strokes: The New Abnormal

<p><span><span><em>- The New Abnormal</em> is the new album by seminal 2000’s rockers The Strokes. Recorded with legendary producer, <strong>Rick Rubin</strong>, the band took their time making the record, taking preliminary steps in the studio dating back to 2016. The result is the band’s finest work since their 2006 release, <em>First Impressions Of Earth</em>. Their sixth since their monumental debut, <em>Is This It</em>, the band’s career can be seen as two separate parts.

Superego: Nautilus

<p><span><span>- It’d be easy to think of Superego as conscious-hip-hoppers, but, on their new EP, that isn’t what they really are. The name is sort of misleading. What was once <strong>Pow! Negro </strong>is now Superego: a struggle to establish who you are; a roiling, unsettled identity; an attempt to move from in-your-face, break-your-nose rage to something more collected, settled, stronger; a middle-path between rage and hopelessness.

Willaris. K: Lustre

<p><span><span>- <strong>Jack McAlister</strong>, aka Willaris. K, first emerged in 2017 as an apprentice electrician who in his spare time crafted dark, eerie slices of atmospheric techno from his northern NSW bedroom. Three years later, McAlister has been touring the world and gaining internet hype. <em>Lustre</em> is the first of two EPs planned for release in the next few months.</span></span></p>

Midwife: Forever

<span><span>- Where to begin if not with nature; human and of mother itself? <em>Alive</em>, and all that comes with it. All of the circular movements of wild emotion and of course, the fixed ending. The universal understanding of life is whatever may enter the periphery, must eventually leave. And so, <em>Forever</em>, Midwife’s sophomore album, interrogates our automatic behaviours: the lying, our loving, their lingering, while freeing the memory of the ones who have left us behind.

Methyl Ethel: Hurts To Laugh

- Hurts To Laugh is the new EP by rockers Methyl Ethyl, who have gifted us with three whole studio albums to date; the last one, Triage only being released back in February of 2019. Hurts To Laugh was recorded at the same as Triage so, maybe the enforced tour cancellation and time alone has brought upon us this release.

XIII: Heard Of Cows?

<p><span><span>- We’re a long way from the early 2000s, back when <strong>Dan Sanders </strong>used to look like <strong>Richard Ashcroft </strong>and fronted successful WA rockers <strong>Gyroscope</strong>. I actually had to check quite hard that their successor outfit, XIII, was&nbsp; the band I was thinking of. They’ve slimmed down the social media presence - Facebook, forget about it.

Violent Soho - 'Everything Is A-OK'

After having wrestled with a decade and a half worth of demons across four albums; each crammed full of wry suspicion, ageing angst, flippant cheek, existential despair, plaintive hope, pie-eyed wonder and worry — along with metric tonnes of neck-snapping riffs — in 2020 Everything Is A-OK for Violent Soho. Well, in reality, that’s never exactly true, is it? The story now goes that after several years of playing the part of “those kids who don’t seem to fit in anywhere” with their first two records (2008’s We Don’t Belong Here & 2010’s self-titled) Violent Soho finally announced themselves into the public’s consciousness with 2013’s Hungry Ghost. It came in a hail of riffs and ‘HELL F*CK YEAH’s scrawled on arms, desks, and bathroom walls the world over. 2016's WACO, meanwhile — despite earning a No.1 chart debut, ARIA awards, festival headlining spots and sold-out tours to the biggest crowds of their careers — came amid personal upheaval for drummer Michael Richards, bassist Luke Henery and guitarist James Tidswell. But now with Everything Is A-OK, Mansfield’s favourite sons have drawn a metaphorical line in the sand: five albums into their career, equipped with a renewed self-confidence, they know not to follow a rule book written by other people. That’s what Everything Is A-OK is: a declaration that THIS is who Violent Soho are as a band. As musicians. As mates. “It’s honest,” explains guitarist/vocalist Luke Boerdam. “It’s doesn’t claim to be anything it’s not: it’s apolitical, slacker, cynical, and trying to connect with people over a shared experience in pointing out society’s failures and the personal shit that follows.”

4ZZZ Top 20

1. Cable Ties - Far Enough

2. Holiday Party - Let Down (Single)

3. Baker Boy - Move (Single)

4. Sycco - Nicotine (Single)

5. Violent Soho - Everything Is A-OK

6. Good Boy - It Takes A Lot Of Skill To Milk A Mare

7. Superego - Nautilus (Album Of The Week)

8. Cloud Tangle - Kinds Of Sadness

9. Jeremy Neale - We Were Trying To Make It Out

10. Dicklord - It's Soooo Boring

11. Screamfeeder - Start Again From Here (Single)

12. Ultra Material - Marigold (Single)